He may only stand six LEGO plates tall, but the Indiana Jones in this series of “8-Bit Indy” vignettes by TBB alum Rod Gillies is still an archaeologist of action. And leading off the series is this fantastic bit of title lettering, showcasing the font associated with the franchise. I like the 3-D aspects here, helping the gradient letters pop out of the background even more. And don’t miss the tiny titular character sitting atop the 8-bit signage.
Rod Gillies brings TV’s most successful soldiers of fortune to life with this microscale creation. Every child of the 80s knows this black and gray van with its striking red stripe. Even if you didn’t watch the show, the van adorned toy aisles and Halloween costumes and lunch boxes. Heck, even younger kids might know the van, thanks to it’s recent-ish inclusion in LEGO Dimensions. But Rod’s gone even smaller than LEGO did, and he’s accomplished it without needing to use a printed piece for the stripe. I love it when a MOC comes together.
I’ve always been a fan of Sky-Fi aircraft. It’s a glorious retro-futuristic look, typified by the Xbox classic Crimson Skies, and the creations of LEGO builders such as Jon Hall and John Lamarck. To pull myself out of a recent bout of builder’s block, I set myself a challenge — to build a series of Sky-Fi aircraft, in a common colour scheme, with a similar overall style, but each design different. Crimson Squadron is what emerged over the next few weeks…
The first of the squadron’s aircraft to roll off the production line was this twin-engined beast — the Bulldog. It established the signature elements which sit across the rest of the fleet: the red and chequerboard livery, a whiff of a muscle car from the up-front intakes, a bubble canopy for a fun retro feel, and an overall super-condensed chunky chibi look. I was pleased with how the Bulldog turned out and immediately set to work once more.
It has been a while since the last Halo game, but The wait is over, with the release of Halo: Infinite, Master chief is back, and ready for action. TBB alumni Rod Gillies crafted a little slice of the massive and partially damaged ring which is the setting for the game in spectacular detail, with pine trees, rocky ground, one of the many alien artifiacts, and even the hexagonal structures that make up the ring below and around the surface. The scene by itself would be great, but miniature versions of four vehicles from both the Banished and the Space Marines are gravy on a very tasty dish.
I was given one of the large-scale Batman LED torch figures a few months ago and it planted a dreadful seed in my mind. I don’t know about other LEGO builders, but once I have an interesting idea for a model it haunts me, making me unable to concentrate on building anything else until it is exorcised by an attempt to put it together. After months of experimenting and tweaking (and multiple Bricklink orders), I finally ended up with a Big Ol’ Batmobile — over 10 inches long and 4 inches wide. The trickiest part of the process was embedding the domed canopies neatly within the bodywork, but the worst part was undoubtedly when I discovered late in the build that a key piece was unavailable in the colour I required. Do not be too outraged, dear reader, when I tell you I resorted to spray paint.
I’m not a scale-modeller, I don’t have the patience or toolkit of building techniques for it. So the key for me was capturing the spirit of the original Batmobile — its styling and key elements — without attempting to recreate it perfectly. Identifying those signature elements was the first step — bubble cockpits, red striping, a “bat face” in the front grille, the three rocket pipes, and, of course, prominent fins to the rear (as seen in the image below). I’m pleased with how this model eventually turned out, although in future I won’t underestimate how long it takes to build something to a larger scale than you’re used to.
Ever since the LEGO Friends theme appeared in 2012, I’ve had the stupid idea of Frenemies in my head. Picking up the bricks for the first time in months, I decided to finally take a crack at turning Frenemies into reality. Mech suits are not my forte, and I had to spend ages fiddling with these before I was happy. I found my initial attempts didn’t look like “suits” — the models just looked like ill-proportioned people who just happened to have tiny heads. Much of the focus during building was around the neck and collar areas, trying to get across the impression the minidolls were sitting inside these bigger mechanical contraptions.
“Welcome to Jurassic Park”. I’ve loved Jurassic Park since devouring Michael Crichton’s original novel in 8 hours of straight reading, months before the movie adaptation had even been announced. Then there were the years of waiting, wondering if Spielberg could possibly deliver on Crichton’s vision, before we finally experienced the jaw-dropping impact of seeing “real” dinosaurs on the big screen. In a world where CGI effects are the norm, cinema audiences have become rather blasé about regularly seeing the impossible made real — back in 1993, this was something special. The effect this movie had on me was considerable, and I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of recreating elements of the film in bricks. I figured I’d never be able to build a LEGO version of the whole park to the scale I wanted if I used minifigures, so instead I decided to give it a go in microscale…
I’m a die-hard Disney fan. Walt is one of my creative heroes — a constant source of inspiration — and the theme parks at DisneyWorld are some of my favourite places. The current lockdown situation has seen us have to cancel a family trip to Florida, and whilst there are obviously much more serious problems in the world than a missed holiday, I’ve been feeling a bit down about it. I decided to cheer myself up by attempting to recreate some Disney magic with LEGO bricks. Three years ago, I enjoyed putting together a microscale LEGO version of Cinderella’s Castle, so I decided to set myself the challenge of creating some other iconic theme park sights. In addition to a rebuild of the Magic Kingdom’s centrepiece castle, I took a crack at Spaceship Earth at Epcot, and the Chinese Theatre at Hollywood Studios. We’ll see where my microscale tour of central Florida takes me next, but I feel Animal Kingdom and Typhoon Lagoon beckoning…
Some LEGO builders return over and again to the same subject — obsessively tinkering with a particular design, fiddling with the structure or details in an endless quest to “improve” their creation. My particular obsession is with microscale Star Wars — the attempt to capture iconic spaceships and movie scenes in the minimum number of pieces. Microscale building can be a dangerous time-suck of a pastime, as the smallest tweak in part choice or connection can make all the difference in the final appearance of a model. For as long as I’ve been an adult builder I’ve been fiddling around with tiny Star Wars scenes. I must have built these subjects in microscale dozens of times, but on every occasion, the design gets tweaked and revised and tightened. Maybe someday I’ll be content with them, but in the meantime, here are the current iterations. First up, Episode IV: A New Hope…
Click to see models from Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi
In the non-LEGO “real” world, I work in innovation, developing ideas for new products, mostly in the world of drinks. Doing work like this, you come across multiple techniques for enhancing creativity and improving idea generation. In my experience, one of the most effective is the setting of constraints and rules around what you’re trying to do. Although it seems counterintuitive, the narrowing of possibility, the scaling-back of the intimidating blank canvas, gives more permission and opportunity for creativity. That’s where my recent Hover Car Racer models came from. In a bid to get past a bout of “builders’ block,” I set myself some constraints — a handful of key elements which would be common across the models, but beyond those, each racer could vary in design. The “rules” I set myself: bold color styling, a whiff of a muscle car, elements of asymmetry, and an enclosed cockpit. I’m really pleased with the variety which arose from sticking within these constraints and was pleasantly surprised at the creative flow of the building process…
The next time you’re struggling through a bout of the creative block (regardless of your creative medium of choice), I’d recommend setting yourself some constraints. Give yourself an unreasonable time limit, drastically limit the materials you can use, or set size and/or color restrictions — paradoxically, you’ll find such limitations will set you free.
Once I had a few models, it seemed natural to expand the world of Hover Car Racing. I imagined a future where the drivers are rockstar celebrities, with wall-to-wall coverage of races on every channel. I love taking a model and presenting it in a way that implies a broader universe around it…
A recent touch of insomnia prompted this latest LEGO model. I found myself lying awake, staring at the ceiling, caught up in concern as to how sentient robots would cope on long interstellar journeys when their human companions are all tucked up in cryosleep. Maybe they shut down for a decade or so, but maybe they just wander the silent corridors of the ship, lonely and cold? This melancholy scenario wouldn’t leave me alone, and so I built it to try and get it out of my head. The robot’s stooped posture was key to the feeling I was trying to create. I wanted him to look old and tired, and perhaps a little apprehensive, as he shuffled through the empty halls of his vessel. I’d originally planned to shoot the photo and then filter it to a black and white image. However, built in shades of grey, it turned out exactly how I wanted without much processing. I hope it captures the slight air of gloom, which prompted the build.
This was one of those LEGO models which seemingly popped out of nowhere during the creative process. I started off fiddling around with the new mudguard pieces, thinking they might make for interesting detailing, and almost before I knew it, I had something reminiscent of a muscle car engine grille. At that point, the retro racing vibe kicked in and the rest of the model came together in a couple of hours. I think asymmetry always adds an interesting spark to a model, and so the off-centre elements — the stripe and the protruding engine — were in the plan from an early stage. The domed cockpit came late to the party, but it’s the part of the model I’m most pleased with. I feel it adds a Jetsons-esque touch of the retro-ridiculous, and makes the model more fun than it might have been otherwise. Similarly, the addition of the Friends sticker on the front wing fitted with a racing theme, but represented a change from the usual livery applied to futuristic LEGO vehicles.
Once the model was complete I obviously had to build some kind of backdrop for it. The panel-based scenery is plain and simple, but that’s okay as I’d always planned to motion-blur the hell out of it! I know some people prefer to see their LEGO models in plain and unfiltered images, but for me this one demanded some oomph. I’ve been watching a lot of the Netflix F1 documentary recently, and I was trying to capture something of the same feel, conveying the dynamic nature of the hover car racing competition I had in my head.