Tag Archives: Sci Fi

The future of farming: the only way is up!

Vertical farming isn’t exactly a new thing, but even seeing examples of it in the present day, there’s something quite futuristic about it. Throw in some cool architecture, add in a few greebley bits, maybe some drone workers, and boom, you’re transported to a distant planet. Oh hey, that’s exactly what Bart de Dobbelaer has done! Although there are no immediate clues as far as scale goes, you get the sense this is some enormous monolith built just off the shore. Bart is quite the prolific off-world builder, you know.

Mion H8 space farm

Luxurious travel for the art-deco arthropod

It’s always a treat when Vince Toulouse graces us with another LEGO build. He has developed a very unique style, and we’re big fans of his insect-inspired retro-futuristic sci-fi builds! That may be a mouthful, but it gets the point across. What should we call this, Insectpunk? Anyway, we featured something called a Myriapod way back in March 2020, and Vince has revisited the concept with this gorgeous red and gold consist! It’s only fitting that an insect-inspired train would use a bunch of legs from the Insectoids line. There is surely no more stylish way for bugs to get around!

Myriapodotrain

A LEGO city built on a foundation of Aquanauts

While it may not look like it at first, this microscale LEGO city by Casey McCoy owes its roots to the Aquazone theme, in a very literal way. Using a baseplate from 6195 Neptune Discovery Lab as the starting point, Casey assembled quite the futuristic metropolis. I love the multi-layered approach, with different levels of buildings built into the cliffside contrasting the towering skyscrapers above. The one stud-wide monorail track helps break up the levels, and appears to run through the baseplate at one point. And that pop of color from the trans-neon orange “river” running through the canyon just sets the whole build off!

Home on a Hill - Neptune 2587 - #1

The perfect place to go when your battery’s running low

Everyone needs to recharge every now and again; especially robots. And builder Rubblemaker has just the thing for a drowsy droid. This marvelous robot req. room comes equipped with plenty of charging devices and even a serving of a delicious Blue Alcobot to take the edge off. And you can’t beat that view!

Robot Rec Room

Assassinanny 9-12?

Beware, mild Mandalorian S3E7 spoilers ahead. Please forgive the title, but it’s not every day that I get to make an obscure Venture Brothers reference while I write about a LEGO Star Wars build. Believe me, I’m enjoying the moment! From the penultimate season 3 episode of The Mandalorian, Dread Pirate Wesley has channeled his inner Anzellan and created the best IG-12 I’ve seen thus far. Grogu’s new mech is looking extra sharp with spindly, Technic-heavy extremities. I especially like the use of the Constraction fig lightsaber hilts in the robot’s forearms, providing the perfect amount of texture with the glint of pearl silver. IG’s head is well-formed, especially with two pulley pieces. They critically allow stud connections for texturing/coloring while still maintaining a 3-wide cylinder. But there’s really nothing more eye-catching than that lime-colored pilot, complete with an adorable custom face print.

Lego IG-12 (and Grogu)

The age of men is over, the time of the Mecha-Orc has come!

Well, now I’ve seen everything! Direct from the imagination of Illia Zubashev comes this hearty band of LEGO orcs armed with a mech suit, a rocket pack, and one huge rocket launcher. I absolutely love the colors here! The greens of the orcish skin and dark tan of the terrain provide wonderful contrast with the safety yellow and of this troop’s equipment. Unorganized and organic patters interplay with neat black-and-white checkerboards and safety striping. It instantly signals that these devices are out of place in this setting. And yet, the hints of rust and a few haphazard patch jobs apparent on the modern equipment still anchors this scene in reality (or at least a reality where fantasy has been gut-checked by sci-fi). May this platoon have much success in its raid of the nearby kingdom of Cyber-Elves.

Rokkit Launcha Trakk.

Book your flight to another galaxy on this intergalactic wonder

There are many styles of LEGO spaceships, but there’s just something special about the classic LEGO Space theme. Builder Wynd adds an entry to the theme with this excellent spacefaring vessel. The colors are the tried and true yellow, blue, and grey with the hints of red from the theme. Given the size of the ship, there’s plenty of room to use all those wonderful smaller pieces to add textures and details to the spaceship. There’s not a bad angle to be found! The ship looks great from stem to stern. The ship is perfect for some galactic adventures!

Intergalactic Voyager

We are Legion, we are many

Whenever I think of creepy alien LEGO creations, I always think of Bart de Dobbelaer. His creations are always out of this world, on a much bigger scale than I personally am used to working on. Bart has the ability to perfectly use seemingly single-purpose parts in a way they were not intended to. The latest creation is called Legion and there we can spot the Belville horse saddle in black in the pillar-like creatures. This makes me wonder why Bart actually managed to get his hands on 16 black Belville saddles.

Legion

In the middle of the creation, there is the ‘mother’ of all the black critters. For her eyes, Bart used a combination of coffin bases and rolled-up Dots bracelets. Using mainly black bricks can be tricky, as those creations usually are really hard to photograph, but if you look closely, the little critters aren’t all the same. There are a couple of designs scattered around the base, making it look like each of the creatures has its own specific talent or ability.

Grab hold of this Toy Story transport

Everyone remembers when the little green aliens stole the show after Buzz Lightyear and Woody found themselves trapped in an arcade claw machine. Now, David Roberts is giving those little aliens a claw they can take outside Pizza Planet with this handy hover machine, suitable for lifting and transporting all manner of items. David has a knack for primary-colored sci-fi vehicles with strong geometric patterns built into them, and that’s a style that suits these little Pixar aliens just right.

The Claw

A dark ocean on an alien world

Builder Ralf Langer has a particular knack for making LEGO bricks feel like fluids. Whether it’s a mind-blowingly impressive curve or a serene tide pool, Ralf always seems to turn the bricks into liquid in his hands. And he’s done it again with this build representing the aftermath of a distant war on an alien landscape. Ralf has made excellent use of reflections so that the rubble of a futuristic vehicle sinks beneath the dark waters with no visible seams. It’s an effect so realistic that it makes my thalassophobia kick in.

After the war

Coming soon to a spaceport near you

Despite the best efforts of large online retailers, drones still haven’t quite taken off (geddit?) as the main method of transport for goods. When they do though, I hope they look as good as this LEGO drone created by Stijn van der Laan (Red Spacecat). It’s a perfect example of near-future sci-fi – it has the classic drone layout we all know and love in the form of the propellors on each corner. But at the same time it looks too slick and cool to be from this day and age. It has a touch of the Boston Dynamics about it.

Cargo lifter

Even the container matches this aesthetic! It can be easy to overcomplicate future space-freight containers, but Stijn has done a sterling job to keep this convincingly realistic. Naturally, the container and craft are compatible.

Cargo lifter

EVE Online’s Sarum Revelation brickified with LEGO

Building a 100+ stud long LEGO SHIP (Significantly Huge Investment in Parts) in no small feat. Building one that is a highly accurate recreation of a preexisting design? Well that’s exactly what Eugene Levin did with this beautiful model of the Sarum Revelation from EVE online. The attention to detail is superb and he even managed to sneak his own icon onto the hull. Check out more photos below and his Flickr page for comparison shots with the original in game ship!

In-game model comparison

There’s a Significantly Huge Investment in Pictures below