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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
I normally applaud new LEGO parts, but this did not go for the electric scooter part introduced a couple of years ago in the friends theme, that was later used in the LEGO city theme. Maybe it’s because I am not a fan of electric scooters. Who knows. Duncan Lindbo however has proved me wrong. In their latest creation the electric scooter part is used multiple times to represent the insect-like feet of a tank. The part I dread so much, looks amazing and really is, what makes this creation so special. What also is special is that we get friends figs from a different range of themes. We get Noctura from Elves sporting pants and a cap, Namaari form Raya and the dragon in her official form and a third fig composed of regular Friends parts sporting a The LEGO Movie hairdo. It is fun to see how these two fantasy figures fit the Sci Fi theme so well.
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.
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.
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.
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!
There’s a Significantly Huge Investment in Pictures below
We see plenty of ideas of what the future might look like in LEGO bricks. Cities, spaceships, cars, robots… But what will trains look like tens or hundreds of years in the future? Blake Foster has had a crack with this cyberpunk locomotive. It’s recognisable as a train to us mere present-dwellers, but has enough cool features for that sci-fi look. I especially like strap-like detail around the mechanical parts in the middle — it really sells it as something futuristic. Since this is cyberpunk, I have to assume there’s some dystopian reason for that enormous strap. Perhaps it’s to stop people falling into the loco’s fusion reactor? I hope that’s a preventive, rather than reactive, measure…
Builder Aido Kessler wants the future of LEGO today with the brick of their dreams, as submitted to New Elementary’s Make a Wishbrick contest. While the idea presented, a headlight brick minus its foot, is something that’s been on my wish list for longer than I can remember, that’s actually not my favorite part of this build. In an effort to zhuzh up the design, Aido added a living quarters inside a technologically advanced brick. The vignette very much feels like a LEGO-themed take on The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, my favorite bit of science-fiction. I love the clean interior juxtaposed with the technological textures on the exterior, and the subtle hints of trans-light blue really drive home the space-age look. Now will our hero continue to inhabit his little brick-built cube, or will he break free with his new part and let his creativity run wild?
