Tag Archives: Sci Fi

I promise you, one day I’ll take you to Elysium.

Graffiti is commonly found in alleyways, on abandoned buildings and railway cars but you don’t think of it as being scrawled on spacecraft. That’s why it is so neat to see it on Peter Stella’s newest LEGO creation. This is a shuttle from the gritty…or partially gritty Elysium movie from 2013. For those who haven’t seen the film, the citizens of Earth live in squalor, filth, pestilence and turmoil. That’s the gritty part. The non-gritty parts of the movie takes place on Elysium, a beautiful, clean utopian space station orbiting the Earth where the rich and powerful live. The station is technologically advanced, with devices that can cure diseases, reverse aging, and even regenerate body parts. Earth, not so much. The film makes deliberate, heavy-handed socio-political commentary and, as you can imagine, tension ensues. Anyway, in a LEGO world of Star Wars and Harry Potter it’s nice to see someone of Peter’s caliber give Elysium a bit of love. And graffiti.

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“Houston, this is Platform 7”

From a galaxy likely not too far away comes a creation from LEGO sci-fi building genius Tim Goddard.

This is incredible. The amount of detail here is off the charts! Just look at those stairwells (yes, the external stairs and the internal yellow stairs), the airlocks, the lines on the landing pad! But that antenna on top, that takes the cake. Clearly, it can send messages all the way from Pluto to Earth.

Also, is that the Death Star as a fuel tank?

You’ve done it again, Mr. Goddard. Keep up the great work!

Outfitted for an expedition

When you’re exploring an alien wilderness, prospecting for valuable materials, you don’t want to get caught underprepared. This LEGO figure, built by the talented Marko Petrušić (Cezium) is suited up and ready. I love how smooth the midsection is, and how solid the whole figure looks. Many aspects of the base, rifle, and body are cool, but what really sells it is that jacket. You can’t help but feel warm just looking at the “fuzzy” fringe made from gears and Minifigure hair.

Marko built this as a birthday present for Buttloaf_Builds and claims to have been inspired by his incredible recreation of the Nigerian trickster, Eshu. But Marko is exceptional in his own right, with several other builds featured on here on The Brothers Brick.

Greebles galore

There are very few LEGO builders whose creations give me the chills, but Bart De Dobbelaer is definitely one of them. Intruder Alert is where we see all of Bart’s photography, editing, and building skills combine into one work of art and the result is haunting… and gorgeous. My eye is immediately drawn to the silhouettes of the unidentified intruders, poised and ready. The walls are decked out with greebles and ominous neon lights have been cast to really set the atmosphere. The ribbed hoses running across the length of the floor, several of which are slightly bent, add to the realism of this scene. According to Bart, we’re looking at his entire light bluish gray collection greebled on the walls of this passageway. The spikes on the armed intruders, the textures on the floor and walls, and the curvature of the entrance all work in harmony.

Got your favorite sci-fi soundtrack playing in your head? Then you’re ready to check out some more of Bart’s creations.

Wake up, time to hide

The tag-team effort of Brickleas and Si-MOCs produced a scene to give science fiction fans a double take. They created a two-tier MOC of an intergalactic manhunt. Topside, a space police officer is in pursuit of an outlaw, meanwhile below, the suspect lurks through the sewer. The collaboration was a standout submission for this September’s Rogue Bricks contest. Teams of two picked either side of a “space gangster” or “space sheriff” to depict their story.

In a strange turn of events, Brickleas and Si-MOCs teamed up at the last minute after their original partners dropped out of the contest because their parts were unfinished. The result worked out with Simon Liu (Si-MOCs) building his version of a Spinner from Blade Runner, and a space police minifigure outfitted in Barbara Gordon‘s ceremonial uniform from The LEGO Batman Movie CMF (Series 1) and the LEGO Star Wars Wedge Antilles helmet. Elias Hübner’s (Brickleas) contribution looks as dark and desolate as any subterranean waterway with an underground tunnel as the escape. Check out a photo of the Si-MOCs’ take on the Spinner below.

Cue the monk music as you wield this LEGO Halo energy sword

It is only fitting to think about the Halo Gregorian chant as I look upon this amazing brick-built Covenant energy sword – a holy weapon wielded by the noble class of the Sangheili species, crafted by Nick Jensen. According to Nick’s specs, the sword is comprised of a whopping six pounds of LEGO bricks and is 41.5″ long. No adhesives such as tape or glue were used – talk about clutch power!

The inner portion of the blade of the energy sword is mostly comprised of clear-colored and light blue 1×2 trans-clear plates and 1×1 round tiles while the outer portion is made of trans-clear bricks and slopes in light blue, clear, and pink.

The handle is crafted out of a menagerie of bricks, tiles, dome-tops, and slopes in mostly blacks and greys with some trans-clear parts. Nick also smartly constructed a couple of stands to display this amazing work. It definitely must feel pretty empowering to hold this sword – even if it is only a model made of bricks. It looks almost exactly as I remember it from the games. The Master Chief’s weapons have got nothing on this beauty.

If you’re going to create a portal, make sure you know where you’re going

My favorite LEGO builds are always ones that contain story, humor and lots of color. Builder Victor hits all three of these points perfectly and throws in a little absurdity for good measure. As the story goes, Diogenes Trexler ordered a pizza on his home planet that smelled so delicious it attracted the attention of a giant worm. Plotting his escape, our pizza-loving hero created an ill-advised portal that opened on to the bathroom of one very surprised bather.

The landscaping and colorwork in this piece are gorgeous and there is a minimum of visible studs, giving it a very slick look. The worm really pops with its blue colors and excellent shape. The alien fauna is colorful and appropriately weird and creepy. The portal is nicely rendered with transparent pieces and the change between the two universes is wonderful, going from organic shapes to the clean tiles of a modern bathroom. The surprised bather, caught in mid blow-dry is the perfect punch line with his terrified face and hair blowing toward the ceiling. In my opinion, it’s little touches like these that make the difference between a good model and a great one.

Check out the model from another angle to see all the details

The rules of the race

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…

Emerge: Object 5-D

Just when we thought we had LEGO builder Mitsuru Nikaido all figured out he comes along with something outside of his usual comfort zones. Frankly, seeing a techno-goo monster emerge from withing a cube would be outside the comfort zones of many people. This whole concept has an eerie, otherworldly feel, like the stuff of our strangest nightmares. Even the low placement of the cube in the composition feels a bit unsettling. While he may have shifted his palate, Mitsuru is still experimenting with bold and stark color contrasts. The end result is stunning. I am fascinated by Object 5-D and will surely remain intrigued by what this builder comes up with next.

Wheel need some bigger tires

I love vehicles with big, knobby tires. Just love ’em. My dream ride is a tricked out, super-lifted Jeep Rubicon, ready to crawl the ruggedest rocks on the planet. But that’s not all big wheels are good for. They are also useful for getting your massive military machine from point A to point B, through all weather and terrain. Brick Ninja demonstrates this ably with this LEGO artillery truck. The olive green looks appropriately military, and the splash of orange gives a nice pop of contrast, adding some sci-fi flair. It says, “Camouflage? We don’t need no stinking camouflage!” The greebles are not overdone, which makes sense since it is an armored vehicle (who would leave a bunch of important stuff on the outside to get blasted off?). And I love the crew, complementing the colors of the vehicle while giving life to the scene.

I think I finally get Radiohead

LEGO builders Timofey Tkachev and Sheo have put together a tragic band that somehow has nothing to do with Radiohead or Joy Division. That is a total bummer because I really wanted to lay on the references for either band pretty thick but that’ll have to wait for another post now. Instead the members of this sad band are rooted with a much more highbrow notion; each bears the name of great Greek tragedians.

Click to delve deeper, you know you want to!

Stargate alien overlords travel in style

We all know that aliens built the great pyramids, which we learned by watching Stargate. And while the sight of a golden pyramid slowly drifting down to earth to land amidst thousands of worshipers is something to remember, seeing one in orbit, surrounded by a massive black lattice is even more memorable. Kevin J. Walter is a true believer and has recreated a Goa’uld mothership and its outer frame with surprising details at this small-ish scale. The outer structure is covered in a variety of tiles and curves of all shapes and sizes, and the pyramid itself is very accurate to its source materials.