Menace and malice are the motto of Malefactor, the latest LEGO build from Scott Wilhelm. With outer plating of dark red and mouthparts and limbs clad in black, this giant parasite still appears to have some of the essentials of space travel like rear thrusters and forward battery. So is this a living creature, or a spaceship with a natural inspiration? I’d rather not get close enough to find out!
In case it escaped your attention, this year is a leap year. That means we got a whole extra day of the LEGO community’s month-long rover-building bonanza: Febrovery! And boy, has Scott Wilhelm made good use of that bonus day. At 117 studs long, this colossal rover would almost qualify for that other famous space-building monthly challenge, SHIPtember (it just needs to swap those wheels for wings). Since it’s built for exploring, let’s do some exploring of our own and find out what Scott has hidden inside this behemoth. (Spoiler alert: a lot!)
Step inside to have a look around this massive rover!
You may recall Scott Wilhelm’s LEGO Iron Horse spaceship we’ve featured last month. We were thrilled to learn that it brought along a few of its friends and, as impressive as it is on its own, the aforementioned Iron Horse isn’t even the showstopper. Scott brings the same striking color scheme and meticulous attention to detail to an entire fleet he calls The Q’Endar Alliance.
Click to discover the entire fleet
Clocking in at 105 studs long, this Seriously Huge Investment in Parts (SHIP) by Scott Wilhelm may not have made the SHIPtember deadline of Sept. 30th, but it’s still a masterful work of interstellar spaceship-ery. The hints of red stick out brilliantly on this carrier, adding a pop of color to shades of tan and gray. The detail work is simple but well-accomplished, and I adore the tiny turrets lining the top of each “wing.” But my favorite bit has got to be the cavernous docking bay on top of the SHIP, lined with some great technical texturing. If you’d like to see more of the B212 Iron Horse, or the rest of the Alliance fleet made to commemorate 10 years of SHIPtember, be sure to check out Scott’s Flickr album.
It’s that time of year again. The leaves are turning orange, coffee mugs are filling up with pumpkin-spiced lattes, and enormous LEGO spaceships are cropping up all over the internet. That’s right, it’s SHIPtember! Scott Wilhelm‘s entry has us gobsmacked. It’s christened the Ockham’s Razor, which in itself is a wicked name. But this 140-stud wide behemoth looks truly alien. There aren’t any obvious signs of scale, so this could be an extraterrestrial hoverboard, but one gets the impression it’s a sprawling mega fortress shooting across the stars.
To get a perspective on its real-life scale, just look at this shot of the rear. Two halves of a Star Wars planet are used for detailing, and these are not small parts – but they look tiny here! The greebling work combined with the geometrical shapes and the colour scheme all combine to make a seriously impressive spaceship.
I’ve been remodeling my home and thus have been living without a functioning kitchen for a couple of months now. Hence I am drawn to anything that closely resembles a functional kitchen. This LEGO kitchen by Scott Wilhelm features an amazing fridge that has functioning drawers in the freezer compartment and the vegetable drawers.
Scott even added a light feature for your late-night snacking. There is a lot to love about this creation. From the ornate wooden doors on the kitchen cabinets to the black cast iron handles. On the windowsill, we can spot a frog soap. I like the use of actual fabric to represent the curtains. However, I am glad that Scott did decide to go for a brick-built approach when it comes to the carpet on the floor. There are tons of lovely details to discover in this build but the one thing that makes it almost lifelike has to be the insane amount of fridge magnets sticking to the beautiful fridge. Oh and have you spotted the scouring pad?
Want to see more LEGO kitchens? Click here!
As Febrovery 2022 comes to a close, we here at the Brothers Brick Bullpen thought we had seen every variation on space rovers there was to see. But builder Scott Wilhelm had a trick up his sleeve that we weren’t expecting: a half-track rover built from a giant Bionicle mask. That’s right, the giant curved mass of dark red that you see below is the main gate from Set 8759-1 Battle of Metru Nui. Scott has cleverly crafted a minifigure cockpit on the mask’s forehead, and cramped all manner of glorious greebles into the mask’s negative space. While the mask was only ever available in one set, this rover might have the LEGO Group looking to see if they still have the mold on file.
Unpopular opinion time: not every mech needs to be a military hard suit covered in weapons. Oh, sure, they look cool. But what about mechs made for peaceful purposes? Search and rescue? Exploration? Or, best yet, construction? Sure, it’s a bit meta, but I like the idea of things made out of LEGO that are intended to make other things out of LEGO. That’s why the Kroniton Cybernetics I-Beam Bolter from builder Scott Wilhelm makes me smile. This giant robot (piloted by our favorite construction guy, Emmet, of course) features a striking black and orange color scheme, solid articulation, and an action feature that, frankly, caught me by surprise.
Sure, the extending lifting arm with it’s working grippers is cool, and shows that Scott thought about how this sort of mech would need to function in a real construction situation. And the rotating fastening device on the other arm combines form and function. Even the roll-cage around the operator cabin says “real world compatible.” All of those things are quality, but none of those things are shocking. Not compared to this:
This is the first extendo-mech I’ve ever seen. I’d wager it’s the first one you’ve seen, too.
And that, friends, is why I love this build.
Too much sci-fi is brooding and dark and grey. If we develop the technology to travel amongst the stars, surely we’ll carry a sense of optimism towards those infinite horizons? What better way to signal our positive attitude than to bedeck our spaceships in bright cheerful livery? Scott Willhelm‘s bright blue LEGO starfighter fairly bursts off the screen — a neat little model, with a striking colour scheme, in a nicely-presented image. Beneath the bright plating, there’s a dark grey chassis, festooned with functional-looking greebly details, but it’s the blue, and the purple and white striping, which captures the eye.
(Okay, maybe the overall message of hope in our interstellar future is undermined by us having single-seater weapons platforms flying around. But at least they’ll LOOK friendly.)
Thanks to regular building contests held by the LEGO Ideas team, hundreds of fantastic custom creations have seen the light in the recent couple of years. The Unleash Your Own Genetically Modified Hybrid Dinosaur! building competition gathered some of the craziest and funniest creatures of this summer. As we continue seeing some of the best entries as the builders share them elsewhere online, we can’t help but admire this hilarious Veggiesaurus by Scott Wilhelm.
Well, we know there were a lot of vegetarian dinosaurs, but a creature like a “vegetarian Tyrannosaurus” sounds like either a freak of nature or the triumph of modern science. Looking at the pictures of this foody, I tend to think it’s a win rather than a failure. A full-length picture of the T. rex reveal the actual size of the build; the furniture and table accessories elevate the work to a whole new level. And although this Tyrannosaurus rex looks very frustrated, I hope it will feel much better once he finishes his dinner.
If intergalactic asteroid mining sounds like an interesting prospect, Scott Wilhelm’s LEGO microscale New Bedlam Mining Hub delivers the goods. According to the builder, the mining colony of New Bedlam earned its name for the lawlessness and chaotic growth that comes with rapid development. Scott’s city fits the part, with foreboding dark towers covering the asteroid’s surface. Thanks to an extensive use of black and trans-neon colored elements, the colony also has all the grittiness of a red-light district in the stars.
