When you know what you’re doing, LEGO elements create some very interesting patterns and shapes. Builder Azurekingfisher knows what they’re doing. In mobile sculpture, rings and snowflake-like shapes are created from a complex repetition of plant leaves in a variety of hues. Add Technic rods and connectors to hang them from, and you have an art installation just waiting to happen.
Take a closer look at this wintry LEGO mobile
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Maybe what Jack needs is to take a break and play with some LEGO. Then again…maybe not. Timofey Tkachev brings us a twist on an iconic image from The Shining with “Here’s Johnny!” An instantly recognizable Jack Nicholson breaks through a door…but since the door is made of LEGO, he’s using a brick separator. Because of course he is.
There’s a lot to love about the build here. Elephant trunks have just the right shaping for Jack’s eyebrows, and an energy effect wave makes for a great bit of unkempt hair. Tiles are used to great effect, with quarter circle round tiles shaping the nose, and white half circles forming his insane grin. The really scary part of this build, though, is that somehow it just took a single evening to put together. That’s spooky fast!
It might be an accurate statement to say that Jason Allemann is having the best month ever. First he was our keynote speaker at BrickCon, where he also designed the commemorative model that we featured here. And now he…or rather JK Brickworks, has completed a series with this model. Why the distinction? Jason is merely the “J” half of JK Brickworks. “K” stands for Kristal and she is the driving force behind this model that is the final part of a trio of sculptures that explore the human mind. The first model, which can be seen at The LEGO House in Billund, explores the mind of an artist. The second sculpture explores the mind of an engineer. This third sculpture, however, might be the most therapeutic for a lot of us. It delves deep and gives us a peek inside a tortured mind.
When I was little, one of my favorites nick-nacks was filled with water, a plastic carrot and a few tiny pieces of plastic “coal,” and was labeled “Florida Snowman.” (Look, trust me here. This was hilarious when I was six years old.) I’ve always had a fondness for snow globes. In unrelated trivia, I was also a big Spider-Man fan. I never dreamed, though, that both of those childhood loves would come crashing together. Builder Flambo14 changed all that with a fun LEGO build inspired by Spider-Man: Far From Home. In this creation, Mysterio’s trademark fishbowl-dome head is a LEGO Christmas ornament filled with 1×1 round plates for snow. You’ll aslo find a simple-but-effective microscale New York City skyline and, of course, Spider-Man himself. There’s even a sand-green minifigure telescope as an itty-bitty Statue of Liberty.
Mysterio’s torso has some fun details, too. I like the use of the minifigure ring to help create the eyeball-patterns present on the cape clasps. The smoothness of the wedges used to construct the cape makes the exposed-stud build of the chest feel much more textured, just like the movie’s costume design. There’s also just the right touch of other gold elements to give him a bit of showmanship.
I’d love to see a whole series of Mysterio snow globes. If anyone else takes a swing at one, let us know!
Prolific LEGO builders scatter our desktops with inspiration constantly, showing us more with each coming build. Miro Dudas has been doing such for me for quite a while, with his Woodland Creatures Collection. His newest accomplishment, simply titled Buck, brings another to said collection, leaving me wanting this on my shelf too. The regal stag is such a strong animal, in muscle and stance as the king of the forest.
Dudas’ rendition, though heavily inspired by Joe Perez’s impressive Stag from earlier this year, stands on its own accord. The reddish brown coat with tufts of white are nice adjustments to his inspiration but it’s those antlers, made predominantly from small bony appendages and mechanical arms, that bring this build into a realistic zone. I don’t know about anyone else but when I first saw this, I instantly wanted to see two of them standing off with horns locked..
If you’re more sci-fi inclined, maybe check out Miro Dudas’ fury little Wicket..
Some folks are just too unruly for this world. Their actions can lead to a stint on Death Row, then eventually a final dance in the Electric Chair where, legend has it, they go to meet their maker or some other entity less favorable. When we’ve featured this builder’s creations in the past, they have left some of us asking what or why?. In every case, her own chosen name comes back with a defiant answer: why.not?. Why not, indeed. One thing for sure is she’s an enigmatic builder whose subject matter has us just intrigued enough to check in on her from time to time. As foreboding as this is, I like the use of tires as restraints. The overall lighting is inspired. There will come a time again (maybe soon) when this builder will grace us with something a little grim and odd to puzzle over. Until then, we’ll keep doing what we do.
When building with LEGO bricks, most people opt for recreating something that mirrors our experiences. We draw inspiration from the real world — maybe we look to movies, literature, or some other media, but our creations look like things that exist…or could possibly exist…in our reality. What, then, should we make of the artistic abstractions of Crimso Giger? Even though they exist as physical models, these spaces are like nothing we’d expect to encounter. Crimso has combined geometric abstraction with sculpture, leading us into an unfamiliar world without giving us a roadmap.
Sure, you can try and make sense of these images by trying to force some sort of logic onto them. Take Abstract – Yellow Grey Black, for example. The choice of colors and shapes reminds me of the interior of a computer, or a cityscape that’s been bent like a scene from Inception or Doctor Strange. But that’s just my perspective – maybe this is something else entirely.
Abstract – White Black Red makes me think of gaming. The red and black tiles seem to form a checkerboard, and the black and white groupings remind me of backgammon boards and dice. But what is that construction in the center? Is the “x” shape in the 1x6x5 rectangular girder a call out to Tic-Tac-Toe? Have I completely missed the point? I just don’t know!
Previously on Tom Servo and Me: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
When we last left Chris Doyle, he had just finished building his latest replica of Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000. All that was left was to take photos and write up the summary article. Simple, right? Well, if you’ve read the previous installments, you know things rarely went according to plan throughout this journey. Why should the last few steps be any easier? When things go disastrously wrong during the final photo shoot, Chris will find himself questioning if getting back into LEGO building was the worst idea he ever had.
In the end, it will all work out. We promise.
Read more about the final leg of Chris’s journey in rebuilding his LEGO Tom Servo model.
When a statue is erected of someone riding a horse, they usually follow certain rules. If the rider died in battle the horse would be rearing on two legs. If the horse has one leg up, the rider died of an injury and if the horse is standing on all four legs, then the rider died of natural causes. With this in mind Filbrick has built a statue of Napoleon Bonaparte on a horse standing on all fours. I particularly like the textured “greebling” effect on the horse using wheels, gears, Bionicle parts, radar dishes and other bits usually employed in building spaceships.
Some statues of Napoleon on horseback have been erected in all three leg configurations, because the cause of his death can be a topic of hot debate. Did he die bravely in battle defending the French army? Was he poisoned by enemies while in exile on St. Helena as so many history books suggest or was it just the unkind fate of the winds? Autopsies reveal that the cause of death was stomach cancer which may have been brought on by excessive levels of arsenic. (A-ha!) However, later studies, not available during his time, stated that Napoleon (and so many others of his day) were being exposed to arsenic throughout his entire lifetime from glues and dyes and not by purposeful murderous intent. It would seem that Filbrick’s depiction of a serene horse on all four legs may be the correct configuration all along.
I’m always impressed when someone builds something with LEGO bricks that doesn’t have a strong tie to an established theme or building style. It takes a special kind of eye to look beyond the mundane, and builder why.not? has that vision. Or they had a vision. Or maybe just a very bad dream. Whatever the source, they have brought to us an unsettling image indeed.
The central eye is built from 1×2 and 1×4 plates, using subtle color variation in light blue, tan, and blue grey to create a convincing iris against a white brick background.
Eyelashes are constructed from minifigure hands clipped to the modified plates and tiles that create a smooth curve to the eyelid. There’s even a curved brick to represent the tear duct.
Additional creepy details include an abundance of Technic (eye)ball joints, a floating maw made of teeth and quarter-round tiles, and dangling red tentacles. The heart uses exotic elements like a sand blue dinosaur tail and medium lavender flexible hose. There’s even a dragon wing hidden in the blood(?) in the upper right.
I’m not sure what this piece says to me. But I’m kind of glad it can’t talk. I doubt I’d want to hear the messsage it brings.
In this, the Caped Crusader’s 80th birthday year, what better way to celebrate the influence and impact of Bob Kane’s creation than with Timofey Tkachev‘s large-scale LEGO sculpture? The Batman has rarely looked better in the brick — the model’s shaping is spot-on, perfectly capturing those to-die-for Bat-Abs, and making a nice job of the comic world’s Second-Most-Iconic-Chin (Judge Dredd is clearly No. 1, in case you were wondering). The sculpting of the bat sigil on the chest is worth a good look, and I dread to think about the tricky connections which were required underneath all that armour to get the angles right.
As an avid builder and a contributor for The Brothers Brick, I have seen a lot of LEGO creations. I mean A LOT of LEGO creations. To put this in perspective as to what it is like to be an adult LEGO builder, I have a LEGO room in my home — most of us do, some more elaborate than others. Whether it be a corner of the laundry room, a repurposed bedroom, or an elaborate add-on suite built for this reason, we all have a dedicated space to build LEGO. A perusal of my phone contacts reveals that the vast majority of my friends are LEGO friends. We eat, sleep and breath this stuff daily. By now I’ve written a fair number of articles and am confident that I can at least amuse if not inspire or enlighten our readers. With all this in mind, you’d think there would be no one to baffle me and put me at a loss for words. But then along came Ekow Nimako.
See more of this amazing LEGO sculpture