Tag Archives: Sculptures

See the mice in their million hordes, from Ibiza to the Norfolk broads

Trying to summarize almost half a century of accomplishments and innovation in a couple of paragraphs would be futile, so I won’t even try. Yesterday a singular artist departed this particular plane of existence, leaving us with a body of work that will no doubt be remembered for another half century to come (including one final album, released just a few days ago).

Somehow we overlooked this gorgeous LEGO sculpture of Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album cover, built by Gabriel Thomson as an entry for the 2014 MOCAthalon contest. So let’s fix that now.

RIP David Bowie (aka Ziggy Stardust, aka Major Tom, aka The Goblin King) 1947-2016.

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Dem dry bones

I wish I’d had one of these guys when I was studying for high school anatomy and physiology! While he may not be one-hundred percent anatomically correct, this marvelous skeleton by umamen comes pretty darn close (actually, I can’t imagine getting much closer with LEGO). He’s got everything that counts including knobby knees, boney phalanges and neck vertebrae, protruding clavicles, a healthy set of lungs, and even a complete digestive tract. And he appears to be extremely poseable. His rib cage even opens for a closer look!

Check out more photos on Flickr.

Carrion spotted, on final landing approach

Australian builder Shannon Sproule has created a LEGO model of one of the seemingly less graceful birds of prey – the vulture. Shannon says he based this build on the griffon vulture, and with an average wing span of 2.5m (8 ft) in real life, these birds are impressive creatures.

The position of the outstretched feet, ducked head and ‘flaps down’ wing position has really captured the body positioning of a typical griffon vulture landing. While the vulture appears to be coming in to land near some carrion, the birds-eye view spares us from the sight of a decaying animal… just use your imagination.

An apeeling way to get your 5-a-day

We all know how important it is to get your dose of fruit and vegetables each day and Japanese builder and TBB regular nobu_tary has two creations full of Potassium, Vitamin C, Vitamin B and …well actually they’re just LEGO.

This is the best LEGO banana I have seen, the varied wedges are a perfect choice to form the peeled banana skin and the use of lime, reddish-brown and black at the end really adds to the realism. I also note that the builder has peeled the banana the ‘correct‘ way to avoid bruising the flesh.

A plate of broccoli is the second build served up by nobu_tary. The angle of the photographs help the plant limb elements (Part 2423 and Part 2417) appear more ‘broccoli-like’ along with the lighter stem in lime elements.

LEGO skating penguin sculpture

Jason and Kristal from JK Brickworks continue to pump out amazing mechanical inventions created using LEGO. When last we featured them it was with Jason’s holiday cookie decorating robot, but today’s creation comes from Kristal and is a delightful little skating penguin.

The heart of the moving sculpture is a Trammel of Archimedes, a mechanism that traces out an ellipse. This is usually used to make “useless machines” such as the mischevious black box that JK Brickworks created a few years ago.

Full instructions for your own Happy Feet are available right here.

Peace, love and understanding

While some hand gestures (including the one below) are notorious for having radically different interpretations in different cultures, it’s clear that when Hong Kong builder Alanboar Cheung crafted this brick-built anniversary gift for his wife, he was inspired by the sign language allophone I-L-Y.

A sculptor wields the chisel, and the stricken marble grows to beauty

These sublime bas-relief LEGO sculptures are the work of mysterious new builder Bricks Noir. The skill and ingenuity behind these is so remarkable that we here at TBB are pretty sure this is an established builder working under a pseudonym. (…and we have our theories as to who!)

Don’t be fooled by the apparent simplicity of these pieces – the sophistication behind the builds is considerable. For example, take a closer look at the brickwork in the familiar “mudflap girl” above. Not only does the builder capture the outlines of the figures very effectively at such very small scale, with curved bricks facing in all directions, but he/she also manages to keep everything attached together and even secured to the background! I can’t wait to see what this builder does next, or how long it takes for imitators to emerge.

Click below the fold to see another great sculpture by this builder!

You can’t make an omelette without bricking a few eggs

According to Indonesian builder Kosmas Santosa, kerak telor (a kind of spicy rice/egg/coconut omelette) is a traditional snack in his home city of Jakarta. It is always freshly prepared, and during the annual Jakarta Fair kerak telor vendors are hard to miss! As part of a local LEGO display celebrating Jakarta’s 488th birthday, Kosmas created this beautiful model of a kerak telor vendor’s cart, complete with ingredients and equipment:

For context, here is a picture of the real thing:

The icing on the cake

Shockingly, it’s been almost three weeks since I last posted a LEGO model of a urinal, so I’ll rectify that oversight immediately with this charming scale model made by Flickr member Ashton6460. I’m not sure what possesses people to build these things, but I’m not gonna overthink it. Enjoy…

Simon says

Readers under the age of 40 are probably looking at this creation by Flickr member jtheels right now and thinking either (a) “Nice spaceship, dude!”, or (b) “Worst Chrome logo ever”. In fact, this is a life size recreation of Simon, an electronic game that first appeared in 1978 and became ridiculously popular at the time. By a complete coincidence, we have a Simon here at The Brothers Brick, who is also ridiculously popular, and has various buttons that we enjoy pushing on a daily basis!

Lifesized LEGO Tesla Supercharger

Chris’ recent Tesla post reminded me of one of the more impressive sculptures I saw this year. Robert Turner (rt_bricks)‘s (almost) life sized Tesla Supercharger. Standing at over a one meter (42.5 inches) tall, and taking over three months to build, this is a deceptively large build due to Robert’s fantastic shaping:

You might be thinking: “well it’s not that big…”
Which is why he actually put it beside an actual Tesla Model S to show off the size:

That Tesla incidentally is Adrian Drake’s, who had his own Tesla build to contribute to the display.

You can check out Robert’s interview about this creation, courtesy of our friends from Beyond the Brick:

Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint

Almost ten years after his previous foray into the middle east, mysterious artist/activist Banksy recently popped up in the Gaza Strip, in an effort to once again highlight the plight of people in this region. Flickr member TheBrickAvenger was inspired to recreate one of the Gaza pieces in LEGO:

Some LEGO “purists” may scoff at the choice of the stacked bricks technique used here. But hey, maybe the builder was using it to make a statement? Or maybe there was literally no other way to create this image convincingly at mini-fig scale. Either way, the result is impressive – especially when you consider the effort it must have taken! For context, here is a photo of the original: