This LEGO spaceship is bending space itself! Or maybe that is just the brick bending technique that David Roberts used on this fantastic curvy racer. These massive engines look great with their colorful markings and smooth shaping. Brick bending is a difficult technique to work with at such a small scale and David pulled it off beautifully. I can imagine an entire racing series with this catamaran-styled ship full of high-speed action and incredible maneuverability. Always nice to see an uncommon technique used to great effect! If you want to check out what else can be achieved with brick bending take a look at the creations of Jeff Sanders, the brick bending specialist.
Tag Archives: Space
This speedster lifts and separates
The cool thing about designing spaceships is that space travel is more or less in its infancy here on Earth so we can still dream up all sorts of wild and wacky designs. Take this LEGO “Comet” Speedster concept built by Marco De Bon for example. It is chock full of neat build techniques and complex angles. The forward dishes are Ninjago Spinners making the model tricky to balance according to the builder. Speedster implies speed but I imagine the forward mandibles can lift a payload magnetically while the aft section sports four Brick Separators, hence the lifts and separates reference in the title. I definitely wasn’t thinking of a retro bra ad when I thought up the title so don’t get that idea in your heads.
A sci-fi build that tickles us pink
With a cheap string of LED lights placed inside a tube of transparent bricks, Andreas Lenander has added some big budget atmosphere to his latest build. The resulting rosy glow perfectly illuminates the power core chamber, creating a sci-fi scene that you can almost hear humming with life. The roller coaster track used as scaffolding adds an industrial flair that makes this power source feel functional, while also casting some subtle zigzag shadows onto the surrounding walls.
Speeding to the scene of the crime
Builder Tim Goddardreturns with a LEGO speeder bike in this Space Police-inspired build.
I love speeder bikes, they’re an excellent quick build with table scraps and a fantastic way to practice just how useful those smallest LEGO pieces can be. This is seen from the very front of the bike where a Boomerang and Binocular are paired together to serve as steering vanes
What I particularly like is that the entire speeder bike is built around a bicycle frame. The frame serves as a great starting point to connect the wider build. The bike is made all the more striking by limiting the colours to those most familiar to Space Police fans, the recent Space Police Series 21 Collectible Minifigure is a perfect pilot for this one!
Exploring the cloudy canopies of Algastarr
This LEGO build by Peter Stella shows us something wondrous aboard a stylish frigate. The ship we see here is a new version from a previous build of Peter’s that hadn’t met the builder’s expectations. Trimming the nose and the top of the engine block, this ship’s structure stands out with it’s new geometry. The colors really pop too! Check out that sand-blue inverted slope in the first blue stripe. I favor those teal blocks just below the stripe–such a cool color to see on a spacefaring vessel. However, the ship isn’t the only cool thing in this build; let’s talk about the planet. The floating islands are beautifully constructed using simple techniques that really shine. I particularly like the shaping of the leaves on the trees, and the use of an Indiana Jones whip on the small one in the bottom right corner.
Want to see more about this build, and what went into it? Peter has a great YouTube video detailing the ship, the islands, and how they’re all constructed.
Bee careful these viper drones don’t steal your plans
A LEGO builder who goes by the name of Rubblemaker has built a Queen Bee Royal Viper Drone. Let me break that down for you. Queen. Bee. Royal. Viper. Drone. What part of that don’t you understand? Clearly, she’s out to do some badass queen bee stuff like infiltrating the hives of other bees and stealing their plans for honey, pollination, and other bee-related stuff. But no need to explain it any further. You had me at Queen Bee! Check out why we think Rubblemaker is the bee’s knees.
Hello, Dolly!
With this brilliant-looking robot, Julius Kanand pays tribute to M-Tron. The black, red, and trans-neon green pieces are all used in perfect proportion to each other to recall the color scheme of LEGO’s old, much-beloved and/or maligned space theme.
There’s some really nice parts usage, too; from the six-sided, rubber-framed dice at the shoulders to the socket wrench-as-antennae. But what I think works best is the minifigure dolly cart used as the shins and feet. The back of the dolly provides a natural vent effect, and the dolly cart is so stable that this robot can stand on one foot! It’s definitely an impressive engineering feet.
Clean, mean, flying machine
Back from a small hiatus, Blake Foster brings us this beautiful LEGO spaceship! Color blocking is on point in this ship, with subtle reds and yellows peaking out of the black, white, and light grey. The dark zzure takes this that much further and ties the whole build together.
This starship has a snake in its boot! (Probably)
I love Iron Builder! It usually means job security for us here at TBB, loads of awesome LEGO entertainment for you, and stress, horror, and depravity for the poor sods who have to build for it. Take this pointy starship built by Joe (jnj_bricks) for example. It’s pretty neat in its own right, but knowing full well you gotta crank out a bunch of quality builds in short order while your competitor does the same gives me heart palpitations just thinking about it. As per the rules of Iron Builder, you gotta cleverly use a seed part or another. We’re supposed to be impressed by Joe’s use of the required hexagonal blabitty-blah but I’m more smitten with the hidden Woody figure from Toy Story. Can you spot it?
Our road leads into the desert of Arrakis
From Arrakis comes spice and these LEGO vignettes by builder Bryan Firks, whom you may know from the second season of LEGO Masters. I had the good fortune to chat with Bryan about these scenes and the inspiration behind them. He became a fan of the “Duniverse” after watching the 2021 film Dune, sparking an interest in the original book and the richly detailed world. Soon, the idea to create a series of microscale scenes developed in his mind. He drew inspiration from 2021’s TBB creation of the year, Jan Woźnica’s Tales from the Space Age, for providing atmosphere and color. Equipped with new color palettes, he employs similar techniques with his vignettes. On the left, transparent neon orange antennae represent orbital strikes on the old city of Arrakeen. A spice refinery explodes in the foreground. In the center, we see an ornithopter hovers above a spice harvester with levers as its wings. On the right, there’s one of the legendary sandworms of Arrakis! The worm is captured brilliantly with round bricks interlinked by flex tubing for poseable segments. The sand dunes give a sense of scale to the worm, showing just how massive it really is!
Bryan faced a few challenges rendering these scenes on this scale. Being a Lord of the Rings fan, he wanted to use Uruk-hai swords for the ornithopter wings. Alas, they were too big for this size. The sandworm presented a fun challenge, and using an inverted 2×2 dome for the gaping maw is very cool! The flow of direction, from left to right following the lines of the orbital strike through to the worm’s mouth, is intentional to give the build a sense of motion. Another clever choice is the night-day-night pattern of the backgrounds, giving the vignettes a lovely balance. The mirroring of the dual moons in the night scenes helps to frame and hold the day scene in your attention as you take in the whole. My favorite part of the build, besides the sandworm? It demonstrates how inspiring the LEGO community can be. Anyone can become inspired by another builder’s creation, leading to more beautiful homages and builds!
A taste of nectar on another world
Meet the Epyft, an alien being created by Mattia Careddu. This LEGO creature brings to mind a hummingbird crossed with a butterfly, as its long mouth reaches down to the bright blooming flower, drinking up all the rich nectar. No doubt the sugar is needed for the energy to stay in the air. The flower and the surrounding foliage feature so many cool parts to create something out of this world! Bionicle masks give the translucent green plants and blue flowers cool shapes and textures. Speaking of Bionicle masks, they’re also used for the creature’s sides, but that’s not the coolest bit of parts usage for this build. The creature’s body is a fun use of a torso piece from the Galidor toy line, produced by LEGO in 2002 for the sci-fi kids show by the same name.
The Black Sparrow
Streaking though the sky comes the latest LEGO creation from French builder F@bz! Clean lines and great parts usage are present throughout this flying ship. The angles on the wings use a wonderful old slope brick with studs on the slope. The splash of purple and yellow really pop and the light blueish gray of the engines give great contrast to the deep black of the wings. I particularly like the use of the large rotor blade running down the center of the fuselage.