Tag Archives: Space

From giant space carriers to starfighters, moon bases to moon buggies, whether you love LEGO models inspired by real-world space programs or science-fiction, you’re in the right place.

Don’t judge a spaceship by its greebling

Although SHIPtember is already over, some great creations are still reaching our planet. This time it’s a massive 127-studs-long battlecruiser by art_xxx13.

Earth Alliance Ship - Johnson

Simplicity (in the best sense of the word) is what I love about this ship. You won’t find much greebling or large solid panels here. Still the contour of cruiser looks diverse – thanks to regular slopes which, for instance, create the main command tower’s rather complex shape. Additionally, there are only three basic colors – light bluish grey, black and a couple of touches of dark red. And they are what make the battlecruiser realistic and credible; I do believe that this is what heavy ships in deep space look like.

Moreover, the spaceship has an impressive prototype. Take a minute to appreciate how accurate the brick-built model is to its concept.

Aliens: Colonial Marines - USS Sephora Redesign

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Starship bridge shows all the right controls

Neo-Classic Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of a very nice-looking starship…

This control room scene is the latest creation from Pete Reid, one of my favourite builders. He’s famous for his Exo Suit, but for me, it’s his depictions of everyday life in space which define his style – it’s rarely blasters and aliens, usually just regular space folks at work.

NCS Bridge

The model has some lovely touches, such as the consoles, the ceiling details, and the use of ingots as chair cushions. But what I really like is the way the stripped-back use of a single color allows lighting to create the mood, and makes the bright shades of the crew uniforms pop against the backdrop. This is a great example of a nice model, elevated to another level through smart composition and a restrained use of color.

Now I want to see the rest of the ship…

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Furrowing the space with style

The video game Destiny brought us quite a number of smooth and polished starfighters. Without copying any particular spaceship David Steeves did a great job of capturing all the main distinctive features of those fighters, complementing them with a couple of nice building techniques. I love how neat and solid his Disruptor XC2 looks, not to mention a not so ordinary choice of color for the cockpit windscreen.

Disruptor XC2

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Today’s heresy, courtesy of the Tyranids

Flickr user Garry_rocks is one of the most consistent LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) model makers out there. Lately he’s been on a bit of a Warhammer 40K stint, pumping out everything from Terminators to Killa Kans. Now he’s back with the scourge of the Imperium in the form of Tyranids.

Tyranid Warrior
Tyranid Brood

As an extra treat, there are 360° rotation views of the filthy beasts:
Tyranid Warrior.
Termagant.
Hormagaunt.

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Man the Guns, Join the Fight

Wise part selection is the key to any successful Lego creation; and that’s one thing Brick Burger is clearly well aware of. Using a rather specific (and large!) minifigure headpiece from the Superheroes line, he built a giant, unique, and very-well scaled Space Marine—one with an even larger space gun to boot. Perhaps the only thing more amazing is how the print of the headpiece perfectly matches the personality of the extreme character he has created.

with his weapon

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Elfire Interceptor

Nick Trotta‘s starfighters are some of the most gorgeous and complex models one can make out of Lego. His latest Elfire Interceptor features wings with built-in stripes and a unique windshield design. The clean exterior masks a sophisticated network of bricks that you can only see in the breakdown video below. Visit YouTube for more in-depth commentary on the model.

Elfire Interceptor

Elfire Interceptor: Build Video

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Benny gets his used speeder pimped

Italian builder Priovit70 explains this mashup of The LEGO Movie, Star Wars, and MTV’s Pimp my Ride thusly: “Benny bought on S-bay a used speeder by a certain Rey from Jakku, but it was a downright rip-off. Mr. Robot, in the attempt of cheering his mate up, called MTV and… TA-DAH!!” This isn’t just a straightforward blue recreation of the Rey’s Speeder set from The Force Awakens, but is also a really solid build with some great Classic Space details, like the yellow-black-yellow stripes, gray greeblage, and that pimpin’ Classic Space flag. Benny certainly seems excited by the result, and so am I.

Pimp my speeder

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Dans la Lune

Laure (Fujiia) speaks to the daydreamer in all of us with her new piece, Dans la Lune. I love the whimsical atmosphere. The face on the character is simple and highly effective.

Dans la Lune

As always, I invite you to check out the rest of her gallery on flickr.

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SHIPtember: Judges award and people’s choice

Over the past week we have focused on the amazing builders who decided to build a SHIP within a month. We’ve looked at pop culture SHIPs, original and very unconventional SHIPs, realistic and near future SHIPs, the super fun minifigure scaled SHIPs, and finally SHIPs based off of one of the most influential games for SHIP buliders: Homeworld.

But before we dive in, I want to congratulate every single builder that participated in this year’s SHIPtember (even those who were too ambitious to complete their SHIPs). It’s an incredibly fun month of building and sharing your work in progress with everyone. You make SHIPtember special.

Today we wrap up our Week of Wonders: SHIPtember edition by revealing the overall best SHIPs, as chosen by the judges, and also the people’s choice.

Again, we have a great prize, thanks to several of members the development team from Homeworld Remastered who have generously signed and donated a copy of the Homeworld Remastered game to the builder of SHIPtember 2015’s Best SHIP – which tradition also dictates will be immortalized as SHIPtember’s 2016 poster boy (much like the 2014 and 2013 winners) and also be featured on next year’s event brick.

SHIPtember 2015 Best SHIP
This year’s Best SHIP goes to the infinitely talented Jonas (LEGOLIZE IT MAN) for his M.U.LLA Battle cruiser:
muulla
This SHIP is just a perfect combination of elegant piece usage. Jonas manages to add just the right amount of detail, while keeping it clean and stylized. Or as one judge put it: “This thing has the perfect balance of texture, clean lines, and just perfect color blocking”. And Jonas is not only gifted in the art of LEGO building, but is also quite the doodler and even pre-sketeched his award-winning SHIP.

Our runner-up for Best SHIP this year is Josh Derksen (armoredgear7) with his mammoth Demon’s Maw. It not only looks like some kind of demonic claw, but also has lights and motorized features!
Demon's Maw (SHIPtember 2015)

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SHIPtember: There’s no place like Homeworld

Over the past week, we’ve talked a bit about some of the influences behind builders’ SHIPs. For many builders, the 2003 video game Homeworld has had a pivotal effect on their building style.

This year Homeworld Remastered was re-released with updated graphics, and many space builders fell in love with the game again. So it’s not surprising to me that we saw a lot of Homeworld and Homeworld-inspired SHIPs pop up in SHIPtember.

But what was surprising to me was that some folks from the actual development team of Homeworld Remastered loved our LEGO SHIPs as much as we loved their game, and reached out to offer a few prizes! So without further ado I present the best Homeworld inspired SHIP, as chosen by those developers, who happen to also be LEGO fans:

The best Homeworld SHIP, which will also receive a copy of The Art Of Homeworld, kindly donated and signed by a group of developers, is Pierre E Fieschi with his Maersk Highliner:
MAERSK HIGHLINER With wonderful technique and controversial part usage, this ship launched itself into the top spot despite not actually being in the game, but heavily inspired by it. Quoting the developers: “We love the layering of details. Panels overlapping one another without it being too much noise. And of course this is just outright gorgeous.” and also “That guy’s concept art and other work is legit.”

Second place, as chosen by the development team is Ryan Olsen (Rphilo004) and his Hiigaran Battlecruiser: Hiigaran Battlecruiser with Escort Fleet
Again, quotes from the development team: “Nicely executed for the size and detail that you were able to get into it. Bravo!” and “It’s PERFECT. The support ships even rock. I wanna buy this or have one made for myself SO BAD.”

Coming in third place was last year’s SHIPtember winner, Tim Schwalfenberg (One More Brick) with his Vaygr Battlecruiser:
Vaygr Battlecruiser Which the keen eyes of the developers noticed was missing the side tower: “That surface detail. Maybe the tower hit an asteroid?”

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SHIPtember: Return to the minifig scale SHIPs of old

Today on Week of Wonders we look at the minifig scaled SHIPs.

For a long time SHIPs (Seriously Huge Investment In Parts) had a pretty specific definition. Not only were ships to be 100 studs, but they were almost always minifigure scale with interiors. With SHIPtember some builders have lost sight of the minifigure scale and have built a wide variety of amazing microscale ships. But there’s still something magical about building minifig SHIPs, harking back to our childhoods, where the dream was to build not just a big space ship, but one where there was room to play with our minifigs!

Today we celebrate the minifig populated SHIPs from SHIPtember.

Adam Dodge (Dodge…) has a bit of history of going overboard, from winning awards at cons to doing the infamous SHIPhatTrick – building 3 SHIPs in one month. But his Intercept Invader is the set I would have loved as a kid:
Intercept Invader - in flight Not only is this SHIP big, it has a full interior and most jaw dropping of all, is completely modular and reconfigurable! That by itself earns Adam big props from me.

Ryan McBryde’s (goatman461) Mercy Brandy SHIP looks smaller than it is:
[Challenge 2][Cat. B] 3 It’s built and textured like a lot of other microscale ships we’ve seen, but it’s deceiving with a fully detailed bridge: [Challenge 2][Cat. B] 6 I particularly like the classy brick built Octan logo.

Not to be outdone, Jake (Jayfourke) has jam packed the inside of his Thames-Class Coastguard Patrolboat:
Thames-Class Coastguard Patrolboat Not only has Jake added a full interior, but he’s managed to have not one, but two vehicles safely docked inside.

I don’t know about other people, but next year, I want to build a big minifig SHIP.

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Biking Large: a Cyberpunk Rocket

This cyberpunk bike would look right at home in Akira, but is actually from the mind of French builder F@bz. Sitting at 55 studs in length, the large scale gives room for plenty of terrific details, the coolest of which are the brilliant incorporation of the hot air balloon panels as a sleek engine cowling and the stacked 2×2 radar dishes for the rear suspension.

Yamaha Spectrum (01)

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