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.
As an extra treat, there are 360° rotation views of the filthy beasts:
Tyranid Warrior.
Termagant.
Hormagaunt.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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!
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:
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: 
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:
Which the keen eyes of the developers noticed was missing the side tower: “That surface detail. Maybe the tower hit an asteroid?”
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:
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](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media.brothers-brick.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/20713790788_a14755d46d_z.jpg)
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](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media.brothers-brick.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/20714990559_bf850c2210_z.jpg)
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:
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.
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.
Today on Week of Wonders, we talk about SHIPs that have that real world vibe that were built as a part of last month’s SHIPtember contest.
Most of the time spacers tend to build fantastic ships from far in the future with Warp Engines or Hyper Drives and all sorts of make believe techno-babble inventions. But there’s a certain few who take a more realistic approach to their spaceships, taking inspiration from today’s space technology and pushing it out just a few years…
Tyler H has created this near-future high altitude bomber, the B-5 MANTA:
At just under 100 studs long, and 144 studs wide, this lovely near space ship has a great shape and I just love the integrated lights and the bottom detailing with the combination of studs up and studs down construction.
Going slightly further into the future, Damien Labrousse (legodrome) has created this inter-planetary traveler, the Galactik Bricks:
The dockable shuttles are just a fantastic touch, and I really like the shaping he has put in the front with the spinning habitat section.
And finally, going far into depths of space is Nathan Proudlove (Proudlove) and his Deep Space Explorer Intrepid:
With its radiation shield (required for deep space travel) this 5 foot (or 1.5meter) model is a true interstellar ship. Nathan has thought about what a real world Benny would need on his travels, and has included habitats, science labs, communication array, solar panels, and of course a SPACESHIP! for exploring those far away worlds.
Welcome to the second installment of the Week of Wonders: SHIPtember edition. Today we’ll take a look at some of the more unconventional SHIPs that were built during this year’s SHIPtember contest.
Usually ship builders will base their builds on some existing ships, or designs and influences from movies, games or books. Then there are builders that just go a completely different route and create something truly unique.
Chris Perron (thebrickbin) leads the pack with this unconventional Castle ship, the Astral Voyager:
With a combination of fantastic rockwork, integrated castles and volcano engines, the Wizard Chris has managed to create a believable magical flying rock space ship.
Alysa Kirkpatrick (d2hiriyuu) has built this Dyson Sphere, a spaceship that is wrapped around a sun, which she calls Astra Luminaria: 
One of the most interesting parts of this build, besides possibly being the biggest SHIP we’ve seen built to date, was that the entire build is a series of geometric shapes, which means that it was easy for her to calculate that there were exactly 20,012 parts used.
Last but not least, (ska2d2) has this … well I’m not really sure best to describe this… I guess as the name implies, looks a bit like a Dragonfly :
What I really liked about this isn’t just the cool build, and strong colour blocking, but the fact that it was based on a Concept Sketch that he did prior to building.
When most of us photograph a new creation, we’re satisfied if the photo has clean lighting and a nice backdrop. Some builders, however, take things to the next level. Over the past several years, we’ve seen a number of builders apply their superb photography skills to our favorite plastic toy, including Vesa Lehtimäki and Joe and Will Merzlak. Rob D. is a new addition to the ranks of those builders taking breathtaking shots of LEGO, and he’s got some great building skills to boot. One of Rob’s latest photos, portraying an underwater scene of the new LEGO Deep Sea theme, is featured in the current edition of Blocks, a LEGO fan magazine, but my favorite has to be the shot of Rob’s LL-962 spacecraft being maintenanced.
