I’m a sucker for weirdly colored alien landscapes. With his latest creation, A Plastic Infiity has given us that, plus some funky alien technology, and a floating rock. The scales of justice look balanced in the photo, but they feel tipped towards awesome to me. Also, I had no idea those minifig hats came in a purple shade, I’ll be needing some of those for my own funky landscapes.
Browsing for MOCs this morning, I certainly wasn’t expecting to find a new six foot long SHIP, but David Collins (IntronD) had a surprise in store. It’s quite a lovely shape from the angle below, and the medium blue (or is that azure?) and tan color scheme is just a thing of beauty. Truly amazing is that it’s all built to house a hangar for mecha. Make sure to check out all the photos, as it’s packed full of details and lighting effects.
Let’s take a walking tour of this gorgeous spaceport, built by Stephan Niehoff. Stephan estimates it took 6 months to build. In terms of parts, he stopped counting after 9,000. Hats off to you, Stephan, because I’m quite sure I would have stopped counting parts at 10.
On to our tour.
You’re going to have to sit down with this and just oogle the gorgeous details, but let’s cover a few of them to get you started:
The Craters: The building style gives some great angles and very smooth lines for the entire display.
Communication Tower: With the dish set to receive signals, the tower is sturdy, industrial, and excellent situated with everything anyone could need.
Landing Pad: I absolutely love the textures from using the up-side-down plates here. It’s a great way to seperate it from the smooth lines of the studs-not-on-top design of the rest of the diorama.
I am particularly delighted by the rocket and launch tower, with all of the access points and the rocket itself.
So! What’s your favorite detail from the Outpost?
Synchronicity is a funny thing, and in a hobby where we have a limited palette of parts but a near-infinite number of possible builds, surprisingly rarely seen.
However, Cagerrin and Damien Labrousse both had a similar idea recently, which they executed in strikingly different ways.
Cagerrin’s Kyusu A9W1 is a riveted piece of dieselpunk Sky-Fi, with smoothly curved angles and a plethora of real-world detailing, such as the complex night-fighting radar array in front.
While keeping the same basic structure, Damien’s Space Wulf 190 is a spinier space-worthy fighter, similarly clad in a retro vibe but this time harking back to 70’s scifi.
Both builders credit anime as a primary source of inspiration; Sky Crawlers for Cagerrin and Captain Harlock for Damien. The design archetype also shows up in Wings of Honneamise, as built by Mike Psiaki with this classic.
We’ve seen the Friends minidolls show up in all sorts of interesting creations since they were introduced in 2012, including sky-fi airplanes, giant spaceships, tiny spaceships, and mechs. But these anime-inspired hardsuits may just be one of the best uses I’ve seen yet. When paired with the crazy hairpieces from LEGO’s official anime-inspired theme in 2006-2008, Exo-Force, the minidolls look like they’re straight out of an anime. And builder 3D Foundry has done some great work building cool hardsuits for them.
The aggressively clean lines of this ship belie its complexity. If you look closely, you’ll note that builder Chris Perron (thebrickbin) employs a healthy dose of complex techniques to achieve the sweet stylings of this space fighter. Plus, trans-neon-green is an unused color in modern space builds, and it looks just stunning here.
Umamen recently posted this MaschinenKrieger-inspired robot. The amount of detail that the builder was able to cram into such a small area is pretty amazing. I also really like the sleek chunkiness, which is key to a Ma.K. build.
Steven Erickson branches out into the far reaches of Outer Space with this build. Christened the “White Raven”, this little speed demon has an adorable chibi vibe going on. I really like it. More Space, Steven! More Space!
Gonkius has created one of the most gorgeous LEGO rockets I’ve ever seen. Those seamless curves…I can’t get over them. They are everywhere! Looking at their photostream, it would appear this is their first publicly released build. I can’t wait to see more.
Some time ago, Peter Reid inflicted the cutest little robots on the universe and things have never been the same. Christened “Blips”, they have covered the galaxy in a widespread epidemic of love, hate and rampant insomnia. This picture is a collection of their vehicles and it’s a thing of beauty. I could see this as a poster on the wall in my LEGO room. Hmmmm.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 novella Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) is a profound allegorical study of human nature, disguised as an illustrated children’s book. And it’s the 2nd best-selling book in modern history – topped only by the Lord of the Rings series. So it’s quite surprising I’ve never come across any LEGO interpretations of this book …until now!
Hong Kong builder Andy Hung has created this clever diorama featuring the titular prince on his asteroid, surrounded by the planets and stars – all built from standard LEGO pieces (including a lot of black!).
Tim Goddard (Roguebantha) has been on something of a cosmic constabulary kick lately, bringing forth a number of glorious models from that best-of-the-80’s LEGO theme, Space Police. So far he’s got a large landing craft, a nifty little runabout, some smaller vehicles and drones, and my favorite, the quintessential icon of the omnipresent State, a watchtower. The models have all been given a healthy dose of modern building techniques, while still incorporating the classic aesthetic. Updating old themes like this is a popular trend these days, but as long as they’re this well done, I don’t mind. Here’s a gallery of all Tim’s cool Space Police models.
