Vince Toulouse is a master at building curved shapes out of Lego, a consistently difficult feat. His latest spacecraft combines his curved style with a vertical axis to make something that feels properly alien. The variety of manipulator arms at the bottom cement the otherworldly vibe.
Today, shortly after 1600 GMT, a historic event took place. The European Space Agency successfully landed a spacecraft on a comet. “We are there. We are sitting on the surface. Philae is talking to us, we are on the comet”, celebrated Stephan Ulamec, Philae lander manager. Víctor Martínez Nouvilas also celebrated the event by recreating the historic moment of touchdown. There were moments of uncertainty as it was not apparent if Philae’s harpoons had managed to anchor the spacecraft in place, but it appears that all is well. This marks an important milestone in the mission as the spacecraft was launched over a decade ago. Quite an exciting day! It will be fascinating to find out what kind of information Philae will send back to us as it explores it’s new home.
Check out this cool microscale space mining operation by Outer Rim Emperor. He says it’s his first model in the Classic Space theme, and I think he’s nailed it. The big Octan tank is a nice, touch, too, though I’m not quite sure where Octan fits into LEGO’s chronology in relation to Classic Space.
This drop-dead gorgeous example of a Vic Viper is full of win. Nick V. has orchestrated something quite nice here. I love the color scheme and how the details pop from the center section. But most of all I love the use of the various blades all over this ship. It’s probably the ‘Castle’ guy in me, but it really rocks!
Jeremy Williams has built a beautiful corridor. I don’t say that often but this one is special. I love the circular walls and the amount detailing is just right. But, on top of all that, the lighting is perfect.
Many thanks to Pete Reid for the tip!
One of the more notable Maschin Krieger inspired builds from this year’s Ma.Ktober fest is probably the Baumeister Spinnentier, a “construction arachnid” style zero-G hardsuit, created by Canadian builder Josh Derksen.
Clearly the break-out technique Josh has used here is the application of paint to give the model a rusted look (…yes it rains in space, deal with it!). Using paint to artificially ‘weather’ LEGO is something I’ve wanted to do myself for a long time, but have not yet been man enough to attempt. But Josh totally nails it with this creation. Check out his full breakdown to get a look at all of its finer details and play features (which include poseable arms and pincers, and an openable cockpit).
Applying stickers used to be something my dad would do for me when I built sets as a kid, and seems to be far less common in today’s adult builds. But anyone paying attention to the space builders this past year has seen a steady rise in stickering, especially in the micro-sized builds. Enter Jacob Unterreiner (4estFeller). We’ve seen him a few times here on this blog but I don’t think we’ve really seen him like this:
That’s a pretty amazing stickering job. But look at it closer, that’s a micro GARC and is only 11×5 studs! Feels a lot bigger, eh? He’s taken stickering to the next level and really able to skew the sense of scale with his intense stickering. By my count (assuming symmetrical stickering and no stickers on the bottom) I found 54 stickers! That’s probably 2-3 times the usual sticker sheet size for a 1000 piece LEGO set.
But dear reader, you might be asking yourself, how does he achieve such wonderful results? Thanks to our friends at Build Like a Boss who have been running a series of tutorials on everything from advanced bricklink buying, building frames or bases, and of course stickering:
You can check out the awesome three part sticker tutorial series:
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
Here is a build that we missed from earlier in the year. Hammerstein NWC is a force to be reckoned with and this “Kromikoma” is some of his best work. All the custom “shiny” makes me jealous.
Kevin Walter‘s SHIP from the Goa’uld fleet captures the unique triangular geometry of this interesting vessel. Check out MOCpages for photos of the construction process.
If you’ve been paying attention to what’s marketable in pulp culture these days, the video game Destiny has pretty popular. It has also become a pretty common excuse: “Sorry, can’t build, playing Destiny”. Jake (Jayfourke) has solved this problem by building Destiny with this fantastic ship:
Even if it wasn’t from a game, the ship design is gorgeous. I love the simple colour stripes, and really great angles that Jake was able to recreate. Though my favorite part, and what impressed me most was those iconic triangular intakes:
This thing looks like it was built for swooshing.
