Kurt Vinnedge (vinn) has been slowly crafting this sweet microscale ship over the past year. The Helena debuted at BrickWorld a few weeks ago and somehow looks even better in person – just don’t bump it, or those awesome faceted angles will fracture into a thousand blue shards.
Tag Archives: Space
Reckless Abandon Starfighter
Even among some of the best Starfighter builders around, Chris Maddison manages to stand out as he puts in this phenomenal entry into the Starfighter Telephone Game:
Combining the styling of the previous Stafighters, Chris takes it to the next level with the amazing use of the light brick inside the Galaxy Squad pod, which gives this already very alien ship that extra exotic look.
Some Hubub for the Hub
Andris Barkevics (TGBDZ) has poured a great deal of lovely sand green brick into this interesting space ship. It’s more than just a color, though, it has a cool shape, I really like the arc curving in from the bottom, to overlap the cutout in the top section. The black greebles look good, as much as I can see them.
Welcome to Level Eleven
Flashlight, flashlight, FLASHLIGHT!
(…ok, ok, that’s the last time I’ll use that joke in my post titles, I promise!)
So at first glance this may just look like a couple of 70’s era space figs in a particularly greebly version of the classic LL928 Galaxy Explorer set. But take a closer look…
That’s right, those are GIANT mini-figs and one HUGE spaceship! Well actually they are LEGO spaceman LED flashlights and this crazy scene is brought to you by our very own Simon Liu, who was given the flashlights as gifts and figured this was the most logical thing to do with them.
Of course, the blue spaceman has been magically transformed into Benny from The LEGO Movie. And with the addition of Simon’s giant Unikitty, the scene now makes total sense… It’s obviously from the sequel, and this is our hero’s plan to deal with the giant monsters from Planet Duplo!
I was fortunate enough to drool all over marvel this at Brickworld Chicago a few weeks back, where Simon’s creation won the award for BEST SPACESHIP. Congratulations, Brother Si-MOCs! All that bribery and blackmail clearly paid off.
There’ll be no living with him now… :-)
Xiphos – a sword in space
Better known for his mechs, Kyle (BermudaFreze) showed up to BrickWorld this this impressive SHIP. Though it’s not the first time Kyle has built a SHIP, his previous one took home best Space Ship at BW2010, and had possibly one of the best Swoosh/PEW PEW PEW pictures taken.
While some may argue that the forward guns are a bit of a cheat to hit the arbitrary 100 stud threshold for a SHIP (Seriously Huge Investment in Parts), I don’t think anyone can argue how great this build is. From the nicely placed cheese wedge built caution stripes, to the fantastic forward slopped angles, to the colour stripes this thing is gorgeous. And don’t forget the light up engines:
This was definitely one of my favorite space builds from BrickWorld, and was one that I constantly told people to go see … unfortunately it was set up beside among Kurt Vinnedge‘s builds, and I mistakenly attributed the SHIP to him … sorry! This is a good reminder to fill out your MOC cards! So people will know who built what (and be eligible for awards).
SPACESHIP!
USS Enterprise NX-01 – Star Trek as it should have been
What better way to break my blogging dry streak than with this fantastic alternate take on the iconic USS Enterprise from Star Trek (The Original Series) by Shannon Sproule. Shannon’s version looks a lot more realistic than the version in the actual TV show, even by 1960’s space program standards.
At first, I actually thought this might be a Soviet Enterprise, which would be very cool to see as well! Get building, someone!
Mass Effect Reaper is a Harbinger of the End
This isn’t the first model of a Reaper featured here on The Brothers Brick, but it still warrants highlighting. Ben Caulkins (Benny Brickster) had done a great job of capturing the look of the largest space borne Reapers in the Mass Effect games. The creepy legs and eyes of the machine are perfectly represented.
Evolutionary Craft: The Eclipse Starfighter
I don’t find as much time to build now as I’d like, but it sure is fun when I finally get around to finishing a model. My latest inspiration was the Starfighter Telephone Game, a flickr social game. It’s a building game where each participant is mailed the previous player’s ship and then builds an evolution of it to mail to the next player. I’m taking part in the latest round, and when my turn came up, I was excited to receive Aaron William’s sweet yb-E ship.
The result of my efforts is the Eclipse Starfighter. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use the trans-red corner panel as the windscreen, and fitting it into the ship proved to be challenging. Incorporating the rotating wings for landing, which are locked together and pivot when the engine is rotated, introduced me to using worm gears to lock the wings in place. By using a worm gear, the movement is unidirectional, so that turning the engine moves the wings, but you can’t turn the wings to move the engine.
And here’s the ship next to Aaron William’s yb-E.
Unitron Pushback
Everyone loves to build star fighters, and other space combat craft, or space racers, buy when was the last time you saw a truly utilitarian space creation? R. J. Waldman (*jwaldo*) seems to have recognized this gap, and brings us a pretty fantastic star port support vehicle. I’ve long been fascinated by the geometry of airport support vehicles, they really bring minimalist and ultilitarian aesthetics home. This creation does a great job of capturing that look, and it also includes a lot of cool details and play features. There are built in stairs and cabinets, and I really dig the grill riding platforms sticking off the back.
Dragons in space
I’ve seen so many starfighter designs that it’s rare to see one that’s as unusual as this dragon-starfighter hybrid by BobDeQuatre. If you want to see more, check out other designs from the series that the builder calls Space Ninjas.
A Ship from Another Dimension
There exists a small but vocal contingent of the adult fan community who look down upon Bionicle and its descendent Hero Factory, claiming that the pieces are juvenile, not useful, and altogether too different to mix with traditional bricks. I’ve never understood this train of thought. LEGO is about imagination, and the ability to successfully incorporate unusual elements into a model is generally viewed as positive. Besides, there are just so many cool things that can be done with Bionicle pieces, completely aside from building large poseable action figures.
Take, for instance, this wicked cool spaceship by Ricardo Soà. Incorporating both traditional bricks and pieces of Bionicle heritage, it’s menacing and awesome in a way that is fresh and new. It’s a welcome change of pace for a community which frequently sees the same styles again and again.
And since we’ve not featured Ricardo here before, it’s worth taking a peek at some of his other killer spacecraft.
