Tag Archives: Spaceships

Massive 100000+ piece MCRN Donnager Hangar

Spaceships and LEGO are partners to the end. Fans have been dreaming up their own versions of their favorite ships, fictional or real, since before LEGO picked up Star Wars. Builder Mocking_brick combines their love of The Expanse with LEGO to create massive, minifigure scale ships from the series. Though these spacecraft are already immense on their own, Mocking_brick felt like pushing the limits of the building program, Stud.io, by making gigantic scenes as backdrops for their creations. This scene exceeds 100000 pieces all on its own, showing off the hangar bay of the MCRN Donnager prior to its destruction. Housed inside this minifigure-scale creation are the damaged Knight shuttle (which held the survivors of the Canterbury ice freighter) and the MCRN Tachi (which would become the legitimate salvage, the Rocinante).

While James Holden and his rag-tag crew of rebels caused issues for the Martian crew of the Donnager, their seized shuttle sat in the hangar with the formidable frigate that would become the Rocinante. After digitally building these ships to minifigure scale, Mocking_brick created separate renderings for the different parts of the background. The background was fleshed out first, as it was a repetitive but satisfying element for the builder to develop.

After building out both walls and partnering them with the Tachi, Mocking_brick moved on to the base and the maintenance rig. Already at 63,000 pieces, this next section added another 40,000 pieces and tested the limits of the Stud.io program and their computer.

This builder has an unmatched dedication to this fandom and I, for one, am here for it. I mean, the attention to detail that Mocking_brick puts into their ships goes above and beyond anything I’ve seen. I can’t wait to see what else they manage to finish. Given the size of their creations, it makes sense that they jump around projects for a little while. Patience is a virtue, though, and these builds are worth the wait.

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Hats off to this harsh landing

This hair-raising crash may have ruined Arodi Anderson’s ship but he’s survived to take revenge on those that wronged him. This scene by builder Mix the Brix makes use of some clever techniques to build a realistic desert scene on an alien world. Emerging from the wrecked starcraft, the pilot knows there’s no point looking back as the smoke rises into the barren skies above the dune sea. He’s more concerned about who shot him down.

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This speedster lifts and separates

The cool thing about designing spaceships is that space travel is more or less in its infancy here on Earth so we can still dream up all sorts of wild and wacky designs. Take this LEGO “Comet” Speedster concept built by Marco De Bon for example. It is chock full of neat build techniques and complex angles. The forward dishes are Ninjago Spinners making the model tricky to balance according to the builder. Speedster implies speed but I imagine the forward mandibles can lift a payload magnetically while the aft section sports four Brick Separators, hence the lifts and separates reference in the title. I definitely wasn’t thinking of a retro bra ad when I thought up the title so don’t get that idea in your heads.

LEGO Disney·Pixar Lightyear 76832 XL-15 Spaceship [Review]

What happens when the director of a highly anticipated film about a Space Ranger also happens to be a fan of LEGO Classic Space? You end up with a gorgeous spaceship with a sleek new yellow canopy that writer, director, and adult fan of LEGO Angus MacLane wanted for his own builds. The LEGO Disney·Pixar Lightyear 76832 XL-15 Spaceship is hands-down the star set of this new movie tie-in line. We got a chance to familiarize ourselves with this 497-piece set a few months before the movie hits theaters. Buzz Lightyear’s XL-15 Spaceship is available now from the LEGO Shop online and retails for US $49.99 | CAN $64.99 | UK £44.99.

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Let’s go to infinity and beyond!

Exploring the cloudy canopies of Algastarr

This LEGO build by Peter Stella shows us something wondrous aboard a stylish frigate. The ship we see here is a new version from a previous build of Peter’s that hadn’t met the builder’s expectations. Trimming the nose and the top of the engine block, this ship’s structure stands out with it’s new geometry. The colors really pop too! Check out that sand-blue inverted slope in the first blue stripe. I favor those teal blocks just below the stripe–such a cool color to see on a spacefaring vessel. However, the ship isn’t the only cool thing in this build; let’s talk about the planet. The floating islands are beautifully constructed using simple techniques that really shine. I particularly like the shaping of the leaves on the trees, and the use of an Indiana Jones whip on the small one in the bottom right corner.

Want to see more about this build, and what went into it? Peter has a great YouTube video detailing the ship, the islands, and how they’re all constructed.

“Careful with my ship, Wrecker...”

Continuing his line of midi-scale LEGO Star Wars ships, FlyInSpace has built an Omicron-class attack shuttle. Specifically, it’s the Havoc Marauder – the flagship and mobile base of Clone Force 99, the Bad Batch, which LEGO also released as an official set, 75314 Bad Batch Attack Shuttle. There is nothing Bad about this fan-built model though! A singular wedge element is used upside down for the angular cockpit, and it’s the perfect piece for it. There’s some great texturing in the wings and body of the ship as well, with ski poles, ingots and roller skates used to give some added detail at this small scale. The edges of the solar panel wings are very well done with clips and bars (albeit with some fragile-looking connections). Perhaps that’s why Wrecker needs to be so careful with it!

Honey, I shrunk the Republic gunship

This LEGO Republic gunship by Ron_mcphatty is a smaller take on a great vehicle from that galaxy far, far away! The ship is built on the midi-scale, which puts it between miniature and minifigure scale. This size allows for greater details than a miniature model, but less complexity and fewer parts than a model scaled to minifigures. And this thing is jampacked with details! We’ve got the rockets between the rocket launchers on top in the back, ready to shoot down any battle droid fighters. Clear radar dishes represent the swivel guns on the wings. Of course, that’s not all! The coloring of the ship stands out with the bright red and green against the stark white. That bright green is one of my favorite things about the ship, so I’m glad to see it all represented!

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What adventures await on this mysterious alien world?

In a galaxy far away, an astronaut takes a break from space travel to investigate an unusual planet. Bart De Dobbelaer has created this colourful LEGO scene which shows mechanical pillars topped with layers of vibrant plants. The display uses a wide range of pieces from the Clikits theme, including pink suction cups as the flowering sections of several plants. The spaceship has a compact design and features a flexible tube that is interwoven around a cockpit chair from the Hero Factory sets. Let’s hope there’s nothing too sinister going on with this strange alien world.

The Iron Starhopper

Certain parts show up a lot throughout the year thanks to LEGO fans’ tendency to challenge each other’s ingenuity, such as the recurring Iron Builder challenge. For his third model using the red hexagonal windscreen part, builder Jake Hansen went for a space angle. This multifaceted spacecraft might not hold much by way of cargo but it can certainly get you from Planet A to Planet B in good time.

Ships like these are intricate puzzles that show off the nontraditional or unexpected ways that builders find to fit pieces together. Triangular clip plates in the nose snuggly fit in the area between the red windscreens while grey domes of reducing size fill the space behind. The light blue ski poles in the front, along with the other uses of the color by the engines or along each side of the body, perfectly compliments and contrasts the red of the windscreen. Stacks of minifigure skates in grey are built into each arm of the body, providing an industrial texture that works really well in this ship. This swift little starhopper is just another example of Jake’s prodigious skill.

Clean, mean, flying machine

Back from a small hiatus, Blake Foster brings us this beautiful LEGO spaceship! Color blocking is on point in this ship, with subtle reds and yellows peaking out of the black, white, and light grey. The dark zzure takes this that much further and ties the whole build together.

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This starship has a snake in its boot! (Probably)

I love Iron Builder! It usually means job security for us here at TBB, loads of awesome LEGO entertainment for you, and stress, horror, and depravity for the poor sods who have to build for it. Take this pointy starship built by Joe (jnj_bricks) for example. It’s pretty neat in its own right, but knowing full well you gotta crank out a bunch of quality builds in short order while your competitor does the same gives me heart palpitations just thinking about it. As per the rules of Iron Builder, you gotta cleverly use a seed part or another. We’re supposed to be impressed by Joe’s use of the required hexagonal blabitty-blah but I’m more smitten with the hidden Woody figure from Toy Story. Can you spot it?

At 3,145 pieces, The Negotiator is a midi-scale LEGO Star Wars masterpiece

I just can’t get enough of this LEGO Venator-class Star Destroyer by FlyInSpace! The lines on this build are so clean, it looks like the edges were cut with a hobby knife. At 27 inches long, it’s hard to believe this model is actually a step down in scale from the LEGO Ultimate Collector Series.

See lots more details of this LEGO Star Wars ship