Tag Archives: Spaceships

Botanical Cruiser carries Earth’s plastic plants across the cosmos

While back-to-school sales, falling leaves, and pumpkin spice lattes might be the more recognized signs of autumn’s arrival, among LEGO fans, it’s the sudden appearance of massive spaceships in our feeds that we look for. SHIPtember is when builders race to complete a spaceship of at least 100 studs in length, aka a SHIP (Seriously Huge Investment of Parts). Space Kook is no stranger to the tradition, having participated for at least four years, even creating five SHIPs in a single month. This year, Space Kook presents the LSS Kew, a Botanical Cruiser adorned with domes to transport Earth biomes to distant colonies.

Click to explore Space Kook’s impressive cruiser from other angles!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

SHIPtember comes around sooner every year... In, er, August?!

Now see here, ktorrek. We’ve seen your latest Seriously Huge Investment in Parts (SHIP), and we’re seriously impressed. Even more so to hear that it’s your 17th (!) such LEGO build; heck, we even featured one of the first ones some 11 years ago. But your calendar is a month out! SHIPtember – the annual build-a-spaceship-longer-than-100-studs challenge – doesn’t start for another week and a half yet. We were still mentally preparing ourselves for brick-built behemoth season! TBB Towers has been thrown into disarray by that clean colour-blocking and those awesome triple fins! Let’s file this one under SHIPtember: Early Access…

In all seriousness, we always look forward to SHIP season here at TBB – and ktorrek’s build is a great way to start. If you’re looking forward to it too, why not see what we’ve featured from previous editions of SHIPtember?

Cruisin’ for a bruisin

TBB alum Mansur Soeleman is back with a heavy-duty LEGO cruiser that can dish it out with the best of them! Using only one technic plate, a slope, and two plates with bars, Mansur has built a gun turret that he’s peppered across the ship. I count seven visible, can you find more? Be sureake in all of the fascinating greebling between the armor panels on ship. And speaking of armor, gander at the tiny rounded indent just below the command deck, to the right of that turret. Mansur has added some extra texture using a pair of finger hinge pieces from yesteryear, likely to reverse the stud direction in the span of a plate. But, the star of the armor show is the 8x1x3 slope. Mansur has used six of them just on this half of the ship to create the angular and geometric paneling. With all of that done, all that’s left to say is “punch it”!

Albatross dropship soars the sci-fi skies

The Albatross multi-atmospheric carrier ship is a brutalist beast of aerospace engineering dreamed up by concept artist Theo Stylianides and recreated here in LEGO by Vitus Barth. The massive dual-colored wings look incredible and pose quite a structural challenge for the builder. Vitus does a great job matching the form of his inspiration while making some creative choices with color that enhance the build as a LEGO model, such as making the top of the craft in tan and using black for the impressive “orbit breaker” thrusters and intakes.

We first featured Vitus’ work back in 2007 and it’s great to see he’s still creating and sharing amazing sci-fi builds.

Learn how to build spaceships like a true master AFOL [Instructions]

There are some LEGO builders who, every time they present a new build to the world, have us scratching our heads wondering how on earth they’ve made those pieces fit together like that. For no one is that more true than Nick Trotta, whose spaceships feature frankly mind-bending ways of connecting things together. Have you ever wanted to see how he does it? Well, he’s just released instructions for one of his models, so you can do just that! This spaceship was featured here way back in 2018, and it still looks just as good now as it did then. You can build your own using the instructions over on his website!

And while you’re here – why not take a look through some of his other builds that have graced our Nick Trotta archives since the Resonance made its first appearance?

Massive LEGO spaceship is over 5 feet long

Canadian LEGO builder Jean-Philippe Leroux has built a massive LEGO spaceship with a suitably impressive name! The Empress took over 24,000 parts to build and weighs over 43 pounds. If you like sci-fi bits and bobs, The Empress has it in spades; so let’s look at the engines back to front. For sports fans its got minifig skis and snowboards. For the handy-folk there’s saws. After the robot arms, there’s stud shooters and the old 1×8 bar. Finally, towards the front, there are robot binoculars and zipline handles. And that’s just the engines!

Continue reading →

Think wasps are only good for being a nuisance at picnics? Think again

Wasps are something of a bête noire when it comes to animals – they’re probably the least liked of all the insects. Having been stung by a fair few in my time, I’d have to agree; but if anything is going to change my mind, it’s Shamisenfred‘s innovative LEGO interceptor. Christened the GUÊPE (French for wasp, or more literally, WASP), it’s said to be a craft with “erratic, unpredictable movements”. Yep, sounds very on brand. And speaking of which, I love the use of the chevron-shaped wedge pieces to create the ship’s body, as it mimics the hexagonal nature of wasp or bees’ nests. I bet it still packs a sting, though…

Pigs! In! Briiiiiiiiiicks!

Perhaps it’s the mysterious Algorithm™ at work, but my social feeds lately have been on something of a Muppets revival, and I am so here for it. If you feel the same, I defy you to look at Jon-Paul Hansen, AKA j-p-30‘s, LEGO depiction of the Pigs in Space skit without saying the tagline. The set is very well recreated, with – among others – letter tiles used to represent some of the buttons and controls. The crew of Captain Link Hogthrob, First Mate Piggy and Dr Julius Strangepork look as good as their names sound ridiculous.

And if the interior wasn’t enough, j-p-30 has gone the whole hog (geddit? OK, I can hear Statler and Waldorf telling me to leave) and modelled the exterior of the USS Swinetrek too! If I’m not mistaken, this does make use of some light bluish grey paint on the big cone pieces, but the end result is a dead ringer for the show model.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this builder tackle Jim Henson’s lovable characters, either – have a look in our archives to see some of the others.

This screen-accurate LEGO Star Wars X-wing stays on target

Creating a screen-accurate minifig-scale LEGO X-wing isn’t as easy as bulls-eyeing womp rats in your T-16 back home. Builder Joel Short takes his best shot at getting everything right—and it looks like that particular proton torpedo hits home. The long, tapered fuselage is notoriously tricky to capture (you could argue that many of LEGO’s official models have struggled to hit the mark) but Joel nails the angles.

Here’s a side view, where you can see the wealth of tiny pieces used to shape the fuselage. You can also make out a few more instances where attention to detail went above and beyond, like the intricacy of the landing gear or the shoulder armor on the laser cannons.

All wings report in! See more here…

Teamwork makes the LEGO spaceship dream work

I’m really liking this Swordfish frigate by Stijn van der Laan (you might know him better as Red Spacecat – after all, he’s been here before). It’s part-submarine, part-aircraft carrier, part-Mass Effect, even part-Halo, perhaps. It’s inspired by a piece of concept art, but Stijn has applied a hefty dose of artistic license to make it his own. And he’s called in some big guns to help him do so, too. If you’re going to solicit advice from a fellow LEGO spaceship builder, then there are few better people to ask than Nick Trotta! Again, our archives will show you why. In this case, Nick apparently provided some guidance on the tapered nose, capping off Stijn’s great work. What a formidable pairing these two talented builders make!

An elegant spaceship for a more civilized age

You’d be forgiven if you couldn’t quite place where you’ve seen this distinctive vessel before. If you never played the Star Wars: The Old Republic massively multiplayer online roleplaying game or missed the official LEGO Star Wars version of the ship in 2013, you might not even recognize the hammerhead profile of a Defender-class light corvette. But it doesn’t take any familiarity with the source material to look at BobDeQuatre’s impressive model and hear a John Williams track or two in your head. The smooth hull, bold red-and-white color scheme, visible laser cannons, and subtle greebling at the equator are more than enough to evoke that quintessential Star Wars-ness that accompanies all the coolest spaceships.

In space, no one can hear you make swooshing noises

Sometimes, you can hear a LEGO model even when all you’ve got is an image. Take this spaceship by Al-Tair here, which inspires a reaction somewhere along the lines of KSHEWWWWWW PEW-PEW-PEW! For anyone who doesn’t speak spaceship onomatopoeia, that’s the sound that automatically springs to mind as you imagine yourself swooshing the model around, firing those deadly-looking wing cannons. Bonus points for the use of one of my favorite cockpit pieces (we all have those, right?): the newer trans-blue helicopter screen from the City theme.