LEGOLIZE IT MAN enters this year’s SHIPtember building challenge with a stunning spacecraft promoting one of the world’s famous home furniture producers. It’s hard to say whether the assembling process was as hard and exhausting as it is of a some Swedish kitchen table, but at least there are no spare screws lying around.
Extending to a length of 125 studs — or for better scale, the length of 4 LEGO modular buildings — this battlecruiser dubbed the Basilisk was designed and built by Pico van Grootveld, and it’s a thing of stunning beauty. The belt frame built in yellow gives it a sturdy and unique texturing for a spaceship’s body. The army green all over makes it feel like it’s a tank-class battleship not to be messed with, especially with the menacing looking fins — or spikes shall I say!
If you’re a fan of the sci-fi film Oblivion, you should recognize this unique bubble ship piloted by Tom Cruise. Builder Marcin Otreba constructed a worthy replica of the vehicle sparing no expense for details and function. He did a good job capturing the visual styles of the movie into LEGO brick form. It is said that the ship was inspired by the Bell 47 helicopters of today.
Marcin did slightly modify the design to fit a single passenger to provide details from the actual movie ship.
Intergalactic space is getting busy with SHIPtember traffic as the number of large LEGO spaceships begins to rocket. Here’s another fine looking vessel called the ZC Lapsadle. Built by TBB alumnus Simon Liu, it definitely meets the longer-than-100-studs criteria to be a SHIP. The flashes of Bright Light Orange are a standout feature along with the interesting two-prong shape of the bow. I love the central launch bays on either side — dark and deep enough to generate some intriguing shadows.
Do you think Simon actually built two of these ships or are we seeing some artistic jiggery-pokery at work?
From Random Vector‘s imagination flies the beautiful stealth starship Void Raven. The dark color scheme not only evokes the stealthy feel of the spacecraft, but also places the spotlight on brilliant texturing and clever parts usage throughout.
The pair of translucent blue Bionicle masks inside of an inverted tire in the rear, and the arrays of tread links, are my personal favorite details highlighted here.
What does September mean to you? Perhaps it signals the end of summer, when the days are noticeable shorter and leaves start to change colour. For a significant number of LEGO builders, September is SHIPtember when the aim is to build a large spaceship of at least 100 studs in length. Marcin Grabowski completed this huge dropship on 10 Sept after 29 days of building. His DragonFLY class dropship is certainly eye-catching with its lime and yellow hull. I love those central wings with the ball of complex machinery, wiring and ducts at the connection point.
Sometimes is is hard to get a sense of scale with this type of large model. I am happy to report that Marcin did exactly what any self-respecting LEGO SHIP builder should do…he swooshed it!
Talented Canadian builder Simon Liu confesses his love for the majestic Star Destroyers of the Star Wars universe by recreating an episode of the final battle from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story where two of them, well, are being destroyed. With numerous debris torn off the ship’s surface, this unusual diorama is much more complicated than just two starships colliding. The way each piece is connected creates a strong illusion that every part of this scene is actually floating in open space above Scarif.
And, of course, here is the hero of the battle — a small Hammerhead corvette pushing one of the Destroyers towards its certain doom. And it’s impossible to ignore Simon’s keen eye to details with an edge of the Destroyer’s body being actually crushed by the Hammerhead.
There is something special about LEGO’s retro space themes that makes people revisit them time and time again, and it’s probably nostalgia. One of the more popular themes is surely Ice Planet 2002 with its iconic blue-white-black and translucent orange colour scheme, and Tim Goddard has built an excellent microscale spaceship based on the 6973 Deep Freeze Defender, which he’s named Zycon V. It’s also tied closely to a collaborative story recently featured on The Brothers Brick: LEGO Space: ICE Titan.
The spaceship itself has nice shapes and a good balance of details and clean surfaces, as well as following the original’s colour scheme. Though I would have loved to see a bit more translucent orange included, and the curves may not fit into a 90’s inspired creation very well, those are minor points on an otherwise amazing build.
If the latest LEGO Ideas set NASA Saturn V is a little too big for your shelf or for your wallet, we have the perfect solution. Jussi Koskinen has built a compact Saturn V that can still separate into the launch and mission stages, just like the official set. Jussi has taken care to ensure each stage has the correct number of engines and maintains the same separation function as the larger model. I am impressed with the shaping achieved, since making a cylindrical LEGO rocket can be a challenge.
As you can see, despite being small in size, Jussi’s mini Saturn V still looks the part when launched.
It’s always great to see a first-timer in the online fan community introduce themselves with as sweet of a build as Michael Kanemoto has done with his Chrysalis spaceship.
The builder says he spent a few hundred hours over the past couple of months perfecting his design, and I’d say the effort was well worth it. This is a gorgeous and sleek spacecraft featuring all kinds of clever design details. The colors look great and the launch pad has a nice retro look to it. But the coolest touch may be that the builder has also replicated the ship in microscale.
Many of you have probably seen the official LEGO Milano 76081 from the new Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, or maybe even read our review of the microscale Milano which LEGO is currently giving away. Tyler Clites liked the ship so much, he made his own custom 3000 piece minifig-scale version with full interior! At 2 feet wide and a foot long, Tyler has recreated the unique shapes and curves of the craft with some very clever building techniques; the “beak” of the ship looks fantastic, and he has captured the swept back wings and feathered ailerons with style.
Tyler also teamed up with The Brick Show to show off all the details in his model:
https://youtu.be/cnMKd_RzSb0
No need for frantic searching to find the nearest fuel station for this LEGO starfighter, that goes by the intimidating name D.I.E Fighter. The builder of this fine ship, Pascal Schmidt, tells us that D.I.E. actually stands for Dual Ion Engine, but I don’t think it comes in peace. Those four blue panels are actually high performance solar panels that provide power, as long as the fighter doesn’t enter any long dark wormholes I assume. With some nice nods to Neo Classic Space with the grey hull and bumblebee stripes, there’s a lot to love about this little fighter. Don’t look too hard for the pilot though, he is hidden inside the opaque, spherical central cockpit.
This starfighter ship was built as an entry to the Real World +200 Starfighter Contest currently running on Flickr until May 15th, 2017. Entries must be a minifigure scale starfighter (with at least one minifig pilot) which could realistically exist in 200 years, assuming no magic warp engines, gravity techno babble or deflector shields. Get building…