Tag Archives: Ted Andes

Old habits get a new life in brick form.

In the Grammy-winning “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”, Will Smith famously sang, “Ciga-cigar right from Cuba-Cuba. I just bite it. It’s for the look, I don’t light it.” And, just like the Fresh Prince, Ted Andes likely knows that a lit cigar can be the source of numerous health issues. So, Ted has constructed a cigar and accessories that provide the old-school Hollywood mogul look without the risk of contracting throat cancer. The realistic wisp of smoke that Ted achieved might make you do a double-take, but rest assured everything in this photo is 100% LEGO. Although, come to think of it, biting a LEGO cigar might not be entirely healthy, either. You could break a tooth.

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Art Nouveau book covers

LEGO has been into books as of lately. We got the LEGO Ideas 21315 Pop-Up Book, the Hogwarts Moments books, the Disney Storybooks, the 40410 Charles Dickens Tribute, and more. So as a LEGO fan, why not hop on the trend? That is exactly what Ted Andes must have thought. They created a series of lovely hardcover books with Art Nouveau-inspired cover art to go along with the Wasp-wing Table Lamp we featured a while back.

The blue book looks quite elaborately embellished with golden details which make the satin white jewels pop. The green book uses Spider-Man’s web as a very artistic cloud and the minifigure butterfly wings are used to represent a magical transparent butterfly. Most of all this is a very ingenious way to display minifigures you like and it can be translated to any theme.

The Battle of Drumstick Glade

As you know over at The Brothers Brick, we love a good brick build insect. And this LEGO creation by Ted Andes features a lot of them! The ants are completely brick build. They are made out of droid arms, clip claws, t-bars, and bricks with studs on 4 sides. They even have a small gaster made out of tooth plates. We are currently watching a battle between the Blackthorns and the Lavender Leaf ant clans. My bet is the Blackthorns are the black ants and the grey ants are the Lavender Leafs. They are fighting over a half-eaten pheasant leg on the ground. I’ve seen a lot of uses for the curved tapered panel but I’ve never seen it used as a pheasant leg. For the foliage, it looks like Ted dismembered a bunch of LEGO flower bouquets. Which seems like a good cause in this case.

You light up my life. You know, because you’re a lamp.

There’s something extra cool when LEGO crosses paths with Art Nouveau. This amazing wasp-winged table lamp, designed by Ted Andes, was inspired by antique Tiffany lamps. And as cool as that lampshade “glass” is, I admire the twisting metalwork accents the most. Although the small details like the gracefully curving wall plug and period-accurate light-switch are also in the running.

Taking off the top, you can better see the brick-built vintage lightbulb and the complex construction that went into the shade’s base. Seen out of context, that lampshade could easily double for a Matrix-inspired robotic vehicle. Amazing work, there.

Built as part of the Bio-Cup contest, Ted was limited to using 100% LEGO elements. That means that this lamp doesn’t light up…yet. Ted says that he plans to add that “non standard” functionality in the future, with an eye on displaying it at an in-person LEGO convention. You know, when those are a regular thing again.

Forget dragons. Imagine wagons.

There are LEGO builds that hit that sweet spot of nostalgia and realism, and this little red wagon from Ted Andes is one of the great ones. The highlight has to be those great wheels – 3×3 dishes rimmed with a rubber tire, complete with a 1×1 round plate cap. The thin rods for the axles and handle are also perfectly scaled, making this look like a product shot from a retro-toy catalog.

Ted is an expert at creative part usage and unusual builds, as you can see if you take a trip through our archives.

The hare of the bunny that bit me

A Gatling gun, grappling hook, chainsaw, and an unfolding semaphore tower is not the kind of things you’d usually associate with little pink bunnies. But LEGO builder Ted Andes has done just that with this Nousagi (野ウサギ) Reconnaissance Tank. This mech-tank looks like it means serious business. However, just a few pretty pink touches and bunny stickers clue us in that one can pilot a tank and still have a playful personality. The open hatch gives us a glimpse of a playful young driver who can still get down to brass tacks when serious reconnaissance stuff needs to happen.

A charcuterie board complete with cheese and a mouse?

Okay, so maybe this isn’t quite a charcuterie board, I am still unclear on the concept, but I do know such boards were trending in the blogosphere over the holidays. Ted Andes does give us a great minimal LEGO model of a cheese board of sorts with all the essentials – even the casual kitchen mouse.

The board is simply constructed out of one tile panel and several plates in alternating brown and dark tan. As for the arrangement of elements topping the board; we’ve got the mouse from series 18 of the collectible minifigures, for the Swiss cheese we have a minifigure torso in light yellow – arms removed, and of course to slice and dice the cheese there is a minifigure machete which looks great as a cheese knife and then the silver slotted slope piece as a shredder. This little assortment is certainly social media ready.

Keep hitting snooze, you lose.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen an actual digital alarm clock, to me they actually even seem old-fashioned – don’t most people just use their mobile phone? But the physical alarm clock and your iPhone timer have one thing in common – you can hit snooze. Ted Andes gives us a LEGO model of the standard alarm clock with its digital face displaying 11:00, I guess someone hit the snooze button one too many times!

The body of the clock is simply fashioned out of a collection of black bricks, tiles, and plates. There are a couple dials on the right which utilize some rounder elements. Andes uses red minifigure torsos with the arms removed in red to create the display’s numbers – a pretty unorthodox use of parts. The colon between the hours and minutes are some cylinders also in a nice bright red color. While the build is simple, there is still some nice parts usage utilized in the work and the concept is timeless.

Deep Woods Off

Heading into the forest? You’d best watch yourself. There are…things in there. Critters. Faeries who don’t take kindly to intrusion. Don’t believe me? I’ve seen ’em! And so has Ted Andes! Captured their likeness in LEGO, even! Those top wings are from 2015’s 76039 Ant-Man Final Battle, and the lower ones are from the 2004 Alpha Team Mission Deep Freeze sets. There’s Knights Kingdom II shoulder armor, and Bionicle Rahkshi Back Cover armor as their legs. Curved Hero Factory blades serve double duty as swords and long hair. This combination of themes seems almost as mythical as these faeries themselves!

It must have been something I ate.

Sometimes it’s a challenge to keep things in perspective. Builder Ted Andes created a sharp-looking table out of LEGO, but called the image “EAT ME”. I wonder why? If you look closely you might spot a small clue…

Let’s take a another moment to appreciate that table, though. The legs are made from lampposts capped with eggs. The table runner has some clever building allowing for a half-plate rise over the tabletop, letting it read more like cloth. The use of gold-toned modified 1×1 round plates for tassels on the ends also works well. The rest of the room is also full of fun details. The vase is a Galaxy Squad Alien Pod in a pleasing shade of transparent purple. The windows are stained glass from the Brick Bank modular set.

At a meta-level, I do enjoy the juxtaposition of scales that Ted has used here. It’s a much larger build than you first expect, but still not human sized, so it’s still kind of small, but still big, and I think I need to go lie down now.

A colourful fleet of fighters

There’s a fine balance in creative endeavours between finding a groove and getting stuck in a rut. There’s no doubt which side of the scale Ted Andes is on with his latest run of LEGO starfighters. Whilst there’s a common shaping and techniques involved in the production of his Corsair models, the variety of styling applied to the variants make for quite a fleet. First up, there’s a red and white beauty, which showcases the use of the Technic panel parts alongside the cockpit…

Ted has put together a whole range of these craft, each a skilful combination of Hero Factory armour, Bionicle pieces, and regular LEGO parts. These are models I’d love to see “in the brick” — I’m sure they’d make for an impressive formation flypast.

Lock, loaded and lookin’ good with the Y-wing evolution

Back in 2017, Ted Andes built one of my favourite LEGO Star Wars-esqe ships that could have been a page taken from the galaxy far far away. This year he’s taken that inspiration and made it into a full-blown evolution of a Y-wing and it looks amazingly sleek and fit for a Rebel bombing run.

Utilising the canopy of the X-Wing and the shades of the popular yellow-themed Y-Wing from Star Wars, taking out bad guys never looked so good.

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