Tag Archives: Tintin

There’s not much LEG(O)room on Flight 714 to Sydney

A new LEGO builder on Flickr, by the name of Aero Explorer, is living up to their name with a neat model of a fantastical plane. Fantastical? Yes! Although it may look like real enough, this is a prototype private jet that appeared in one of the weirder Tintin comics: Flight 714 to Sydney. The parachute on the back is the biggest clue to its fanciful design. Even I know that when planes have parachutes, they’re normally kept on the inside. Anyway, this is a cracker of a model. I really like the way the fuselage tapers towards the nose…

Lego Carreidas 160 Jet

… And we get a bit of a clue as to how the shaping was achieved here. You can also see that there’s just about enough space for an interior. It sleek profile is only a few studs wide, so it’s impressive that minifigures can sit in it at all, never mind with this level of detail! It might be a bit cramped, though. I can say from experience that flying to Sydney with minimal legroom is not much fun… Hopefully the minifigure Tintin is a bit more resilient than me!

Lego Carreidas 160 Jet

Destination Moon in this massive LEGO Tintin rocket that’s almost 5 feet tall

I was in Brussels Zaventem airport the other day, where I came across an enormous red and white rocket in the departure lounge, standing an impressive 6 metres tall. Stefan Johansson must have been through the same airport, as he has built the very same spaceship at an equally impressive scale! Of course, this isn’t just any old rocket. This is the craft that Belgium’s most famous son — at least in comic book form — used to travel to and explore the moon. The rocket is one of the most recognisable pieces of Tintin iconography, and as such has seen a fair few LEGO versions, but at 1.4m (4 feet, 7 inches) tall, Stefan’s is easily the biggest brick-built one I’ve seen!

Click here to see the details of this colossal build!

The crash scene from a beloved Tintin story

The cover art of one of the best Tintin stories is perfectly recreated here in LEGO by Dark Small. If you’ve never read anything from the Tintin series, you should. The adventures of the clever young man, told in a comic book style, are fun and heartwarming. And one of the most heartwarming stories of all is Tintin in Tibet. This installment has the hero and his comrades searching the mountains for a plane crash in hopes to find and rescue his lost friend.

Tintin au tibet

Click to see the original artwork

Tintin and Captain Haddock brought to life in LEGO BrickHeadz form [Instructions]

This will surely strike a chord with fans of the famous adventurers from the long-running comic book series by Belgian author Hergé. Builder Per Martinson applies the characters’ familiar colour tones to a simple build that’s instantly recognisable. Instructions are provided to add this to your custom BrickHeadz collection.

Click for the full set of instructions

Stunning model of the Sirius, featured in Tintin books.

The Sirius is a fictional vessel first appearing in the Tintin graphic novel The Shooting Star, and later in The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure. It was named after the SS Sirius, the first steam-powered ship to cross the Atlantic under its own power. This wonderfully detailed boat by Stefan Johansson is so accurate compared to images of the vessel John-O.88, a trawler that inspired the author, that it is easy to mistake it for a wooden model.

The curved hull is particularly impressive, along with the riggings, made up of various lengths of LEGO string elements. On deck, Tintin is ready to plunge into the depths in his diving suit, while Snowy, Thomson (or Thompson?) and Captain Haddock look on.

Tintin’s tiny adventures

A mysterious meteorite floating in the Arctic, a giant mushroom, a massive spider, and… a seaplane made of bananas? All these elements feature in Sad Brick‘s brilliant LEGO microscale version of a classic Tintin comic book cover. The stormy sea looks great, the iconic mushroom is immediately recognisable, and be sure you don’t miss the tiny Tintin and Snowy figures on the shore. But the star of this show is surely that little seaplane — beautifully put together from a handful of well-chosen pieces.

L'étoile Mystérieuse

I remember reading and enjoying The Shooting Star as a child, but it’s worth pointing out that it hasn’t aged as well as some of Herge’s other works. The book is now regarded as something of a blot on Herge’s reputation with its questionable anti-Semitic depiction of the main villain.