It’s rare that I find LEGO Halo builds which deliberately stray from an exact replica of the source material. That’s one reason why I like what Stephan Niehoff created with his mash-up of Halo’s iconic Scorpion tank and LEGO’s own Blacktron II theme. Another reason: the mash-up works beautifully.
Stephan has also been working other Blacktron II creations, such as this great spaceship landing pad. See his Blacktron II series and more pictures of Scorpion II in this album.
As builder Andrew Somers mentioned, he had fun building multiple variant models of the same SUV frame. I have to say, it’s fun to see how many variations he can crank out. Check out his police, civilian, off-roading, and military versions in this fantastic lineup. Which one is your style?
Monsterbrick has posted a whole series of lovable big-headed racers using parts from the latest large-scale “constraction figures“. First-up we have a cracking Jango Fett who could have driven straight out of a new Mario Kart-style Star Wars racer (now there’s a game I’d snap up tomorrow)…
Other than the big-headed bounty hunter, my favorite of the lot is probably this supercute creation. Cap has never looked so adorable…
There’s not a whole load of complicated building techniques going on here, these are just pure good fun. I highly recommend you check out Monsterbrick’s Flickr stream to see the entire series.
This isn’t the first time someone has mixed the constraction heads with regular LEGO System scale bricks. Check out this Jangbricks video on YouTube.
LEGO has been creating official versions of F1 cars for years now, but none of them have even come close to the elegance of these four from builder Noah_L.
From left to right you’ll find: Maserati 250F Tipo 2, McLaren MP4/6, Ferrari F2007 and finally a Ferrari SF15-T. If you need any more F1 beauty, Noah_L is in the process of building “at least one F1 car from each decade since the first F1 season (1950)”. I can’t wait.
LEGO has an all-new wave of Speed Champions planned for 2016, bringing some American muscle to a party that has so far been dominated by European supercars like Porsche, Ferrari, and McLaren. European cars are still in the mix for this year, but first off the starting line for the Americans is a 2016 Ford Mustang GT, a killer car in blue with a classic white stripe.
Click to read the rest of the review
During the nineteen-fifties, rapid advances in aeronautical engineering meant that the top speed of fighter aircraft shot up from below supersonic to more than twice the speed of sound. For the U.S. Air Force, this huge increase in performance coincided with the introduction of a now almost legendary range of fighter aircraft, starting with the F-100 Super Sabre and ending with the F-106 Delta Dart, also known as the Century Fighters. Over the years I have built both an F-105 Thunderchief and a Delta Dart. Just after Brickfair Virginia 2013, a number of military builders including myself visited the National Air & Space Museum Udvar Hazy Center near Dulles Airport and, after seeing the museum’s Super Sabre, I wanted one, badly.
The trouble was, this is not particularly easy. I didn’t just want any old Super Sabre; I wanted one in Vietnam war era camouflage much like the one in the museum. I find the best match for the camouflage colours is dark tan, dark green (or Earth green, as LEGO calls it) and old dark grey, and the parts palette in all of these colours is limited. The jet also doesn’t have a particularly easy shape, with a slightly odd oval intake and curved fuselage sides. Then I got a bit side-tracked, building movie cars for a couple of years. However, after a lot of procrastination and head-scratching, it is finally done. The model represents an F-100D that served as a fighter-bomber aircraft with 184th Fighter Squadron, the ‘Flying Razorbacks’, of the Arkansas Air National Guard, late in the type’s operational career.
How do you fight a foe with ice in his veins and the ability to call down a winter blizzard on top of your head? With this fire-spewing, bellows-powered war wagon by Jacob Nion of course! Though I’m slightly horrified that Jacob folded pleats into that fabric (Seriously, will it ever be flat again?), it resulted in completely adorable (and presumably, powerful) accordion-style bellows. Also, the dragon-shaped potbelly stove and Jacob’s iconic rat warriors round this build out into sheer awesomeness.
It’s time to leave January and its Droneuary shenanigans behind and move onto the fun of FebROVERy. First out of the garage is Jonas‘ (aka Legopard) Planetary Rover – a tricycle on steroids. Not only does this rover fit the monthly build challenge, but it transpires that Jonas is also taking part in Iron Builder 4.0 – Round 8 against Tim Schwalfenberg.
The wheels on this rover are great but the inside of the tires are really special thanks to the transparent red grilles. The seed part is the Technic metallic pin connector, and it forms the unusual wheel attachment in this particular entry. I also love the comfy looking leather covered driving seat in the cockpit, who doesn’t want 360° vision when out exploring?
Jonas has been featured regularly on TBB, in 2016 thus far we have bogged his Flying Erwin, Tree House and Morgan 3-wheeler.
Let’s just have a quick consensus: Transformers is one of the coolest things ever. Robots that turn into tanks, dinosaurs and sundry? That’s just too good. With that in mind, I happened to come across not one, but two transforming builds from two separate builders.
Up first is “PACE” from JAN LEGO that looks great in both forms as well as using anything but wheels for its wheels.
For more nostalgia, Andrew Lee’s “Shellax!” is equal parts van and turtle. Oh, and it’s Donatello, because he’s the best Ninja Turtle. Again, there’s a consensus on this.
For those of you who’ve been living under a rock for the last eight years, LUGNuts is the Flickr group for LEGO car enthusiasts, founded by Lino Martins and Nathan Proudlove, with Tim Inman, the impossibly prolific Peter Blackert and yours truly serving as moderators. Ever since it was founded, the group has organised a monthly build challenge centred on a particular type of car or car-related sub culture. Normally these challenges are just for the fun of it and they’ve inspired many cars blogged here on TBB. This month is extra special, however, because it’s the 100th challenge!
To mark this occasion we’ve turned the challenge into a competition, with whoppers of prizes. The third place winner gets the Technic 42050 Drag Racer, second place gets the Technic 42039 24 Hours LeMans Race Car and for the first place winner, we pull out all the stops with the Technic 42030 Remote-Controlled Volvo L350F Wheel Loader. These prizes are sponsored by The Brothers Brick, one of the biggest Bricklink stores in the US, Constructibles, and the LUGNuts Admins and moderators. Furthermore, the three winners will also receive autographed editions of The Art of LEGO Scale Modeling, courtesy of Dennis Glaasker, Dennis Bosman, and No Starch Press. Thanks to Dennis Glaasker and his equally creative daughter Stacey for making the poster.
To compete, join the discussion, pick a number, get assigned one of the individual challenges from our top-secret list of wacky cool cars and start building.
The most anticipated LEGO set of 2015 was the enormous Avengers SHIELD Helicarrier. As we highlighted in our extensive video review, there was a lot to like about that set, except for the relative scales of the carrier, the microfigs, and the quinjets. And while some builders have explored more ambitious LEGO Helicarrier designs within the confines of a computer screen, no-one has dared tackle the challenge of building a more properly scaled and movie-accurate version of the Avengers’ flying fortress using actual LEGO bricks …until now!
Working with nothing more than reference photos from the 2012 Avengers movie, Taiwanese builder ZiO Chao and a his friends Dada, Kimura, Kuan-Wei, Stephanie, Tiger and Will from the Formosa LEGO club spent a month and a half (and many sleepless nights) constructing this enormous and fully detailed model of the iconic Helicarrier. At 140cm x 80cm it’s twice the size of the official LEGO set, and contains five times as many pieces. At last, those “swooshable” little quinjets now actually have room to move around!
Regarding the build process, which he photographed in great detail, ZiO told The Brothers Brick: “Before I started to build it, the most annoying thing was collecting parts and classifying them. Then we used Technic beams to sketch out the skeleton of the carrier, which needed to be strong enough to hold everything together. Technic beams were also a great solution for the supporting yellow columns, the front of the carrier, and the four turbine engines.”
FebRovery‘s come early this year! Ilya T.’s greyscale rover is just the thing to kick off twenty-nine days of rover-fueled madness. (That’s right everyone, 2016 is a leap year! So why not use your extra day to build a rover of your own?) I love the tight construction inside the small bubble-cockpit, the conical rear end, and the pop of color from the spaceman’s red suit. But the real selling point of Ilya’s build are those fantastic heptagonal wheels.
