Every scene can teach a lesson, and this scene has taught me not to wonder into deep caves. According to Tkytko, that is where Raus’zod has the Weeping Skull Mausoleum. The scene is full of clever details with great building techniques. And all those details come together to create a rather scary lair.
Take some time to look over the entirety of this entry to the Summer Joust competition.
Castle has been on a wonderful resurgence of late, and Goran Maksimovic adds some great personality to the mix. A wonderful little tower is being scaled as one of the culprits falls. Each of the four faces seen on the minifigs tells a great story of the action scene. It can take some effort going through minifig face designs, but Goran shows us the effort pays off in the enjoyment of the scene.
As a LEGO set designer for Elves, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Zelda, and Wicked, it’s fair to say that Wes Talbott knows a thing or two about bringing fantasy to life at minifig scale. Last year, the builder’s Fire Breathing Fortress reimagining with Chris Perron took our breath away. Now Wes is back with a trio of vignettes titled Dungeon Dangers. The first scene stars a hideous slime made from trans green macaroni tubes from the Dreamszzz sets. My favorite technique is the spiral columns decorated with thorny vines in metallic silver.
Wes was so pleased with the vignette design of a hexagonal base framed with three columns that he kept the pattern across the full serries. The crystalline spider sparkles, but again its the corners that capture my eye with an innovative technique for stalagnate columns. Apparently Wes came up with the concept a few years ago but never had a chance to use it until now. Spider eggs made from clusters of clamshells is another standout technique.
Wes’ final fantasy vignette follows, along with a bonus from the builder
When setting a LEGO scene, how much of a world needs to be built to spark the viewer’s imagination?
There are two approaches to bringing a world to life in LEGO: 1) meticulously build out every aspect of the scene with bricks, or 2) provide just enough detail to suggest the bigger picture while letting the viewer’s imagination fill in the rest. While building it all can make for impressive displays, I am drawn to the latter approach.
Various styles can achieve this, each with its distinct charms. Immersive scenes transport us to new worlds, like a window into a picture, by filling the frame with LEGO. Vignettes, on the other hand, embrace the artifice of a model and give the impression that a slice of the world has been captured in bricks. Even if vignettes have their appeal, I have a preference for immersive scenes. They’re more fun, if more part-intensive.
But there’s a third style worth exploring, one that many in the community – including myself – have experimented with. It’s a style that I call “Ground-Based.” As you’ve probably already guessed, this is the topic I’ll be covering today
Learn how to create MOCs in the ground-based style
Bricks down! After seven grueling days of non-stop building, RebelLUG’s Vignweek 2025 has come to an end. The first five challenges gave builders just 24 hours to create a LEGO vignette around the daily theme, but for the final challenge, builders could take 48 hours. This time the theme was “Reclaimed by Nature,” which is the perfect excuse to pull out those bins of leaf parts and create something beautiful. As the Vignette builders break out their brick separators, let’s take a stroll through an overgrown LEGO world with some of our favorites of the day.
FS Leinad participated in all six builds, but his final creation is my favorite. The orangutan is a great design (per the builder, “RIP 3-in-1 Forest Animals) but it’s those vultures that have stolen my heart… and pick it apart with those brilliant hook beaks.
ILB Creations completed 5 challenges and also ends on a high note. I love the larger scale and the light blue mortar between crumbling bricks.
Forage for more vignettes that nature has reclaimed
Do not adjust your screen. Today’s round-up of Vignweek builds features topsy-turvy creations around the theme “upside down.” This is also the last set of builds created with a 24-hour limit. Some builds are photographed upside down, others are constructed from the ceiling down, and others split the difference with mirror worlds. These are just a selection of the incredible upside-down vignettes from both familiar builders and some new faces.
You can always count on NikiFilik for bright and playful builds, and today is no exception. What a fun twist on perspective as this stunt plane flips in the sky.
Someone had to do it, and that someone was buillding_after_dark. Spider-man’s upside-down kiss remains one of the most iconic scenes in all of superhero cinema and the builder recreates it perfectly.
You’ll flip for the rest of these upside-down vignettes
Vignweek 2025 crosses the halfway point with the fourth daily challenge prompt: “Road trip!” Once again, incredible builders heeded the call and quickly assembled LEGO vignettes interpreting the theme in a myriad of ways. Let’s have a look at some of our favorite builds of the day.
Fresh off judging the Summer Joust, LEGO legend CheesyStudios drops by Vignweek with this incredible tribute to Badlands National Park. The forced perspective works brilliantly, and the striated rocks with the bands of sand red are stunning.
_BrickBytes hits the road with cozy VW camper van. The metallic fists as a grille is a brilliant use of a specialized part.
Hitch a ride and for more amazing road trip vignettes
Day 3 of Vignweek has closed, bringing with it a bounty of brick-build vignettes with the theme of “nautical.” Participants had plenty of leeway to interpret the theme and offer up watercraft ranging from ancient to futuristic, structures both cozy and apocalyptic, and sea creatures big and small. And every build here was constructed in just a few hours! Thanks to @RebelLUG for hosting this creative contest. Now on to some of the Day 3 highlights…
CRCT Productions plunges beneath the waves for this evocative scene of submarine exploring a deep sea reef. The submersible is great, but I especially love the fish made from quarter round tiles.
Joël Jurg sticks to the ocean theme with a Roman Emperor’s pleasure barge. I love that w not only get an incredible miniature model, but a history lesson about how insanely luxurious the Emperors lived.
Brownbricks brings us to minifig scale with a seasteader living in a makeshift container house. It must be a lonely life – good thing he has a cat to keep him company!
Voyage on for more aquatic vignettes
Vignweek is an annual competition hosted by RebelLUG that challenges builders to assemble a vignette around a daily theme. Just 24 hours to turn around a build with no rest days! It’s a marathon and a sprint for some incredibly talented LEGO creators. We rounded up our favorites from day 1’s “Archaeology” theme here. For day 2, the theme is “Monochrome,” challenging builders to make a vignette using just one LEGO color. Here’s just a sampling of the amazing creativity born from this challenging constraint.
Jakub Kozina gets his greebling on with a tribute to the knobby little bits that space and machine builders so adore. Excellent glue and modeling scissors too!
Sydrarian offers a microscale scene of a tower in the clouds. There are so many impressive curves in this lovely composition. The builder also gets a bonus color through use of negative space to give the tower windows that pop.
NikiFilik‘s creation may be red, but I’m feeling green with envy at the skillful technique on display.
More monochrome creations await
Vignweek is an annual competition hosted by RebelLUG that challenges builders to assemble a vignette around a daily theme. 5 weekday builds and a weekend build, for a total of 6 builds in 7 days. It’s a marathon and a sprint for some incredibly talented LEGO creators. The contest kicked off on Monday with “Archaeology” as the theme. Here are some of our favorite creations from day 1.
Carson Lacy zooms in with Johnny Thunder exploring a lush jungle site. I hesitate to call them “ruins” as this location seems as slick and studless as they day it was built. It’s probably cursed, but this beautiful build certainly isn’t!
Behold_The_Loaf offers up an alien archaeologist scanning a future Earth. What do they make of this Octan fueling station?
Join us as we dig up more amazing LEGO vignettes
They say that dogs are humankind’s best friend. That rings true in several walks of life, and among the elderly, they can be a vital source of companionship. But as Sigmund Haugland‘s LEGO vignette proves, they’re just as useful in times of emergency! All it takes is a little ingenuity- and I’m not just talking about those forced perspective portraits. A defective stairlift is no match for a fishing pole and a doggy treat!
The long-awaited Hollow Knight spin-off, Silksong, is slated to finally come out later this year. (It’s really happening this time, right? Right?!) It’s been a long wait, but it has allowed LEGO builders such as DJ (GioiaLego) to hone their craft and bring the roguelite to life in brick form. This is one of the first locations you see in the game: Cornifer & Iselda’s map shop. It can be difficult to translate 2D designs into LEGO’s 3D nature, but this is a terrific execution! The parts choice for the Hollow Knight is perhaps most noteworthy; purists may not be keen on the dots added to the crash helmet, but there’s no escaping what a perfect choice the spike is for its nail weapon!
Silksong is coming any day now, honest – but until then, you can pass the time browsing our archives of other Hollow Knight builds.