Japanese builder (and TBB regular) nobu_tary joins the Halloween celebration with this adorable pair of costumed kids. I like how Nobu has differentiated the Frankenstein’s Monster costume from the kid himself, but it’s the awesome expressions on both kids’ faces that I love. Clearly, the little girl has a long night of dealing with her brother’s sugar highs ahead of her!
Our Halloween-themed Week of Wonders continues and takes a sinister turn as Paddy Bricksplitter shares his build based on the psychological thriller The Ring.
The movie tells the story of an urban legend where a videotape filled with nightmarish images leads to a phone call foretelling the viewer’s death in exactly seven days. Paddy has managed to capture the eerie atmosphere with his intricate static television screen and blue tinted LED lighting. While his antagonist is called ‘Brickmara’ rather than Samara, her bony fingers and dishevelled hair are perfectly creepy.
Just remember not to answer the phone if it rings now you have seen this build…
Will this Halloween Week of Wonders never cease? Apparently not! There’s more than meets the eye with these awesome little studs-out Halloween figurines by accomplished young LEGO sculptor Will Ho. Each one has a different mechanical “reveal” – click to watch the video demonstrations. I particularly like the design of the Invisible Man – very clever indeed!
Is it Thursday already? While my neighbors and I begin to appreciate the literal pit of hell that we have dug for ourselves with this year’s haunted house project, I will tear myself away for a moment to bring you some more frightful builds in this, our Halloween-themed Week of Worries Wonders.
For the third wave in his ongoing Blockheads project, Dave Kaleta decided to honor this most unholy of holidays with a set of heads representing popular Halloween characters.
Now someone who could probably make use of one of those heads is the Headless Horseman, rendered here in Bionicle form by Mohamed Marei. Hmmm, another Bioncle-based Halloween creation, you say? I wonder if there’s a contest going on somewhere…
Having masqueraded variously as Elmo, Blue Man Group and Marie Antoinette in previous years, I’m a firm believer that costumes are the best thing about Halloween. So in our week-long exploration of the holiday, let’s take a look at a couple!
I’m not sure whether this vamp and vampire by Brothers Brick regular Letranger Absurde are intended to represent costumed party-goers or bona fide members of the Nosferatu, but there is so much to love about this build – from the perfectly proportioned outfits, to the clever part usage, and attention to detail in the dilapidated background.
But what’s better than a LEGO costume you can actually wear? I would happily go trick-or-treating in See Music‘s “mask of horror”, which is constructed entirely from Bionicle pieces and bears more than a passing resemblance to Donnie Darko. Not sure how you’d actually eat the candy in this thing, though!
Our pre-Halloween Week of Wonder continues with a couple of fresh perspectives on the humble Jack-o-lantern. Apparently it’s not all headless horseman chasing a bunch of pesky kids and their stupid dog!
First we have the Groundskeeper, a surprisingly helpful “gourd sprite” devised by Bionicle wizard Micah Berkoff. As yard help goes, these things sound pretty economical so I’m definitely gonna have to charm myself one.
Next up is the Pumpkin Diner, a delightfully seasonal addition to Heartlake City dreamt up by Palixa and the Bricks. It comes complete with a fully detailed interior and even a set of costumed Friends!
Halloween is less than a week away. For kids, it’s one night of dressing up, trick-or-treating, and gorging on vast amounts of delicious candy. For parents, it’s several frantic weeks of constructing costumes, decorating houses, and avoiding vast amounts of fattening candy. Yes, this holiday really does have something for everyone!
To get into the spirit of the season, we’ll be bringing you the best new Halloween-themed LEGO creations all week, starting with this deviously constructed witch by Serbian builder DjorDje. “Bionicle, Bionicle, toil and trouble…”
And for another fine example of witchcraft (see what I did there?) look no further than this old hag named Henrietta, by teen builder P Squiddy…
Over the past week, we’ve talked a bit about some of the influences behind builders’ SHIPs. For many builders, the 2003 video game Homeworld has had a pivotal effect on their building style.
This year Homeworld Remastered was re-released with updated graphics, and many space builders fell in love with the game again. So it’s not surprising to me that we saw a lot of Homeworld and Homeworld-inspired SHIPs pop up in SHIPtember.
But what was surprising to me was that some folks from the actual development team of Homeworld Remastered loved our LEGO SHIPs as much as we loved their game, and reached out to offer a few prizes! So without further ado I present the best Homeworld inspired SHIP, as chosen by those developers, who happen to also be LEGO fans:
The best Homeworld SHIP, which will also receive a copy of The Art Of Homeworld, kindly donated and signed by a group of developers, is Pierre E Fieschi with his Maersk Highliner:
With wonderful technique and controversial part usage, this ship launched itself into the top spot despite not actually being in the game, but heavily inspired by it. Quoting the developers: “We love the layering of details. Panels overlapping one another without it being too much noise. And of course this is just outright gorgeous.” and also “That guy’s concept art and other work is legit.”
Second place, as chosen by the development team is Ryan Olsen (Rphilo004) and his Hiigaran Battlecruiser: 
Again, quotes from the development team: “Nicely executed for the size and detail that you were able to get into it. Bravo!” and “It’s PERFECT. The support ships even rock. I wanna buy this or have one made for myself SO BAD.”
Coming in third place was last year’s SHIPtember winner, Tim Schwalfenberg (One More Brick) with his Vaygr Battlecruiser:
Which the keen eyes of the developers noticed was missing the side tower: “That surface detail. Maybe the tower hit an asteroid?”
Today on Week of Wonders we look at the minifig scaled SHIPs.
For a long time SHIPs (Seriously Huge Investment In Parts) had a pretty specific definition. Not only were ships to be 100 studs, but they were almost always minifigure scale with interiors. With SHIPtember some builders have lost sight of the minifigure scale and have built a wide variety of amazing microscale ships. But there’s still something magical about building minifig SHIPs, harking back to our childhoods, where the dream was to build not just a big space ship, but one where there was room to play with our minifigs!
Today we celebrate the minifig populated SHIPs from SHIPtember.
Adam Dodge (Dodge…) has a bit of history of going overboard, from winning awards at cons to doing the infamous SHIPhatTrick – building 3 SHIPs in one month. But his Intercept Invader is the set I would have loved as a kid:
Not only is this SHIP big, it has a full interior and most jaw dropping of all, is completely modular and reconfigurable! That by itself earns Adam big props from me.
Ryan McBryde’s (goatman461) Mercy Brandy SHIP looks smaller than it is:
![[Challenge 2][Cat. B] 3](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media.brothers-brick.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/20713790788_a14755d46d_z.jpg)
It’s built and textured like a lot of other microscale ships we’ve seen, but it’s deceiving with a fully detailed bridge: ![[Challenge 2][Cat. B] 6](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media.brothers-brick.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/20714990559_bf850c2210_z.jpg)
I particularly like the classy brick built Octan logo.
Not to be outdone, Jake (Jayfourke) has jam packed the inside of his Thames-Class Coastguard Patrolboat:
Not only has Jake added a full interior, but he’s managed to have not one, but two vehicles safely docked inside.
I don’t know about other people, but next year, I want to build a big minifig SHIP.
Today on Week of Wonders, we talk about SHIPs that have that real world vibe that were built as a part of last month’s SHIPtember contest.
Most of the time spacers tend to build fantastic ships from far in the future with Warp Engines or Hyper Drives and all sorts of make believe techno-babble inventions. But there’s a certain few who take a more realistic approach to their spaceships, taking inspiration from today’s space technology and pushing it out just a few years…
Tyler H has created this near-future high altitude bomber, the B-5 MANTA:
At just under 100 studs long, and 144 studs wide, this lovely near space ship has a great shape and I just love the integrated lights and the bottom detailing with the combination of studs up and studs down construction.
Going slightly further into the future, Damien Labrousse (legodrome) has created this inter-planetary traveler, the Galactik Bricks:
The dockable shuttles are just a fantastic touch, and I really like the shaping he has put in the front with the spinning habitat section.
And finally, going far into depths of space is Nathan Proudlove (Proudlove) and his Deep Space Explorer Intrepid:
With its radiation shield (required for deep space travel) this 5 foot (or 1.5meter) model is a true interstellar ship. Nathan has thought about what a real world Benny would need on his travels, and has included habitats, science labs, communication array, solar panels, and of course a SPACESHIP! for exploring those far away worlds.
Welcome to the second installment of the Week of Wonders: SHIPtember edition. Today we’ll take a look at some of the more unconventional SHIPs that were built during this year’s SHIPtember contest.
Usually ship builders will base their builds on some existing ships, or designs and influences from movies, games or books. Then there are builders that just go a completely different route and create something truly unique.
Chris Perron (thebrickbin) leads the pack with this unconventional Castle ship, the Astral Voyager:
With a combination of fantastic rockwork, integrated castles and volcano engines, the Wizard Chris has managed to create a believable magical flying rock space ship.
Alysa Kirkpatrick (d2hiriyuu) has built this Dyson Sphere, a spaceship that is wrapped around a sun, which she calls Astra Luminaria: 
One of the most interesting parts of this build, besides possibly being the biggest SHIP we’ve seen built to date, was that the entire build is a series of geometric shapes, which means that it was easy for her to calculate that there were exactly 20,012 parts used.
Last but not least, (ska2d2) has this … well I’m not really sure best to describe this… I guess as the name implies, looks a bit like a Dragonfly :
What I really liked about this isn’t just the cool build, and strong colour blocking, but the fact that it was based on a Concept Sketch that he did prior to building.
Welcome to a Week of Wonders, highlighting some of the best SHIPs (Seriously Huge Investment in Parts) that were built during SHIPtember. We have some special prizes lined up so stay tuned to the end of the week!
For those that might be unfamiliar and might be asking: What is SHIPtember? Well it is a challenge to build a very large space ship that is at least 100 studs in any orientation, from start to finish within the month of September, or as we’ve now lovingly dubbed it: SHIPtember.
This year we have over 120 astounding ships created by builders. These ships range from complete figment of the builder’s imagination, recreating concept art, taking design cues from existing themes, to recreating familiar ships.
But today, let’s focus on the fine art of recreating ships based off existing properties.
John Boozer (JediKnight219) (yes, that’s his real last name) has been a long time SHIPtember builder, focusing on recreating some of the best pop culture ships from his Transformer’s ARK Ship and last year’s minifigure scale Guardian of the Galaxy’s Milano.
This year, John is back with a vengeance with this incredible take on the Superman Villain: Brainiac’s Skull Ship:
This one was particularly fun to watch watch being built in the last month as it was originally quite hard to decipher what John was working on.
Kevin J. Walter (SkyWalter), who actually won the best IP based build last year with his Goa’uld Mothership from Stargate SG-1 is back this year with the Nazara / “Sovereign” from the Mass Effect game:
I’ve always been a big fan of Kevin’s love of building in black, a very hard to photograph colour, especially given the amount of details he manages to put into his builds.
Not to be outdone, Pico van Grootveld (Brixnspace) built another creature-ish SHIP this year with the EVE online’s custom Scorpion battleship:
While we’re used to many ships being really big, this is really big. Which is extremely impressive given the size and and shaping of the lowered section – it’s quite the LEGO-engineering feat!
And one more for the Pop Culture round up, another Video Game based ship, by Mel F. (Melan-E) with her build from Destiny: The Queen’s Emissary:
Which ironically is the most ship-like of all the ship’s in this post, but none the less a beautiful recreation of the original source that is instantly recognizable due to Mel being able to recreate those distinctive angles.