Nerdy About The Bricks
Sometimes when a clever creation comes along, I like to just stop and try to imagine how it was made. For instance, I like to imagine that Elspeth De Montes' fountain vignette started with pouring a pile of trans-light blue elements onto the floor. Maybe it didn't really, but either way, the result is beautiful.
I have only the vaguest of memories of watching Aaahh!!! Real Monsters reruns as a kid, but the character designs always stood out to me. I think I even had a few action figures of the monsters. Julius Von Brunk does a great job capturing the creative absurdity of the style in his latest build, Krumm. I can only hope he's planning to show us the rest of the main cast next!
Dead Frog Inc. returns with an eerie, stoic robot. He's simple in form but impressively full-of-character, considering the lack of facial expression, and the red arm serves as a great flair of color (although you may not recognize him because of it).
Sergeant Chipmunk's newest build, Standing in the Sea, is a magnificent little work of art. From the bizarrely fitting bright color scheme, to the ever-realistic rocks, to the uniquely botanical boat sails, every element of this build invites closer viewing, and happily rewards it. It;s the kind of build that makes you wonder, who are these mysterious masked men, alone in these mysterious towers? What are they looking for? How do they get down?
I find it remarkable just how much inspiration certain themes - in this case The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit - provide to the LEGO fan community. As the characters were released over the past several years, they've inspired many of the most beautiful and impressive dioramas which I've seen in my time on Flickr - and Legopard's latest build, depicting the woody domain of the elves, is certainly no exception to that. Organic shapes are one of the hardest things to make realistic with LEGO, and this build is chock full of different types of organic shapes (trees, water, rocks, dirt, grass, and more) and not one of them looks out of place. If you get the chance, I recommend checking out more views of this beautiful MOC on his photostream.
Henry Pinto has completed the daunting task of building this massive LEGO Sentinel, complete with a working light center. I've always loved the menacing, monolithic forms of these villains, contrasted with their bright pink heads and highlights, and this one looks like it could easily stomp on all of those tiny X-minifigures.
....But the fire is so delightful, and since we've no place to go, build LEGO! Build LEGO! Build LEGO! Maybe build a nice holiday-themed diorama, like this one by Firas Abu-Jaber. He's known best for his cars, but I've got a soft spot for LEGO penguins and the one he built here is just adorable.
Captainsmog has begun what looks like a fantastic new series of MOCs based on a cartoon classic - the Wacky Races! Sure, every episode had the same basic premise, but this show still holds a place in my heart, full of memories of Boomerang re-runs from the mid-2000s. His series starts with a great rendition of the most famous car of the series, the Mean Machine - and he's already posted the second MOC, which you can check out on his Flickr page.
Brickolaje has put together a great little set of various Sci-fi vehicles for the cute pets from the Friends line. Each one shows the pose of it's respective pilot really well. He also built a hangar bay for the vehicles, check it out on his Flickr page!
I think Arrival, this month's new sci-fi film, is easily one of the best films of the year so far, and what improves a film more than a LEGO interpretation? Simon Liu does a great job with that with a clever design of the unique "writing" in the film, which really captures the tone of the scene quite well.
This idyllic pirate MOC (by Vitreolum) shows something I really love to see in MOCs online: an entire scene built fully out of LEGO. A White background is nice and all but it's really cool when a builder goes the extra mile to flesh out a scene with more details. I especially love the forced perspective with the tiny island, and the puffy white clouds.
Sean and Steph Mayo make their triumphant return to the building community with the S.S. Helios, a bombastic starship chock full of great techniques! I especially love the use of the Elves keys, the rows of bright yellowish-orange dishes, and most of all the great texture achieved with the 1x1 round tile hexagons!
There have been lots and lots and lots of interpretations of the iconic X-wing and TIE fighter over the years, but I don't think any quite as tiny-yet detailed as Grantmasters'. Even if there's one I'm forgetting, six and three pieces to a ship, respectively, is pretty darned impressive, and the greeble background works quite well given the small size.
Forgotten Days has put the classic LEGO set to shame with a great MOC rendition of the temple from the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It includes an awesome amount of detail on each of the several famous traps.
In light of the immense resurgence of Pokémon this past summer, Carson Hart set himself a goal to build all 151 of the original Pokémon, and he's done quite a good job of it. You might have to squint on some of the smaller models, but a lot of them came out looking really spot-on, like his great Charizard, Lapras, and so on.
Time and time again, Djordje has proven himself as a master of Bionicle-System integration, and it is certainly evident in his newest MOC: Nuvhok Kal. There's a lot of inspired part usage in the head especially, like the way the eyes are put together.
Joseph Z.'s newest build jumps out at me as a very unique castle MOC. It does a masterful job of combining what it's easy to accept as the most common modern castle style (with the patchwork plate-filled brick walls, etc.) with its exact inverse, a totally clean and symmetrical style, like the striking stained-glass evenly spaced along the frame. I had the pleasure of seeing this build in person at Brickfair in Virginia last weekend, and I can vouch for the fact that it certainly looks great even without this crisp white background.
In the wake of the new Brickheadz Super Heroes line announced at this weekend's San Diego Comic Con, it didn't take long for AFOLs to start making Brickheadz of other characters, such as these great Transformers by Tankm.
Show of hands, who's been playing Pokemon GO? The game's been available nearly three weeks now and it's already cliché to ask that. I've been playing the game like mad lately and nothing's beaten the excitement when a Pikachu showed up nearby - a moment perfectly captured in this giant iPhone model built by Chris Madisson. For me the most impressive part is how cleanly he achieves the look of the Pokéball - round shapes aren't always easy in LEGO but all it took was a tire and some quick thinking to perfect one.
Neo-Classic Space is arguably the oldest theme in which AFOLs have been building for all these years, and in just one build Cole Blaq has both mastered it and wildly subverted it. "High Jack" is one of the most unique NCS models I've seen in a while in terms of shape, with some clever part uses thrown in for good measure.
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