A new Red Baron

This red baroness may not prowl the skies, but with that rapier, I know that this LEGO model by Eero Okkonen means business! Eero is an accomplished builder of figures and other structures, and you can check out our past articles on his work here. This baroness duels in style in her cape borrowed from the Chirrut Îmwe constraction figure, while her trans-red skirts were only available in the 2022 set 80035 Monkie Kid’s Galactic Explorer. The Baroness shows off her station with a wealth of golden trinkets on her outfit, but I’d like to draw special attention to the buckles on her cape which – using only two parts – clamp onto the fabric. Would you dare challenge her?

This nursery rhyme just became a nursery ride

“There was an old lady who lived in a shoe, who had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.” On the other hand, LEGO builder Julie vanderMuelen‘s version of the footwear-dwelling senior citizen clearly knows what she’s doing. The old shoe has been upgraded to a fancy new roller skate, with all those children strapped in and ready to go. The old lady herself has settled behind the wheel, which rests snugly above the delightful curve of the roller skate’s tongue. It’s not hard to imagine those exhaust pipes belching whimsical smoke as this tricked-out skate rolls out to beat Mother Goose and Little Bo Peep in a drag race.

There was an old lady who lived in a roller skate

One of the classic space blunders

Feeding wildlife is generally frowned upon, even at your local park, but more so on alien worlds where lifeforms have too many legs, teeth, or tentacles and where the only thing protecting your body from asphyxiation or worse is a brightly colored space suit. I’m not sure if the happy-go-lucky LEGO spacefarers in Dicken Liu‘s playful scene are taunting the local fauna for science or just for kicks, but I sure hope they brought enough gems to share with all the locals.  Last year we named Dicken Liu Builder of the Year for his clever parts usage and joyful models and this vignette lives up to that reputation. For the surface of the alien world, he uses hexagonal rotors from the Nexo Knights line, which tessellate nicely with 2×4 wedge plates. Red crowbars make for convincing legs for the insectoid aliens, while Nexo Knights make a return for the larger alien’s half-dome head. Liu titled this build Scavengers Reign, perhaps in reference to the creepy cool animated series which offers many clear reminders of what can happen when you get up close and personal with strange lifeforms.

Scavengers Reign

We return to a brick-built Middle Earth with LEGO Icons The Lord of the Rings 10333 Barad-Dûr [News]

After several teasers released online over the past few days, LEGO has finally announced another large-scale set from Middle Earth: LEGO Icons The Lord of the Rings 10333 Barad-Dûr. Set to hit store shelves this summer, Barad-Dûr rivals last year’s LEGO Icons The Lord of the Rings 10316 Rivendell with 5,471 pieces. Not to be confused with 10237 Tower of Orthanc released back in 2013, this is the first time that we’re seeing the other half of the titular two towers, and it’s coming in strong at 32″ tall (83 cm). The set also includes 10 minifigures from the LotR novels/movies, including Sauron, the Mouth of Sauron, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. LEGO Icons The Lord of the Rings 10333 Barad-Dûr will hit LEGO store shelves on June 1st for LEGO Insiders (June 4th for all others), and will retail for US $459.99 | CAN $599.99 | UK £399.99.

Check out more on this icon of Mordor below!

Find coastal serenity at the Black Falcon’s chapel

TBB regular Andreas Lenander shares with us what appears to be a continuation of his LEGO Black Falcons seafaring creation. Titled “Falcon Chapel,” it depicts what seems to be an island with a coastal structure. Rockwork in the foreground, a sand trail, and coastal greenery (utilizing barrels for the trunks of the palm trees) draw as much attention as the white stone building. This structure’s brilliant color would serve as the focal point of the build, were it not for the flowering vines growing on the side of the chapel and the multicolored roof. It gives the scene a weathered look, bring realism to the building. I assume the lantern-bearer at the edge of the small wooden dock is patiently awaiting the visitors from Andreas’s prior build.

Falcon chapel

History is made in the abstract

At LEGO street level, a tense scene plays out. Orders from the General. It’s time for Major Brickleton to finish up his puddings and bid adieu to the modernist comforts of Seawatch’s beloved Mondrie Inn. The colonel raises his gaze to look upon the half-timbered rooms, blocked in primary colors in the Dutch style. “War is all well and good in the abstract,” he thought, “but I’d rather stick to my puddings.” Evan Crouch is no stranger at progressive builds that fuse history and whimsy, but his latest scene might be his most modern(ist) creation yet from (neo)plastic bricks. I wonder what came first, the delightful play on the name of artist Piet Mondrian for the Mondrie Inn, or the visual pun of fusing half-timbered architecture with Mondrian’s trademark blocks of primary colors? Evan backs the whimsical concept with exceptional technique.

Orders Arrive at the Mondrie Inn

The inn’s ground floor uses a mix of masonry bricks, round plates and SNOT bricks for a nice weathered effect, while dark grey ingots make for effective cobblestones. The color blocking for the upper stories is minimialist in approach, appropriate for the inspiration, with no windows and just a few round tiles to show wear. Evan rounds out the build with a custom sticker for the inn’s signboard and historical characters.

The Empire isn’t afraid to break some LEGO bricks to get what they want

In between my day job and editing all sorts of articles about wonderful LEGO builds, I’m also finding time to work in the last season of The Bad Batch. And it must just have me in a very Star Wars kind of mood, because I am absolutely loving this creation by Jakob Kaiser. While not a recreation of a specific scene in a movie or show, Jakob says he was heavily influenced by the comic Star Wars: Purge when making this vignette. The tank is phenomenal on its own, but the freeze-frame of the statue mid-explosion is what really grabbed my attention. We’ll see if it’ll make these poor citizens comply or rebel.

Purge

Bridging the Gap

Lego castle builds always seem to tell a story at just one glance, or perhaps it’s simply my overactive imagination. Lego builder Taylor has titled this one “Unexpected Visitors”, giving us a starting point to envision the scenario presented here. Is the visitor the king and his personal guard? Or do we see a herald on an important mission delivering a message? The bridge in this scene could tell a story on its own, but the inclusion of the minifigures deepens that narrative to another level. The façade of the bridge conveys both its age and strength while the rockwork and plants create the impression of the bridge connecting two mountains. What do you see? The start of a battle? The start of an alliance between factions?

Unexpected Visitors

Smile for the camer-androids!

A few days ago, Joey Klusnick staked his claim for NPU of the year with his LEGO camera robot. It’s certainly earned my vote, not least because now, it’s got a little sibling! Rather than a functional camera, the head of this one is a Duplo accessory. In fact that camera throws off the scale slightly – it’s not until you look at some of the parts used elsewhere, like the windscreen in the body, that you realise that this droid is actually pretty small.

Thumbnail

This next shot gives you a better idea of that! The consistent colours make them both feel like part of the same family. There’s some more clever parts use in the tyre and rubber band for the camera lens, too. But the cleverest detail might be the names. The bigger bot is called Megapixel; so what’s the smaller version called? Why, Thumbnail, of course!

Megapixel and Thumbnail

An eyebrow-raising tachikoma build

Is there a mech concept more versatile in LEGO form than the think tank? So many different variants and possibilities! The latest one to catch our eye is by SPARKART!. It’s got a touch of the Warhammer 40k’s about it, don’t you think? It must be the combination of those big blocky legs and the round dome on top. The leg mechanism looks really interesting as well, incidentally. But whether intentional or not, there’s one thing I can’t unsee. The handlebars above the eye remind me of a single eyebrow, so now all I can think of is a tachikoma wandering around looking mildly surprised at everything…

LEGO Logicoma

It shouldn’t be a surprise to see another great robot tank grace our pages, though. Why not have a look at some of the other tachikoma in the TBB archives?

What awaits the weary traveler within the wintry walls of the Crow’s Nest?

“Halt! Who goes there?” A lonely warrior, his cloak billowing in the frosty air, approaches ZCerberus’s formidable tower known as Crow’s Nest. Along the way, our intrepid LEGO hero passes an assortment of slopes and angles used to evoke snowdrifts and half-buried evergreens. He gazes upon the light bluish great accents on dark bluish gray stone and steps beneath inverted sloped elements used to create dramatic battlements. My favorite part of all, though, has to be the brick-built coat of arms above the door, including upside-down feathered wings. We don’t know what this solitary traveler seeks within those sturdy stone walls, but we know what he’ll find: an impressive display of building techniques that bring this wintry scene to life.

Crow's Nest

Less than 50 shades of grey

I love it when a LEGO build leans into an aesthetic. This build by Jessica Farrell is done completely in monochrome – like an old timey movie – and displays a crumbling landscape frozen in stone and fossilization. There’s more interesting parts in this build than I can point out, but here are some of the highlights! Sprinkled around the build you’ll see tiny flowers in flat silver. These flowers were only available from the Trolls World Tour 2020 product line, while the arching spine on the upper left is made of parts that ceased production in 2016. There’s vines climbing the ruined pillars, and gears big and small. One thing I know for certain, Charlie Chaplin has to be hiding in there somewhere!