(olive) Green machines

  There is yet only a small selection of parts available in LEGO's new olive green color. It lends itself well to military-themed creations, although anyone who follows my own creations elsewhere knows that I could care less for realistic drab color schemes. Above, Fredo does a nice quadruped. I like the cylindrical shape he has made with the 1 x 4 curved double slopes. Given the squareness characteristic of the medium, the model's curves seem surprising although it is is hardly a departure from with Fredo's previous work. Below, Carter uses the new color for a landmate. It has good feet. I can imagine the little auxiliary arms reloading the bullpup-style weapon. 
Here's another quadruped/humanoid mecha combo with a relating color scheme, via Curtis and Pate:

Time for tanks

Aleksander Stein is a favorite on this blog; I think you would be hard-pressed to find a more authentic LEGO military modeller. His models forgo artistic embellishment, focusing realism and functionality. The vehicles themselves are extrapolations of specific present day combat vehicles. Some of the examples in the following photos are near-future derivatives the Leopard 2 Main Battle Tank and the Stridsfordon 90 Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

I like to judge things over content rather presentation, but Aleks has graduated from the plain poster board school and has stepped up with digital backdrops for his models. This isn't always done well, but I like how Aleks has done well not to make any post-photography additions look to obtrusive; it is clear that the focus is on the models.   

Camouflage is not easy to do with LEGO parts, but Aleks pulls off convincing enough patterns.


This blog supports modularity!


This isn't a photo re-color, each of the four models here is a unique construction.

Brickworld 2012 AFV round-up

This year's BrickWorld saw an extensice lineup of especially well-crafted LEGO Armored Fighting Vehicles. The "cyberpunk" setting allotted these guys some creative license, there are enough flashy futuristic bits to make them stand out from the run-of-the-mill stuff that occupies much of the near-future military genre.
Ignacio Bernaldez Carter Baldwin Peter Anderson (Shadow Viking) Forest King (KingBrick)

Here's the same vehicles participating in a brikwars game, the venue is the Pennsylvania LEGO Users Group.







Carter and Forest put together this gritty diorama, I took a moment to pose one of my Verticals for a good show.

Cole Blaq goes navy blue

Tim Gould over on The Brothers Brick featured this before I came across it, but I'm glad to post it here. First, because of the sci-fi builders that see regular plugs on this blog Cole isn't one of them; second, Cole's stuff is certainly good enough to deserve an increased signal radius; and third, because I've thoughts of my own that I get a kick out of seeing published.

Anyway, these are pretty smart near-future designs. Gould mentioned the vivid colors in his post, I'll echo that, as it is my adamant belief that color variety is the spice of LEGO. I can't help but think a trans yellow windshield on the smaller vehicle to match the larger Aliens APC looking thing would be nice, but I'm not knowledgeable of Cole's preferences regarding modding.The wheels are great.


The blue and gold colors on Cole's fan models resembles the liveries of the human faction in the official LEGO "Alien Conquest" line. The subject matter is not different as well, it is as if Cole took the juvenile playset characteristics out of the designs and inserted some worthy aesthetics.


Set reconstruction, a level above "set modding", has been popular lately as the official themes have gotten more niche. 2001's "Alpha Team" line was one of my favorite themes as a young child. After being inspired by the submersible that recently made a limited run via the Couscous Cuusoo program, my interest in tracked ground vehicles (like snowcats!), and remembering the adoration that I harbored for the above set as a third grader,  I might like to do a "cover version" of 6774. To this day springy slat that was used as the catapult is still bent from use. And that skull-spanning grin!


Halfway relevant links:
This Maize-and-Blue "Wolverine". A mecha from Kyle Vrieze's collection of early works residing on MOCpages.com. Even more relevant to those of us, who such as the author dwell in middle Michigan where the MSU / U of M rivalry is a very real and frightening thing.

"I must admit, the Wolverines usually have a better football team, but I think we beat them more often than we really have a right to."


The APC from "Aliens". Created in LEGO by flickr user Larry Lars.

"Red Stripe Shuttle"

 This shuttle by Colin is a great example of how advanced building techniques aren't at all necessary for a sleek model. The fuselage seems to be mostly studs up, making simple but smart use of slopes. Jassim's work comes to mind. The windows sell it as a flashy civilian craft, a fun break from the drab future-military subthemes that a lot of builders stick to. There's some aged commentary authored by the .space old guard expressing caution when using wheels as engines, but I don't think Colin's model here suffers from it. The more I study it the less comfortable I am with the lack of white surface behind the red stripe, but it's a minor gripe.
 
 He also has a collection of nicely scaled AFVs, all in the standard green color. Very "LEGO", if you will.


If you admire Colin's military models, you ought to pay Brickshelf user Nyu's gallery a visit.

Jerac's red rhomboids

40K Space Marine armor, made mobile through power functions.



His latest makes use of the the large technic treads. There are a lot of great textures, headlight bricks offer selective studding and curved slopes are used to bevel out the edges of the boxy shape.

Press Select

Brixe63 has built this maze, a simplistic but puzzling build. The isometric camera angle really makes it pop. The decision to highlight the 1 x 1 slope ramps with a color is a good one. It is reminiscent of dungeon map out of a video game, the kind one would bring up to make out a path to the princess/warp portal/power up/level boss. That is a very, very good thing.

Over the past six month or so, Soren has been pumping out gems like these:



I believe the intent is for a table-top wargame, they are fun to look at and I am sure they must be equally fun to play with.



These two armored vehicles do a great job of standing out from the ordinary, cookie-cutter military models, of which I have stated my disdain for elsewhere.



This guy's stuff has already earned plenty of the right kind of praise, so I won't re-iterate it here. Check them out!

Psiaki's X-Wing Instructions,

I was pretty into Star Wars. Some claim to be, and they'll say how they know all the ships, like, "that's an X-Wing". I would be the one to specify with a bit more detail, say, "it's a T-65 X-Wing starfighter, as manufactured by the Incom Corporation and distributed the Rebel alliance During the Galactic Civil War."

Mike Psiaki has unveiled building plans for his X-Wing in Lego, which is probably the best in the medium anywhere by anyone.







Blogger's post editor can't handle 3888 x 2592! Everything's slowwwiingg doowwnnn.

Anyway looking into a builder's work and seeing all the solutions they have come up with is really fascinating, even more so than the finished model. It is clear the Psiaki has taken every step to replicate both the form and feel of such a classic design. It is also evident that he has taken more care to produce these images than I did with instructions for my M4 Sherman tank.

He recently finished his Foxbat:



And has made progress on his millennium Falcon:

As per usual we can expect it to be a finer model than any put out by the Lego Company, even the Ultimate Collector's Series kit that was released a couple years ago.

Nick Dean has started work on the Pan Am Space Clipper as seen briefly in 2001 ASO. Here is some concept artwork by Peter Elson:



See more of Elson's work.

Nick finished building a different clipper from a different era last month, here is his Boeing 314:

Lightning, the Sequel

F-35 lightning II by Simon T. James.



Aww yeah man, we don't need tiles.



Pretty slick, as is this Batmobile by flickr user erth&fiya:



Falls into the the "doesn't look like lego" category.

Where are the Brickarms

In the Tile Every Damn Stud era, these minifig scale models by Brickshelf user "Nyu" stand out as quaint. Each of them can be seen in this Brickshelf folder.











Excuse me, did you perchance say, BATTLE TRAIN?



I am currently making a historic military MOC in a similar scale, so these have been pleasant inspiration. Perhaps these obscure lo-fi builds from yesteryear can be accommodated by obscure lo-fi music from yesteryear. Hmm.



How is that for impressment of taste?