Mini mill

Somehow I missed this when it was uploaded to Flickr in December of last year. This tranquil little micro-castle build from Halhi141 has some of the best rockwork I've ever seen at this scale, and the rest of the construction isn't too shabby either. 

Check out the lovely sloped construction of the stream and the terrain around it:

This project is up on LEGO Ideas and it deserves your support. Imagine having this miniature masterpiece displayed on a shelf in your own home... https://ideas.lego.com/projects/129343

Air delivery, circa 1800

"The Flying Irwin" is a steampunk-style traveling vendor hot air balloon thing (?) built by Legopard and Brick Vader. The ramshackle design and all those little details make it a very interesting MOC to look at!

Ring-necked parakeet

AnActionfigure adds to their lovely series of realistic, detailed animal builds with this brightly colored parrot:

The color scheme is nice and this is quite a realistic model. Check out AnActionfigure's photostream for more like it!

Three building tricks from umamen

One thing this blog hasn't covered very much is building techniques. Flickr user umamen (whose General Grievous figure we recently blogged) has recently posted a trio of useful building tricks that I think the rest of us would benefit from seeing. 

First off, here's how to make a "rounded cube" or "ball" using a little SNOT and some nice use of flower elements: 

Next, here's a simple yet effective angling technique using the new(ish) skeleton arms: 

umamen has put both the above techniques to good use in this little robot:

Finally, this is probably the technique that the most of our readers already know about, but it's a great one to know if you don't already. If you separate the two parts of LEGO's lever/joystick element, you can stick the skinny part inside a 1x2 grille tile, which has several useful applications, as seen here:

We'll try to feature a bit more "building tips and tricks" content here on The Brick Bucket, even just by pointing out interesting ones we see in MOCs we blog. 

Crush them! Make them suffer!

"Army or not, you must realize... you are doomed!"

The easy part of this was deciding to blog umamen's General Grievous figure - it's just so good! The hard part was deciding which Grievous quote to use as the title of this post...

"Your lightsabers will make a fine addition to my collection."

Yet another mecha roundup

Man, we post a lot of mecha roundups don't we?

"DRUMS" by Chris Maddison: 

"Bullfrog" Recon Strider by Nick Angelucci:

"Knappe" by Simon Liu (Si-MOCs): 

"2222" by Cole Blaq:

"Bison heavy assault land mate" by Trash can man:

Cyberpunk!

As far as I am concerned, there can not be enough cyberpunk builds. Over the course of the last couple days, there have been three Cyberpunk-themed mocs which stood out for me.

First of all, Trash Can Man brings us a big, awesome cannon walker. I especially like the small green details, and some NPU of printed pieces.

As it's still Droneuary, Michael Willhoit brings us a sweet drone, making use of some older pieces and colors and combining them with new elements:

The last MOC in this post was build by Carter, using some of the new pieces interduced in the nexo-knights series. I'd love to name all NPUs, but there are just too many.

Spanish villa

Gabe Umland  is a builder of many talents. We recently featured his "muscle car" spaceship, and indeed Gabe has many great sci-fi MOCs in his Flickr stream, but he's also built some nice mecha, castle-style buildings, video game scenes, and even an iPad Mini. 

Now he's expanded his palette even more with this excellent Spanish-style building, located at water's edge and with a lovely homelike feel. My favorite parts are the little details, like crawling vines, sky-blue windows, telescope on the balcony, and the crates and barrels strewn about in the yard. 

I'm also curious as to where Gabe got the green parrot sitting in that palm tree...

Snowspeeder: Evolved

LEGO fans love Star Wars (but then, who doesn't?), and FBTB is running yet another building contest from a galaxy far, far away. The challenge is called "Star Wars Evolved" and participants have to build an updated version of a Star Wars vehicle. 

This entry from Legopard really caught my eye because of how unusual the design is. It took me a minute to realize the Snowspeeder influence, but after I figured it out, I totally see it. The little details like orange-and-white color scheme, big silver guns, and harpoon shooters keep it recognizable despite the shape. 

#olivepunk

"The CF-1008 is a ship that harkens back to the "American Muscle Car" of the long dead planet earth. Owner's of CF-1000s are forever tinkering and customizing their ships. This particular ship made the Kessel Run in 16 parsecs." 
-builder Gabe Umland

I hope "olivepunk" becomes a new trend. This thing is sweet.

Brick Bucket Review: 75915 Pteranodon Capture

3/5

Appearance - 4/5
Construction - 4/5
Pieces - 2/5
Playability - 3/5
Minifigures/accessories - 5/5
Value for money - 5/5


75915 Pteranodon Capture is the smallest of the May 2015 Jurassic World movie tie-in sets. It costs £19.99 / $19.99 / 24.99€ and contains 174 pieces.

Verdict: Overall this is a pretty nice set. The pteranodon and minifigs are fantastic. A lack of interesting or useful parts makes this pretty useless as a parts pack; it's intended as a collector's model, and specifically a collector's model for Jurassic World fans. If you liked Jurassic World, I recommend this set to you. Everyone else can pass. 

Ice Age: Continental Bricks

Here's another irresistible movie character we can check off the list as "brickbuilt"! Brought to you by captainsmog, the adorable and hapless Scrat is once again mere seconds away from his precious woolly acorn, though that ominous crack in the ice is likely to put the reunion off a while longer (probably forever).

With clever techniques to achieve proper shape and texture in the face, posture, and voluminous tail, and Mixel eyes once again doing their job to ensure unmistakable cartoonishness, this recreation is brilliantly accurate.

What a nice view...

Over the past couple of months, Vitreolum has build many Characters, some of which we're featured on this very blog. Now he goes even further and brings us an entire room to go with the figure. The room is stuffed with details, but still retains a pretty clean and organized look. Overall a full success.

Elite Imperial speeder bike

This little Star Wars-inspired speeder by Uspez has been sitting in my "to blog" folder for a while now. I keep getting drawn back to it, and every time, I notice something new. Check out the HERO FACTORY jumper part used on the hood, and the way those chrome pipes are nicely tucked into the speeder's body. 

(Wow, we've really been starting off the new year going a bit heavy on the sci-fi!)

Angle of approach

A few of us here have been meaning to post something by perig perig for a while now, I think. The angles and techniques used in his starfighters, star cruisers, space freighters, and other sci-fi MOCs are reminiscent of the great Nick Trotta (tardisblue), but perig has a more greebly, rough-hewn style that sets him apart. This scout ship is one of his sleeker models, but it still manages to convey a good sense of the builder's style: 

click to enlarge image

Something I always love in spaceship builds is asymmetry, and there's a solid dose of it here. But if you want some more sci-fi goodness, here's the link to the builder's Flickr stream for your viewing pleasure. 

Spaceships and robots

Let's kick off the new year with a nice bit of microscale SPACE! Specifically, this support carrier by Deltassius. The use of crates for hangar areas is inspired, and for such a small build there are some fairly complex angles in there. 

While I'm on this builder's Flickr page, enjoy these two nice little mecha, with a similar color scheme:

"GHF C213h"

"GHF Darter"

Happy new year from all of us here at The Brick Bucket!