Venice, 1486

Last time Jonas Kramm (Legopard) and Brick Vader collaborated on a MOC, we blogged it. Then again, pretty much anything made by these builders extraordinaire is blog-worthy. Here's their latest, a wonderful scene from medieval Venice:

This is one of those builds where the more you look, the more details you find. This was built for NEW ELEMENTARY's "The New Black" parts festival, so plenty of new molds and recolors (in black, of course!) are featured - check out the lamppost, bench, door knocker, gondola, and balcony! (Some are hard to see from the above image, so be sure to visit Legopard's post to see more images and some building analysis.) 

Some Scala parts have been integrated: the bridge features a specially molded flower, while the large salmon-colored vase is made from a flowerpot and umbrella stand. 

The wonderfully lifelike tree features many flexible elements and is one of the most natural LEGO trees I've seen. 

Maybe my favorite part use is the Chima vulture head for the mask of a plague doctor!

Overall this MOC is fantastic and only heightens the already lofty reputations of its builders. Great work!

Some images and content in this post came from NEW ELEMENTARY. See Legopard's highly interesting post there at this link!

Bloomin' good build

The Brothers Brick just highlighted Milan CMadge's cactus MOC. I wasn't aware of the builder so I checked out his photostream and found this equally impressive flower build (a lily, I'd say): 

Although there aren't many parts, they're all used perfectly - the hot air balloon segments as petals and some Ninjago ghost blades and what I think are whip elements used for the inside of the flower. A very well-composed build and photograph!

Guard those shins

Yep, those are CCBS shinguards (from the Star Wars buildable figures, I think) on this Vic Viper by F@bz. Don't they look fabulous?

This is a really unusual color scheme and F@bz pulled it off beautifully. I'm in love with that trans-lime windscreen, the design of the front prongs, and all those lovely greebles around the engines and guns. Everywhere you look there are innovative part uses and techniques - for example, I love the way the tailfin uses some SNOT to fit right into the slope of the rear canopy; the choice of dark gray "log bricks" as exhaust ports; the lime-and-blue "racing stripe" on one of the prongs... Some well-chosen stickers from official sets complete the model. A fantastic build and one of my personal favorite NoVVember builds I've seen! 

The desert of forced perspective

Certain comments about building a wall aside, most people consider Mexico a land of beauty: red sand, spicy food, crystal beaches, tequila, mustangs, mariachi bands, El Dorado... Since childhood, vir-a-cocha has wanted to visit this country. Hopefully someday he will, but for now all he can do is build the beautiful desert landscape with LEGO:

This MOC makes expert use of forced perspective - just check out that distant shadowy cactus, created brilliantly with small pieces! That steer skill in the foreground is very well built, and the red-and-pink sunset completes the scene. Fantastic build!

What is this, Ma.K for ants?

October is Ma.Ktober, a theme month based on Maschinen Krieger or Ma.K, a specific strain of sci-fi that focuses mainly on powered suits with smooth shapes. However, Ma.K aircraft and autonomous craft are thankfully all regularly built, as well as more creative takes on the theme like what I've found for our readers today.

Brought to you by D-Town Cracka / Andy is this deceptive toy robot. The presence of Lego's Belville dolls, opposed to standard minifigs, may make it difficult to quickly identify the building scale for those unaccustomed to the dolls. Closer inspection, however, will probably give you a bit of a shock: this killer biped, hilariously advertised as a toy, is not much taller than a minifig itself! Careful use of stickers has helped furnish this bot with a level of detail normally found only on far larger MOCs. As for the pieces it's built from, see if you can spot:

• Pirate hook
• Hero Factory figure arms
• Ski poles
• Nexo Knights arm pieces
• Minifigure arm

I haven't posted in a long time, but this tiny treat was too good to pass up. Bravo, Andy.

Micro monsters

LEGO 7 has put together two expertly built microscale monster trucks, in a race to the finish on a dusty desert track. 

The bush element used as a dust plume is great, but my favorite detail is how the wheels are connected - the hubs aren't specifically molded wheel pieces, but just 1x1 cylinders. This allows them to be attached to a pair of handlebar elements, giving the splayed-out look of heavy-duty suspension as these monsters bounce across the rough terrain. Fantastic microscale building!

Cherry pie

I love pie. Here in New England we eat it for breakfast from time to time, and there's always four or five varieties on the table at my house come Thanksgiving. Homemade is of course best, but there's something to be said about a slice of storebought cherry pie, bursting with gloppy, sweet, red-food-coloring cherry filling. W. Navarre has recreated it perfectly:

Casa Kolonihagen

Not to be confused with BrickNerd head honcho Tommy Williamson, Tommie Wilhelmsen is a Norwegian architect known for the simple, two-room Casa Kolonihagen house. This modern-style home has now been recreated in LEGO by Lego Fjotten, and I think he did a great job - although if you don't believe me, check out the source images of the real-life building.

The Kingdom of ABS

As ABS Round 1.6 rages on (and I keep struggling to come up with more uses for the seed part), we seem to be heading off in the Castle direction - usually not my preferred genre, but when the builds are as cool as my competitor Mark of Siloam's new microscale MOC, I really can't complain! 

The seed part was used six times: four times in the castle, one in the windmill, and one in the cathedral (the builder's favorite). I really like the rockwork and the SNOT techniques in the castle walls and the cathedral. Really nice work, and some more tough competition for me in this round! 

Stay tuned for more ABS coverage, including some personal insights into the contest...

ABS Round 1.6 now in progress...featuring The Brick Bucket Editor Tate Whitesell!

The ABS Builder Challenge is back! This time, the four competitors are...

• Roy of Florenheim 
• ConRoy
• Mark of Siloam
• ...and yours truly, Tate Whitesell!

I'm a little bit of an "outsider," as my three competitors are primarily castle builders, while I focus more on sci-fi...but I'm sure there will be plenty of excellent MOCs of all genres in this contest!

I'm incredibly excited to participate in ABS and I'm grateful to the contest's organizers for including me. I will be posting some updates from this round right here on The Brick Bucket, so stay tuned for some insights into my building and the contest in general. 

Now I'm off to go figure out this seed part... may the best builder win!

You can follow this round of the ABS Builder Challenge here: https://www.flickr.com/groups/abs-builder-challenge/discuss/72157674968251745/