Star Wars goes micro

Cole Blaq, usually known for his creative abstract builds, has taken his building skills to the Star Wars universe to recreate the StarScavenger and the Eclipse from Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. I'm really impressed by how nicely they turned out at this scale - they may be even better than the minifig-scale official sets!

A mighty castle

InnovaLUG has been recently turning out some amazing medieval creations; everything from a fortress to a build that incorporated a bird cage.

Today's blog shows a MOC that literally towers over the others made by Brother Steven.  Farwin Castle is the epitome of what we LEGO® builders consider to be the ultimate castle. The build is beautifully constructed with a conservative rock and stone work that is complimented by hints of Tudor architecture.  What a magnum opus.

If you wish to see more of InnovaLUG's BrickFair Virginia collaboration, you can see it on their website here.

Fabulously fantastical medieval

I've seen quite a few medieval MOCs, and being the sucker for the theme that I am, I couldn't resist taking a closer look at this brilliant MOC entitled The Market Gate by Bricktease.  The MOC comprises of many different styles of building, from the classic castle construction feel, to an almost city vibe.  Bricktease has beautifully merged all sorts of colors together, from dark red to sand blue all within a natural setting.  It's just beautiful.  To say that I now have some inspiration for future builds is indeed an understatement.

Please welcome new contributor John Klapheke!

Hello everyone!  My name is John (aka BrickBuilder7622), and I am the newest writer for The Brick Bucket.  I am honored to be able to contribute to this awesome blog alongside some wonderful and very talented LEGO® fans.

My LEGO® experience really has been something of a journey.  Getting my first Duplo set when I was about three or four, I've always been fascinated with assembling and designing things.  I upgraded to the normal LEGO® System bricks a year or so later.  But it was not until I was about fourteen or so that I began to truly appreciate all the possibilities for the wonderful interlocking brick system. 

That was around the time that I started MOCing.  Since then, it's pretty much been a non-stop roller coaster of only good times and meeting a lot of great people.  I was fortunate enough to have won a competition hosted by the LEGO® Group back in July of 2014, and I have been nominated twice at BrickWorld for Best Sea Vessel. I've also been blogged several times, and have even been commissioned to build a MOC.

My personal theory behind the hobby of building, blogging, and working with LEGO® is that the builder can make anything that they want.  The sky truly is the limit.  This ability to take an idea, a concept from the imagination, and transpose it to a 3D medium is amazing.  I don’t restrict myself just to building with LEGO®; I also like to render objects and models using a computer, and I am about to embark on the journey of drawing and improving my artistic skills.

Well, that’s about it for me intro-wise.  If you would like to see my works, please check out my Flickr, as well as my personal website (dedicated to LEGO® builds).

Stay creative!  Cheers and ciao.

- John Klapheke

Architectural interlude

As you have probably noticed, The Brick Bucket has not been particularly active recently. All of us have been quite busy and only have minimal amounts of time in which to write (in fact, I'm typing this post in my girlfriend's car while I'm waiting for her to finish her cello lesson). But fear not, we're still here and the posts will keep coming, as frequently as we can cook them up.

Today's fare is a brilliant microscale build by John Klapheke (BrickBuilder7622). The builder says it's a "pseudo-Frank Lloyd Wright-style" build inspired by an iOS app and a fellow architectural builder. There are also some Japanese additions such as the cherry tree, rock garden, and gazebo. I think the overall effect is quite nice:

Thanks for sticking with us, Bucketheads - hope to see you again soon!

All of these MOCs are sort of related...

- They're all futuristic 
- All of them use fantastic angle techniques and wedge plates
- I found all of them in my co-blogger Frog's Flickr faves
- What more could you ask for, really?
- Ok, just enjoy the builds...

"Box Truck" by [Carter]:

"Erik's APC" by Dryvvall:

"Robodog" by Gamabomb:

Luggabeast

Wow, sorry for the lack of posts this month! I've been surprisingly busy for summer break, but hopefully soon we'll be blogging more regularly. I was talking to Frog and Aaron today about some potential new ideas, and we're also going to be bringing another pretty well-known blogger on board pretty soon...

...but enough about that; you came here for the MOCs. And Robert Lundmark has provided today's fare - an excellent model from a galaxy far far away, specifically from The Force Awakens. Behold Teedo astride his Luggabeast:

This is on a larger scale than the official-model Luggabeast from a recent set, and is therefore much more detailed.

If you love highly detailed and accurate Star Wars builds, there's much more where that came from, so follow the link to Robert's photostream for more amazing builds from across the galaxy...

Khanibre Castle

Here's a sweet build from W. Navarre with a decidedly medieval-Japanese flavor. "Khanibre Castle" features some great techniques in those stone walls and fantastic roof adornments. I'm also a fan of the not-quite-a-minifig samurai...

"I'm late I'm late I'm late"

I don't have much time today - but here's a great Alice in Wonderland scene from The /\rchitect, featuring some great landscape building:

The good, the evil and the...nocturnal being?

So, today I've got not one, not two, but three amazing Bionicle creations to share with you.

First of all, Alieraah brings us an adorable bat-technician (I'd never thought I'd ever say that). The CCBS body, the system head and the Ninjago wings mix up perfectly. The small bits of mint green also add a lot to the overall detail.

Second of all, Kelvin Low brings us this Nexo Knights-inspired lava beast. Appropriately titled "Ballrog"(Get it? cuz it has got a Ball for a head. Also yeah, this name kinda was my fault... This thing really looks like it won't let you pass. The flawless integration of system pieces and especially tires into this Bionicle build is pretty dang neat.

And for the last MOC of today I got a bit of a personal backstory. If you don't want to read is, just skip right ahead to the image.

As a little kid, I was a huge fan of Bionicle, and I especially liked the Barraki series. Then, one day, I think it was in 2007, I got the Lego Collectors Guide, and how shocked was I to find out that there were three Barraki Sets that never made their way to Germany. One of them was Nocturn. I was lucky enough to get this set around one year ago, and have really liked it ever since.

Now Logan McOwen brings us this lovely revamp of Nocturn. The seamless integration of CCBS onto the old Barraki pieces, the integrated gearbox and especially the new head design really made this MOC outstanding to me.