Tasty burger

As the ABS Season 1 Finale races to a close, jsnyder002 is still churning out MOCs, compressing them into patties, and dousing them with ketchup. Everything about this meaty build is top-notch, right down to the excellent shaping of the melted cheese and splotches of ketchup. I especially love the window shutters used as lettuce: 

Back to the future

I've got a handful of Popular Science magazines from the 1950s, and it's both fascinating and hilarious to look back on what bygone generations predicted the future would be like. These hovercars by timhenderson73 look just like something out of those magazine pages, right between the sexist advertisements and Cold War hysteria:

Tim got some great shaping on these and I love the bubble cockpits and how they accent the sleek, studless surface. The use of a few textured grilles adds the perfect level of contrast.

The builder has a few more hovercars over on Flickr, so be a good fellow and take a look.

Café au lait

Confession: I'm much more of a tea person than a coffee person. Coffee tends to make me shaky, but there's not much more soothing that some chamomile tea or a chai latte. But hey, if Brother Steven wants to be a coffee drinker, that's up to him. I just don't know how I'd feel about my morning cuppa being made of plastic. 

This was built for the ABS Season 1 Finale (which I'm a proud part of!) using the dark red elbow brick as the seed part. 

A cool castle (plus some personal updates!)

I'm back!
The last few months have been super busy and I've barely even touched a LEGO brick, much less had the time to build anything serious or, as you've probably noticed, post anything here. But I'm still here, and so are the other Bucketeers, so never fear! Woo, rhymes!

A couple of asides before I jump into the main content of this post:

First, the Season 1 finale of the ABS Builder Challenge is underway, and as a Season 1 contestant, I'm included! 16 competitors are using the dark red "elbow brick" to create some dang cool MOCs, and I'll be blogging several of those in the next few days, as well as hopefully uploading a few of my own contributions to Flickr. 

Second, the other day I had an excellent conversation with my English teacher regarding the LEGO fan community. Turns out his 10-year-old son is a big fan and my teacher got suckered in, and they took a trip to LEGOLAND in Florida over February break. My teacher showed my a video he took of Miniland, and we discussed conventions and TFOLs; the next day I brought my copy of Beautiful LEGO for him and his son to borrow. I found it impressive that LEGO fan terminology and culture has now reached the level of popularity that I can discuss it with my English teacher as normally as if we were talking about Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye. 

Anyways. I do actually have a MOC to show you today, and it's a good one. 

"Waelras Castle" comes from the build table of Sir Gillian and it's a case study in constructing a natural, tranquil Castle setting. Everything flows together nicely, from the greebled stone walls of the castle to the rocky, leafy cliffs to the smooth SNOTed water. 

Check out the Flickr album for several more shots, because there are a lot of creative details packed into this build. But I gotta point this one out: what are a Fabuland figure and a Rock Monster doing down here?

Explain yourself, sir. 

I'll be back later with some more quality content™!

Prehistoric speeders

The amalgamation of futuristic technology with prehistoric settings and creatures has always produced entertaining results - think Jurassic Park. Keith Goldman's latest brick-built scene is another beautiful example: a rather unfortunate speeder-bike pilot is ambushed by a Dilophosaurus while his comrade makes a high-speed getaway. 

While the repetition of pieces and techniques (such as all those green Exo-Force spikes!) gives a sense of the vast scale of the prehistoric forest, there are plenty of small details that stand out too. The weaving together of several yellow-orange tooth plates produces a fantastic prehistoric plant design; I love the ammonite printed plate on the front of the lead speeder, and as Christopher Hoffman pointed out on Flickr, the fit between the ski and the ingot element on the underside is "goddamn beautiful." I love this build. 

Seasprite

Contrary to what you might have been expecting - perhaps some delicate aquatic creature, or a type of magical fairy - the Seasprite is actually a big hunk of metal. Drat. 

As usual, Ralph Savelsberg (Mad physicist) has knocked it out of the park with this build. According to Ralph, the UH-2A Seasprite was used by the US Navy as a utility helicopter and a plane-guard helicopter for aircraft carriers. I'm a big fan of the bright contrast in colors (that orange is one of my favorite colors!), as well as the techniques used to create tapering slopes and the greebles used in areas like the landing gear. 

It looks like Ralph also managed to include a sliding door and retracting landing gear, which adds a nice bit of functionality to this excellent display model. 

Matchstick

One of our most blogged builders in 2016, Deltassius returns this year with another fantastic little mecha, this one called the F-T System "Matchstick." I love the chunky construction with a blend of round and sharp edges, and that trans-orange brilliantly offsets the black and gray armor. 

Well-rounded

legoalbert takes us simultaneously forwards and backwards with this throwback to 2013, the year this futuristic sci-fi tanker truck was constructed - although it's only now been posted. Well, the shaping on this build is awesome. Part usage is minimal - pretty basic large pieces and a simple construction and color scheme - but it gets the job done beautifully, one of those MOCs that doesn't quite seem like LEGO. A few exposed studs and barely-visible ribbing under the tank add some lovely contrasting texture. 

One question though: what's that gunner doing? What kind of future war is this truck fueling? Only time will tell, although I'd love to see legoalbert revisit this concept in a later build.

Suit up

Happy 2017 everyone! For my first post of the year I've selected a glorious mech-suit MOC from recurring bloggee nobu_tary. Isn't she a beauty?

I love everything about this build, from the purposely exposed studs for greebling purposes, to the 1x2 grilles used to add texture to the thighs, to the vibrant yellow-on-gray color contrast, to that big-ass gun. Note the interesting part usages such as a droid torso and pistol in the hand, and the new Nexo Knights battle suit element in the cockpit. 

What's that? Cockpit? Oh yeah, this thing fits a minifig too:

Fantastic work! And for those of you who missed it at the end of 2016, check out nobu_tary's tribute to the new year with his excellent Year of the Rooster build. 

Colossal castle

Each time InnovaLUG builder Mark of Falworth reveals a new MOC, I am simply blown away.  His latest work of art, (CCC14) Clarendon Castle, is one of his biggest projects, weighing in at an impressive 110 lbs (~50 kg).  It is as if Mark pulled this scene right out of a medieval fairy tale book. The details, the techniques, the color schemes all have been exhibited in former MOCs, but if there is something that sets Mark apart from other castle builders, it is that he knows how to make classic techniques innovative and incorporate tried and true methods of building that appear to be timeless.