Halloween

Here's a little vignette I built as part of a Star Wars themed MOC competition this time last year.

At the time I'd just gotten my first few Series 14 ("Monster") Collectible Minifigures, and scored this Skeleton Guy with his pumpkin basket. He got put straight to use as the homeowner handing out candy. As I had to include something Star Wars somewhere, I gave my storm troopers short legs to become kids in costume.

I didn't win, but I had a lot of fun working on the wall textures of the "house", and with configuring the wedge-shaped tiles into a footpath.

Eomer

Here's a minifigure habitat I made towards the end of my series of small builds. If you look at the base layer of yellow you can see I was running out of bricks and was substituting with plates.

Éomer of Rohan (a Lord of the Rings minifigure) stands guard at a gate in his palisade. Behind him you can see some experimenting with small-scale landscaping, with green slopes, curves and plates layered to atttempt some sense of an uneven hillside.

The large arches on either side let a lot of light into the scene, even when stacked in layers with other vignettes.

Lion Keeper

Not everyone has the time (or the bricks) for full-table-size dioramas, but sometimes smaller builds are a good challenge as well!

"Habitat vignettes" are a very popular method (just do a Google image search) of making little displays to showcase individual minifigures. Every year when LEGO releases a set of Collectible Minifigures, a lot of people around the world find cool and creative ways to display them in a small "room" themed to the figure.

With a set size (12x12 studs in area, 8 bricks in total height), it is easy to make one or more and assemble them together into a "wall" of little rooms. This is what we did in my club last year, with multiple vignettes on a single table as part of a group display.

My first was a lion cage to show off the Zookeeper minifigure (Series 5). It was fun trying to figure out ways of securing the vegetation at different angles to give a more "overgrown" look to the background.

Valentine's Day

My entry to another Star-Wars-based MOC competition, this time on a Valentine's/Romance theme.

I call this "Awkward First Date." Rey reads the menu as Obi-Wine Kenobi pours Kylo Ren a drink.

Walter White

When I first started working on my Comic-Con themed display, I really wanted to include a Breaking Bad reference. Well, here he is - my version of Walter White!

Starting with the Series 3 Fisherman collectible minifigure, I added a head with safety glasses. The flask is borrowed from the Series 11 Scientist, and a trans-light-blue piece in his other hand completes his "accessories".

Barbecue

As a companion piece to my esky, I later built this four-burner barbecue.

Esky

Two years ago I attended my first LUG meeting, which included an Australia-Day-themed MOC competition. I brought along this Esky (cooler). I started with two aircraft roof segments as the lid, and worked out the scale from there, building from the top down.

The esky was fully stocked - check out all the details below.

The Walking Dead

Here's my attempt at making some minifigure versions of "The Walking Dead" characters.

Daryl is a Monster Fighter, and Rick is a Forest Police figure, both with different faces and hair. Carl is a hobbit with the Forest Police officer's hat.

Seaplane

In addition to building MOCs (My Own Creations), it's also a lot of fun modifying existing LEGO sets into something slightly different. Here's something I built a few years ago, a seaplane based on the passenger jet in the 2010 Airport set.

First I shortened the fuselage, and moved the wings to the top of the aircraft.

For comparison, here's a shot of the plane I started with:

Maritime Museum

As Minotaur Bay grew, it also gained a Museum. The building was from a set, but I swapped out the clock for a ship's wheel to give it a maritime touch appropriate for a seaside town.

Australia Day

The most recent Star Wars themed MOC competition I built something for was for Australia Day.

As January is in the middle of the southern hemisphere's summer, a day at the beach is a perfect scene. Here's my build.

And now let's have a look at some of the details...

Predator

Predator is one of my favourite 80s action films, and I just had to attempt to make one in LEGO form. I did a few online image searches for inspiration, but most results involved custom decals, or custom 3D-printed heads. I much prefer staying with official parts, which are easier to source and can easily be mixed and matched for other things later.

One picture did give me an idea though, and I went out to the shops and bought my first Chima sets.

This is what you get when you put a scorpion head on a crocodile body:

I'm really happy with the effect, and my "predator" has made his way into all my displays ever since.

The Horse's Head

The next building I made for Minotaur Bay was a pub, The Horse's Head. I wanted an old-style look for the architecture, so took a lot of the pieces from one of my favourite Castle sets, the Medieval Market Village. The horse-head sign from over the blacksmith makes a great painted pub sign.

Cafe

With plans for a three-baseplate-wide display, I needed a couple more buildings to line the street. I worked on a basic footprint of 8 x 16, which allows for easy rearranging of buildings alongside baseplates.

Below is a cafe, built on an upper storey above another business, a transport company. The side panels from the Cargo Truck were easily modified into building walls.

Mythbusters

Here are two minifigs I feature in my "Comic Con" themed display.

The bodies are both fairly common city workers found in many LEGO City sets. I had to find two bearded faces, with one having a prominent goatee. I used a light brown hairpiece to match the beard colour on the "Adam" figure, and of course found a beret (not a common part) for "Jamie".

Pizzeria

To fit in the Seafood Restaurant, my beach setup grew to two baseplates wide, which then meant more buildings to fill in the street.

The first addition was the Pizzeria, modded from its official form as part of the Town Square. I removed the outdoor seating area and moved it onto a 16 x 32 baseplate. I put a jumper plate behind the "City Pizza" sign so that it could be set at an angle, and then added construction workers to that it looked like the sign was still being fixed into place. The worker on the right is hanging the menu on the wall.

★

R.I.P. David Bowie (1947-2016)

It was sad to hear of David Bowie's death this week, and I wanted to do something in LEGO form to pay tribute.

My other album covers are still a way off being ready for display, and I hadn't yet started on a Bowie cover of any sort. Since I had a large quantity of white bricks to hand I started with his final album, "★" (Blackstar).

The other cover I would like to recreate as a mosaic is "Heroes". In black, white, and two shades of grey it should still be recognisable at this 32 x 32 "pixel" scale.

Brick Separator

Here's a little building I made as an experiment. The angled pillars holding up the roof might be familiar to many LEGO builders.

The Brick Separator is a very handy tool. I was recently over at my parents' house sorting and building some of my childhood sets. The number of teeth marks on the edges of small pieces joined together (from years and years of separating tightly-joined plates the hard way) was kind of scary. I wish we'd had a tool like this back then! While there were earlier versions in the 1990s, this tool dates from 2012, and is provided in a lot of large sets.

Zed

Now here's a really obscure sci-fi character - "Zed" from John Boorman's 1974 film Zardoz.

The torso is the Barbarian I previously used for Taylor. The legs are from the Series 12 Lifeguard. The hair is from The Hobbit's Bard the Bowman, and the face is Johnny Thunder from an older Adventurers set.

And now for a reference pic... apologies for any nightmares caused as a result of seeing Sean Connery's costume.

Seafood Restaurant

After the apartment building, I kept going with the blue and white colour scheme and built another beachside building - a seafood restaurant.

It was partly inspired by some fish and chip shops near the Gold Coast that combined a takeaway service with a sit-down restaurant.

Apartments - Interior

After I built my seaside apartments, I furnished them and gave them occupants.

The ground floor has a reception counter, a TV on the wall (I think the wall panel is from a police station set), a rug and a sofa. The sofa is made from just four elements - a 2x6 brick, a 1x4 brick, and 2 hinge bricks. As the ground floor, the only windows are on the front wall.

Khaleesi

This next SF minifigure was an easy case of mixing and matching.

All I needed was the Series 10 figure "Warrior Woman", and swapped her long brown hair for a short braided blonde hairpiece. Then I just added some baby dragons, and the result is a pretty recognisable Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones.

And now here's the HBO version...

Seaside Apartments

After I built my beach, I wanted to build a luxury apartment building like you would see on the Gold Coast. Here's the finished product:

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody. Drink responsibly, and play well...

It's hard to believe the year's almost gone already. Bring on 2016!