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.