There are few subjects I enjoy seeing in LEGO as much as trees, from the single-mold pine trees in vintage sets to the enormous redwoods of Sequoia Tree Trail. I never cease to be amazed by the creative ways that AFOLs find to make decidedly organic branches and bark out of plastic bricks. At Skærbæk fan weekend, a pair of builds from Finnish builder Niina L show just how evocative a LEGO tree can be. First up is this incredible iron tree with a greeble trunk sitting atop a pile of tires and surrounded by blood-red water. It’s a glimpse of a dystopian world where green has been all but forgotten. A lone sprouting branch offers hope in this dead world. A second build also showcases Niina’s incredible talent for creating organic forms from irregular parts. This time the trunk incorporates incorporates a mix of Bionicle, constraction, and System parts in brown. The...

LEGO might not have released a stand-alone Space theme since 2013’s Galaxy Squad, but the spirit of space exploration lives on as a sub-theme of City. Two years of great sets have introduced new uniforms, personal mechs, and swooshable ships with an aesthetic closer to Interstellar than retro sci-fi. At last month’s IDS Brickworld, long-time collaborators and Rogue Bricks membrers Michael Diermann and Sascha Brüning debuted a sprawling tribute to the City Space called “Mission on Thalora Prime.” The builders adhere to the aesthetics of the line, from the nougat earth to the modular building style to the alien shrubbery, while expanding in scope and variety. The arid alien landscape is wonderfully done and provides a fun foundation for an aerial walkway to the radar module. LEGO 60430 Interstellar Spaceship has never looked better than here, with hangars to hold a squadron. Michael, aka Boba-1980, shares a video from the event on his...

We never get tired of seeing new additions to the Frogust lineup, even in October, and this spin from LEGO’s newest set designer, Nathan Don, is especially sweet. Dubbed ‘Cherritoad’, this frog gives the theme its just desserts with a whimsical design that wouldn’t be out of place in the Pokémon universe. For a LEGO model, the shaping and techniques are incredible. My favorite details are the wide cartoony eyes and the way the ‘cone’ scales upward (we’d love to see what the inside of this build looks like!). You can’t help but love this little guy! You can read more about this build on Nathan’s Woomy World blog. The post Soft serve toad with a cherry on top appeared first on The Brothers Brick. Original linkOriginal author: Jarrett Gercken

A Minecraft-inspired modular? Thanks to A Minecraft Movie’s isekai plot taking real-world gamers into the fantasy land of voxel-based construction, it’s not as weird as you might think! Swedish AFOL Jenny Bergensten, a member of Swebrick, is a fan of the film – specifically Game Over World, the retro gaming shop run by Jason Momoa’s Garret “The Garbage Man” – and she spent much of the summer faithfully recreating the set in LEGO. Jenny recreates the shop inside and out, capturing the faded glory of both Garret, the former arcade star, and a small town main street. Jenny packs the shop interior with gaming memorabilia and glorious relics of 80s gaming. As much as I love the timeless charm of LEGO’s modulars, I would love to see the company try a larger Arcade set, especially after the excellent 40805 Arcade Machine set from earlier this year. To match the film’s details...

Japanese builder Pan Noda is a master at crafting liminal spaces in LEGO. From ancient ruins to cursed malls to surreal swimming pools, their worlds make the familiar look strange or even haunted. Controlled depth of field and a lack of minifigs make scale confounding and dreamlike. Pan Noda’s latest takes one of the most cheerful LEGO elements, the magenta flower with shaft found in so many kid sets and pick-a-brick-bins, and creates one of their most cursed scenes to date. Titled “A Field of Mocking Flowers,” a column rises from an endless field, a smiling face seen in negative space. Is there a structure beneath the blooms that happens to have a face, or is this the visage of some floral hive-mind? Are the boardwalks there to protect the flowers from pedestrian feet, or are they to protect us from this malevolent magenta force? The post Liminal LEGO horror is...