Inspirational Lego #46

Another monday is upon us, so it`s time to have a look at another 10 fantastic builds I came across on the internet.

And while I kicked off last week with a huge fantasy collab, this week I`m tackling another timeless classic: dinosaurs.

This fantastic Jurassic Park collab features a build for each one of the 4 movies, resulting in an awesome timeline with this summer`s blockbuster.

Not everything in Classic Space has to be actual spaceships, as is demonstrated by this huge AFV transport.  It feels a bit like the great design of the Aliens one, on steroids and in bricks.

The next one is a very gorgeous mosaic of the famous skunk Pepe le Pew.

In a true style of classic cars, comes this old timer from 1911.  I love the use of the gilded parts on this one.

For a Castle and fantasy lover like me, the yearly Colossal Castle Contest is a real eye candy festival.  This build depicts castle gardens and relay that serene feeling perfectly.

Iron Man might be the coolest guy in an iron suit at the moment, but these guys do wipe him off the board in cuteness factor.

A great use of transparent pieces give birth to this fantastic looking Phoenix.

One of the older franchises Lego had was Toy Story, and this is a fantastic recreation of the train scene in the movie.

Okay, this one I just included for the GF to see ;-)

Art with Lego is gorgeous, as you can see in this creation of a traffic light using what seems to be the new hype at the moment, monochrome figures.

And that is it again for this week.  Next week will be another regular episode, before doing the week after a Force Awakens special with all kinds of builds based on the trailers so far released for what is no doubt going to be the box office breaker of the year.

The Haul Report #5

Another week of hauling has gone by, and in this little report I`m showing the stuff I collected and gained for exchanging until past friday again.

It was a relatively calm week actually, with all in all barely 6 euro spend, so don`t expect some superduper rare items this week or so.

The first score was the second polybag that comes with the belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, and this time it`s the TIE Advanced Prototype polybag.  They are for sale in local stores for 5 euro, but with the coupon they only cost 3, so that`s some grey bricks for the stack afterwards :-)

The second thing I got for myself is another exchange through Miniaturetrading.com, as I could add another Gargoyle to my stack, putting their total number now on 7.  I really like the figure, not only for the wings, but it will be suited for a planned GoH build in the future.

A local trip to the Kringloop in Kapellen yielded some small items for my trade albums.  The first grab where two Harry Potter card games, coming in at a euro each.

While the second was a Sherlock Holmes `puzzle` game.  You have to read a booklet, which unfortunatly was missing, and then solve the riddle with the aid of a puzzle.  I`m going to search the net to see if I can find the booklet before trying to exchange this, but if not it still is a pretty puzzle all in itself coming with a beautiful box.  And it also knocked me back a single euro anyways.

So as you can see, nothing to fancy, but I can already promise you this will be changing the next week, as the pilgrimage to Wijnegem (twice!) is on the menu this week for Doctor Who and the likes!

Lego Build: 7469 Mission To Mars

In today`s build report, I`m tackling my loot I brought back from Brick Mania Wetteren in past april, the Mission to Mars set which was produced together with Discovery Channel back in 2003.

Now, being a geek I do love these `hard science` sets (okay, so the Space Shuttle has past out of my budget reach unfortunatly) and was very happy to find it in the sealed box for 40 euro.

The set contains the three stages of the Mars mission, with the first being the satellite Odyssey, the famous Mars Rover and the Delta II rocket on a launch pad which delivered the Rover to his destination.

The box contains a couple of bags for the 400+ elements, a sticker sheet, but also a mini poster and a very informative booklet about the mission.

The first thing we are going to be building is the Odyssey probe, which comes with a disc shaped base decorated by a large sticker.

The probe itself is a pretty straightforward build, with nice decals being used for it`s solar panels.

It`s also the owner of the famous gilded dish elements.

These are connected to a tan core build with the necessary expanding staves for the dishes.

Connecting those to the solar panels, we have the probe all ready.

The second build in the set that will be made is the Mars Rover, whose bodywork is all build within tan elements.

The wheel axles are build and connected with rubber bands at the front, allowing the rover to navigate difficult terrain and interlinking all the wheels together.

Dark blue plates are used to cover it`s topside to represent it`s large solar panel back.

The necessary antenna and tools are added on the top of these plates, including it`s signature `head' and the manipulation arm at the front.

The final build is the Delta II.  Now as you will see during the build up, it has some decals that span more then one element, making it rather hard to disassemble it if you placed the stickers on it.

The tower is basically just that, a whole array of large grey elements stacked on top of each other with the odd connector arms left and right to add some difference.  But it really is a rather monotonous build for the first few levels of the tower.

The top level is a bit of a change in build, including a long connector build pole to connect it to ground level.

Oddly enough, the actual rocket is far less boring a build then the launch pad.  It has a very intresting way of building the fuselage, which is something I carried along in builds later on after I saw this.

Using long technic beams, round bricks are then stacked onto the rocket to bulk it out, with the lovely sand green to make up the center.

The final thing to do is to add the missile top to the build and place the rocket in it`s berthing.

The full set completed:

And of course some extra parts:

I really enjoy the look of this set, even though it isn`t the most exciting of actual builds.  But it does give a great piece of atmosphere to your desk or mancave, and it makes you look like a scholar of space exploration ;-)