One area of LEGO® fandom that has always fascinated me is the use of microscale. LEGO elements can be used in numerous way to create amazing builds, but bigger doesn’t always have to mean better. Building on a such a small scale, suddenly turns various elements into completely new things along with how they are used changes. Microscale building let’s you create impressive scenes without needing thousands of bricks. Jeff Friesen is particularly skilled when it comes to microscale creations. Something which has now been featured into another LEGO focused title from No Starch Press. So let’s take a closer look at LEGO Micro Cities: Build Your Own Mini Metropolis!
Product Description
LEGO Micro Cities is a full colour guide to creating intricate LEGO micro cities. Readers learn how to recreate classic architectural styles using only LEGO bricks. In addition to creating entire buildings, LEGO model-building expert Jeff Friesen shows how to create interesting architectural features like bridges and skyscrapers, and will offer suggestions on how to customise your cities and make the models your own.
- Book Title: LEGO Micro Cities: Build Your Own Metropolis
- Publisher: No Starch Press
- Pages: 216
- RRP: £20.99
- ISBN: 9781593279424
- Availability: Online
The Book
In recent years the use of microscale has become more prevalent in LEGO sets, the recently released Hogwarts Castle set is the biggest set to be released in scale so far and in the past numerous Architecture sets have also made use of this smaller way to build. If you’ve seen any of these builds up close, you’ll be amazed to see just how much detail they contain. A notion that Jeff has embraced for this new book. Across it’s 200 odd pages, you’ll be greeted with various build ideas and simple instructions to help creation your own Micro Cities.
Each of the eight stylised cities are all build upon a foundation of a 20×20 stud plate. This can be achieved by grouping together various larger plates to get the correct dimensions. However this is LEGO so you can build upon whatever base you like. Although there are 8 different cities featured, the book doesn’t give you a step-by-step instructional guide to build them. Instead various aspects of the cities are highlighted, including the elements you would need to create them, complete with elements numbers, making it much easier to trackdown, should you not own the pieces you need.
Overall
As mentioned in other reviews of No Starch Press’ LEGO titles, these books highlights an area of LEGO building that hasn’t really been featured elsewhere before. The book is well presented with excellent photography of the builds and clearly shows how some of the details are created. Just flicking through it’s pages will have you looking at LEGO elements in completely different ways. Roller skates suddenly become cars, a collection of 1×1 studs can become vast woods and a simple 1×2 brick can become the foundations of an epic skyscraper. No Starch seem to have a knack of finding these amazing builders and turning their skills into unique and interesting books.
The LEGO Micro Cities Book is published by No Starch Press and is available now from Amazon and WHSmith, plus in digital form from No Starch Press. This book was provided by the publisher for purposes of review, the thoughts expressed within this review are that of BricksFanz and do not reflect those of No Starch Press or the LEGO Group.
