Nearly everyone alive now has played with LEGOs at some point. We’ve either had them as kids, played with them with our own kids, or had fun with them with grandkids. These toys are one of the most popular and enduring of modern franchises with sets ranging from basic building blocks for toddlers all the way to complex, technical sets that verge on being engineer’s tools. For thousands of fans globally, though, LEGO sets are also the stuff of scale modeling fun.
Dennis Glaasker and Dennis Bosman are two of the more well-known LEGO scale modelers, who build not only for fun, but also professionally. The two have built models out of LEGOs that involve scaled replicas of historic machines – cars, trucks, boats, and more. They’ve even been commissioned to build specific models of specific vehicles for clients and magazines. If anyone in the world knows and has access to the results of building scaled models with LEGOs, it’s these two.
In The Art of LEGO Scale Modeling, Glaasker and Bosman show us some of the most intriguing models built by experts around the world. These include a long list of awesome machines that include every transportation mode you can name. From detailed cranes to the semi-trucks that haul them and the service trucks that keep them running, someone, somewhere, builds those models. Trains are also hugely popular, often being built to run on tracks using LEGO’s train system or being designed to operate on standard scale model locomotive tracks alongside traditional scale model trains. Even scenery and buildings for the dioramas the trains run through can be built from LEGO blocks.
The best part of this book, however, is the end. The last chapter details some of the things you’d need to get started in building your own LEGO scale models. The hobby has become so popular that LEGO now sells sets that are actual scale models, with pieces and instructions, to get you started. Very cool. My Amazon wish list now includes several (you guessed it) car models from that Creator’s series.
The Art of LEGO Scale Modeling is an excellent coffee book whose photography and detailed builds will mesmerize anyone who reads it. My four and five year old girls, my wife, and myself have all enjoyed thumbing through the book. It’s beautifully rendered and an excellent find. You can get The Art of LEGO Scale Modeling in any bookstore or on Amazon at this link.
Many thanks to No Starch Press for the review copy of this book. Photos at their courtesy.
