Beasts from Bricks

This book is amazing for Lego lovers! I love that there is a blurb about why the animal was chosen for a creation in addition to random facts about the animal. The step by step instructions to build the creation with a list of necessary parts is sure to entertain for hours. This is a must have for the young (and old) Lego lover in your life.

Beasts from Bricks is a nice Lego tutorial collection from Ekow Nimako and Quarto publishing. The projects are complex, but the tutorials are really well illustrated and with some patience, can be followed by most of us.

The 15 animals included are arranged by continent and there's a complete brick list for each one.
Most of them are articulated and move in some way. My only caveat is that you need a LOT of single color bricks and a lot of the really obscure pieces as you can see from the cover (rhino).

They're really beautiful and I appreciated that each section included the Latin name along with some geographical and background/conservation info.

My favorite part was the gallery at the end. Truly breathtaking sculpures. I'm in awe!

The book also includes a resources section as well as a short bio of the artist creator.

Beautifully made, with meticulously illustrated step by step tutorials.

Four stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

First of all I'm going to praise Nimako's art. The pieces in this book are fantastic sculptures in a "non-traditional" material, which manage to capture life-like aspects of the creatures he's depicting. The gracefully-swimming walrus and gleeful elephant in particular made me smile, followed swiftly by admiration at coaxing out expression in Lego.

Creating organic forms in Lego is very challenging due to the brickiness of the bricks, but with clever techniques Nimako manages to overcome that and bring some truly lovely pieces. This is most noticeable in the brief Gallery at the back of the book, where we see spectacular owls and flying horses, part of his body of artistic work. I only wish we could have seen more of them!

For me, the main value in this book is being shown the unusual techniques employed by Nimako--SNOT (studs not on top) is used extensively--which are helpful for inspiring my own designs. I'm unlikely to head to Bricklink and purchase the parts for these models, and it's highly unlikely that I have all the pieces in my collection already. As such, this isn't much more than a coffee table book for me as it is largely building instructions. I imagine an adult fan of Lego with some disposable income and a love of animals might go the extra mile and have great fun building these.

I have a couple of criticisms. The blurb says 'all ages', but this is certainly not for younger fans of Lego. These models use advanced building techniques, and while the instructions themselves are very clear, they often require turning the model about and doing odd things I suspect are far beyond the average child. I think if these were official Lego sets, they'd be marketed at adults, which makes the basic animal facts included before each model just a little out of place.

Secondly, the instructions, while clear, aren't always consistent in their layout. Many of the pages have up to six steps on them, and sometimes they're organised with steps 1-3 on the left hand side, while others have steps 1, 3, and 5 on the left hand side. You'd definitely need to pay attention when building or it could get confusing fast! That said, I'm still pretty impressed with the instructions. The program Nimako used to make them is fiddly at best.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and think AFOLs could get a lot out of it, but it might have been better with more pictures of Nimako's Lego art (instructionless) to give it more value as something to pick up over and over to check out the incredible details of his larger work.

Cool brick built animals with instructions so you can build your own. The end of the book features a gallery of additional artwork. The owl, entitled Silent Knight, uses 50,000 LEGO elements and looks mighty nice. Going to try my hand at a few of his animals. I might start with the hippo because it has him swimming and not just standing there. I also really like that each project gives a nice explanation of each animal in real life that inspired the LEGO animal.

Now this is an epic Lego blocks book! Fascinating, definitive and reproducible. Comprehensive block guide and step by step images with completed model to inspire you and serve as a reference point. Who could ask for anything more. Recommended.

An interesting set of animals to be created from basic lego blocks. An easily understood collection with nicely imaged instructions. An excellent way for parents and children to connect while building these animals.

This book is excellent for any LEGO fans out there - it has some great idea, brilliant images and it is easy to follow - great book!!

well explained with illustrations to make beast from bricks........