New books: How to Build Easy Creations and Space Race - Build Your Own Robots and Spaceships
Posted by Huw,
We are spoiled for choice when it comes to books containing building instructions nowadays.
Brickset reader and author Francesco Frangioja has recently had two such books published: How to build Easy Creations with LEGO Bricks and Space Race - Build Your Own Robots and Spaceships with LEGO Bricks.
He's sent me electronic copies to enable me to tell you about them.
The 208-page paperback books both contain step-by-step instructions for 16 and 18 models respectively. They follow the usual convention of showing a picture and description of the finished model, a bill of materials and step-by-step instructions for building it.
Each instruction step shows the parts to be added, just like LEGO does in its manuals, and also highlights the parts to be added in pink.
What sets these books apart from others is that there's a QR code for each model that leads to a ZIP file containing a video of the build and the parts list in XLS and BSX (Brickstock) format which will simplify gathering, or purchasing, the parts considerably.
Francesco has clearly put an incredible amount of work into the books and the additional resources.
How to build Easy Creations with LEGO Bricks
This one contains a variety of models including cars, boats, planes, spaceships and, my favourite, a flower with ladybird.
Space Race - Build Your Own Robots and Spaceships with LEGO Bricks
As its name suggests this one contains space-related models, spacecraft, ground vehicles, robots and mecha, most of which are microscale.
As I said above an incredible amount of work has gone into producing these and Francesco deserves them to be successful. If you're in the market for inspirational books for yourself or a young builder these are definitely worth considering.
They are available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, along with the author's Italian language titles, for around £15 / $13 each.
Thanks to Francesco for sending me electronic copies of the book for this article. All opinions expressed are my own.
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5 comments on this article
Fortunately, I stumbled upon the 2019 Friends sets’ images in the database. Why wasn’t there an article like all of the other themes or did I just miss it?
These books are actually ones that I’d consider getting for the kiddos, but extra LEGO money is going to be hard to come by as 2019 *should* finally mark the year we’re going to be spending much money on better/more accessible storage for our LEGO collection. We’re not getting a proper “LEGO room” like I always have wanted, but the playroom will have enough extra space to have a dedicated LEGO section in a permanent place instead of just on-rotation.
I’ll have to Wishlist these so I remember them.
A couple of very good looking books. Some nice builds with good instructions.
May have to keep an eye out for them
@ericjohn, unlike other sites that can only publish information about new sets in articles, we have the ability to add it to a permanent storage area of the site and thus don't always feel compelled to alert you to every new set we add to it because it'll always be there and easily discoverable.
Hey, the english versions are out! I designed the "futuristic van" in the first book!
Hi Umbra-Manis! The children love to build your amazing "TRON-like" van!