Cubic Dioramas - LEGO MOCs

A few years ago, for the Christmas season, Dollar Tree started selling these little 2.5" photo cubes (currently out of stock) that caught my eye. At first I was using them for miniatures storage and display, but after measuring I found that they were exactly eight studs on a side. Score!

So now I grab a few whenever they have them in stock. I've also used the 32x32 stud baseplate they sell as baseplates (each cut down into 16 8x8 stud squares) as the bases within the cubes, since 1) they're cheaper than actual Lego 8x8s and 2) they're thinner by about half a plate. This means that I can build 6 bricks + 1 tile on top, which is enough height to create a minifigure-scaled diorama.

In an effort to push how much space I could fit in such a small footprint, I created a micro-scale version of Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (with a nice little nod to a certain historical castle), as well as a replica of Vermeer's The Geographer (which actually won first place in Minifigures Plus's recent photography contest).

I've also used them to create habitats for various minifigures. The usual format is 8x8 studs and 8 bricks high, with an open front and an interlocking back wall, like so. My allergies mean that I need to minimize dust whenever possible, so having bricks just sitting open on the shelf isn't really a good idea. Which is where these neat little cubes come in: I get to make habitats, have the creative constraint of fitting everything in such a small box, and have the satisfaction of self-contained units to display as I see fit.

It's also the way I designed the "Tim's Studio" habitat that I'm using for my profile picture here, as described on my first post.

I've got lots more of these little guys just waiting to be built, and it's a nice small challenge to tackle periodically. I'll definitely post more detailed shots of the finished ones in the future, both the cubes I've already done and the ones I've yet to do.

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The Artful Brick

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