The Brothers Brick

It’s already Christmas in much of the world, so let’s kick off our series of merry posts with this mustachioed snowman by Josip Špika.

Another late entry for Classic-Castle‘s contest: a simply beautiful rendition of “The Castle” of Boston University, built by Francesco Tavella. I really don’t have much more to add. The details on this building speak for themselves.

Time’s running out to enter the Colossal Contest over at Classic-Castle! There are some fabulous entries this year, and it’s been a blast to watch them come through. I do not envy the judges.

Zack Milenius’s entry is all about relativity. Or, more specifically, Relativity.

I like the castle-twist to a classic art piece. It’s just a fun build.

Brickworld is celebrating its 5th anniversary in 2011, and this year you have the opportunity to design the convention’s event kit. This is a rare chance to have hundreds of people own a creation designed by you, and you don’t even have to be an attendee to submit a design. Check out more details on the Brickworld website.

December’s also been a busy month for Cole Blaq (whose creations we’ve already featured several of in the last few days). His Dachs ATV may not have black and white stripes, but it’s just as fierce as its namesake (though it may want to steer clear of LEGO dachshunds).

Via Young Spacers Association Blog.

Brandon Bannerman (Catsy) isn’t taking it easy during the holiday season, pumping out new builds every few days. My favorite of the season is this festive red dive-bomber, the sub-orbital B-9D Garuda.

Don’t miss the full photoset on Flickr for the escape pod, bomb bays, payload, survival kit, and other lovely details.

Though this is for US & Canada only at the moment, nearly all of the first quarter 2011 LEGO sets are now available from the LEGO Shop online. As if that’s not enough of a temptation, you can still order in time for Christmas.

We here at The Brothers Brick are irrationally excited about what looks to be the silliest — and most awesome — of the 2011 themes. Fraukinder and mannkinder, I give you NinjaGo!

The premise appears to be that several brightly colored ninjas take on an army of undead in single combat using a technique called “spinjutsu”.

Seriously, how awesome is that? And don’t miss the ear-worm that is the NinjaGo theme song.

The 2011 LEGO City police sets feature a new dog, backpack, and crowbar.

And of course, the 2011 LEGO Star Wars sets are also now available — not least of which the ever-popular battle packs.

Though I have yet to see a single episode of The Clone Wars, I’m intrigued by this non-gray Bounty Hunter Assault Gunship:

Finally, 10217 Diagon Alley will be shipping on January 1st, and is currently available for pre-order:

I was stunned when I came across this photo in Cole Blaq‘s flickr stream. The colors in the thumbnail seemed so intense that I had to take a closer look. I have to admit, I never thought I’d see someone use those tentacles for anything other than tentacles.

Aran Hudson (Cole Bl♠q) is organising a LEGO speeder bike contest over on Flickr. The contest takes place at the LSB – Lego Speeder Bikes Group and the thread for the announcement and discussion can be found here and the entry thread here.

First prize is a chrome Stormtrooper riding a bike with Chrome parts. And the 2nd and 3rd prizes are random Minifigs from the MS2. A special Speeder Bike with rider is for the most innovative concept.

Air trucks are the 18-wheelers of the sky (we count the thrusters instead of wheels). This air truck by Ragsnarock has both functional details and an interior. There’s even several animated gifs showing off the features.

Speaking of VTOLs, this lovely medivac by French builder legodrome has an off-center cockpit and detailed underside.

Like the builders of the last VTOL we featured, the rest of legodrome’s photostream is also worth a lengthy perusal.

Joe & Will Merzlak, aka The Brothers Merz, deploy the CVT-GS39 Shrike.

Check out their photostream for dozens of other awesome sci-fi and future military vehicles.

Stop-motion filmmaker and AFOL Chris Salt (0ldScratch) has created an entirely brick-animated video clip for one of the latest tracks by Printed Circuit. This is some of the smoothest brick animation I’ve seen and the use of the M-Tron torsos is brilliant.

Suggested by Pete Reid and my apologies to Pete, Chris and our readers for taking so very long to finally get it posted.

There was a time when circular towers were the latest innovation in castle building, now Tyler (Legohaulic) builds castle on a circular base. I only remember one other creation that features this technique, and that was built several years ago. Filling the circle is difficult with rectangular LEGO bricks, but Tyler finds an effective solution by laying differently shaped bricks to create a cobblestone mosaic.

The NinjaGo theme song has been generating a lot of talk recently and I, for one, like it.

The NinjaGo website has been up for a while now on LEGO.com, playing “The Weekend Whip” by The Fold (thanks to Paul Lee for identifying the artist and song name).

For those of you who think the song is as awesome as we do, LEGO has kindly shared the song for everyone to download.

Download “The Weekend Whip” by The Fold (3 MB MP3)

We’ll host the MP3 right here on The Brothers Brick for now, so download away!