The Brothers Brick » Building Techniques

Introducing r/afol on Reddit

Nannan — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:44:09 +0000

Matt De Lanoy made a Lego version of the Reddit alien for the newly launched subreddit for Lego fans, r/afol. You don’t have to be an AFOL to join as the group seems to focus more on MOCs and building techniques.

Temple of Jugatinus

Nannan — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:54:23 +0000

James Pegrum’s (peggyjdb) vignette caught my eye with its slanted rocks and angled placement of the temple, making it look more refined and realistic.

An Ancient City Besieged

Chris — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:38:01 +0000

This vivid scene by flickr user Mark of Falworth portrays the fictional Hellenistic city of Tiylis being assaulted by medieval troops. Mark’s techniques for the palm trees and rocks are worth noting, and it’s always good to see some ancient architecture outside of the northern/western European styles, but it is Mark’s water technique that really stands out here. He’s used plain bricks in several shades, jumbled in a thin layer, to produce a quite fascinating style that appears vaguely painterly.

Raising the bar for building floating rocks

Nannan — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:10:14 +0000

Barney Main (SlyOwl) built a floating rock sculpted in complex angles. There have been a few notable instances of this technique used, but it has never been applied to a floating rock due to the instability of angling the bricks. Here is the technique he used.

Caution: hot

Nannan — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:42:11 +0000

Simple is good.

By Vanjey_Lego

A cuter scooter

gambort — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:07:44 +0000

Karwik is no stranger to two-wheel creations but I think these latest scooters are some of his cutest. The use of the hollow 1×2 slope brick is the cleverness that makes these work.

Shadow prowler

gambort — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:03:08 +0000

Ralph Savelsberg (Mad Physicist) has packed in the action on his latest iteration of the EA-6B Prowler of VAQ-141 Shadowhawks. I’m especially keen on the opening brick built cockpits but the rest of Ralph’s impressive bag of tricks are all on show.

Awesome Veritech fighter(s)

gambort — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:40:38 +0000

I’m glad that Mike Yoder (builder42) covered and added to maxvf1‘s amazing Valkyrie/Veritech fighter as it gives me an excuse to blog both. maxvf1′s is available on LEGO Cuusoo and was mentioned by Nannan a while back. ~~Unfortunately maxvf1 has restricted use of his pics so we’ll have to provide a link to the Gerwalk and Battloid modes.~~

Luckily Mike doesn’t.

And now maxvf1 doesn’t

Best LEGO X-Wing Yet

gambort — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:20:55 +0000

I usually avoid making a judgement call about a model being the ‘best yet’ (at least here on TBB). But I’m making an exception for Mike Psiaki’s (psiaki) latest iteration of the X-Wing Starfighter. Mike has packed in every detail possible from an accurate backside to detailed guns to working landing gear.

The complex shaping on the nose is a miraculous piece of LEGO engineering using just about every technique under the sun to accurately portray the long wedge shape. Even the intakes are given detailed treatment.

This model is a testament to the time and dedication Mike has put into his X-Wings. He has improved it every iteration with new techniques parts and efforts.

Le-Go Yo-Yo

gambort — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:18:37 +0000

Lino Martins (Lino M) claims this Yo-Yo is 100% LEGO and who are we to argue? I’m also wondering if this model doesn’t have the fewest pieces of any we’ve blogged here.

And to let you all in on a personal shame: if you give me a yo-yo I will be ‘that annoying yo-yo guy’ until it breaks. Not the one who can do tricks, the one who just makes it go up and down constantly. I get so mesmerised.

Functioning Lego bumper cars arena

Nannan — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:55:23 +0000

Nuno C creates this classic amusement park attraction featuring bumper cars that actually move. The mechanism is described as a system of gears underneath the floor that moves magnets that pull the cars. This technique has been used in at least two instances but none as complex as this. See the video on Flickr.

Here’s the video:

T’Met Monastery

Nannan — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:25:27 +0000

Oftentimes we see applications of a new building technique on a small experimental model, but rarely do we see them applied to a large creation. I am delighted to see tiberium_blue‘s T’Met Monastery, which not only uses Technic liftarms for its massive stone walls but also depicts a refreshing subject of a fictional sanctuary inspired by a Star Trek Vulcan monastery.

RAILBRICKS Issue 10 is out

gambort — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:13:50 +0000

RAILBRICKS issue 10 is just out. Chock full of the usual trainy goodness with a focus on recent events. And it’s happy editor birthday to Elroy Davis who marks one year in charge of RAILBRICKS.

RAILBRICKS Issue 10 is now available for download. The new issue features stories covering some fan events from the past summer, as well as tips and building instructions.

Machinations in the Boardroom

Andrew — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:19:35 +0000

To get the necessary overview of what’s happening in the LEGO world, we here at TBB often have to rely on various sequences of small pictures — it’s just not possible to review hundreds of LEGO photos a day in deep, individual detail. Sometimes, amazing LEGO models get overlooked as a result. So we’re eternally grateful to readers like Chris Edwards to make sure we don’t just blog LEGO models that “looked good from the thumbnail.”

This fantastic photo by Nathanial Brill (Shuppiluliumas) is a perfect example of what we might have missed if we were only looking at a tiny version of the picture.

Low light emanates from the walls and ceiling, illuminating the scheming executives. Outside the window, Nathaniel uses microscale buildings to provide a clue to the scale of the city in which these captains of industry plot their hostile takeovers.

It’s definitely worth taking a look at the large version on black. And don’t miss the setup shots.

New brick separator adds Technic axle pusher, tile-removing wedge

Andrew — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:26:03 +0000

Paul Lee just got back from a trip to Billund, where he picked up a brick separator with some new features.

Paul says:

The brand new debricking tool. It’s smaller. Streamlined down to about the footprint of a 2 x 10 plate. There are many notable new features. There is a technic axle pusher for removing those stubbornly embedded axles. There are of course the standard top and bottom brick removing configurations. Also new is the pointed wedge at the back end of the lever, very useful for popping tiles and splitting plates that the other end can’t. It basically doubles as an ABS thumbnail. It’ll do whatever you would do with your thumbnail without ruining your manicure. Lastly, another nice added feature is the jumper plate offset in the underside, allowing the removal of jumper plates that the previous version of the tool could not handle.