Category Archives: Models

This is what we’re all about. We scour the web for the best custom LEGO models to share with you. From castles and spaceships to planes, trains, and automobiles, you’ll find the best LEGO creations from builders all over the world right here on The Brothers Brick.

Cowboys and Dinosaurs make for a very wild west

Cowboys and Dinosaurs are the perfect B-Movie pairing (don’t believe me? Watch this clip of Valley of Gwanji from 1969). Builder Martin Dasnoy agrees as he wrangled up a trio of dino-riding Wild West factions. First up, “The Law” features an armored transport wagon pulled by a beefy ceratopsian. The dinosaur design is ingenious, with a fully brick-built head on a molded body that has been augmented for a more cohesive LEGO look. I like this approach more than the Jurassic-branded dinos that only use a few large molds.

Next up is the Red Raptor tribe where a pair of indigenous minifigs ride atop their prairie raptor. Again, the dino design is a lot of fun with its wide mouth and copious spines.

Last is my favorite of the trio, the Miner atop his trusty Hadrosaurid mount. The dino offers a lot more cargo capacity than a mule and can ford dangerous rivers with ease.

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You’ve got chainmail!

LEGO Castle sets have offered plenty of armor options for your medieval knight minifigs, from pauldrons to full plate, but while mail has been available on printed toro, the company hasn’t figured out how to deliver the supple weave of a true chainmail experience. Hamilton Whitney solves the minifig chainmail problem by working with a really big head – one of the sorting bin variety! The effect is uncanny. This clever creation was built for the MOCtober challenge hosted by NOVA-LUG, an annual tradition asking builders to make a MOC a day based on a prompt. In this case – Armor! Hamilton excelled this year with some real lateral thinking around the prompts. Congratulations, Hamilton, on your 31 builds.

Visit Kyoto’s Gion district in LEGO

Meredith Najewicz is no stranger to Japanese architecture, having created several incredible cubes and towers for the New Hashima collab. At this year’s Brickworld, Meredith traded cyberpunk for the Edo era with a miniland-scale scene of meiko in Gion, Kyoto’s geisha district. This larger scale allows for beautiful architectural detail and clever techniques, like the rooftops made from garage door panels, and wood texture from stacked spiral staircase axles.

The two meiko (apprentice geisha) feature beautiful kimonos with floral patterns of bright colors, and of course obi (the NYT Crossword puzze’s favorite 3 letter word). My favorite construction detail is the geta, sandals, bound by rubber bands, on which the women delicately balance.

This month, as part of the Creations for Charity fundraiser, Meredith created a standalone geisha vignette with a variation of her Bricksworld character. The golden folding screen behind the character is a beautiful design that makes excellent use of gold tiles. The model will go on sale shortly at the Creations for Charity store where MOCs from many of your favorite creators can be purchased to raise money to send LEGO to children in need. The fundraiser runs through November 30th.

The Tengu Temple above the Clouds

Drawing on Japanese Mythology, pickybrickster shares a beautifully constructed Tengu temple high above the clouds with a gripping backstory. The various techniques used to build the rock foundation and the surrounding clouds work really well together, especially highlighting the smoothness of the clouds in contrast with the jagged rocks.

With a story as wonderful and intriguing as the build itself, he writes:

On the highest mountain peaks, far beyond human reach and well above the clouds, dwell the mighty tengu. A lone samurai ghost has come to this mythical place to seek his revenge, for he could not reach it while he was still alive. The tengu took his family, and now he hunts them down — this is a story destined to become a legend.

Little Tykes for big dreamers

If you have memories of tooting around in a little red coupe with a yellow roof, and headlight eyes, you were one lucky kid! The Little Tykes Cozy Coupe was the ride of choice for the preschool set… at least until you were old enough to see Power Wheels commercials. Nikita Filatov pays tribute to the ubiquitous kiddie car scaled up for a grown-up minifig. Who hasn’t dreamed of driving around in that jolly little car? Just look at Bubba Blaster – he couldn’t be happier!

SEGA’s Sonic and Tails soar on this stunning Tornado MOC

SEGA mascot and Jim Carrey foil Sonic the Hedgehog has inspired a dashing run LEGO sets, enough that Sonic’s beloved biplane, the Tornado, has appeared twice – as part of a Dimensions level kit and in a playset for younger builders. What LEGO hasn’t offered is a version of the Tornado built with an aviation enthusiast’s eye for detail. Thankfully, vehicle builder and Genesis-era Sonic fan Sérgio Batista proved more than up to the challenge! Sérgio builds the biplane as it appears in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, outfitted with Tail’s turbo boosting rocket in lovely chrome.

The Tails logo is sourced from 76991 Tail’s Workshop and Tornado Plane set, and at first glance Sérgio’s version bears many similarities to that design, but the silhouette, livery, and details are greatly improved here. The wings are staggered as opposed to stacked. The Tails emblem is actually the least game-accurate, as the original design features a very USAF-inspired star.

As a bonus, Sergio photographs the Tornado with Super Sonic flying alongside inspired by the game’s intro. It’s a wonderful AFOL tribute to one of the best video games of the 90s.

Bringing back the Ma.K

Every year, it seems like we have more and more monthly themes and building challenges in the LEGO community. Febrovery, SHIPtember, Frogust, and the new NovHENber, to name a few. Sometimes it seems like a trend has always been around and always will be… until it’s not. Ma.Ktober used to be a huge event in the community and one that TBB would cover excitedly each year, but for the last decade, the Ma.K is an endangered species. Gone, but not quite forgotten thanks to builders like Redbirch, who is bringing Ma.K back with the Wanze Box, a recon and espionage walker. It’s an excellent throwback build to a beloved theme that captures the aesthetic perfectly.

If you’re not familiar with Ma.Ks, short for “Maschinen Krieger” and based on model kitbashing and worldbuilding by Kow Yokoyama, Ted Andes provides a great overview of the theme’s LEGO history over here on BrickNerd. you can also see many more builds in the theme in our Machinen Krieger archive.

Minifigs of Spooky Season: The Final Nightmare [Minifig Monday]

Halloween is over, so it’s time to retire the jack-o-lanterns and put away the ghosts and plastic spiders (unless you’re in Australia, in which case it’s just spiders all the time). But before we close the book on spooky season, let’s take one last look back at the chilling minifig creations with costumes and creatures!

Let’s jolt things to life with this incredible take on Frankenstein and the Monster from Garret (2p_figs). These are characters that have been recreated so many times in LEGO, but Garret makes them his own with some brilliant choices, like using Nute Gunray’s head for the monster’s face and Tasha’s buckle-heavy torso for the doctor. Incredible staging too!

frankytea_lego creates a grizzly scene from the dark corners of Fleet Street. I hear the pies there are delicious!

Love The Addams Family and Wednesday but aren’t a fan of minidolls? gcbricks recreates the altogether ooky family as minifigs. My favorites are Cousin Itt and the uncannily perfect Fester made from Gru minifig with the eyebrows erased. Of course Wendsday brings her friend Thing…

Our Spooky Season roundup concludes after the break

Quoth the raven, MORE GREEBLES!

LEGO might be more commonly associated with three-dimensional models, but in recent years, the medium has seen an explosion of creativity around mosaics. While mosaics can be flat and tile-based, many builders play with texture and layering in ways that add depth. Greeble Mosaics take that to the extreme, adding large vertical elements, or even whole scenes, that dissolve into a painterly texture when seen from a distance. GothGirlBricks, a frequent mosaic builder, created her first greeble mosaic this Halloween and the results are spectacular.

The builder started the project four weeks ago with a flat base layer of the raven and skull. While ravens may be “black,” there’s an iridescence to the feathers that she brings out with color highlights in the pink and blue spectrum.

Up close you can see so many parts that GothGirlBricks brings into the model – especially the animals! I see spiders, kittens, owls, butterflies, and even an octopus in the mix!

For builders who would like to try making a greeble mosaic but with instructions and parts, LEGO’s Milky Way set is a good way to try your hand at this immersive style. You can also check out the breathtaking work of Gerardo Pontierr, an artist whose work is currently on display in LEGO House in Billund.

Dreaming up engineering marvels

Declaring that “An architect’s dream is an engineer’s nightmare”, Roman brings this premise to life in LEGO form. Appropriately for the subject, the construction itself features some incredible engineering and wonderful parts usage throughout all sections of the build. Some of my favorites are the Ninjago dragon head, hammers, binoculars, and visors that are used in unconventional ways in the artist’s billowy smoke imagination. The dreamer himself is excellently shaped and topped off with a hat comprised of leaves, broomsticks, and an entire boat. A wonderful tribute to this architect’s fantasies, brought to life in bricks.

Stay glassy, fans of LEGO

Much has been made on this site and elsewhere of the new re-colours that LEGO has been introducing recently. Sometimes it’s new parts in existing colours, sometimes new colours altogether. But I feel like transparent colours tend to slip under the radar somewhat. Not so for Mattia Careddu – it’s clear he’s a fan of translucent LEGO! This glassy fellow almost doesn’t look brick-built, and in truth I’m not even sure I could tell you where many of these pieces come from. Somehow, I’m getting balloon creature vibes – perhaps because of that Jeff Koons-esque trans-green dog?

Set sail on high seas of the future!

Not to be a downer, but conventional wisdom tells us that in the future there will be more ocean to sail than ever before, so why not plan to explore it in style? That’s where this futuristic sailing craft by Daniel Church comes in. The sleek hull, with its well-crafted curves, should cut through the waters with ease. And we figure that sail, stitched together from numerous hexagonal patterns, probably doubles as a solar panel. Perfect for long voyages!