Tag Archives: Minifigs

Everybody loves LEGO minifigures — well, almost everybody. Minifigs are often the stars of the LEGO models we feature here on The Brothers Brick, but we also feature some amazing custom minifigs you’d never expect to see in an official LEGO set.

When you gotta go, you gotta go

While it’s best to stay indoors, sometimes you just need to go outside. Particularly when you need to “go” outside. This slice of modern LEGO life from Crises_crs is just cute enough to not be super-depressing.

Protect yourself

There’s just the right hint of disrepair to the scene. The mix of exposed studs and 1×1 round tiles has the grass looking a little ragged. The pavement has a similar mix, leaving it just a little cracked. But both the dog and owner look pretty happy in their protective gear, all things considered. You have to wonder where they found that toilet paper, though. My local shops have been out of stock for a while.

Watch out for splinters – hands on with LEGO Originals 853967 Wooden Minifigure [Review]

A surprise announcement, a pop-up LEGO art gallery launch in London, and the start of a new line of LEGO products — 853967 Wooden Minifigure has had quite the introduction to the world. We’re not sure we’d call this a “set” as such, although it does feature a handful of regular LEGO bricks as well as the titular 20cm tall oak figurine. LEGO themselves describe the figurine as a “blank canvas” for personalisation and creative decoration. Whatever you want to call it, the wooden figure is available from Nov. 3, 2019, for VIP members, and Nov. 8 for everyone. It can be purchased from the LEGO Shop online for US $119.99 | CAN 154.99 | UK £109.99.

(EDIT: The wooden figure is also available from LEGO in bundles including a discount of up to $30 US when combined with various other LEGO products, including one 1,500-piece Classic set.)

Read our hands-on review of LEGO 853967 Wooden Minifigure

Open the gates!

Builder Louis of Nutwood packs a lot of story in a small space in this snow-covered castle scene. This is part 8 of a wonderful ongoing series by Louis, and not only is it visually interesting, but there’s a written component that accompanies each part of the heroes’ journey.

Svalg Keep

In this chapter, a pair of weary travelers, one in dire circumstances, arrive at Svalg Keep to seek help from its residents. The castle is nicely sculpted and I really like the way it seems to spill off of the confines of the base. The small wooden structures are a fitting addition and do a great job of breaking up the mostly gray and white color palette of the castle. Adding more color to the proceedings are the snow-laden trees utilizing fall colors on their branches. It can be hard to work in a limited number of colors, but Louis excels at it here.
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Some alone time in the Herbology Lab

Neville Longbottom is working overtime for that extra credit in this lovely scene by architeclego. A quick scroll through their Instagram feed shows architeclego’s skills at creating great models and a mastery over lighting and effects that really elevate their photos to the next level. This beautiful little Harry Potter themed creation is no exception!

While everyone else is out practicing their broom skills and spell casting, Neville is hard at work on his Herbology homework. His wand is at the ready and earmuffs firmly in place for working with the screaming mandrake root.The lab has a lived-in look with the many jars and plants scattered around the room and the two levels give the whole thing a nice sense of vertical scale. Ron’s rat Scabbers even makes an appearance, peeking out from behind the pots. It takes a deft hand to seamlessly use non-LEGO objects in a model, but architeclego does so here with great results. The real plants blend in quite nicely with their plastic counterparts and the spray of water in the greenhouse is a perfect dash of realism.

While the whole scene is fantastic, it’s the lighting and effects work that really make this scene shine. The daylight coming in through the windows looks authentic, but it’s the light beams coming from the greenhouse that provide the most impact. We all love seeing a nicely photographed LEGO model, but as this set up demonstrates, a little attention to lighting effects can really transcend the art form.

The Encroaching Empire

Order 66 has been executed. The Clone Wars have ended. Sith Lord Darth Vader has become Emperor Sheev Palpatine’s trusted enforcer, bringing Imperial order to an unruly galaxy. Tim Lydy has put his stamp on this era of turmoil with his first-ever Star Wars creation, and it is most excellent.

For the Empire!

I really love how cramped and chaotic the trench feels. However the highlight for me is the giant statue of Palpatine constructed out of Light Aqua which doesn’t really have a very extensive parts selection yet.

I also appreciate the effort Tim went to incorporating the writing on the side of the scene in Aurabesh, the Star Wars universe’s standard alphabet.

TBB alumnus Tim has been featured in the past for his work with superhero–themed models. I certainly wouldn’t mind if he dabbled in the Star Wars sandbox some more!

Get a deeper look into the iconic minifig with this anatomical model

There have been pictures showing anatomical diagrams of minifigs as far back as 2008 and brick-built versions starting in 2009, but this idea is still quite alive, as proven by Brixie63 with her latest creation. This half-dead minifig is not Brixie63’s first attempt at a scaled-up minifig — check out this Santa we featured last Christmas!

Bones

The minifig is built with the iconic red torso and blue legs on one half and a faithfully recreated skeleton on the other. The head is especially well built, capturing all the printing and curves with bricks facing all possible directions. I especially like the skeleton’s teeth made of 1×2 grill tiles.

When your keys become Christmas bells

During Christmas, many of us decorate our homes, trees and more, so why not our keys? Chungpo Cheng has the right idea with this classic Santa keychain creation.

Santa Claus Classic Key Chain

The only problem in this case would be finding keys large enough! The builder has super-sized the classic Santa Claus minifig which still used a pirate cap instead of the modern purpose-moulded piece. What is most amazing in this creation is not just the accurate recreation at the scale (those hands are especially cool!), but the fact that each individual body part is its own finished creation, as seen on the picture below!

Santa Claus Classic Key Chain

Now I really want to see a whole range of up-scaled minifig body parts that can be mixed and matched like the originals!

Water you talking about?

Sweden’s Andreas Lenander latest LEGO creation is a terrifying canoe ride right over the edge of a waterfall. These minifigures certainly appear as though they’re on an adventure they’re not likely to forget. I think what strikes me the most about this diorama is the palpable dynamic energy of the rushing water, free-floating figures, and tipping canoe as the river crests the edge of the cliff.

Adventure at the waterfall - AFOL vs AFOL 2018

You could argue that there’s nothing particularly innovative about the techniques on display, but what Andreas has achieved here with a few simple, repetitive pieces is really remarkable. It’s a strong exhibit of how purposeful prop placement (the minifigs, canoe, water) over background noise (plants, splashing water, textured rocks) can achieve a visually interesting composition.

Adventure at the waterfall - AFOL vs AFOL 2018 - closeup

This was the winning entry in Swebrick‘s head-to-head elimination AFOL-vs-AFOL contest, which for 2018 was based on Adventure. We’ve also featured Andreas here recently for his lifelike cigarette smoking in an ashtray and earlier this summer with his Titan starfighter.

Basement dwellers and brave adventurers alike

Henrik “teabox” Zwomp‘s adventure-themed LEGO diorama, titled From the Safety of the Basement, is a clever juxtaposition of real (minifigure) world players in their home as they venture forth through the not-so-real role-playing game world, complete with dungeon floor inlaid with the ubiquitous grid system. The wall texturing also provides a nice contrast to the scenes playing out in front of them, not too dissimilar from those achieved in our last D&D post, Mimic Mishap!

From the safety of the basement

It’s a compelling scenario that is played out all over the world by inspiring (and inspired) dungeon masters and their willing victims (er, players), who act out a type of choose-your-own adventure story with an infinite number of scenarios all dictated by the fateful roll of the dice. I especially appreciate that the basement room not only includes standard geeky paraphernalia on the walls but also books, a scale version of the dungeon map, and character sheets.

From the safety of the basement

You can dip into our archives to see some of Henrik’s past work like the microscale bullfighting scene, and sea serpent attack

For those following along at home, I’ve just gotten enough game experience to hit level 3 and got to pick an archetype for my character. Even though I’m often lost in the wealth of information in the game I’m helped along by my adventure companions and mostly-benevolent DM.

Brickfair Virginia: fourteen builders from six countries collaborate to commemorate the Vietnam War [Feature]

Last year, after Brickfair Virginia 2017, over a few drinks Magnus Lauglo, Aleksander Stein and I had a discussion on what to bring for 2018. The three of us have been attending BrickFair for years and have often admired the large collaborative displays at the event, with builders creating something together. Because of this we figured it would be nice for us to collaborate too rather than bringing our own stand-alone models. We soon agreed to build scenes from the Vietnam War.

I suspect that most ideas that come out of conversations in bars lead nowhere and that is probably a good thing. However, earlier this year we found that we were still pretty excited about this idea and we found that more people wanted to get involved. Ultimately, eleven more builders contributed (in no particular order): Peter Dornbach, Stijn van der Laan, Matt Hacker, Dean Roberts, Eínon, Evan Melick, Casey Mungle, Corvin, Yasser Mohran, Bret Harris and Brian Carter. Corvin, Aleksander and I are the only builders who don’t live in the US or Canada to regularly attend the Virginia event, but our Vietnam group turned out to be a pretty international crowd. We had builders who live in six different countries: the US, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, Norway and the Netherlands.

We picked Vietnam as the subject because we all watched classic Vietnam War movies when growing up, it is largely novel for most of us and it is far less common for military builds than models from, say, WW2. We considered building a single collaborative battle diorama, but chose to build separate scenes instead. It is hard to find a single battle that is actually interesting to build, as there is usually just a lot of terrain involved and multiple copies of trees, bunkers or vehicles. Separate scenes have the advantage of allowing different builders to give the subject their own twist. I was excited to see what the other guys came up with. The Vietnam War offers a lot of scope for building interesting military hardware, but we could also show some of the history, including the aftermath. Given the wide range of different models on display, we nailed it.

See more details and a gallery of the builds

Mimic Mishap: a Dungeons and Dragons LEGO adventure!

Taylor, of the Brandon and Taylor Walker building duo, has put out another entry in his Dungeons & Dragons series. As a newly-minted D&D player in the middle of his first adventure (I’m a half-elf Ranger with a sailor background who always follows orders, even if they’re wrong), I’m probably paying more attention to this one than I normally would have! There are five unique figures representing a range of the official character classes all facing off against a monstrous mimic treasure chest. The standout figure for me is the demonic tiefling with his mustache-for-horns. The floor and walls are also extremely well done, adding a patterned texture to offset the chaotic battle.

Mimic MishapAnd if you’re as hungry for more D&D LEGO content as I currently am, check out our archives for cool models featured previously!

Fighting “Yankee Air Pirates” with the S-75 missile

From the way pop culture depicts the war in Vietnam, one would think it was all about fighting guerillas, involving lots of helicopters, close combat in jungles or rice paddies and music by the Rolling Stones. However, the US was simultaneously fighting a high-tech war, with US combat aircraft bombing targets in the North and duelling with air defenses of ever-increasing sophistication. Peter Dorbach has expertly recreated some of the North’s main tools in their fight against the so-called “Yankee Air Pirates”: the “Fan Song” guidance radar and a matching missile with its launcher.

S-75 Dvina unit

These missile systems were part of the Soviet-built S-75 “Dvina” / SA-2 “Guideline” surface-to-air system. The comparison with the minifigs shows the size of these missiles. They had two stages and flew at 3.5 times the speed of sound. They weren’t particularly agile and they could be evaded, but this required careful timing. Initiating the evasive manoeuvre too soon gave the missile time to compensate. Manoeuvre too late and its massive warhead, with a 75 m blast radius, would do its job. S-75 missiles shot down dozens of aircraft during the conflict, with many crew members being killed or captured.

SM-90 launcher diorama (1)

The model is part of a Vietnam War collaboration that will be displayed at BrickFair Virginia this summer. A surface-to-air missile may be a slightly unusual choice of subject, but it is certainly historically significant. The introduction of these systems completely changed air warfare. The S-75 is famous for shooting down Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spyplane on a secret mission over Russia in 1960, and another over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It is a Cold War classic and amazingly is still in service in about two dozen countries almost 60 years later.