Yearly Archives: 2013

The LEGO Build-it Book: Amazing Vehicles, out Jun 2013 [Exclusive Excerpts]

No Starch Press continues building a library of LEGO books this year with their forthcoming The LEGO Build-It Book, Vol. 1: Amazing Vehicles, due out on June 22. The book features LEGO vehicle designs by Dutch builder Nathanaël Kuipers and Swiss builder Mattia Zamboni.

The book will feature step-by-step instructions for ten vehicles that you can build from the same LEGO bricks, ranging from a stroller to a rescue truck.

To whet your building appetite, we have an exclusive preview of pages from the instructions for the Off-Roader, Go-Kart, Muscle Car, Street Car, and Rescue Truck models (click through for large photos).

The LEGO Build-It Book, Vol. 1: Amazing Vehicles is available for pre-order from Amazon.com and No Starch Press.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

The Marine Air-Ground Task Force, on station over the landship Pugnacious

I love it when two builders play off of each other, posting an escalating series of LEGO models, whether part of an semi-official “build-off” or just a casual coincidence of when they both happen to be building in a similar theme or scale.

A week or so ago, Karf Oohlu posted this lovely — and heavily-armed — microscale “landship” dubbed Pugnacious.

Stijn (Red Spacecat) responded today with a formidable force of his own, led by the massive U557-Warthog hovership. I say “massive” not because the model itself is huge — it can’t be more than six or eight inches long — but because all the detail and the accompanying smaller vehicles leave you with an impression of immensity.

Perhaps this might have been best saved for Keith’s next “Friday Night Fight,” but I have to ask: Who would win?

The Lonely Tree

I spotted this the other day, and simply needed to share. There are some brilliant trees floating about in the general LEGO universe, and I love spotting techniques that add character, brilliance, and stand out amongst the others.

Enter the Lonely Tree, by Luke Watkins Hutchinson (Derfel Cadarn).

I love the way the tree twists and turns.

You can see more of his beautiful builds (landscaping, building detail, take your pick!) here!

LEGO Lone Ranger sets out now from Amazon and LEGO Shop [News]

The movie won’t hit theaters for nearly three months, but the new line of six new LEGO sets from The Lone Ranger is out now from both Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop online.

First, be sure to check out our reviews so far of the new sets (more to come):

Links to Amazon.com, with free shipping on orders over $25 and no sales tax in most states:

And here are the links for the LEGO Shop, which currently has free shipping on orders over $75:

US: The Lone Ranger sets on the LEGO Shop
Canada: The Lone Ranger sets on the LEGO Shop
UK: LEGO Shop online (I can’t link to the theme page, for some reason, but the sets are all there if you search)

Finally, a brief reminder that when you click through from The Brothers Brick, a portion of every sale on Amazon.com (not just LEGO, by the way) and the LEGO Shop online goes to support the site, including our sponsorship of events like the SEALUG LEGO display at Emerald City Comicon last month and BrickCon each year. Whether you click through from us or from another favorite LEGO site, you’re helping the LEGO fan community (at no additional cost to you).

How the Face of Boe saved the Doctor, Martha, and New New York

Well, I won’t actually tell you — you’ll have to watch the show — but Thorsten Bonsch (Xenomurphy) has continued his series of scenes celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who with two scenes from the 2007 episode “Gridlock”.

First, Thorsten has recreated the incredible scene in which the Doctor and Martha encounter the world’s largest traffic jam:

But my favorite of Thorsten’s scenes so far is from the end of the same episode, in which the Doctor has an important encounter with the Face of Boe:

Monochrome Ruins in LEGO

Recently the Polish LEGO club LUGPol ran a challenge to build a monochrome LEGO model. I think we can agree that Hippotam more than succeeded in meeting the challenge and making a great model with his “Destruction of Pompeii“. I’d like to see more people try building in just one colour.

John Lennon LEGO Mosaic

I thought this was a fitting follow-up post to Andrew’s, considering John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Bed-Ins for Peace. The appropriateness of the subject matter aside, Arthur Gugik’s use of printed tiles is a really unique technique to create a LEGO mosaic, and one that adds a subtle colour variation.

The Spinning Wheel

It’s hard to find a meaningful way to move on here on our silly little LEGO blog in the face of complex world events. As a former resident of Boston who lived directly on the marathon route, my heart goes out to the city, to all my friends back in Massachusetts, and to the victims and their families — one of whom was an eight-year-old boy. One of the beautiful things we humans do in the face of evil is to refuse to allow it to rule our lives. So, despite the pain and sadness we all must feel, we’re going to move forward today.

During the non-violent campaign for India’s independence, Mohandas Gandhi used the spinning wheel as a symbol of Indian self-sufficiency and resiliency — a positive symbol in the face of evil oppression and cruel violence. Michael Jasper posted this yesterday before the bombings in Boston, but I think it’s a fitting LEGO model to highlight first as we push ahead.

As always, Michael uses LEGO elements in wholly unexpected ways; his spinning wheel includes magnets, bucket handles, robot arms, and Technic chain links.

Pods r us

Anyone following my flickr account will know I posted this LEGO repair pod a few days ago. But, thanks to a) the arrival of my new lightbox and b) my rediscovery of Kerouac’s account I figured the time was right for a posting. re. a) I was finally inspired enough by TR’s light tent fun to buy one myself.

As for b)… the ultimate LEGO pods ever were made by Kerouac way back in time. These may have been blogged before but are worthy of reblogging by virtue of their awesomeness. If I could make a pod half this good I’d consider myself a winner.

This Jolly Roger transforms

If I were checking out TBB right now, I’d probably think something along the lines of: ‘oh no, not another mecha!’ However, my excuse for blogging this model by daikoncat is that this is not just any old mecha; it’s the Skull Leader from the Macross saga.

I used to watch the series as a child (although I knew it as Robotech). In fighter mode, the Valkyrie resembles the F-14 Tomcat and the Skull Leader’s markings are obviously based on the US Navy’s ‘Jolly Rogers’ squadron. As a big Tomcat fan and a big fan of the Jolly Rogers, I loved it and I love this model.

This is not the first Valkyrie we’ve blogged, but it does look super-poseable. Mecha don’t get much cooler.

Tank-Spank

Flickr user Dryvvall had teased us with some quite stunning creations last May, and then slowly slid back into the shadows. Well I am happy to see that he is posting again.

The recent posts are chock full of fabulous designs, but this shot in particular caught my eye and tickled my funny bone.

As Dryvvall explains:
A corporate Fenrir takes on an MBT. This tactic is known colloquially as the Ghetto Stomp or the Tank-Spank. The crafty ‘mech has denied the tank its main cannon.

It also appears that we missed this fantastic dropship from last August.

Please be sure to peruse through Dryvvall’s full photostream…he is certainly a builder to keep an eye on.

Out with the old, in with the new – revising and updating older LEGO models

For a long time I used non-LEGO plastic canopies on my aircraft and helicopter models, but in the last two years I have been steadily replacing them with purist brick-built ones. Usually while I was doing this, I also fixed up some other issues.

I have had models of an RA-5C Vigilante, A-7E Corsair II and F-14A Tomcat for more than ten years. The models represent aircraft that were assigned to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, in 1978, and carry high-visibility markings that were typical for US Navy jets in the Seventies. The models were showing their age: their stickers were peeling, they were built with somewhat grubby-looking old grey LEGO, some of the white parts dated back to my childhood and were pretty badly yellowed and, finally, I have picked up a fair few new parts and tricks since I built them. They are the final three models that still had non-LEGO canopies.

The new models are built with new grey and I gave all of them new stickers. The Tomcat had been updated before, and apart from the canopy, its shape remained the same during the rebuild. The other two jets, however, were rebuilt from the ground up. I hope you agree they now look good to go for another decade.