Yearly Archives: 2014

BrickNerd Pledge Drive

Friend and fellow LEGO-nerd Tommy Williamson is offering up the chance for some sweet, sweet BrickNerd swag over on his site.

Tommy is running a pledge drive to continue to provide you with excellent online content and swag for Fan Events. All of this costs money in terms of purchasing equipment and give-away items and in return, he’s got sets, MOCs, and Nerdly goodies as a surprise and thank-you for your support.

There are many, many different ways to support your favorite fan-sites, and we appreciate every one of you who take the time to use our click-through ads to Amazon and Lego Shop at Home. We do all of this for you, our readers, and love being able to bring you great posts, content, or whatever it is your favorite LEGO fan site provides!

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.

War Doll is a Stampy Good Time

Brian Kescenovitz (mondayn00dle) brings us a fantastic little mecha. The first thing that struck me was the bulbous cockpit area, shaped out of bionicle pieces, it’s an awesome shape and great use of parts. The mecha also features some great piston-like details along the legs, interesting weapons, and an overall futuristic military feel I enjoy.

Friday Night Fights – Fire trucks

Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another round of Friday Night Fights. Since large parts of this blog’s ancestral homeland (Washington State) seem to be going up in smoke this week, we thought it appropriate to turn our attention to mini-fig scale fire trucks.

In the shiny red corner, we have Isaac Mazer and his super-accurate Rescue 134, inspired by an engine from an actual ladder company of the same name, in his native Toronto:

In the even shinier redder corner, Galaktek takes a step away from the real world and goes future-retro with the FutureCity Fire Engine from the planet Incendia XII (which sounds like it probably needs a lot of fire trucks).

As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding, by way of comment, which truck is destined for glory and which is destined to rust in the fire house. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, Concept Art Ships, Jake nailed it to the wall in an 11-4 showdown against Alexander. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!

Be the leaf

It’s a “Summer of Korra” for Avatar fans, with the 3rd season of The Legend of Korra now in full swing on Nickelodeon. We’ve seen Korra go through some big changes in the first two seasons, and the title of the new season is ‘Change’ …go figure.

Letranger Absurde hasn’t wasted any time getting in on the action with this exquisite vignette featuring a minifig Korra demonstrating multiple bending techiques, while her trusty steed Naga looks on. The construction of the water spout (or could it be a Sharknado, I wonder??) is particularly nice.

The Naga model appears to be fully posable (…thankyou Mixels!) and ready for Korra to ride. The Avatar has also been given the perfect sassy expression: “I’m the Avatar, and you gotta deal with it!”

The Wise Owl... Of Space

Alexander (Malydilnar) brings us a cool space fighter. This ship caught my eye, as I recognized it as inspired by the work of one of my favorite concept artists, Karanak. Ironically, this is one of my least favorite illustrations, and I thought I didn’t like the style of the ship. Seeing it assembled in Lego, though, my opinion has changed. Great job Alexander!

To the stars aboard ships of the Cervine Royal Fleet

I have a special place in my heart for a fun fleet of microscale LEGO spaceships — it’s a challenge maintaining a consistent visual style that ties the fleet together, and it can stretch your LEGO collection in your chosen colors. Chris Boen (Mos Doomsday) succeeds rather well with his fleet of six substantial ships clearly inspired by the stripy Homeworld aesthetic.

Granted, the sleek, striped skin around a dark gray “technical” core is nothing new among LEGO space shipwrights, but the central battleship has some interesting shaping and I like the brutish-looking destroyer near the back. Regardless, it’s an impressive fleet with a clear common theme.

Should an emergency arise, the Varys medical/rescue vessel is ready to provide aid.

I knew I had to blog these when both appeared in my “to blog” folder…

Banana Slug

This crazy conglomeration of tiny twee turrets and giant crazy treads, all decked out in a blindingly yellow color scheme is somewhere in the middle of terrifying and adorable. Huib Versteeg calls it the Obnoxiously Yellow Landship. I call it awesome.

The Brothers Brick present BRICKNADO, a Sharknado building contest!

We at The Brothers Brick love predatory fish and extreme weather. So we’re huge fans of SyFy’s high-brow political thriller and romantic comedy Sharknado. But we also love ridiculous New York movie stereotypes, such as rude cabbies and the pointless destruction of famous landmarks. Not surprisingly then, we’re positively shark-static about the new follow-up movie Sharknado 2: The Second One which airs July 30th on the SyFy channel. We’ll be glued to our TV’s, popcorn in one hand, bucket of chum in the other, for 2 hours of deeply thought-provoking chainsaw-tastic aquatic mayhem.

SyFy is planning Sharknado Week in celebration of its new movie. But we felt that LEGO fans deserved to be a part of that experience too. Our solution…

The Rules of Bricknado

Build a LEGO model! It can feature sharks, nados, chainsaws, New York references, celebrity cameos, whatever you like! Anything goes, the funnier and sillier the better.

Then add one photo of your creation to the Bricknado group on Flickr. You are welcome to submit more than one creation, but The Brothers Brick reserve the right to BITE YOUR FACE OFF if you overdo it! No digital creations are allowed.

All entries must be submitted before July 28th.

Fabulous prizes to be won!

We will announce 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners on the 30th, right before the movie airs. Winners will get to choose (in winning order) from one of the following prizes:

• Rare San Diego Comic Con official Sharknado t-shirt, mens large [donated by Mariann Asanuma]
• “Ye Olde Bag-o-Sharks” [a dozen LEGO sharks, old variety]
• Sharknado pop vinyl figure
• Sharknado on Blu-Ray

You can also expect plenty of honorable mentions, and perhaps a mystery bonus prize or two!

Disclaimer

They’re sharks, they’re scary, and no-one wants to get eaten. But I’ve been eaten, and it takes a lot more than that to bring a good man down, and even more than that to bring a New Yorker down! This is the Big Apple… If something bites us, we bite back. So forget the umbrella, grab a chainsaw, and let’s kill some sharks!

The Art of LEGO Design book review

The Art of LEGO Design is a book written by Jordan Schwartz about ways to approach creative building. This book is the first of its kind focused on building tips. It is now available on Amazon. Below is my review of the book.

Pros:

Features interviews with builders who have iconic building styles
Thorough depiction of Jordan’s own building style
Content includes specific examples as well as general concepts

Cons:

Specific topics such as Fabuland and cloth accessories nudge out broader themes like train, military, Technic, Bionicle

Jordan has covered a lot of ground and touched on most major themes in Lego creations. This is a huge task for just one author and Jordan handled it pretty well. This book can be interesting to both novice and experienced builders because it offers the in-depth perspective of the author who is a jack of all trades builder along with that of about a dozen builders known for excelling in particular themes. Outside the builder interviews, the book is entirely focused on Jordan’s own views on Lego design and most models featured are his own. This is relevant if you want to look through the lens of one builder and learn the specifics of that person’s approach. It is not meant to be a reference for how to build in every major theme, but for new fans this book can be a nice springboard into making your own creations.

Boba Fret performing his guitar Solo

Individually, Star Wars, chibi-fication, rock music and dark humor will make everything 20% cooler. Scientific fact. But combine all these things together and that’s, er… Ok, well math is not my strong point. But it’s clear what Kevin Ryhal‘s strong point is:

Life’s A Beach in Lego World

At least, it is for the residents of Miro Dudas’ (miro78) Lego world. His beach side fruit stand captures a nice tropical flavor. The small scene is packed with little details that take one to the islands. I think my favorite is the inclusion of a scooter, which brings me plenty of beach associations.

I need a vacation.

Turtle Insanity

The LEGO Group and Eurobricks have teamed up to help celebrate the release of Pete Reid’s Exo Suit with a Turtle building contest.

I decided to take my own stab at building some turtles, creating an adorable little turtle facing off with turtle inspired Exo-Suit.

Hopefully we will see a whole lot more fun Turtle creations this month.