The seventh annual Creations for Charity sale starts today! From now until the end of November, you can buy a custom creation to help raise money to buy Lego sets for underprivileged children. These creations are all built and donated by the fans, and there’s more to come throughout the sale. Anyone can donate a creation before November 15th by visiting creationsforcharity.org and submitting a donation form. Take a look at some of the creations for sale so far:
Dave E. over on the Brickset forums has compiled a fascinating summary of the evolution of the LEGO palette over the past 40 years. Dave wrote an program to analyze the Brickset database, pulling part inventories for the last 40 years’ worth of sets. He says he ignored a few special themes known for their rampant use of unusual colors, such as Duplo and Fabuland.
This chart compiles the colors as a percentage of the total parts produced each year, so while a color’s percentage may decrease from one year to the next, its actual quantity produced may increase if LEGO manufactures more total pieces the next year. This chart also only accounts for a set’s release year, and not the subsequent years in which that set may have been produced, nor the quantities LEGO produces, so it only approximates what a collector would have if they were able to buy one copy of each set in its release year.
Shockingly, it’s been almost three weeks since I last posted a LEGO model of a urinal, so I’ll rectify that oversight immediately with this charming scale model made by Flickr member Ashton6460. I’m not sure what possesses people to build these things, but I’m not gonna overthink it. Enjoy…
The Grumman F-14 Tomcat was a big beast of a fighter, similar in size and weight to many WW2 bombers, but it could also carry a big punch in the form of four long-range air-to-air Phoenix missiles nestled under the fuselage and a Sidewinder and Sparrow missile under each of the wings. The jet and its armament were faithfully reproduced by Péter Dornbach (Dornbi). Like the real aircraft, his 1/48 scale model also has a working variable geometry ‘swing wing’.
It may be an old warrior by now, with the last examples in US Navy service having been retired almost ten years ago, but it’s still one of the coolest jet fighters in my book, certainly in the high-visibility colour schemes typical for the Seventies. Péter’s model is resplendent in the markings of Fighter Squadron 41 “The Black Aces”, aboard USS Nimitz in 1978. Excellent choice!
Brick to the Past is a British collective (and veritable Who’s Who of top-notch castle builders) that focuses on large historical LEGO displays. The team finally unveiled its 2015 opus at the STEAM expo this month, and it’s a real humdinger! Entitled The Wall, it’s an expansive and gorgeously detailed slice of Romano-Celtic life along both sides of Hadrian’s wall.
The Roman side features a full minifig scale fort, villa, temple, bath house, milecastle and town. Whilst the Celtic side features an Iron Age village, farmhouse and standing stones. All laid out amidst some great contoured landscaping and a long snaking section of the famous wall.
If I recall correctly, we reported on a community poll that LEGO conducted a few years ago, to gather suggestions for possible future LEGO themes. And if also I recall correctly, a large number of you cried out for a Roman theme. So while we wait and hope for LEGO to finally see the light, I thoroughly recommend you get your fix by checking out all the detailed photos of this awesome display.
Today on Week of Wonders, we talk about SHIPs that have that real world vibe that were built as a part of last month’s SHIPtember contest.
Most of the time spacers tend to build fantastic ships from far in the future with Warp Engines or Hyper Drives and all sorts of make believe techno-babble inventions. But there’s a certain few who take a more realistic approach to their spaceships, taking inspiration from today’s space technology and pushing it out just a few years…
Tyler H has created this near-future high altitude bomber, the B-5 MANTA:
At just under 100 studs long, and 144 studs wide, this lovely near space ship has a great shape and I just love the integrated lights and the bottom detailing with the combination of studs up and studs down construction.
Going slightly further into the future, Damien Labrousse (legodrome) has created this inter-planetary traveler, the Galactik Bricks:
The dockable shuttles are just a fantastic touch, and I really like the shaping he has put in the front with the spinning habitat section.
And finally, going far into depths of space is Nathan Proudlove (Proudlove) and his Deep Space Explorer Intrepid:
With its radiation shield (required for deep space travel) this 5 foot (or 1.5meter) model is a true interstellar ship. Nathan has thought about what a real world Benny would need on his travels, and has included habitats, science labs, communication array, solar panels, and of course a SPACESHIP! for exploring those far away worlds.
Talented multi-theme builder Joshua Brooks isn’t just about giant Waterloo dioramas and beautiful castle gardens, he’s also a solid train builder. His latest engine is an EMD SD40-2 locomotive in Burlington Northern livery that would look great as TBB livery as well. The railings and brick-built “BN” lettering on the engine are excellent details, while the setting gives the impression of the train speeding through the great American West.
When it comes to scale models of sea vessels, Dutch builder Arjan Oude Kotte is in a class of his own. When he unveiled a gigantic minifig scale version of rescue vessel the Grampian Don a couple of years ago, we were impressed by all the details and his sculpting of its bulbous bow. But in preparing to show the model at the STEAM expo, Arjan finally completed it with decals, a daughter ship, and built-in lighting, making for one of the most atmospheric and realistic presentations of a LEGO model that I’ve seen in a long time. I can almost feel the cold sea air!
After a hiatus of several months, Jon Hall has returned with this lovely little fighter with a giant rotating Gatling gun on its nose. My own favorite detail is the air intake in front of the cockpit.
See more photos in Jon’s photoset on Flickr. Jon says he’s back to building after a move, so I can’t wait to see what he shares next!
Well, it happens to the best of us, I guess. While I was at work, TBB went down again, and I’ve just gotten the site back up after several hours of intermittent downtime. While MySQL database repairs, Apache rebuilds, and PHP version upgrades all help in the short term, Brothers-Brick.com has been running on the same physical hardware for too long. Unfortunately, migrating to new or upgraded hardware isn’t free.
Photo by TBB Server Downtime Contest winner Leopold Mao
While we try to be good LEGO community members by sponsoring contests and events using the extra funds our loyal readers help us with, there’s also the very unsexy, much less visible business of hosting a website that receives several hundred thousand visitors a month.
So, to get us to the point where we can consider migrating Brothers-Brick.com to an improved server, you can help by buying your LEGO from the LEGO Shop online and clicking through from Brothers-Brick.com when you make any Amazon.com purchase. That’s right, any Amazon.com purchase — not just LEGO. Buy your next HDTV, paperback, music MP3, or Post-It notes from Amazon, and you’re helping The Brothers Brick at no extra cost to you.
Welcome to the second installment of the Week of Wonders: SHIPtember edition. Today we’ll take a look at some of the more unconventional SHIPs that were built during this year’s SHIPtember contest.
Usually ship builders will base their builds on some existing ships, or designs and influences from movies, games or books. Then there are builders that just go a completely different route and create something truly unique.
Chris Perron (thebrickbin) leads the pack with this unconventional Castle ship, the Astral Voyager:
With a combination of fantastic rockwork, integrated castles and volcano engines, the Wizard Chris has managed to create a believable magical flying rock space ship.
Alysa Kirkpatrick (d2hiriyuu) has built this Dyson Sphere, a spaceship that is wrapped around a sun, which she calls Astra Luminaria: 
One of the most interesting parts of this build, besides possibly being the biggest SHIP we’ve seen built to date, was that the entire build is a series of geometric shapes, which means that it was easy for her to calculate that there were exactly 20,012 parts used.
Last but not least, (ska2d2) has this … well I’m not really sure best to describe this… I guess as the name implies, looks a bit like a Dragonfly :
What I really liked about this isn’t just the cool build, and strong colour blocking, but the fact that it was based on a Concept Sketch that he did prior to building.
I never thought the Lego T-Rex head would be so perfect for a dino pincher until Takamichi Irie built one. Even though I know it isn’t functional, I’d still give it a squeeze if I had my hands on it.
