Yearly Archives: 2015

10-foot-long LEGO Model of 1930s Danish Ship MS Jutlandia

Some builds just put me at a loss for words, and this is one of them. The real MS Jutlandia was launched in 1934, and is an impressive 461 feet long. She started her life as a passenger vessel and served time during both WWII and the Korean War. She spent some time as a royal vessel, and was scrapped in 1965.

Arjan Oude Kotte (Konajra) has created this absolutely stunning minifig scale version of this lovely ship. This beautiful build ultimately took 11 months, with 5 months to design and 6 months to build. The ship itself is over 10 feet (3.25 meters) long, and stands nearly 5 feet (1.5 meters) high. He estimates 90,000-100,000 pieces total, bringing this ship to life.

I encourage you to pour over the details in the flickr gallery, which includes some WIP photos.

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.

Grab your torch and pitchfork

As our previous post revealed, the current round of Iron Builder is already hotting up. But French builder Jimmy Fortel is not about to give up the title to his Romanian challenger without a fight!

Did you know your body uses a quarter of the calories you consume, just to keep your brain running? Which probably explains why this husky fellow is so desperate for a second helping:

And if you haven’t figured out what this round’s fiendishly useless ‘seed part’ is yet, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out from Jimmy’s next entry. The great part about this particular seed part is that the contestants can stab themselves with it while waiting for inspiration to strike.

Bizarre brick beasts from beyond: Cthulhu and the Mammoth

Flickr user Letranger Absurde has been churning out brilliant beasties for Iron Builder, and his two newest creations are awesome. First up, there’s this insanity-inducing Cthulhu crouching over a greyscale cityscape, ready to unleash his indescribable horror upon the helpless denizens.

Next is a creature of eons past, that great wooly beast of the north, the Mammoth. The remains of which are still occasionally discovered intact, Mammoths ranged our planet during the last Ice Age, and while likely no more aggressive than modern pachyderms, would have been terrifying nonetheless for their enormity. This example, however, ranges more to the cute end of the spectrum, with large docile eyes and derpy stare.

Win LEGO with the TBB Server Downtime Contest! [News]

Here at The Brothers Brick, we run the site in our spare time, funded by our loyal readers who support costs like our servers and bandwidth by clicking through from here when you make LEGO Shop and Amazon.com purchases. For months at a time, our servers just hum away happily, until something goes terribly, horribly awry. Since last Thursday, the site has gone down four times, with total downtime of nearly a day. Yikes!

We’re all a little sad about this here at the TBB Compound (especially that pesky Lemur, who gets particularly mopey), but you can help cheer us up by building or drawing something funny that illustrates TBB server problems.

By the way, that’s Linus Torvalds on the right. TBB runs on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and the rest of the usual Open Source stack. Linus invented Linux and named it after himself. I’m pretty sure our downtime isn’t his fault, but I’ll use this minifig of him to illustrate this post anyway.

To enter, submit your photos or artwork to the TBB Server Downtime Contest pool on Flickr. Questions? Ask away here or in the discussions on Flickr…

Here are the prize categories:

TBB is Down Again! Build or draw something showing what happens when Brothers-Brick.com goes down. What’s happening behind the scenes at the TBB Server Farm on the TBB Compound? What do you do yourself?
404 Page Not Found Build or draw something illustrating the age-old website error.
A. Lemur did it! Build or draw something putting the blame squarely on A. Lemur. It’s probably his fault anyway…

Unlike most LEGO-related contests, we welcome brick-built creations, well-rendered virtual creations, and artwork — if you’ve spotted A. Lemur in the wild, we want to know!

We’ll run the contest through the end of the month, and the top prize will get a LEGO set in the $100 range, to make this worth your while (with more cool prizes for the other two winners).

Get building!

Iron Man high-five

We’ve seen quite a few Iron Man builds here on TBB: his head; his heart; his entire body; in mosaic form; and perhaps most amusingly: the custom Hulkbuster minifig (in LEGO Hulk scale).

But what we haven’t seen is a build of Iron Man’s repulsor glove. So give Jonas (Legopard) a hand for, well… his Iron Man hand:

Oh, and dear reader you are absolutely right, it does light up:

Guess who’s coming to dinner

In what can only be described as “best part usage of the month”, Paddy Bricksplitter used the oversized minifig head from his LEGO Art Carousel to create this perfectly staged vignette entited “Attack Of The 50 foot mini figure“. Although I think “50 inch” would have done pretty well too!

I’m digging the trendy furnishings of this downtown apartment, which appear to include a Mondrian, and the forced perspective skyscrapers in the background, and OH MY GOD THERE’S A GIANT HEAD OUTSIDE THE WINDOW (ﾉﾟοﾟ)ﾉ

Character building

After almost a decade, LEGO’s café corner series seems to be as popular as ever. And while it’s not uncommon to see fan-created additions to the range, I’m particularly impressed by the collection that Flickr member Jme Wheeler has amassed:

But these are more than just pretty facades… The lively design and color scheme of each multi-story building continues on the inside, with a staggering amount of detail showing mini-fig citizens going about their daily lives. So much detail in fact, that a couple of example images just can’t do them justice! So I encourage you to visit the builder’s Flickr stream to enjoy the inner beauty of their Music Shop, Heartstone Bakery, Pip’s Salon and L. Rivendell Museum of Natural History for yourself.

Kenbishi Industries R2600

Our friend Pascal (pasukaru76) must have been watching Ghost in the Shell recently, as he’s built a fantastic “think tank” (basically a robotic tank mecha) inspired by the one in the movie. Pascal describes it as a close cousin, and that works for me. The build achieves some simple geometric shapes, which on close inspection prove to be rather elegant implementations of complex techiques, for instances at the angles at the base of the legs. The use of stickers on the model is also top-notch, and really brings it to a higher level.

LEGO Elves 41076 Farran and the Crystal Hollow [Review]

Last week I reviewed the littlest Elves set. Today, I’ve got 41076 Farran and the Crystal Hollow. I picked them up at Toys R Us; I’m happy to report it is now available on the LEGO Shop online. This set has 175 pieces for $14.99.

I admittedly wasn’t sure how I felt about this one at first, since it’s fairly simplistic. From the box, it looked like a tree with some trans green and trans blue pieces. I found that once I was done, I really quite liked it. Shocking, I know.

Continue reading →

Young LEGO Fan shows incredible generosity [News]

The Brothers Brick alumni Paul Lee shares with us the following heartwarming story:

Like most boys his age, Zachary Rogers, age 9, is a huge LEGO fan and a huge Minecraft fan. So when LEGO started a Minecraft line, you can be certain he was excited. According to his mom, Jill, he had been saving up for some time to buy the largest set in the Minecraft line, 21118 The Mine. He had saved $120 in total, which would have been more than enough.

But then, earlier this week, the school held an assembly for Pennies for Patients (http://www.penniesforpatients.org/). Pennies for Patients is a youth program from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in which students are encouraged to collect spare change to help their mission to ”cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.”

This hit particularly close to home because, in the last year, his friend, Jordan Williams, a fellow LEGO mega fan, lost his life to leukemia. So, on his own, in an incredible act of generosity for a 9 year old, Zack donated the entire $120 he saved to Pennies for Patients. His mom says, “I love that he decided to help kids instead of spending money on himself.”

It’s good to know there are really amazing kids with good hearts out there like Zack. If you want to help, you too can donate to Pennies for Patients.

Oh, and what about little Zachary and his dream of a LEGO Minecraft set? Our friends at Bricknerd will have a special review from him. Though Tommy is tight lipped on what set he’ll review…

Joe’s prancing stallion looks ready to gallop

It is probably due to my own bias, but I know Joe Perez (Mortalsworsman) as a car guy. Looking at the various models of his that we’ve blogged over the years, however, a rather different theme emerges: poseable figures.

Latest in line is this beautiful and very lifelike black stallion.

Bricktrix will make you jump, jump

The history of aviation is littered with failed attempts at building an aircraft that can fly like a jet but take-off and land like a helicopter. One of the few successful exceptions is the British Harrier ‘jump jet’, recreated by Carl Greatrix (Bricktrix)

Key to the jet’s ability to take-off vertically is that its thrust can be vectored by rotating the four engine exhaust nozzles vertically down. These are present on the model, of course, and it is finished in Carl’s typical style, with finely crafted lines, a few custom working lighting elements and expert sticker work to recreate the camouflage pattern. The only thing missing, really, is that it can’t actually fly.