Brothers Brick LEGO Builder of the Year 2017 [News]

Every day the team here at The Brothers Brick brings you the best LEGO models from the global community of LEGO builders. Their creations amuse, inspire, and excite us on a daily basis. However, each year there are a handful of builders who take things to new heights, able to turn their hands to a wide variety of building styles, and wow us with their mastery of building techniques and parts.

Brothers Brick is delighted to name Jonas Kramm as our LEGO Builder of the Year 2017.

TBB LEGO Builder of the Year 2017

Jonas has had an astonishing year of building — multiple models, many of them featured here, across a range of building styles, not to mention an excellent performance in Iron Builder (the highest-profile and most stressful LEGO community building competition out there). We’ve loved seeing everything he’s put together during 2017, and we hope you’ll enjoy this retrospective look at his last twelve months…

Jonas started the year competing in an Iron Builder competition, which had him using a green Duplo grass piece in all his models for the month. This is a classic example of a part many would describe as a “one use” piece — one of those “bad parts” which is overly unique (not to mention the fact that it’s Duplo). A stroll through Jonas’ creations is the perfect counterpoint to that argument.

First we have Jonas’ use of the piece as roofs for a tiny woodland neighbourhood — a gathering of lovely dwellings fit for the choosiest fairies.

The Root Kingdom

The key to great LEGO parts-usage is imagining what alternate orientations of a piece could represent, or what the piece might represent at a different scale. Jonas did a great job with his thatched roofs, but for me, one of his smartest uses of the Duplo grass was in this dripping candle creation. Simply brilliant creativity coupled with some nice shaping.

Candle

Even better, is when a builder takes a part and uses it in a totally counter-intuitive fashion. With this model of the Gameboy Advance, Jonas used the base and innards of the grass piece to represent the cartridge slot — inspired.

The Toy I Never Had

Moving on from his Iron Builder creations, Jonas displayed his skills as a builder in the Castle theme. His medieval construction site was beautifully done with lots of little details giving the scene an impressive depth of texture.

Medieval contruction site

Jonas proved he was no slouch on the vehicle front either, with this fierce-looking roadster from Mad Max: Fury Road. It captured the look perfectly and saw the start of a period where Jonas seemed to take his building inspiration from some of the largest sci-fi, fantasy, and gaming franchises.

Mad Max | Plymouth Rock

His version of Impa’s House from Zelda: Breath of the Wild was immediately recognisable — its detailed architecture and equally-impressive interior instantly evoking the spirit of the Nintendo masterpiece.

Impa's House

The Walking Dead was next on Jonas’ building list, and he created a fabulous scene of a prison fence delaying the advance of a shuffling horde of zombies. Jonas’ trademark attention to detail was on display here with a mix of texturing effects and more and more interesting little touches appearing the closer you look at the model.

The Walking Dead - Prison

A colourful microscale version of the house from Up provided some relief from zombie attacks, and showcased some nice parts uses. Check out the construction of that porch!

Up

And Harry Potter made an appearance in Jonas’ 2017 portfolio with a cool vignette of the famous Kings Cross scene. This was a really clever little model, with the trolley disappearing into the wall executed brilliantly.

Getting to Platform 9 3/4

And then, not content with dabbling in steampunk flying machines and cute Christmas decorations, Jonas brought us a large Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag diorama. Once again, the depth of texture and detail on display was impressive, with well-built trees, beautiful water effects, buildings with an appropriate level of patched-up repair, and a nice capturing of the feel of the game.

Black Flag

All-in-all, it’s an incredible body of work, made all the more impressive for being only twelve months’ worth of output. Further, the examples above don’t cover everything Jonas built this year, nor even everything of his we covered here on TBB!

He’s had a stunning year consistently raising the bar with each new LEGO creation, and that’s why Jonas Kramm is the Brothers Brick LEGO Builder of the Year 2017.

Check out our LEGO Builder of the Year 2016 and see what illustrious company Jonas is keeping.

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