Yearly Archives: 2017

The secret weapon of Scuderia Ferrari

As Sebastian Vettel spectacularly claims his 50th pole position in the yesterday’s qualifying session of the Mexican Grand Prix, there is no better time to look back at the car that has won the very same race in 1970 — the legendary Ferrari 312B. A stunning 1:8 scale copy of the car by Greg998 captures all the glory of the machine that once was called “the secret weapon” of Ferrari and which brought the team 10 wins and more than 20 pole positions.

Of course, the part that deserves the most attention is the legendary flat-12 engine in the back of 312B. Bonus points are for shiny chrome round plates!

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An exercise in loft poetics

You don’t need a lot of LEGO bricks to build something fascinating. Moreover, you only need a handful of plates and tiles to tell your viewers a (love) story. Nikita Lazarev explores modern spacious lofts, which seem to be so empty that every smallest detail becomes too important to be neglected. And once you’ve pictured the owners of the room, even that huge empty wall and a cold wide window suddenly become sweet and cozy.

A hell of a good character

Hellboy has long-been a favourite subject for builders. We’ve featured our fair of LEGO Hellboy creations in the past. But this version by LEGO 7 is an absolute cracker. Built at a premium action figure scale, this has poseability to match the fine sculpting. Hellboy’s horn stumps and massive right fist are perhaps the defining features of the character, but this model faithfully captures other elements of Mike Mignola’s creation — the coat with its long tails, the defined abs, and the Samaritan pistol. I particularly like the beard and sideburns, something hard to recreate at this scale. This is LEGO character building at its finest.

Jump up and get down

We like when LEGO builders take on the task of trying to recreate famous artworks, or reimagine the styles of well-known artists through the medium of brick. Grantmasters takes on Keith Haring’s iconic cartoon pop-art in this cool little creation. I had to take a closer look to scope out the selection of curved black pieces Grant used to provide the signature outline to the red character — nicely done. The stripped-back colour schemes of Haring’s work obviously lend themselves well to the LEGO palette, and the collection of black “motion marks” are perfectly-placed to echo Haring’s style.

The arrival of the Blue Comet

Fancy a train trip to New Jersey? Make sure you have your ticket booked as the iconic Blue Comet by Cale Leiphart is arriving! Its thoroughly designed body measures more than 40 studs in length and features a ton of the tiniest elements: valves, sand and steam domes, levers and regulators — all in blue, which makes this build a remarkable assembly of LEGO parts in regular blue color.

And it wouldn’t be a proper locomotive without a full set of carriages. As usual, Flick album has all the details of this impressive train.

LEGO Ideas 21312 Women of Nasa [Review]

LEGO recently unveiled its latest LEGO Ideas set, 21312 Women of Nasa. The set includes four minifigures depicting women astronauts, scientists, and engineers from throughout the US space program’s history. LEGO sent The Brothers Brick an early review copy of the set, which is due out on November 1st.

While the minifigures are certainly the heroes of the set, the set also includes three mini-builds, with 231 pieces. When released, the set will retail for $24.99. Given the science-oriented, minifig-centric nature of both LEGO Ideas sets, comparisons to 21110 Research Institute will be inevitable among LEGO fans, and we’ll do our best to compare and contrast them along the way.

Click through to read our full review of LEGO Ideas 21312 Women of Nasa

Learn from a LEGO master at the Royal Academy

There’s a whole medieval world created by LEGO fan builders as part of a role-playing game called Nine Kingdoms hosted by German-language site RogueBricks. Even RPGs need educational institutions and Markus Rollbühler has built the Royal Academy, a place for students to come and learn from the masters. There are lots of interesting LEGO techniques that we can also study at the Royal Academy with some fine LEGO construction and parts use on show. My eye was immediately drawn to the tree, with its foliage uniquely constructed using plumes of green feathers. I also love the bird’s nest sitting on the roof of the Academy, my ornithological knowledge is rather limited but it looks like a stork has made a home up there.

There are almost too many gems to mention, as the Academy itself has some lovely architectural details such as the beautifully shaped dormer windows. Can you spot the brown minifigure hockey sticks in the scene? There’s a lot to love in this creation and if you like this build, you will certainly enjoy spending a quiet summer evening at Markus’ windmill.

2018 LEGO set images for LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes, Creator, City and Technic revealed [News]

Official images of a selection of early 2018 LEGO sets have been released, including LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes, Creator, City and Technic sets due for release. The details include the set number and part count or pricing in some cases, but not all the information has been released as yet. There are a couple of interesting sets in particular with 31081 Modular Skate House within the Creator theme, and 42074 Racing Yacht from the Technic line-up.

Images for three sets from LEGO DC Comics Superheroes have been released.

76097 Lex Luthor Mech Takedown, $39.99

76098 Speed Force Freeze Pursuit, $29.99

76096 Superman & Krypto Team-Up, $19.99

The LEGO Creator Line up includes a fun looking mini-modular build 31081 Modular Skate House and a selection of vehicles including a stunt plane, racing car and a 4×4 outback explorer jeep-like vehicle.

31081 Modular Skate House, 422 pcs

See more of the first wave of 2018 LEGO sets

Just another bug hunt

It’s not often that we see LEGO creations that incorporate the large Technic figures that LEGO included in sets back in the late 80’s through the 90’s. Similarly, most of the LEGO xenomorphs we’ve featured largely use standard System bricks to recreate the terrifying creatures from the Alien movies. Weilong Yao breaks with both of these traditions by building a work loader around a Technic figure and incorporating lots of Bionicle in the alien itself.

A harsh but satisfying life in the village of Avalon

Four young builders join forces to bring us this extensive medieval village diorama. While I often complain about lack of variety in top-end castle-themed LEGO builds, there is a very bright side to this; if I had not known this creation was a collaboration, I would never have figured it out. The main image is hosted by Timothy Shortell, but the others involved are Micah the fire-breathing hobbit, Mountain hobbit and Cole Blood.

There are many details to see all over the diorama; the market has many interesting elemets, houses are all exceptionally done with interesting textures and angles everywhere, and the plant life facilitates the time and place where this diorama is set up – dried grass, autumn leaves and pine trees show us a cold but habitable place.

Volvo – they’re blocky but they’re good

70s Sweden. What do you think of? If you didn’t say ABBA, there’s something wrong with you. But here’s a fabulous LEGO diorama from LegoJalex which manages to capture the era perfectly without a hint of the Scandi-SuperTroupers. We’ve got an excellent orange Volvo 242 in the driveway, but for me, it’s the surrounding scenery and attention to detail which make this model pop. I love the textures of the different walls, the use of forced perspective to create the buildings and factories in the distance, and the little touches like the pail and the abandoned football in the grass.

The car itself is a smart model in its own right, well worth a closer look…

No time to waste – the garbage is piling up [Instructions]

Nobody likes to talk about waste/trash/rubbish/garbage — but it’s part of our lives as consumers. Call it what you like, but somebody still has to collect and transport it. de-marco has stepped up to help out our minifigures, building this adorable little waste container transporter. The garbage transporter will happily pick up any used and discarded LEGO bricks for disposal. de-marco has kindly provided instructions to help you build your own version. Just make sure you have the necessary training to work those hydraulics…

Here is an instructional video. Soon your LEGO town will no longer have rubbish piling up in the streets…