For over a decade The Brothers Brick has been highlighting the best LEGO creations, and this year has been a cracker with builders across the world putting together some amazing models. To celebrate a year of great building, The Brothers Brick team has looked back over everything we’ve featured, and here’s our selection of the finest LEGO creations of 2018.
Have a look at the fantastic models we’ve shortlisted, and stay tuned for the announcement of our LEGO Creation of the Year 2018 on New Year’s Eve!
And don’t forget to check out the winners of LEGO Creation of the Year 2017 and LEGO Creation of the Year 2016 to see what honourable company this year’s nominations enjoy.
First up, let’s head to a galaxy far far away — to the desert planet of Jakku to be exact. Here we find Rey the Scavenger seeking salvage within the depths of a crashed Star Destroyer. This stunning LEGO diorama was a collaborative effort between Eli Willsea and Grant Davis, and saw excellent photography and lighting effects coupled with an ambitious build — perfectly capturing the mood of the early Jakku scenes of The Force Awakens.
Sticking with the depths of space, we loved Inthert‘s superb alien spacecraft. This thing wasn’t just big, it was wonderfully styled, carrying a distinctly organic technology “alien jellyfish” feel with its green dome and trailing tentacles. Hemispheres, cylinders, tentacles, hexagonal panels — all shapes difficult to pull off with LEGO bricks. Here, they’re accomplished with style.
From an unusual spaceship design to a model that almost defies classification. timofey_tkachev‘s striking artwork offered a gloomy commentary on mankind’s obsession with extracting oil, and the likely results of our continued use of fossil fuels. A hellish landscape of fire surrounds the central oil well, beneath which a hideous creature lurks. We loved this diorama, and enjoyed seeing a LEGO builder using bricks to communicate a serious message.
Having said that, fossil fuels aren’t all bad — without oil we wouldn’t have our favourite plastic construction toy! And nor would we have classic cars for LEGO builders to recreate. This beautiful Bentley by Bricksonwheels was an amazing model — brilliantly shaped and styled, it included an engine beneath the bonnet and a detailed dashboard.
And it wasn’t the only fabulous LEGO car we saw this year. Pawel Kmieć’s supersleek LEGO Technic Porsche took our breath away — not just for its superb lines and Steve McQueen Le Mans movie-based colour scheme, but for its remote-control steering, independent suspension, and working head- and tail-lights. Vroom vroom.
Of course, if you’re hitting the road, you might need to stop for refreshments at some point on your journey. Where better to take a break than at Andrea Lattanzio‘s classic 50s diner? It’s the perfect example of a LEGO City-style model given the superbuilder treatment. The clean lines make this look simple, but it’s anything but, with some lovely minifigure-scale building and nice part-usage on display. The diner signage might capture the initial attention, but you stay for the little details and the fun minifigure action.
From the 1950s, let’s go a few years further back in time, to the Pacific Theatre of WW2. There we find James Cherry‘s astonishing Vought F4U Corsair fighter plane at rest amongst the palms. This thing is a monster — with a wingspan of over one hundred studs (over 32 inches or 82 cm). In this impressive creation, James managed to perfectly capture the Corsair’s signature inverted gullwings and dark blue colour scheme.
From fighter planes above the Pacific to broomsticks above Hogwarts, and to a model at a very different scale: Simon NH‘s microscale diorama of the Durmstrang ship’s arrival at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. This model is a microscale masterpiece, with clever parts usage making it look much larger than it really is. Don’t miss the use of dark blue Batwings for the sea — pure LEGO magic!
And from one fantastic microscale fantasy to another. The city of Minas Tirith from Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings has been the subject of many a LEGO creation, but it’s seldom looked better than in this rendition by Koen. Taking six months to build, it’s remarkably faithful to the films’ version of the city. All the key elements are here — the great curved walls, the massive spur of rock, the tall citadel, and the single white tree found on the topmost level.
Minas Tirith may have stood guard against the menace of Mordor, but who stands guard over Gotham? Batman — that’s who. And we don’t think we’ve ever seen a better LEGO rendition of Batman’s lair than in Brent Waller‘s frankly astonishing 6-foot tall model of Wayne Manor and the Batcave. Packed full of details, and custom lighting effects, this 100,000-brick creation set a new bar for models featuring Gotham’s greatest hero — and it wasn’t built all in black or very dark grey.
We finish this year’s shortlist with a creation by one of our very own. Brothers Brick contributor Bre Burns knocked it out of the park with her fully-functional Classic Space Pinball Table. A skillful combination of LEGO System, Technic, and Mindstorms Robotics, the table captured the heart of everyone who’s been lucky enough to play it, and when we featured it on TBB it became one of our most popular articles ever.
We hope you agree our shortlist represents some of the best LEGO building we’ve seen this year. If you think we missed something special, please let us know in the comments!
Look out for our announcement on New Year’s Eve when one of these shortlisted models will be crowned the Brothers Brick LEGO Creation of the Year 2018.