Yearly Archives: 2019

Ich bin ein käfer

Alright, I’ll keep this short and punchy. Speaking of short and punchy, Lino Martins (hey, that’s me!) has built a car. When I ran the LUGNuts group I had built at least one car every month for ten years so I was a bit of a kingpin in the LEGO automotive world. After retiring the monthly challenges, it is understandable that I wanted to take a break from car building do some art, gaming, and blog all about your creations instead. After nearly two years, I return to car building with this Volkswagen Käfer Racer based on a Hot Wheels design.

The requisite round corner bricks are currently not available in yellow so instead of replicating the Moon Eyes design, I went with a primarily red color scheme and used stickers from the 8041 Technic Racing Truck

The shell can be removed to reveal the seats and massive V-8 engine within.

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Precise, clean cuts. No one saw anything. Again.

The world of Magic: the Gathering is, despite its cheap fantasy storyline, a treasure trove of characters and other motives. Some (far too few, if you ask me!) LEGO builders like Eero Okkonen take inspiration from it and create amazing works of art. This recreation of The Wanderer is a great example of a builder capturing the original artwork perfectly. The Wanderer is a clichéd mysterious character in the lore that would be quite interesting if it was in any other story.

The build is mostly what one would expect from this master character builder. The real highlight is the incredible accuracy to the source material. The exotic colours like pink, gold and sand green are not the easiest to work with in LEGO, but Eero stretched his collection to the limit and successfully recreated the character, with all her challenges. The most interesting part usage to me was the Technic figure scuba flipper used as the ends of the hair. To read more about the building process, check out Eero’s own blog post on Cyclopic bricks.

Ancient Aliens

I’m not saying it was aliens–but it was aliens! Builders Aaron Newman and Tristan Cain teamed up to build a close encounter of the ancient kind. Cleverly named “Parthenonsense,” the scene depicts a microscale Greek-inspired city being visited by a red “chariot of the gods.” The city itself is enjoyable to look at, with curved walls, a bridge, and buildings of varying heights. I particularly enjoy the UFO, which has a self-sustaining habitat under its dome. The beam of light over the lighthouse is a nice touch, almost as if the spacecraft is engaging in oneupmanship with its terrestrial subjects.

To learn more about the model, visit Aaron’s personal blog post on “Parthenonsense.”

Just follow the yellow (LEGO) brick road

Thanks to The LEGO Movie 2’s Collectible Minifigures, the full crew from The Wizard of Oz is now available in minifigure form, so the time was ripe to start seeing some great models from the classic film. Enter Livin’TheBrickLife with this amazing diorama that mixes scales to great effect. With the city of Oz a tiny microscale sculpture in the distance, the four adventurers loom large in the foreground.

The whole diorama is much larger, though, incorporating a variety of iconic scenes, each connected by the yellow brick road, made of sideways bricks.

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Sir, we thought you were here to protect us...

For over four months, the citizens of Hong Kong have been protesting a proposed bill that relinquishes some of Hong Kong’s autonomy and places the city-state under more direct influence of mainland China. More than 2 million peaceful demonstrators have been met with increasingly violent responses from the Hong Kong Police Force, who have bolstered their ranks with mainland Chinese forces and decried the protests as riots, shooting thousands of canisters of tear gas at the civilian crowds. LEGO builder Wing Lee, a Hong Kong citizen, has created this poignant vignette of a demonstrator and a riot-gear equipped policeman.

The two figures stand atop a five-petal orchid, the symbol of Hong Kong, while the color fades from the city’s traditional red and white motif beneath the armored officer. The world is watching this time, and may democracy prevail.

Welcome to Air Batman

You are now free to walk about the cockpit in this massive 1:20 scale model of the classic Batwing. Designed by Eivind Loekken, the Batwing looks sleek and fast thanks to extensive use of angled plates, tiles, and slopes of varying degrees; you won’t find a single stud in sight. Equally impressive is the custom Batman Technic figure seated in the cockpit.

See more of Batman’s favorite flying vehicle.

Steam into the circus with this whimsical train

The modern circus can trace its roots back to the late 18th Century in Philip Astley’s Amphitheatre. By the 1800s, the development of a vast railroad network allowed the circus to hit the tracks, traveling from town to town. In a world before radios and television, the circus was often one of the most highly anticipated entertainment events. Celebrating the spirit of the traveling circus, Ben Spector has built a colorful and fun-looking circus train.

See this charming circus train in greater detail.

I’m a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

Fans of the short-lived television series Firefly will instantly recognize this LEGO version of Serenity built by Richard Van As. His model does a fantastic job of capturing the look of the sturdy, cobbled together freighter that was as much a cast member as her human crew. The model features an opening cargo bay door, rotating thrusters, landing gear, and docking for two short-range shuttles. The ship has several off-colored parts to represent the many repairs and replacements installed over her years of service. If you squint, you can almost see Wash’s collection of plastic dinosaurs through the cockpit viewport.

For more Serenity, you can build your own, or check out this shiny large scale model.

TBB Weekly Brick Report: LEGO news roundup for August 24, 2019 [News]

In addition to the amazing LEGO models created by builders all over the world, The Brothers Brick brings you the best of LEGO news and reviews. This is our weekly Brick Report for the fourth week of August 2019.

A feast for the eyes is coming to BrickCon 2019. Keep reading our Brick Report to get all the details.

TBB NEWS: This week we got a glimpse at the new Brickheadz Scarecrow, saw VIPs get access to the new Disney Train and announced our collaborative build for this year’s BrickCon!

The next seasonal LEGO BrickHeadz set, 40352 Scarecrow is revealed – A cute 40352 Scarecrow set is joining the BrickHeadz theme this fall.
LEGO 71044 Disney Train and Station now available for VIPs – Be the first to get the LEGO recreation of Walt’s beloved Disneyland Railroad.
Announcing the TBB Banquet brick-built food collab for BrickCon 2019 – Join us at BrickCon 2019 in laying out a feast of epic (LEGO) proportions!

OTHER NEWS: There were quite a few other interesting LEGO news articles from around the web this week. Here are the best of the rest:

LEGO Legacy pre-registration begins, Brickset – Fans that pre-register will be rewarded with in-game currency and gems when the game launches globally this Fall.
40368 Christmas Accessories revealed, Brickset – This new set includes a husky, some pearl gold fences and a white leaf.

Build your own LEGO transforming microscope [Instructions]

Do you own a copy of Emmet’s Triple-Decker Couch Mech from The LEGO Movie 2? Would you like to take that set from a 2-in-1 build to a 5-in-1? Alan Yap has investigated the possibilities and discovered there is more to this set than meets the eye. By rearranging parts, you can make a microscope that transforms into both a hovertank AND a sweet, sweet robot. This is alternate building at its finest and, best of all, you can build it too thanks to Alan’s instructions!

There’s more to this model than meets the eye. Read on to find out why!

This golem runs like clockwork

Some things run like clockwork, and sometimes the clockwork is what makes you run. Taking inspiration from Dishonored 2, Return to Oz and D&D characters, Paddy Bricksplitter brings us a Clockwork Golem that is both elegant and menacing. This streamlined build demonstrates that you don’t always need a ton of parts to make an exceptional LEGO model. The black and gold of the main body are accented by splashes of white and grey. Gold plant stems are used for both shoulder ornaments and decoration on the checkerboard base.

A bit of dark pink ties the central clock into the piercing eyes. At first, I thought those eyes were made from Friends lipstick with the ends cut off, but Paddy assures me that that’s just how the bottom of that piece looks due to the dual molding. And that they would never cut any pieces. We’ll have to look elsewhere for the inspiration behind the giant scissors for hands. Although… maybe we’re better off just not knowing.

You’ve got mail!

Fabuland…pfffft, that was sooo 1980’s! If you want to get with the times you need to get with Neo-Fabuland. But before we do, let’s explain what Fabuland was about. It was a line of LEGO sets first introduced in 1979 that was aimed to fill a gap between DUPLO and “regular” LEGO and featured anthropomorphic animals with names like Roger Raccoon and Freddy Fox. Fabuland sets had a primary color scheme, were simple to construct, and often topped out at under a hundred pieces. Now along comes Dale Harris with this Neo-Fabuland idea called “Boris’ Post Office”.

The most impressive aspect I think is Dale’s ability to replicate the look of big clunky plastic pieces by using lots of not-so-clunky little pieces. What looks like a large one-piece roof assembly are actually lots of these elements in red. These round corner tiles help replicate the signature Fabuland whimsical look over the attic windows. He also incorporated all the pieces from the original Boris Bulldog and mailbox set. It turns out this isn’t Dale’s first go with this Neo-Fabuland idea. Be on the lookout for more as he intends this to be just a small part of a much larger layout. Incidentally, the official Fabuland line ended in 1989, the same year this post’s title became synonymous with early internet users.