Yearly Archives: 2020

Maybe a Jedi, but not a mechanic

Season two of the Disney+ streaming series The Mandalorian presses on, and in episode four, a very toasted Razor Crest starship makes its way through space as Din Djarin continues on in his quest to reunite the child with his kind. Mihal builds a humorous scene out of LEGO from this episode of the child who is small enough to fit into some crevices and able to get to some electronics necessary for repair, unfortunately, this type of work may not be the child’s calling.

The build for the child here actually looks like a miniature version of the buildable child with his legs and torso being largely brick-built; it looks like many small plates and tiles in tan were utilized for this portion. The child’s head consists of slopes and bricks in sand green, his eyes being the same ones used in the dewback build from the 2019 Escape Pod vs. Dewback micro-fighters set. This built scene is not only expertly executed but also makes great use of wire-like elements and other small pieces like the lightsaber hilts. As always, I cannot wait to see more builds inspired by the show.

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2020 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 1

Happy holidays to all of our fellow LEGO builders! As is tradition, we at The Brothers Brick will be opening our advent calendars as we count down to Christmas. We’ll also be sharing commentary on each one, which will be both insightful and hilarious!

LEGO Advent Calendar

This year we have new Harry Potter, Star Wars, City and Friends advent calendars to open! We will be sharing images of the new calendars every day through Christmas. Now let’s get the holidays started with day one!

Click to see the LEGO Advent Calendars Day 1

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The changing faces of NYC taxis

The image that pops into my mind when I think of New York City is one of urban canyons full of yellow taxis. For decades, taxis in the city that never sleeps were large sedans with big engines. In the last ten years or so, things have been changing, though. NYC taxis are still yellow, but most are now hybrids. And most are made by Toyota, rather than by American manufacturers such as Checker, Chevrolet or Ford.

The Checker Marathon is the classic New York taxi from the sixties and seventies. It was a traditional sedan, with a heavy-duty cab-on-frame construction well-suited for New York’s famously pot-holed streets. Its design changed very little during the two decades that it was in production. It became a New York icon, comparable to London’s black cab or the Routemaster bus. Many movies and TV shows filmed in the Big Apple feature Checker cabs, including Taxi Driver and Ghostbusters, as well as the TV sitcoms Taxi and Friends.
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Absolutely Riddikulus!

Ekjohnson1 shows us that even though LEGO did their best, a good figure can always be improved. The figure in the spotlight is the second edition of the Snape Boggart from the Harry Potter franchise. Although LEGO did a splendid job on creating this figure, it didn’t fully capture the description in the books:

“You will raise your wand — thus — and cry ‘Riddikulus’ — and concentrate hard on your grandmother’s clothes. If all goes well, Professor Boggart Snape will be forced into that vulture-topped hat, and that green dress, with that big red handbag.”

The builder has added the green dress and topped the hat off with a crow, formerly of the Scarecrow CMF. Placing said figure in a well lit diorama complete with a brick built wardrobe and a quite easy yet effective chandelier using the knob wheel and some small flames, makes for one stellar shot.

Riddikulus

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That’s when an evil woman trapped him on the dark side of the moon

The Brothers Brick contributor Chris Doyle once again builds something based on Mystery Science Theater 3000What’s his excuse this time?

One of my favorite escapes from reality is Mystery Science Theater 3000. People riffing on bad movies just makes the world seem less bleak, somehow. The best part, though, is that my wife Jennifer is also a big fan. She’s usually more of a “build a LEGO set” person than a “make something new out of LEGO” person, but I was able to tempt her into collaborating on a  LEGO Art style mosaic of the latest MST3k head-honcho: Kinga Forrester. (As portrayed  by a Felicia Day.)

PXL_20201127_161428053~2

The techniques we used were very similar to the ones I helped develop for my Wonder Woman collaboration. We bought a couple of LEGO art sets (Beatles and Warhol this time.) We used the LEGO Art Remix site to create several prototype images. We threw away our first few attempts, and combined at least three different versions of instructions for the final image. And then hand-built all the fine details anyway.
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Your favorite desk-mates

I recently finished watching the popular television series The Office, therefore any office supply or item reminds me of the show, this LEGO build of some desk essentials by Joffre Zheng included.

Stationery

The brick-built models include a grey stapler, a classic #2 pencil, and an eraser. All three builds are composed of bricks with heavy use of tiling and slopes to cover studs and smooth things out. Judging by the grey round 4×4 brick with technic pin holes piece used at the top of the pencil to render the metal eraser binding, these builds are pretty large in scale, much larger than the actual real life objects. If office supplies are your thing, or you’re just missing the workplace or school, then this build is definitely for you!

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It’s beginning to look a bit like Christmas in a galaxy far, far away

We have seen quite a few builders pay tribute to the Empire’s most fearsome walking tank, the AT-AT. But I think this is the most unusual version I’ve seen in quite a while. Simon Liu has stretched his LEGO creativity to new heights with this stilt-legged AT-AT tasked with delivering Christmas trees to all corners of the galaxy.

DALI AT-AT

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The Bug Knight won’t let the bedbugs bite. Or maybe he will.

Sometimes you just really get a kick out of something. Maybe it’s the big black radar dishes for eyes, or maybe it’s a clever use of balloon segment parts, but I just love this LEGO Bug Knight built by Nathan Hake. He tells us the Hollow Knight game loosely inspires this. Having never played, I’ll just have to take his word for it. That doesn’t stop me from loving it, though. I’m attracted to it like a moth to a flame, which, now that I think about it will likely end in the same result; singed proboscis. This might be the best thing I’ve seen all day, and I’ve seen someone try to gas up a Tesla!

Bug knight

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Get back you knobby white freaks!

First Order Lego has been killing it lately with some out of this world LEGO Star Wars Creations. And if you search my post history here on The Brothers Brick, you’ll see that I love sharing top-notch LEGO creations based on Star Wars. So naturally, this scene from Chapter 10 of the Mandalorian had to be shared.

“Krykna Escape” The Mandalorian Chapter 10

Aside from the beautifully crafted snowy landscape, the first thing you notice is the Krykna of various sizes. An amazing variety of pieces have been used for the spiders’ legs, from different kinds of horns to bananas! Some spiders are small, some are dead, but my favourite one is the one we can’t even see – the giant one just coming around the corner! There are plenty of other details presented to explore here, but custom-made little bitty baby Yoda is not to be overlooked.

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She thinks my tractor is...

Big? Powerful? Full of dirt? Whatever she thinks about, what matters is that it gets the job done. Here in Idaho, where I’m from, John Deere tractors like this LEGO build from Jonathan Elliot are essential to making sure the rest of North America has enough french fries to go around.
John Deere Tractor

It’s incredible how much detail is packed into so few bricks. I like the flashing lights on top, essential when using county roads to get from field to field. The variation in tire size is a good touch. Even here in this tiny build, they still look huge! I also appreciate Jonathan’s use of black pieces to make it seem like there’s a lot of metal framing exposed, just like real tractors. Everything in this creation is spot on.

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“Don’t ever ask me about my LEGO, Kay”

Some things are just better left unanswered. A LEGO builder who goes by the dubious name of KitKat1414 presents this intriguing piece called “Don’t ever ask me about my LEGO, Kay”. So we posted it without asking. I mean we’d ask first but the title pretty much advises against it. But we still have questions. Like what the heck is going on here? Are they roughening somebody up? And who is Kay? All these questions and the unique “mailslot” composition has me thoroughly intrigued. It’s like reading a good mystery. So as per the title, we won’t ask anything but we’ll surely keep an eye out for what this builder might do next.

"Don't ever ask me about my Lego, Kay"

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Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, cyberpunk?

Some people like horror movies, because they like being terrified by monsters and gore. I don’t. I hate horror movies, in fact. Instead, I go in for cyberpunk, because I like being scared by a desolate tech-heavy future. Bleak metal buildings, an utter dearth of plant life, and gritty scrappers with doctorates in electrical, aerospace, and mechanical engineering (how else could you keep such sophisticated tech running, kitbashing decrepit robots and speeders on the fly, right?), are all the things that give me nightmares. And I love it. This LEGO scene by CRCT Productions hits that perfect cyberpunk sweet spot, with the immersive scene, the optimal balance between greebled and smooth surfaces, and the dim light with brightly glowing signs.

LEGO Cyberpunk Industrial Zone

I love the pipes on the left and the roller coaster track on the right, and that little orange-lit shop down the street gives the scene so much added depth and realism. The builder resisted the temptation to overpopulate the street, and instead carefully chose a few well-placed soldiers to give a dreary, not-quite-but-almost deserted life to the scene. Ok. Now that I’ve looked at this for a bit, I need to get outside for a walk in the park or read one of my many leather-bound books to get that future of technological horrors out of my mind.

Do you like this kind of stuff too? Then check out the cyberpunk archives of TBB!

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