Posts by Ryan Wood

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Come along and sing the song and join the jamboree! Mickey Mouse may have already celebrated his 90th birthday (Steamboat Willie premiered in November 1928) but there’s always time for LEGO cake.

Mickey and his birthday cake were sculpted by Californian Bill Vollbrecht, a former Master Model Builder and LEGOLAND park designer who clearly still has the magic touch, as Mickey exhibits all the character and detail known the world over, down to the buttons on his pants and shape of his eyes. There’s even a really neat and appropriate inky splotch base.

Bill also shared with us that the cake was imagined as one Goofy might have baked for Micky in Toontown: lopsided, multicolored and with candles askew.

Want to have your own Mickey adventures? Read our reviews of the Disney Train and Station and Steamboat Willie, both featuring Mickey minifigures and for sale now. If minifigs are too small, get instructions or inspiration from Build Better Bricks or Alanboar Cheung!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

LEGO Metroid: My past is not a memory, it’s a force at my back

Samus Aran is one of Nintendo’s most iconic characters through a decades-long successful series of Metroid platformers and first-person shooters. Thanks to Spanish builder L-Di-Ego, the famed female bounty hunter’s personal spacecraft has made the jump to digital LEGO and has never looked better.

I’m so impressed with how loaded the ship is–this thing is absolutely packed with play features. The ship is ready to take on the dreaded Space Pirates with firing projectiles, adjustable engine intakes, a removable canopy allowing access to the spacious cockpit plus room for the Metroid containment pod, and my favorite, a functioning loading lift for the Samus Aran minifigure.

If you’re feeling nostalgic we’ve shared a couple of excellent takes on Samus in the past from builders like Eero Okkenen and Logey Bear.

Ilum, home to Kyber crystals and Imperials

Poland’s Jan T. has built an icy LEGO recreation of Ilum from Star Wars: Fallen Order and it’s an action-packed stage with a story to tell!

I have to admit I’ve never played the game but this model caught my eye for its boundary-breaking snowy clumps hanging off the edge of the edges of the scene. The stark gray face of the Imperial lair utilizes interesting paneling and some absolutely gorgeous cutaways reveal piping running through the walls. I also love the probe droid floating menacingly nearby.

Not content with only half the action, Jan has also included a backside to the stout Imperial fortress wall complete with an adorable little BD-1 hacking into a security droid.

Need more BD-1 in your life? We shared instructions from one of our favorite builders hachokoru24!

Winter, spring, summer, or fall

Vivaldi’s Le quattro stagioni is one of the most renowned pieces of music in the world, and served as newcomer ArmoredBricks’ inspiration for this moving (and moving!) LEGO model.

What sets this rendered model apart to me is not only the masterful instrument recreations but the titular seasons represented by small vignettes each crafted in their own clean, colorful way. Each one is such a clear personification of a season of the year. My favorite season vignette is the crooked, budding tree representing the spring season:

Check out the video below to see the full model in action accompanied by a sampling of the Spring concerti.

A city balancing light and dark

Malaysian Sit Tat Wai is a newcomer to the pages of The Brothers Brick, with a debut that’s equally inspiring by day or night.

Click here to continue reading…

Surrealism and LEGO are a match made in elephants

The mustachioed surrealist artist Salvador Dali inspired this stunningly spindly pachydermal presentation from Dutch builder Jaap Bijl. This was an entry for Innovalug’s ongoing Style It Up! LEGO building contest. This category restricted creations to maintaining 4 studs’ worth of contact with the display surface. Dali’s “Les Elephants” features just the sort of delicately balanced build many of us actively try to avoid. Thanks to the plethora of newer curved slope pieces over the last few years the Daliphant’s shape is well represented, and I’d almost wager it took longer to get the thing to safely stand in place than it did to build.

Need more LEGO Dali in your life? We’ve featured a few creations in the past, including Lin Kei’s own “Les Elephants” take which earned him a spot in the LEGO House’s Masterpiece Gallery.

Watch me whip, watch me neigh neigh

Today we get to see one of our favorite LEGO artists might have fared as a more traditional user of ink and paper. We’re quite familiar with the work of 2016 TBB Builder of the Year Grantmasters as a LEGO artist: sometimes it’s an adorable kung fu panda, other times it’s a lifesize steampunk pistol, or even primeval anatomy. Grant is a master of scale and always brings excellent, inventive parts usage to the table.

As related by the builder, this “drawing” is meant to represent the start of the drawing process, the rough shapes and lines only just starting to come together as opposed to a completed, clean rendering. Swooping curves are achieved with whips, katanas, and even a high-pressure sprayer.

Level 1313, the OTHER Star Wars hive of scum and villainy

Minnesotan Hypolite Bricks gritty Coruscant Level 1313 diorama exhibits his penchant for dynamic, textured LEGO dioramas.

For those not familiar, Star Wars 1313 was a promising but ill-fated video game focused on the darker underworld of the Galaxy Far Far Away’s capital planet Coruscant. The concept has recently been revived on the final season of The Clone Wars. This model appropriately features Imperials, aliens, droids, Quarren and Twilek artwork (ads or graffiti?), and -of course- death sticks. There are some neat greebling and detritus strewn about, and you can imagine the sort of shady dealings going on in each alcove.

Check out prior featured works from Hypolite Bricks like the N1 starfighter in Rebellion hangar, and the bounty hunter attack on Republic senators. In all models, you can really feel the hustle and bustle of the “used universe” that is so instrumentally Star Wars.

Star Citizen Vanguard heads to the front lines

Stephan Niehoff revisits the sci-fi video game universe of Star Citizen, the oft-delayed but undeniably gorgeous space combat simulator.

Like Stephan’s Brutus gunboat we previously highlighted, this craft is a herculean LEGO creation packed with neat details and shaping techniques, and given the appearance of metallic wear with a dusting of chalk. If you look closely you can spot an inventive use of multiple orange flippers (aka Frogman’s feet).

The more I see of the game’s vehicle designs the more I’m reminded of Sky-Fi, a favorite sub-genre of LEGO fan building which features (sometimes illogical) flying vessels that repurpose familiar air- and space-craft design elements. The Vanguard looks to me like a very chunky offspring of the P-38 Lightning.

They sure don’t make them like they used to

Joe Klang is back in the workshop making more amazingly deceptive 1:1 scale models. If you thought his LEGO Etch-a-Sketch and Atari were neat, prepare to do a double-take with his cordless power drill.

Although the drill is what caught my eye I think my favorite tool is the orange adjustable box cutter making great use of the newer rounded plates to provide both smooth AND textured edges.

1:1 LEGO models are among my favorite fan creations, particularly because I appreciate the immense effort of manipulating the vast system of pieces (most of which have studs that would immediately give the game away!) into something familiar and handheld that seems like it couldn’t possibly be built out of LEGO.

Why don’t you come in? We were just about to have some cheese.

“Doing more to improve the image of the English world-wide than any officially appointed ambassadors, Wallace and Gromit are the epitome of the English character.” – UK Icons nomination

Aardman Animation LEGO creations have popped up on The Brothers Brick a couple times in the past, namely Shaun the sheep and a particularly grand day out.

This time German builder Andreas Weissenberg gives us A Close Shave.

The intrepid window-washer/inventor/cheese-lover Wallace is joined by his trusty, mute, heroic pup pal Gromit. The characters’ distinctive looks are not only executed well, but this model also conceals some compact motorized functionality within the motorbike and sidecar! Check out the video to see Wallace and Gromit in action!

Like this builder’s character work? Check out some of his prior featured models like Chip and Dale, Dilbert and Dogbert, and Statler and Waldorf!

Now you’re playing with portable (elf) power!

With this retro gaming-flavored diorama, Kale Frost‘s early holiday dominance continues. Obviously the Nintendo Game Boy is the star of the show, and darned if it doesn’t look just like the one I unwrapped on Christmas in 1989. Not to be ignored, the wily minifigure elves have appropriated the device for their own purposes. Circuit boards, wires, and batteries are all expertly represented here.

Like Kale’s Santa creation before the iconic portable gaming console diorama is just one part of a larger whole, which is Kale’s bespoke Christmas scene.

It seems as if there are more LEGO stories to be shared from the display, but you can check out the whole thing for yourself at Rundle Mall in Adelaide Australia until January.

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