About Clinton

I'm all the way down in a little country called South Africa. There's no lions roaming the streets, unfortunately, but there is everyone's favourite plastic brick. I don't have a lot of my own work online (yet), but I've been following The Brother Brick for around eight years, so it's bizarre that I'm going to be writing for it. My day job is journalism covering the maker movement for htxt.africa. And yes, I do occasionally sneak stories of Lego onto the site. Follow my ramblings, LEGO and otherwise: Twitter: @Clint_Matos | Instagram: @clinton_matos

Posts by Clinton

Can’t splurge on 10252 Volkswagen Beetle? Here’s a smaller one!

I will admit that the announcement of the 10252 Volkswagen Beetle got me overtly excited. Car and LEGO fans alike are just waiting for it to hit stores, but there’s two big problems: It’s $100 and it’s not out yet. Fixing both of those problems is a chibi version of the set from Gerald Cacas, complete with tiny surfboard and cooler chest.

Need more tiny cars? Check out this mini Mini Cooper which scales down 10242 Mini Cooper MK VII even more.

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LEGO Ideas guidelines and terms of services updated, makes submission rules tighter [News]

An official post on the LEGO Ideas blog has provided updated guidelines for fan submissions, terms of services, and house rules. The two biggest changes are a 3,000 piece, single-box limit for all creations, as well as a new rule for third-party licences. Once LEGO accepts and produces an Ideas set based on another company’s property, no other Ideas submission from that property will be accepted.

While that may sound like bad news (like we won’t get an EVE to go along with 21303 WALL-E, it may not be. This may lead to LEGO adopting the licence to create new sets, just like it did with Minecraft and Ghostbusters.

The changes are listed below:

Once we produce a LEGO Ideas set based on a third-party property, we will not accept more Ideas submissions based on that property. This sharpens our guideline on follow-up products based on LEGO Ideas submissions. Once we approve a licensed project for production through LEGO Ideas, we’ll archive other projects based on the same property and not accept new submissions based on the that property.
Projects must fit in a single product box, so we’re setting a part count limit of 3,000 pcs.While we can’t count the pieces in your photos, if your model looks too big we’ll send it back and ask you to submit a smaller model at our own discretion.
Projects must focus on a single concept or third-party property. This essentially expands on the “no playthemes or series” rule and also rules out “mass customization” projects (e.g. custom mosaic or minifigure makers) as well as combining more than one third-party property into a single project. (e.g. a project containing both Porsche and Ferrari cars).
It’s now simpler to collaborate on projects. We’ve removed the requirement to email us declaring your collaboration. You must still receive explicit permission from someone else before including their original work in your project. All new collaborative projects must mention collaborators’ LEGO Ideas usernames in the description, and state that their original work is included with the member’s explicit permission.
New restrictions on project contents
- No iconic elements referencing third-party properties we find inappropriate for the LEGO brand
- No large or human-scale weapons or weapon replicas of any kind, including swords, knives, guns, sci-fi or fantasy blasters, etc.
- Projects may not propose LEGO Dimensions expansion packs
- You may only use logos that belong to third-parties in the context of your model, similar to LEGO logo guidelines. You may not display logos that do not belong to you in your artwork, since this can imply endorsement from the logo owner.
New guidelines to help improve project descriptions
- At minimum, please write your description to include a description of your model, why you built it, and why you believe it would make a great LEGO set.
- In some cases, moderators may make basic grammatical changes on your behalf so we can speed up the approval of your project. We will never change the nature of your project and we’ll notify you by email if we make any changes.
Terms of Service now preserves projects that gain a significant following. While we understand you may occasionally want to delete a project with only a handful of supporters, to either re-submit with improvements or clean up your project portfolio, once a project reaches 1,000 supporters it will not be removed.
Terms of Service revises language regarding assignment of rights. We’ve worked with our Legal department to clarify how you assign us rights when you submit a project, and reassure you that you may share and publish your submission to promote your project online, in media, your portfolio, and other places for non-commercial purposes.

Read the full announcement here.

Build your own miniature Songbird from BioShock Infinite [Instructions]

Following up a 1:1 scale Sky-Hook and an incredible minifig scale Songbird diorama, Imagine Rigney is back with another build from the universe of BioShock Infinite. This time around it’s an itty bitty Songbird that you can build from a handful of pieces, and there’s full instructions to make one yourself.

By the way, BioShock Infinite is a brilliant game and one of my all-time favourites. It’s relatively cheap now, so if you haven’t tried it yet, pick it up and give it a go.

Three wildly different mechs

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I have for you today, in this single story, not one, not two, but three mech builds from three different builders. Together, the make quite the lovely trio!

First up is a spindly looking fellow in the form of Rv-12 Voron by legoricola. Something about the angle of those ankle joints makes me really uncomfortable…

Next up it’s the police mech 02 by neruneruneranai which ditches the bipedal form factor of the previous build as well as (spoiler) the next. Instead we have this Tachikoma-esque wheeled design which is very nicely done.

Finally, Lancer Railgun by DeadCajun71, which uses one of my favourite pieces to create a very unique shape for the cockpit area. Also: the way this mech picks up its pilot reminds me a lot of Titanfall 2, a game I’m very excited for.

Make sure you check out each of the builders’ photostreams for more shots, as well as cockpit details to see how they managed to fit a full minifigure in each build.

“Hard Six” mech will hit your soft spot

The only thing better than alternate history is alternate history with big stompy mechs. Matt Rowntree must agree with me because his “prototype heavy walker, model 3, mark 3” (or “Hard Six” for short) certainly fits the bill as a Japanese war machine from 1949.

Be sure to check out Matt’s photostream for other shots including a really cool Jungle platform supply station and the fact that the nose features a sticker from LEGO set 7701 Grand Titan.

Brick Ops

While I still actively buy and play with LEGO, Spy vs. Spy remains a part of my childhood exclusively. Due to import charges and weak local currencies I could never afford to buy Mad magazine, but the hours I spent hiding from store employees while I read Spy vs. Spy are etched into my memory. Andreas Weissenburg does the characters justice in this vignette. I don’t know what I love more, the little tank being driven by the white spy, or the fact that the black spy is wielding a brick separator! My money is on the black spy…

A better proportioned Ultron

While we all love the iconic minifig, it does occasionally have its shortcomings. This was apparent in the Ultron minifigs from sets like The Avengers Quinjet City Chase or The Hulk Buster Smash. That version of Ultron was just too stubby and cute to be the monolithic, metallic machine that was the Ultron we saw in the movies. Luckily, takamichi irie does the character justice with this fan-made brick-built figure.

Fully transformable LEGO version of Sideswipe

Building LEGO versions of Transformers has always been a massive task from both the builder’s skill and the bricks’ limits. Joe Perez has already shown his mettle with a frankly unbelievable Soundwave, and now he’s gone and done Sideswipe too.

It goes from this:

To this:

In around nine steps which require nothing to be added or removed from the model. Impressive!

A scene of Hotline Miami, recreated in LEGO

Hotline Miami LEGO are two things which shouldn’t mix. One is an ultra-violent top down murder fest of a game, and the other is a made-for-kids interlocking bricks system. Luckily, Nannan Zhang does both properties justice with this little scene from the games.

Aside from the great colours used to imitate the game and the textured brick pieces being used as carpet details, what I really love is the fact that (as far as I can tell) only LEGO pieces were used. The Chima headpiece acting as a Tony Mask works particularly well. It all comes together so well and makes me want to play the games again.

Giant LEGO recreation of Force Awakens hangar holds four TIE fighters

Near the beginning of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Poe and Finn hijack a TIE fighter and make their escape. The scene plays out in the hanger of the First Order’s star destroyer, the Finalizer. This hangar has been painstakingly recreated in LEGO by LegoSpencer in this project that took six weeks to create. The final build features four official LEGO TIE fighter sets as well as a few dozen stormtroopers and an untold amount of detailing. For a closer look, you can also check out the builder’s thorough breakdown video.

UNSC Mantis proves that LEGO always does it better

While the Halo license for building bricks is, unfortunately, in the hands of Mega Bloks at the moment, that doesn’t mean that Halo and LEGO fans haven’t been building iconic creations from the series in the superior brand. Proving that point today is Velocites with the HRUNTING/YGGDRASIL Mark IX Armor Defense System… or UNSC Mantis to save time. While it uses only official pieces (save for the bullet chain), this isn’t a purist build as the military olive colour here is done with paint.

In the interest of comparison, here is the Mega Bloks Mantis. For a $33 set, we must admit that Mega Bloks actually did a good job, but this LEGO version blows it out of the water.

The minions of Nurgle are here, and you can fight or join them

The Deathly Halliwell isn’t just bringing you great LEGO renditions of Warhammer 40K models, but also an invitation to join in on the fun — the builder is working with Conner Lill to build a Warhammer 40K layout for BrickWorld Chicago. If your 40K knowledge isn’t up to scrap, what you’re looking at here is a Great Unclean One (which looks like Scabeiathrax), Plague Drones, and a Herald of Nurgle.