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

Poultry-inspired space theme is clucking eggs-cellent

Between designing new Ideas sets, turning your favourite dudes into cubes, and helping make movies, Angus MacLane has been working on his very own classic space theme. So what sensible topic did he use as inspiration for his ‘tron? Well chickens, of course! The theme is called “BokBokTron” and Angus has created quite a few awesome models already:

BokBokTron Box

BokBokTron Thigh Fighter (…ten points for the pun, Angus)

BokBokTron Meggatron (…does not transform into giant chicken gun, unfortunately)

And Angus isn’t the only one building to the BokBokTron theme. Chris Maddison was recently inspired to have a go too…

BokBokTron CHX Nugget

We’re hoping to see more chicken creations from other builders soon. After all, isn’t it just a cracking good idea?

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When made out of LEGO you are, look as good, you will not

Serbian builder Djordje really is one of the best in the game when it comes to capturing characters in LEGO, as this model of Yoda demonstrates. From the ears made of green Kraata, to the upper lip recreated with a single flipper, to (my favourite) the entirety of his robes made with two technic lift arms. It’s. Just. So. Clever.

A full size, functional Fat Man from Fallout 4, recreated in LEGO

Fallout is a franchise of iconography. The power armour, the Pip-Boy, Vault Boy…. everything is just so recognizable. But, in terms of weapons, one sits on the top of the pile for being the most memorable, and destructive. I’m of course talking about the Fat Man, the tactical nuclear catapult that has been every wasteland-wanderer’s ultimate weapon for years now.

ZaziNombies has brought us a Fallout 4 variant of the Fat Man, in true 1:1 scale with an actual firing mechanism.

This Fat Man is more than 2 500 pieces, over 4 feet / 1.2 metres, and weighs in at more than 10 pounds / 4.5 kilograms. Even the Mini Nuke ammo is a real LEGO piece in the form of the giant zeppelin piece from 5956-1: Expedition Balloon.

All that’s left to do now is find some Super Mutants to turn into paste.

A chip off the old block

Being a plastic toy, LEGO doesn’t really lend itself to recreating metallic objects – unless you have the skills to do so. Two builders with more than enough to pull it off are Jimmy Fortel and Legonardo Davidy, both of which have created something that – if you don’t look too closely – could easily be mistaken for anything but LEGO.

First up is this soldering scene by Jimmy Fortel. There’s a little bit of cheating here as the green baseplate forming the PCB is faced down, so nothing is actually connected to it. But when it looks this convincing, who cares?

In contrast, this microchip by Legonardo Davidy is a little more “legal” but just as good.

LEGO Pikachu Superman

Like our recent post of a classic space mecha dinosaur, this one mashes up quite a few things. Courtesy of Greed (승훈 이) we have a Pikachu that has taken to dressing up like Superman. Maybe this takes inspiration from the “cosplay Pikachu” mechanic from the new Pokémon games. Regardless, mixing up three franchises that I’m a huge fan of is a definite win for me.

Official images from the 2016 LEGO Marvel Superheroes lineup [News]

A few of the 2016 LEGO Superhero sets have finally been unveiled.

76049 Avenjet Space Mission
The similarities between this set and 76028 Darkseid Invasion are striking: four minifigs, a bigfig and some kind of vehicle. Heck, Dark Seid and Thanos even share the honour of a little floating platform to ride about in. Marvel fans can start jumping for joy now at Hyperion, Captain Marvel, Mark 39 Iron Man (also called “Gemini” and “Starboost”) and a space-going version of Captain America getting the minifig treatment. The Mad Titan Thanos comes to us as a bigfig, and he actually looks impressively good.

76048 Iron Skull Sub Attack is a very similar concept… except under water. Mark 37 Iron Man (“Hammerhead”), scuba Captain America, Red Skull and a Hydra diver are the minfigs accompanying a rather bulky submersible towing a cage. The armour on the Iron Man seems to be a recolour of the piece used for the minifig-scale Hero factory figures.

I’m personally more than a little excited for some new Iron Man, what’s everyone else looking out for?

Double whammy dreadnought

Conveying raw strength with stance and proportion is something the recent Hulkbuster set did really well, but this “dreadnaughtwhammer” by chubbybots blows it right out of the water. It’s got so much going on, so I won’t zero in on all of it, but I have to point out the use of the brown barrel pieces on the arm as a great way to break up the shapes as well as proving some color variance.

Be sure to check out the builder’s photostream to see the progression of this model.

It’s a mech dinosaur in classic space – What else do you need?

The only thing cooler than a mech is a dinosaur mech, and the only thing cooler than that is a dinosaur mech in space. Christopher Bassett may have struck gold with this. It’s called the “T-Rex JumpJet in classic space colors”, and as far as names go that’s exactly what it is. There’s also another version of this that isn’t in space colors, but I think the simple additions here really add a lot.

(Also notice the little blaster in the right hand. Awwwwwww.)

Mechanized monstrosities

Been having peaceful nights? Pleasant dreams? Lack of waking nightmares? Luckily we have the remedy for that in these “Mecha Beasts” by dennis qiu. Usually pulling off curves is impressive, but it just freaks me out here. Looking closely you’ll see ample use of the smaller ball joints – made popular by LEGO Mixels – being used to give the monsters their hunched stance.

Make sure to check out the creator’s photo stream to see close-ups.

Smashing work, Q

It’s James Bond time once again, both in theaters with the new film Spectre, and in LEGO with a recreation of the famous Lotus Esprit S1 (first seen in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me) that could turn into a submarine. ER0L brings us the submerisble in this faithful build. I have to say that the Lotus is my favorite of all the Bond cars, partly because I love Lotus in general, and partly because it’s a flippin’ submarine.

One terrifying Chinese lion

Indonesian builder Dennis Qiu brings us another stellar example of the amount of character that can be captured in LEGO. This Chinese lion would fit perfectly into mythology or, because I love robots, an episode of Zoids. LEGO has been going gold-crazy lately, but the use of it here is superb.

You can now program your MINDSTORMS EV3 on the go [News]

The latest iteration of LEGO robotics sets, the MINDSTORMS EV3, just got an upgrade in the form of a new app. The EV3 Programmer app brings the ability to fully program your creations from a tablet or mobile phone.

If you have any experiance with programming, this probably sounds like a nightmare , but it’s not that bad. The official programming for MINDSTORMS uses logic blocks that are dragged and dropped to create a working piece of code, with little to no input from a keyboard needed.

Get the app: