About Andrew Becraft (TBB Editor-in-Chief)

Andrew Becraft is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Brothers Brick. He's been building with LEGO for more than 40 years, and writing about LEGO here on TBB since 2005. He's also the co-author, together with TBB Senior Editor Chris Malloy, of the DK book Ultimate LEGO Star Wars. Andrew is an active member of the online LEGO community, as well as his local LEGO users group, SEALUG. Andrew is also a regular attendee of BrickCon, where he organizes a collaborative display for readers of The Brothes Brick nearly every year. You can check out Andrew's own LEGO creations on Flickr. Read Andrew's non-LEGO writing on his personal blog, Andrew-Becraft.com. Andrew lives in Seattle with his wife and dogs, and by day leads software design and planning teams.

Posts by Andrew Becraft (TBB Editor-in-Chief)

Salmamir Torpedo Frigate by Adrian Florea

Adrian Florea presents Salmamir, a microscale torpedo frigate. He also demonstrates the innate swooshability of microspace creations:

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NOX – Heavy Assault Mech by Dennis Coh

Dennis Coh presents “NOX”, a Heavy Assault Mech in the form of a spider.

Happy 75th Birthday, LEGO!

It all started with wooden toys like this duck:

The LEGO Company is celebrating its 75th birthday today. You can read a very cool LEGO timeline on LEGO.com.

Here’s to another 75 years of wonderful memories. We can’t wait to find out what’s next!

EDIT: This is what I get for jumping right to the new post page after getting home, without checking the main page first. Well, at least you get a picture of a wooden duck. :-D

Malkara 2007 in 37 seconds

These time-lapse videos of LEGO events are always cool, especially with hilarious Benny Hill music:

That’s the setup for the annual Malkara School model railroad exhibit in Canberra, Australia — an event that Peter Edwards participates in.

An interesting side note: The trains are run by MINDSTORMS. How cool is that?

Microscale Mt. Rushmore by Red 5

And in the continuing spirit of minifigs being used in microscale creations, this just in via the contact form, a yellow microscale Mt. Rushmore by Red 5:

Excellent Teddy Roosevelt. Great submission, Dan Sibley!

Do you Digg it?

Digg is a “social news” site that lets users highlight interesting stories they find on the Web. Having something you’ve done “Dugg” is always fun. For example, the recent hubbub over the mysterious marine minifig garnered over 4000 Diggs.

Anyway, Fabio Fiss angles to get Dugg with his Digg logo built from basic bricks:

You can Digg Fabio’s creation yourself here.

News: NWBrickCon is less than two months away!

After several years of active involvement in the online LEGO fan community, I finally took the plunge and went to my first convention last October. NWBrickCon right here in Seattle was an absolute blast. If you’re thinking about testing the waters yourself, I highly recommend NWBrickCon. And contrary to my fears, no, LEGO fans are not all freaks. :-D

(3-D NWBrickCon logo by Adam Hally.)

Will M. recreates the mystery of the Dutch minifig, in microscale!

The mysterious, gigantic minifig on a beach in The Netherlands has left TBB readers all abuzz. Builder Will M. has recreated this intriguing scene, in microscale no less!

Giant Lego man found in Dutch sea
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A giant, smiling Lego man was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday.

Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-metre (8-foot) tall model with a yellow head and blue torso.

“We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water,” said a stall worker. “It was a life-sized Lego toy.”

A woman nearby added: “I saw the Lego toy floating towards the beach from the direction of England.”

The toy was later placed in front of the drinks stall.

Excellent work, Will! You had me laughing so hard I could barely blog this.

Gigantic mystery minifig appears on Dutch beach

Here’s the caption from the BBC News Web site:

A huge Lego toy has mysteriously appeared on Zandvoort beach in Holland. Nobody knows where it comes from.

Any of our readers from The Netherlands know something about this?

(Thanks to readers Sharon and Cynthia for the link!)

Fully functional Guitar Hero controller built from LEGO, by David McNeely

UPDATE: Thanks to the magic of our contact form, we now know who built this and where to go for more pictures! I’ve updated the image, name, and links appropriately. Thanks David McNeely! Excellent work!

Here’s what builder David McNeely said on TechEBlog:

This is a custom guitar controller for the game Guitar Hero, modeled after a Gibson Explorer guitar, with an extra large scratch-plate for style. I gutted the real controller and put the electronic boards in the lego case, so it actually works, too.

Thanks for the tip, readers Peter and Paul!

Legohaulic sends some damage our way

I think these two post-apocalyptic vehicles from Legohaulic speak for themselves, so I’ll shut up.

We want to know what you’d like from your LEGO image-hosting sites

Recent events have put the issue of image hosting in the spotlight. There are a lot of choices out there, from popular sites like Brickshelf and MOCpages to newer sites like MOCShow and BrickImage, and even commercial, non-LEGO sites like Flickr. All of these sites provide an invaluable service to the LEGO fan community – a place to host your images.

The LEGO Ambassadors would like to ask fans for your input on what you would want from your image-hosting site. Questions include:

What improved services would you like to see on such a site?
How much would you be willing to pay for these services, if free image hosting was not an option?

I want to be very clear about this: Asking everyone for feedback isn’t intended to start another debate here on The Brothers Brick about which existing site is better (though I suppose comparisons are inevitable). As fellow LEGO fans, those of us who are Ambassadors are simply asking you for your thoughts and ideas about the viewing and showcasing of your LEGO creations.

Unlike many of the other ideas and opinions I hear from you, I won’t be forwarding these ideas to The LEGO Group, who have publicly and clearly stated that they will not own nor run such a service. However, your comments will be available on this post for others in the community to view, and hopefully use, in building and improving image hosting Web sites.

Andrew Becraft
LEGO Ambassador

EDIT: *bump*