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)

The Apogee of Skill?

I couldn’t help but steal that title from Lukas. A hilarious trend I’m seeing in my LEGO feed from Flickr lately is assembling small LEGO sets without opening the bag that the parts come in. Check out three “in-bag builds” from three builders:

Here’s Lukas:

TBB first-timer Tim Tosino:

And finally, Matt Hamann (aka jastermereel08):

Okay, so this wouldn’t work with the Star Destroyer or Death Star, but I’m going to have to try this the next time I get a small set.

EDIT: Commenters to the rescue. Matt credits Tim Gould and Jamie Neufeld as inspiration. Here are the in-bag builds that started it all — Tim’s on the left, Jamie’s on the right (click for full-size pics):

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Happy Birthday, Moko!

In honor of Moko’s 18th birthday recently, I thought I’d feature a few of his latest creations. (Okay, so I would’ve posted them anyway, and they’ve already been Snoikled.)

I love the arms coming out of the new wheel well pieces on this “space mecha”, and the pink makes a surprisingly cool accent color (link):

I can’t find Moko’s blog post for this next mecha, so it might not be new, but it’s new to me and dang is it cool (another great find, Dez!):

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Sugegasa’s Flyers

Angular and spiky, Sugegasa’s vehicles are rarely big, boring blocks of bricks. He’s recently posted three such vehicles:

(Link.)

(Link.)

(Link.)

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Gundam RX-78GP01 and XMA-01

Moko is at it again, building mecha in addition to his usual minifigs, micro-vehicles, vignettes, and so on. Today’s batch brings us mecha from the Gundam universe.

Gundam RX-78GP01 “Zephyranthes” (info):

XMA-01 “Rafflesia” (info):


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Mechanimals of the Air and of the Earth

While I’ve been busy hosting my brother and his wife, Izzo has continued his “Mechanimals” series. Click on over to his blog or Brickshelf gallery to see all of them, but here are a couple of my favorites.

Santa’s podracer (blog post):

This one may be my favorite so far — a mole mech (blog post):

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Minifig’s so versatile...

I’m a huge fan of minifig. As if he didn’t already have the best user name ever, he makes awesome vignettes and, of course, minifigs.

It’s been a while since his last series of figs, but his latest includes the boys from New York, the Beastie Boys from their “Intergalactic” video:


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The Anatomy Lecture of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

This is an amazingly cool recreation of a Rembrandt painting, by Barbara Werth (found by Bruce).

Here’s the original, just to show how nicely Barbara captured the painting’s composition, lighting, and overall mood:


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Cat Bus and Toto-what?!

Most readers probably know by now that my favorite anime director is Hayao Miyazaki. It should be no surprise that I’ll pretty much blog anything Miyazaki-related.

First up, here’s pero’s small round Totoro, or “Totoroll”:

Next, Poizunn-05’s Cat Bus:

Finally, no post of My Neighbor Totoro LEGO creations would be complete without Todd Kubo’s ginormous Totoro:

Search Brickshelf and discover even more!

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.

Izzo’s Ideon

I have to admit that I’m not a huge Ideon fan, what with the decapitations and universal (and I say that in its most literal sense) destruction. That said, I’ll grant that Izzo has recreated the titular mecha quite nicely:

(Via Soren on Tourist Bot’s Diary.)

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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.

MS-09R Rick Dom by Justin Harvey

Back in May I blogged Hiron’s MS-09F Domtropen. Now, Justin Harvey has posted a another version, MS-09R Rick Dom (info) in awesome alternate colors:


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Fire Mario vs. Chain Chomp

Flickrdude graznador presents Fire Mario facing off with a Chain Chomp:

Here’s a close-up of the Chain Chomp:

Wiiiiiiiii!!! Oh wait…

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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.

News: LEGO Shortage at Christmas?

The Associated Press is reporting that retailers may face shortages of LEGO during the upcoming holiday shopping season.

“Many of our most popular products are sold out,” Lego spokeswoman Charlotte Simonsen said. “As part of efforts to restructure the company and focus on our core business, we had to make some cuts and the company has not had time to readjust its production.”

While having strong demand for your product might be a good thing, the article continues:

Boersen, Denmark’s leading financial newspaper, estimated that Lego could lose 750 million kroner ($127 million) because of lost Christmas sales.

EDIT (11/1/06): News of LEGO shortages were apparently greatly exaggerated, as Steve Witt has posted on his blog:

The media reports of a LEGO shortage this holiday season stem from an interview given in Denmark with regard to a supply issue in Scandinavia, but remarks were misconstrued to represent a global issue. We are not experiencing a shortage of LEGO sets in the U.S. or Canada this holiday season. All of our key retailers are well stocked with what we believe will be the most popular LEGO sets, and have indicated they too are satisfied with their stock. It’s always best to get out early to be sure you get what you’re hoping to find.

Kinda sucks if you live in Scandinavia (sorry Linus!), but for those of us here in the States, this is great news!

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