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)

Chris Foss meets Star Wars

One of the stranger vessels to emerge from this year’s SHIPtember build challenge is this bulbous oddity by F@bz. At 112 studs long, this is a proper SHIP. The builder says he built the underlying frame early in the month, and then it sat there for two weeks before he started adding the structure around it, with nothing more in mind about the end result than that he wanted to use stripes. What’s particularly striking about this spaceship is the contrast in textures along the interior sandwiched between the upper and lower hulls — from a mass of greebles to two large domes and then a smooth section. Reminiscent of the rebel transports that escaped Hoth, the stripes evoke sci-fi artist Chris Foss.

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.

OASIS-class deep space exploration ship

We’ve grown used to seeing precarious cottages and luxurious modern architecture from talented Portuguese builder César Soares, but a large-scale spaceship was not something I expected to see in his photostream — even during SHIPtember. César has built a near-future interstellar colonization ship full of believable details — all pulled together with a great schematic that points them out.

See more photos of this great LEGO spaceship

Guernica-class space carrier

I just returned from two weeks in Madrid, and managed to squeeze in some sightseeing around all-day meetings and three-hour dinners starting at 10 PM every night. One life-changing experience was seeing Pablo Picasso’s monumental anti-war painting “Guernica,” which commemorates the bombing of a Spanish town by the Nazi Luftwaffe on behalf of Franco’s fascist rebels. So, I’m not sure how I feel about an aggressive-looking LEGO space carrier bearing that name. Nevertheless, this ship by Leonardo Lopez has some seriously excellent angles. The prow in particular integrates orange parts from a LEGO City snowplow, and the dark gray stripes end with another sharp angle from flags.

The rear of the ship certainly isn’t lacking in sharp angles, with a pair of canted wings and a funky long tail. With judicious sticker usage throughout, about the only thing missing is a saying emblazoned along the ship’s hull. I think “This machine kills fascists” would do very nicely.

Egg on toast

There’s that moment in Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky when Pazu shares the simplest of meals with Sheeta: A single piece of toast with a fried egg. This might also be the simplest LEGO food sculpture by nobu_tary that we’ve featured, but it’s no less excellent with its simplicity. The toast itself uses some interesting studs-out building techniques in multiple colors, and the egg itself has multiple levels with an orange yolk — not merely a flat white disc with a yellow radar dish stuck onto it. Now I’m hungry…

Sumo, the greatest sport on earth

I’ve written elsewhere that sumo is the greatest sport on earth, so I won’t belabor that point here. Because it’s my favorite sport, I always enjoy seeing LEGO creations inspired by Japan’s national sport. Krzysztof J has built this excellent sumo wrestler in a red mawashi, looking ready to take on the biggest and strongest Yokozuna. Krzysztof has used lever handles for the wrestler’s hair, while the round 1×1 plates are both inevitable and perfect as the big guy’s, uh, pectorals.

LEGO Star Wars Rogue One sets & new Death Star now available [News]

The new LEGO Star Wars sets from Rogue One are now available on the LEGO Shop online, along with the new Death Star and other October releases. And as an extra bonus, LEGO VIP program members earn double points right now.

I’m in the middle of building 75155 Rebel U-Wing Fighter at BrickCon, and enjoying the fun minifigs and cool play features — we’ll have a full review soon.

75154 TIE Striker includes 543 pieces and 4 minifigs for $70.

75152 Imperial Assault Hovertank includes the mysterious Chirrut Îmwe, and is quite an excellent deal at 385 pieces for $30.

See more of the new LEGO Star Wars sets

The attack of the Spiny Scallworm

As fantastical as many of the LEGO Castle creations we feature here on The Brothers Brick are, it’s actually not very often that we see a fantastical creature wreaking havoc among the people and structures that comprise most of these medieval scenes. Wookieewarrior remedies that situation with a monstrous worm emerging from the earth to rip through a round tower. The worm itself has lots of great details in black, but the yellow minifig hands stand out (literally) as wonderful spines. The tower includes lovely details as well, including reused LEGO sprues from three-leaved plants as vines. Potted flowers add a spot of color against the gray tower, and the rounded landscaping of the base is excellent as well.

Be sure to click through to the photo and zoom in for more details, including the priceless expression on the hapless farmer’s face.

HMS Enterprise vs. the Continental privateer Oliver Cromwell

I love a good sea battle. This LEGO scene built by E J featuring two excellent sailing ships — the British HMS Enterprise and the American privateer Oliver Cromwell — I can almost feel the whipping wind, smell the salt spray, and hear the creak and strain of wood, the bellowed orders, and the thunder of the broadside.

Both ships are fully rigged with custom sails and rigging, and worth a closer look.

See more of these great LEGO ships

Supersized LEGO Architecture 21028 New York City skyline

One of my favorite LEGO Architecture sets of the last few years have been the city skyline series, including 21028 New York City. LEGO architect Spencer_R specializes in 1/650 scale models of landmarks, including numerous skyscrapers. Spencer says he’d already built several of the buildings in the set, so he built the Flatiron building and Statue of Liberty, and then put all of them on a large black base. This much larger scale enables Spencer to include much more detail than the minuscule buildings in the official set, and the higher-resolution photo on Flickr — as well as Spencer’s photostream as a whole — is well worth a closer look.

Please pardon the dust as TBB migrates servers (and HELP WANTED)

As TBB readership continues to grow — we just crossed the 50,000 threshold for fans of our Facebook page — our poor old server is starting to crack at the seams. Rather than the hour or two every few months (which still works out to 99.9% uptime), we’ve had four or five separate downtime incidents over this past month alone, including about 7 hours earlier today. For those of us who want to give our readers the best possible experience, it’s incredibly frustrating, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Want to know how you can help?

Teemto Pagalies’ IPG-X1131 LongTail podracer as a UCS LEGO model

One of the highlights of Star Wars: Episode I: A Phantom Menace (yes, there are indeed highlights) was the “Boonta Eve Classic” podrace, populated by some great characters aboard interesting vehicles. One of my favorite podracers is the unique racer with the circular cockpit driven by Teemto Pagalies. Cecilie Fritzvold has created a LEGO version at UCS scale, with highly detailed engines as well as the signature cockpit.

Cecilie calls the cockpit a “headache” to build, but it’s certainly gorgeous to behold.

Hit the court at the Squash Centrum Maastricht

Reader Berthil van Beek tells us that he’s been playing squash for more than 30 years, the most recent 5 years at a squash gym in Maastricht, the Netherlands. After starting to build again with LEGO a few years ago, Berthil decided to recreate the the gym and the lovely building that it’s housed in. Built from 11,000 LEGO bricks, Berthil tells us that he spent about 400 hours designing and building this highly detailed LEGO model — a creation that celebrates the place full of “fun and wonderful people.”

The LEGO version of the Squash Centrum includes all the details of the real thing, from solar panels and a little garden on the roof to men’s and women’s locker rooms (complete with sauna) and the glass-enclosed squash court itself. Whether you love squash or not, this is an incredibly detailed creation worth poring over for lots of fun little scenes.

See more photos of this amazingly detailed building