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)

Life-size LEGO TARDIS materializes in Sydney, ready to transport the Twelfth Doctor [News]

Australian LEGO Certified Professional Ryan McNaught and his workshop team have built a life-sized replica of the TARDIS from Doctor Who. Images of the LEGO TARDIS on Bondi Beach in Sydney started circulating on the web yesterday, but you can see it in person at the Zing Pop Culture Store in Macquarie Park through the 18th this month, and then at the Doctor Who Festival in Sydney on the 21st and 22nd of November.

We reached out to Ryan and the BBC to uncover some details and exclusive photos not shared elsewhere. Ryan tells us that his team of 5 builders spent 45 hours just to design the LEGO TARDIS, and then 206 man hours to build it. Everyone is sworn to secrecy on the part count, since the BBC will be holding a contest to guess the number of LEGO pieces used to build it — suffice to say it’s a fairly insane number of dark blue LEGO all in one place! Built to exacting specifications provided by the BBC archives, it stands 316 bricks high (303 cm or nearly 10 feet tall).

The front of the TARDIS features a brick-built notice and fully functional door, which will enable Peter Capaldi himself to emerge from the LEGO TARDIS at the Doctor Who Festival later this month.

The light on top works, and Ryan’s team even built a matching Sonic Screwdriver.

To enable the BBC to transport the LEGO TARDIS to various events, it incorporates an internal steel frame. As to other secret details, Ryan tells us, “It may in fact be bigger on the inside, it certainly felt like it when we were building it!

UPDATE: Ryan has added some more photos to his Flickr photostream, including this great photo of the team behind this epic build.

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.

70816 Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! 24% off from Amazon

If you missed it at 25% off a couple months ago, 70816 Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! from The LEGO Movie is on sale again from Amazon, available at $75.95 instead of $99.99 (about 24% off).

You can read our review of this fantastic set here on The Brothers Brick.

A fair number of other LEGO sets are on sale for 20% or more off, including 75052 Mos Eisley Cantina, which is $15 off.

As always, a portion of the proceeds from any sale on Amazon goes to support The Brothers Brick, without any additional cost to you.

Polybag foldout reveals 2016 LEGO Star Wars sets & minifigs [News]

Polybags of Finn from The Force Awakens are starting to show up at brick-and-morter stores, and one of the interesting things about these small, early sets is that they include a foldout with the first good, official photos of 2016 LEGO Star Wars sets. Brickset has gotten ahold of one of the fold-outs.

The photos show several Battle Pack sets from both the Classic Trilogy and The Force Awakens, along with the first views of a Carbon Freezing Chamber set (75137), Rebel emplacement on Hoth (75138), and another redesigned escape pod with more figs than just the usual Artoo and Threepio (75136).

The back of the foldout reveals better photos of the individual minifigs that come in these sets.

We’ll share more news about 2016 LEGO sets as good-quality information emerges.

Want an Egyptian mummy of your own? Build it from LEGO!

We’ve come to appreciate the amazing brick-built animals created by AnActionfigure — each one has seemed more life-like than the last. But life would not be life without death, and so I was quite pleased to see the builder’s take on an Egyptian mummy. I’ve seen a number of mummies, not least of which the great Ramses II himself in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and AnActionFigure has captured the look of a mummy wonderfully, from desiccated flesh and exposed bone to the linen wrappings.

If that’s not creepy enough, the mummy’s eyes open and close with a switch at the back of its neck.

LEGO Dimensions Starter Pack $15 off, Wave 2 packs out now [News]

The LEGO Dimensions Starter Pack is currently 15% or $15 off from Amazon.com. I’m still working on completing the game as best I can without all of the expansion packs so I can write a review here for everybody, but the game crashed on save recently and took a month’s worth of save data with it.

While that’s not a ringing endorsement for the game, if you haven’t picked it up and you plan to, you can help support The Brothers Brick by buying video games like LEGO Dimensions by clicking through from here.

Also, the second wave of Level Packs, Team Packs, and Fun Packs were released this week, including the new Doctor Who Level Pack with the Twelfth Doctor and K-9.

You can see a complete list of the endless expansions available for the game on Amazon.com.

Hoot hoot for NPU!

As Autumn deepens here in the northern hemisphere, our thoughts turn to falling leaves, harvest festivals, and the hooting of distant owls. Norwegian builder Lego Fjotten has built this adorable Eurasian Eagle Owl for a contest on Brikkelauget.no. While one’s eyes are certainly drawn to the owl’s bright yellow eyes and enormous ear tufts, the nice parts usage (NPU) on this owl is as obvious as the nose on its face — that big white nose is, after all, a surfboard.

Who just scored the most candy on Halloween? This guy!

Japanese builder (and TBB regular) nobu_tary joins the Halloween celebration with this adorable pair of costumed kids. I like how Nobu has differentiated the Frankenstein’s Monster costume from the kid himself, but it’s the awesome expressions on both kids’ faces that I love. Clearly, the little girl has a long night of dealing with her brother’s sugar highs ahead of her!

Hiro Hamada’s garage workshop from Big Hero 6

I hadn’t seen Disney’s animated superhero movie Big Hero 6 until this past weekend. By pure coincidence, I ran across a LEGO version of protagonist Hiro Hamada’s workshop by Jonas just as I was watching the movie. While I could argue that the scene might be more lively with a Hiro minifig or a brick-built Baymax, the absence of characters doesn’t detract from the amazing detail Jonas has worked into the setting — especially those drawers built from 1×2 bricks and bucket handles.

The Bearer of Death comes clad in iron, reeking of brimstone

We’ve been highlighting great LEGO models by Moko for nearly a decade, and that’s because he doesn’t just build one type of things (castles, mecha, or whatever). In addition to being a talented mecha and character builder, he’s a fantastic Bionicle builder. His latest Bionicle creation is inspired by the Black Dog of British folklore, with a strong military sensibility and a high degree of poseability.

You can see more photos of Moko’s Hellhound on his blog.

Benny gets his used speeder pimped

Italian builder Priovit70 explains this mashup of The LEGO Movie, Star Wars, and MTV’s Pimp my Ride thusly: “Benny bought on S-bay a used speeder by a certain Rey from Jakku, but it was a downright rip-off. Mr. Robot, in the attempt of cheering his mate up, called MTV and… TA-DAH!!” This isn’t just a straightforward blue recreation of the Rey’s Speeder set from The Force Awakens, but is also a really solid build with some great Classic Space details, like the yellow-black-yellow stripes, gray greeblage, and that pimpin’ Classic Space flag. Benny certainly seems excited by the result, and so am I.

The Little Tramp

I was thinking when I blogged Chris McVeigh’s self-portrait the other day that it would be great if more builders took up that unique but flexible style of LEGO art. Paddy Bricksplitter accepted my unstated challenge and used nothing but LEGO in shades of black and white to build this wonderful portrait of Sir Charlie Chaplin, the wonderful Little Tramp from The Gold Rush (1923), Modern Times (1936), and one of my all-time favorite movies, The Great Dictator (1940).

Raven, the Haida trickster

Chris Maddison is participating in the current round of Iron Builder, and has integrated the special seed part into a mosaic that captures the uniqe formline style of art made by the Haida, Tlingit, Coast Salish, and many other peoples who share the broad characteristics of what is commonly called Northwest Coast culture. The red and black formlines stand out from the white backdrop, and the brick-built “wooden” frame adds to the presentation. I walk past “Northwest Art” galleries in downtown Seattle everyday, and this would look right at home on a gallery wall.

About Andrew Becraft (TBB Editor-in-Chief)

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