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)

Population density increases on Epherna 1

Tim Clark just posted this fantastically complex microscale space scene, complete with a pair of ships flying overhead and two more smaller ones on a landing pad.

This build is a great example of how repetition can really increase the realism of a LEGO model — the pairs of ships, the beacons, and all the small technical details. Real life is full of repetition, and doing the same even in a sci-fi setting adds a level of realism that would be lacking if every detail was unique.

Here’s another great shot, showcasing the landing pad and the biodome behind it.

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¡No pasaran! Commemorating the Spanish Civil War in LEGO

Despite my stated fascination with Stalingrad, it does occasionally feel unfortunate that I find myself building what amounts to Stalin’s war machine. I took a break over the weekend to build some military models with slightly less moral ambiguity, inspired by the Republican forces who fought a losing battle against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1936, Fascist elements within the Spanish military launched a coup d’etat against the democratically elected Second Spanish Republic. Supported by Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, Generalissimo Franco’s “Nationalist” forces quickly gained the upper hand, and Spain soon became a field experiment for the weapons and tactics that would be used shortly afterward in World War II. For example, the German and Italian air forces destroyed the town of Guernica, an atrocity memorialized in the famous painting by Pablo Picasso. Everyday people from across the world flocked to join the Republican cause, including thousands of American and British volunteers, who formed part of the “International Brigades.” George Orwell fought alongside Republican forces (which inspired Homage to Catalonia), and Ernest Hemingway was embedded with Republican troops as a journalist (which inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls).

The base of support for the Second Spanish Republic’s secular, egalitarian platform rested among socialists and trade union members, including many communists (back before communism as an ideology was the exclusive province of authoritarian regimes). As a result, only Stalin’s USSR rushed to the aid of the Republicans, sending arms and armor such as the Soviet BT-5 tank and BA-6 armored car that I’ve built here from LEGO.

My BT-5 is based on my own BT-7, as I mentioned yesterday, but the BA-6 proved a bit of a challenge. The angular hood and rear hull both required some half-stud offset and SNOT (Studs Not on Top) construction, including the two middle axles, built onto the chassis with jumper plates. The turret turns, the gun elevates, and both side doors open.

Its plight ignored by all but Mexico and the Soviet Union, the Second Spanish Republic fell to Franco and his Fascist forces in 1939, on the eve of World War II. Franco remained ostensibly neutral during the war, and then became a key NATO ally during the Cold War. He ruled as an authoritarian dictator until his death in 1975. An estimated half a million people died during the Spanish Civil War, and mass executions continued long after the end of the civil war.

As I wrote in my post yesterday about Stalingrad, using LEGO to recreate historical people, places, and even equipment connects me to history in a tangible and meaningful way. My hope is that I’ve piqued your interest as well.

A tavern fit for a traveling king

César Soares (csar_soares) says that this medieval tavern is his first Castle-themed model, and only his fifth LEGO model that he designed himself. That’s frankly a bit hard to believe given the detail and the polish, so I’m going to make myself feel better by assuming that César means that it’s the fifth he’s posted publicly. Because look at that roof and those walls!

(Via LegOficina dos Baixinhos.)

And since we haven’t featured César on The Brothers Brick before, here’s some lovely microscale landscaping, with a train heading into a tunnel under a mountain, atop which perches a very precarious castle:

There is no land beyond the Volga!

The Battle of Stalingrad continue to fascinate me. Stalingrad became a symbolic battle of the wills between two totalitarian dictators that manifested itself in devastating real-world consequences for over a million men and women who died on the front lines. For me, building LEGO models inspired by such a brutal battle isn’t about cool things that go “Boom!” Using LEGO to build vehicles, minifigs, and dioramas of historical events puts me in touch with aspects of history that I wouldn’t normally explore — I’m reading Antony Beevor’s excellent Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 alongside my building process.

Back on the 71st anniversary of the end of the battle in February, I posted a small diorama titled Victory in Stalingrad, but didn’t post any of the actual vehicles or minifigs, since I was building toward a much larger diorama for BrickCon this October. I finally managed to take some pictures yesterday.

Not much has changed since February on my KV-1s Heavy Tank (“KV-1s” is the model of the tank, a faster and lighter variant with a lower turret), but I’ve removed the extra plate between the turret and the hull and added some ammunition crates on the rear deck.

The KV-2 Heavy Artillery Tank was based on the KV-1 chassis, so a LEGO KV-2 to follow my KV-1 was inevitable. The monstrous turret enabled me to build quite a bit more functionality into the KV-2, including a fully elevating gun, as well as hatches on the top and rear that both open.

Continue reading →

USS Enterprise NX-01 – Star Trek as it should have been

What better way to break my blogging dry streak than with this fantastic alternate take on the iconic USS Enterprise from Star Trek (The Original Series) by Shannon Sproule. Shannon’s version looks a lot more realistic than the version in the actual TV show, even by 1960’s space program standards.

At first, I actually thought this might be a Soviet Enterprise, which would be very cool to see as well! Get building, someone!

“I only work in black. And sometimes, very, very dark gray.”

One of my favorite characters in The LEGO Movie is Will Arnett’s Batman. His Batwing is also rather awesome. Stefan Edlinger (Brickmasta) loved it so much he decided the Batwing deserved the real LEGO treatment.

Stefan spent several months amassing the parts and reverse-engineering the model from the movie (and accompanying video game). The process proved challenging, because as Stefan puts it “Clearly the mechanics and physics in the movie and the game are different, easier, lighter to make it possible for such great creations to exist.” He had to make the Batwing a lot sturdier than the construction briefly shown in the movie and video game.

You can read Stefan’s full write-up and see more photos on Flickr and MOCPages.

Winter is Coming – Citizen Brick launches “Dragon Sword Fighter Force” minifigs

One of the things I’ve loved about Citizen Brick from the first time I encountered their custom minifigs is their sense of humor. Joe and his crew at Citizen Brick make things you’ll never be able to buy in a LEGO set. Yes, you can buy usefully realistic military accessories, too, but they won me over back in 2011 with minifigs like “Botany Enthusiast.” Their latest batch of custom minifigs is titled “Dragon Sword Fighter Force,” which itself is hilarious, much like the over-the-top book series and premium cable TV show that clearly inspired these minifigs (obviously Game of Thrones).

Custom Citizen Brick Dragon Sword Fighter Force minifigs

I don’t generally quote ad copy, but the product blurb on the back of the three-minifig blister packs proves my point:

Dragons! Knights! Totally inappropriate family relations! Join the adventure as these brave fighters cross swords with some of the most fearsome foes in the realm. Whether defending their kingdom or clamoring for the crown, these minifigs are ready for a battle royale to the death. Horde the complete series of stunning figs before every character you like is killed off. Your honor is at stake!

It’s not just their sense of humor that attracts me to Citizen Brick, it’s the subversiveness of choosing to depict fairly adult subject matter in repurposed LEGO minifigures — “totally inappropriate” pretty much captures most of the Citizen Brick catalog, and “totally inappropriate” has a special place in my heart. (There’s also a strong disclaimer on each Citizen Brick product indicating zero affiliation with, endorsement by, or approval from LEGO.)

Citizen Brick sent me a batch of the “Dragon Sword Fighter Force” minifigs recently, and I wasn’t disappointed. They arrived in three-minifig blister packs with the aforementioned description on the back, plus a 13th bonus minifig of some guy who looks like a fishing boat captain titled “Sir Typesalot” (which you get when you buy all 12 custom minifigs at once).

As amused as I am by Citizen Brick’s subject matter, what keeps me coming back is the quality of their design work. Each custom minifig includes unique printing on nearly every available surface — face/head, torso (both front and back), arms, and legs. Many of the “Dragon Sword Fighter Force” minifigs also come with custom cloth accessories and weapons. The printing is indistinguishable from the printing on official LEGO minifigs, and the designs themselves don’t feel out of place from the world of LEGO (thus the big disclaimer, I suppose).

At $55 for a three-minifig pack or $220 for the full set of 12 (which also includes the George R.R. Martin-esque author minifig), these aren’t inexpensive, and I suspect they’re not the sort of minifigs you’d just fold into your Castle/medieval collection for use in a crowded display at a convention. No, these are serious collectibles for the dedicated A Song of Ice and Fire fan. That said, they are certainly wonderful Castle/medieval minifigs, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing some of the cool parts from these figs on “hero” minifigs quite a lot (I just wouldn’t bury them in an army). Citizen Brick minifigs range from $15 to $25 (these are $16-18 depending on whether you get the three-packs separately or buy the whole set at once), so prices are well within the range of what other vendors are charging for custom minifigs.

Now that so many vendors are producing custom-printed minifig elements at reasonably high quality, the distinguishing factors boil down to subject matter, design, and price rather than just availability and quality. Since price and quality are now somewhat less of a comparative factor, what continues to distinguish Citizen Brick minifigs is their often-humurous subject matter and consistently great design.

Although a bit on the pricey side as a complete set, I can definitely recommend Citizen Brick’s “Dragon Sword Fighter Force” minifigs to every Game of Thrones fan out there, because we certainly won’t be seeing an official LEGO Game of Thrones Collectible Minifigures series anytime soon.

“Dragon Sword Fighter Force” minifigures are available on CitizenBrick.com.

Happy 40th birthday to the first LEGO figures!

Before 1974, LEGO sets were a fairly unpopulated landscape of vacant houses and empty cars. Preceding the iconic minifigure by several years, LEGO released a new kind of figure the year I was born, and some of my first LEGO sets included these figures. Paul Hetherington (Brickbaron) celebrates the 40th birthday of this lesser-known LEGO fig with a lovely double-decker bus.

Paul writes:

I wanted to create a new model that had a distinctly vintage look. My design cues came from some 1970’s Lego trade adverts. I purposely chose a model that used the colors that are incorporated in the Lego logo. In the 1970’s the Lego color palate was limited to yellow, red, blue, white, black, with small amounts of gray and green. On a personal note, I chose the British 1910 B-Type double decker bus because I was born in England and that was were I first came across these figures as a child. As well, if you look at the poster from a distance, red and white are the predominant colors which represents my Canadian upbringing.

Check out more photos on Flickr!

The True North strong and free!

I’m surprised both our Canadian contributors passed this up, but I’ll use my 1/4 Canadian heritage as an excuse to highlight this awesome custom minifigure by Kristi (customBRICKS), based on a friend’s Halloween costume.

Kristi calls him Captain Cold, though I think Captain Canada might be more correct. Either way, he’s pretty awesome.

Build your won Ghostbusters HQ firehouse with instructions from Ecto-1 designer Brent Waller [Instructions]

Even though Brent Waller‘s LEGO Ghostbusters Ecto-1 set was recently approved as the latest official CUUSOO set, you might be among those disappointed that the beautifully rendered Firehouse in Brent’s original CUUSOO project wasn’t also approved.

But fear not! Brent has just released the step-by-step instructions for the Ghostbusters HQ in LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) format.

You can download Brent’s instructions from his Eurobricks post.

LEGO CUUSOO Ghostbusters Ecto-1 set revealed [News]

Another new set unveiled at ToyFair in New York City this morning is 21108 LEGO Ghostbusters, featuring the iconic Ecto-1 car and the four main characters from the first movie. The final design in the official set retains the level of detail that Brent Waller built into his proposed design.

The set includes four unique minifigs with all their gear:

21108 LEGO Ghostbusters will be released in June 2014 for USD $49.99.

Read the official announcement on the LEGO CUUSOO Blog for complete details.

Volleying doom for doom

During World War II, the Allies fielded approximately 50,000 M4 Sherman medium tanks. But ignoring the hard lessons that the Soviet Red Army learned about German armor on the Eastern Front, the United States and its Western allies delayed production of better-armored tanks with bigger guns until very late in the war. That bigger, better tank — one that could go head to head against German tanks — was the M26 Pershing. However, only 20 Pershings saw combat, between February and May 1945.

American 3rd Armored Division veteran Belton Cooper argues in his 1998 book Death Traps that this delay in fielding the M26 Pershing in favor of the existing M4 Sherman cost thousands of lives on both sides by delaying the end of the war in Europe for six months. As much as I love the Sherman for its iconic “tankiness,” I was inspired while reading Death Traps to try my hand at a Pershing as well. (I was also running out of Technic chain link for narrower tank treads until my first batch of Brickmania Track Links arrived, so I was forced to use the wide LEGO tread pieces if I wanted to build anything.)

After more than a decade on the web and a dozen LEGO events, one of my failures as a builder is that I tend to build first for static display and photography rather than functionality, and it takes a couple of iterations before I go back and give my models a bit more of an interior life. I’ve tried to improve this over the last year by adding internal details to my vehicles like a removable engine in my Shermans. But I still struggle with tank guns that elevate and depress properly. I’ve now addressed this shortcoming with my latest tanks, including this Pershing, my Soviet KV-1, and a couple of my newer Stuarts. Given differences in turret design, the challenge has been that each tank has required a different solution to achieve an elevating gun, ranging from guns that pivot on Technic pins to ones that go up and down on simple hinge bricks. It probably shouldn’t be this hard…

Strangely perhaps, my favorite detail on my Pershing is the set of stowage boxes on the sides, which are half-stud-offset in two directions to leave half-stud gaps between the boxes and a half-stud lip at the edge of the tank. You can see this best in this comparison shot, which shows just how much lower and wider the Pershing is compared to the older Sherman — a difference that made the Pershing simultaneously harder to hit and more agile on rough terrain.

Finally, here’s a quick little build I tossed together to showcase some of the rarer BrickArms elements that I’d picked up around BrickCon last year — an original American version of the M3A1 Scout Car that I posted last summer in Lend Lease program Soviet livery.

I managed to pack all of the following custom elements into this tiny little armored car:

BrickArms M2HB .50 caliber machine gun (prototype)
BrickArms M1917 .30 caliber Browning machine guns (x2 prototypes)
Citizen Brick US Army Ranger torsos
BrickArms brodie helmets
BrickArms M1 Garand rifles (x2 overmolded “Reloaded” version)
BrickArms M1917 printed crate
Citizen Brick diamond plate tiles

For those of you curious what “overmolded” means, it’s an injection molding process in which a second color of plastic gets injected on top of another, bonding the two together. Will Chapman of BrickArms has been experimenting with the technique for a year or two, with absolutely beautiful results. But don’t expect to see this in large quantities anytime soon — Will hand-injects each batch in his secret laboratory. Josh and I had the privilege of visiting the BrickArms workshop last year, and learned first-hand just how labor-intensive the overmolding process is. Nevertheless, some of the overmolded items are available for sale from BrickArms resellers.