Posts by Nick Lever

Picture Perfect – Life in LEGO Polaroids (Guest Feature)

This started as a quick contest entry. Just one little diorama for the LEGO Ideas “Picture Perfect Memories” challenge. I thought I’d build a single model—frame it up like a Polaroid, submit it, and move on with my life.

Instead, I made six.

And who among us hasn’t gotten carried away and spent the whole night building? For me, there was something satisfying about having small ideas in my head that I could actually finish. Each one took a couple of hours. Nothing sprawling. Just compact moments, built quickly and intentionally.

I like building small. It forces you to be economical, which I think can be more impressive than going big. It also lets you focus on what really matters—telling a story.

Each of these builds is based on something that happened in my life, or something close to it. They’re impressions. Memories, simplified and captured in plastic. And in sharing them, I hoped to set a kind of template—something other people might follow to build their own.

Take a look at the story behind each of the six Polaroid vignettes and maybe be inspired to make your own

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.

Sixties cool meets serious horsepower with LEGO Icons 10357 Shelby Cobra 427 S/C [News]

Has there ever been a more effortlessly cool roadster than the Shelby Cobra? Combining cheeky British body design with a beast of an American engine, the AC Shelby Cobra remains one of the most sought-after classic cars among driving enthusiasts, and this July, it becomes slightly more affordable as the latest LEGO Icons car model. LEGO Icons 10357 Shelby Cobra 427 S/C promises a sophisticated build that captures the legendary car’s signature curves while packing in enough details to please the pickiest Top Gear critic. Racing into stores on July 1 for Insiders (July 4th for all), the Shelby Cobra is built from 1,241 pieces and can be pre-ordered now for US $159.99 | CAN $199.99 | UK £139.99.

The full gallery and set details follow after the break!

Don’t lose sleep trying to count these electronic sheep

If you thought Blade Runner was a visionary mind trip, it’s positively prosaic compared to the novel its based on: Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep by Philip K. Dick. Builder Pierthviv pays tribute to the master of consciousness-questioning sci-fi with a book cover built from a truly eclectic mix of LEGO elements. While not directly referencing any cover I’m aware of, Pierthviv draws on very Dickian iconography, from the eyes in the machine, to the syringes in the cyber background, to the lenses upon lenses of the Voigt-Kampff machine.

A wider angle lets us better appreciate the builder’s craft. The constraction-style figure seamlessly blends organic musculature with cybernetic elements in a way that feels straight out of and 70s pulp sci-fi art. The Dreamzzz brain, exposed as a robot claw lifts of the top of the skull, is especially chilling. The sheep in the monitor is the only source of color and escape in this dystopian vignette, matching the theme of the novel.

Pierthviv created this chilling model for the first round of the 2025 Bio-Cup with the theme “Dreams.”

Baba Yaga won’t be contained in a LEGO book nook!

Mixing LEGO and books is in vogue right now, but who says the bricks need to go between your volumes? Roman Shemis built this spellbinding witch’s hut emerging from the page of a brick-built book, which looks great stacked atop books of the paper variety. Based on the Cyrillic text, I can only assume that Baba Yaga herself lives inside the chicken-legged cottage. Technique-wise, it’s that tree trunk on the left I’m pining over! Roman only recently started sharing MOCs, but we’re already big fans of the builder’s skill and range. (Especially the technique Roman employs for this cobblestone street). I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more from Roman in the years to come!

If you want to add a bird-legged hut to your collection but don’t know where to start, the Never Witch’s Midnight Raven is one of my favorite sets in recent years.

Return of the Mon Calamari Cruiser

Once again, we find ourselves writing about an excellent LEGO diorama by swbuilds. And once again, it’s a Mon Calamari Cruiser full of life! After finishing the bridge, this build apparently followed close behind. But I’m not going to talk about Star Wars here. Instead I’m going to reference another space-faring LEGO theme: Life on Mars. For that is where all that glorious sand purple comes from! This is one of those colours with an extremely limited colour palette: only 18 designs, and six of those are minifigure parts. Fortunately, many of those other 12 parts were larger ones, so you can make them go a long way, as swbuilds does here. I’m particularly fond of the overturned pump from 7317 Aero Tube Hangar in the background!

Sakiya Watanabe’s quest for excellence as a LEGO creator [Interview]

The secret about overnight successes is that it takes years of hard work to get to that “overnight” success. Sakiya Watanabe, who builds under the handle n.a.b.e_mocs, does the work. In the six months since he started sharing his creations online, Sakiya’s MOCs have earned kudos on this site and from AFOLs and professional builders alike, even as the young builder studies Organic Chemisty at university. We sat down with Sakiya to learn about how he prepared for this “overnight success,” and what drives him as a builder.

TBB: Your work caught our attention from the very first MOC you shared, but you must have been building a lot before reaching that point. When did you first discover LEGO and what excited you about building?

Sakiya Watanabe: Thank you for giving me this opportunity. First of all, my parents gave me LEGO SpongeBob Krusty Krab set (3825) when I was around 6 years old. Also, at the time, I was obsessed with the Lord of the Rings, but LEGO didn’t sell Lord of the Rings sets yet, so instead, my parents often bought me sets of the LEGO Castle fantasy era. And I often reassembled them to create the world of Lord of the Rings. This may have been my first works.

TBB: It sounds like you were making your own creations from the start. When did you become aware of the creations of other builders?

SW: I got into LEGO Star Wars when I was about 9 years old, and started making my own creations(MOC) around that time. At the time, I was always watching speed builds of sets on YouTube, and I would create MOCs while referring to the techniques used in the sets. This is a picture when I was 10 years old.

Our interview with Sakiya Watanabe continues…

“Get away from her, you bricks!”

Like James Cameron, here at the Brothers Brick we never turn down an opportunity to show off a good power suit. Take this Minilander-scale Power Loader from Aliens built by Marco DeBon – equally adept at moving cargo and battling Xenomorphs. This model requires a Class-2 license to operate, but is a class all its own in terms of design, with pleasingly chunky arms and a great use of tiles for a clean look.

Ripley can step out of the loader and is fully poseable. She looks like she’s been training with Chun Li before joining the mission to LV-426. I almost feel sorry for the poor Alien queen that has to face her!

From the side, we can better appreciate Marco’s judicious use of greebles and the excellent application of printed and stickered tiles.

Netbrix and chill with these LEGO TV tributes [Minifig Monday]

Ah, LEGO – the building toy that lets you explore deep space, medieval castles, and… the set of Seinfeld. From Stranger Things to Queer Eye, LEGO has made comfort viewing a staple of its catalogue. Since LEGO’s current product offerings are a bit light on adult TV fare (unless you count Bluey) we’re dedicating this week’s Minifig Monday to stars of the small screen

Kimberly Faul takes us back to Staten Island where What We Do in the Shadows was faithfully recorded for 6 seasons. Sadly the camera crew is gone, but we can get some satisfaction knowing that Nandor and crew are still tending to hedges. Kim does a great job of capturing the cast in minifig form, staged in their lovingly decrepit home (plus a few bonus cats, courtesy the builder!).

For a post-apoc minifig challenge on Instagram, Expansion Bricks revisits three of the stars of The Walking Dead, the franchise that refuses to die, in this update of one of the builder’s earliest minifig tributes. Figs aside, I love those trees made from stacked stud-shooting blasters.

Don’t tune out now. Keep scrolling for more minifig TV tributes!

One Piece pirate ship? How about 4,000 Piece?

As excited as we are for the newly revealed One Piece sets, we still hold out hope that LEGO will return to the Age of Sails with sets that aren’t infused with clowns and talking reindeer. For minifig-scale ships, there are few LEGO shipwrights as skilled as Saran (MocYourBricks) who for years has been upgrading designs from LEGO’s past with an AFOL’s eye for detail and custom sails and rigging. This photo comes from bee.brick, who recreated the Black Pearl and Queen Anne’s Revenge from Saran’s instructions. with extra flourishes, like brick-built canon blasts.

Built from 4,000 pieces, the Queen Anne’s Revenge is a thing of beauty, and even if the roughly $1000 cost of sourcing the parts and instructions is out of your price range, you can vicariously experience the joy of building it in this one-hour “speed build.”

LEGO Voyagers revealed at Summer Game Fest, co-op adventure from Builder’s Journey developers Light Brick Studio [News]

LEGO’s biggest video game hits have featured minifig mayhem and slapstick adventures in the worlds of Star Wars, Batman, and Fortnite, but there is one LEGO game that took a different path. A Builder’s Journey was released in 2019 by Light Brick Studio, an internal development team inside of LEGO, and it offered a poignant and wordless puzzle experience similar to games like Monument Valley, but through an AFOL lens. It’s a beautiful game that offers a more meditative approach to playing with bricks. Today at Summer Game Fest, Light Brick Studio reveals their follow-up: LEGO Voyagers.

Putting players in control of a humble 1×1 brick, the game expands on its predecessor’s gameplay by letting two players journey together in a new co-op adventure. As a fan of the A Builder’s Journey and low-stress couch co-op games, this one looks like a must-play. It’s a welcome addition to the LEGO games lineup – one that remains accessible to all but with a special appeal for AFOLs. The trailer and game details follow.

Official press release and screen shots follow

Heroes of the Star Wars Expanded Universe: Legends but not forgotten

The original Star Wars hadn’t even been released when Alan Dean Foster started writing Splinter of the Minds Eye, the first story in the Star Wars Expanded Universe (later called Legends). Prior to Lucasfilm’s sale to Disney, telling stories in the Star Wars sandbox was a fairly freewheeling business, guided more by a code of honor to not contradict what came before, and to be game to retcon anything that George made canon.( I had first-hand experience writing in this era, penning a choose-your-own-adventure style book full of EU easter eggs.) These days, the Star Wars Universe feels a bit trapped between three aesthetically very different trilogies, with Dave Filoni doing his best to fold EU favorites like Thrawn into the continuity between Clone Wars and Rise of Skywalker. I love The Last Jedi and Andor, but I also miss the era when the Adventures of Luke Skywalker was an endless blue ocean of possibility.

Jan Woźnica certainly carries a torch for the Expanded Universe. In the past, the builder shared an incredible LEGO model of the Moldy Crow from Star Wars: Dark Forces. Now Jan is back with a bevy of expanded universe characters, perfectly assembled from official LEGO parts and staged on custom stands. There are some pretty deep cuts here, so in the gallery that follows, I’ve added links to Wookiepedia if you need a refresher on who’s who.

Take a closer look at Jan’s minifig tributes to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

Don’t lose your head over this elegant mantis

The praying mantis female will sometimes consume the head of the male while mating. What’s this self-made widow’s secret? alex_mocs knows that there’s nothing more alluring than Bionicle and Constraction elements, seamlessly integrated into organic LEGO builds. This model of the
Viridis Mantidae is the pinnacle of elegance with a touch of menace. Like a master sculptor, alex manages to coax disparate LEGO elements together in ways that suggest that this was the role they were destined to play, from the green whip antennae to the Ninjago sail wings to the Bionicle chest.

alex_mocs is one of the organizers of the Bio-Cup. The first round, with the theme “Dreams,” closes on June 9th. If you’re interested in building MOCs that play with non-system elements like alex’s model here, it’s not too late to enter. Don’t worry – they won’t bite!