Posts by Jake Forbes (TBB Managing Editor)

A Minecraft Movie’s Game Over World lovingly recreated in LEGO

A Minecraft-inspired modular? Thanks to A Minecraft Movie’s isekai plot taking real-world gamers into the fantasy land of voxel-based construction, it’s not as weird as you might think! Swedish AFOL Jenny Bergensten, a member of Swebrick, is a fan of the film – specifically Game Over World, the retro gaming shop run by Jason Momoa’s Garret “The Garbage Man” – and she spent much of the summer faithfully recreating the set in LEGO.

Jenny recreates the shop inside and out, capturing the faded glory of both Garret, the former arcade star, and a small town main street.

Insert quarter to continue exploring Jenny’s 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.

Liminal LEGO horror is in bloom

Japanese builder Pan Noda is a master at crafting liminal spaces in LEGO. From ancient ruins to cursed malls to surreal swimming pools, their worlds make the familiar look strange or even haunted. Controlled depth of field and a lack of minifigs make scale confounding and dreamlike. Pan Noda’s latest takes one of the most cheerful LEGO elements, the magenta flower with shaft found in so many kid sets and pick-a-brick-bins, and creates one of their most cursed scenes to date. Titled “A Field of Mocking Flowers,” a column rises from an endless field, a smiling face seen in negative space. Is there a structure beneath the blooms that happens to have a face, or is this the visage of some floral hive-mind? Are the boardwalks there to protect the flowers from pedestrian feet, or are they to protect us from this malevolent magenta force?

A Field of Mocking Flowers

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.

LEGO Bricklink Designer Program Series 6 – Sequoia Tree Trail: Towering beauty [Review]

The Bricklink Designer Program has become a haven for fan favorite themes like Classic Castle, Western, Pirates, and Trains. BLDB Series 6, which goes on sale today, hits some of those greatest hits, but the set that caught my eye isn’t tied to LEGO nostalgia, but childhood memories of summer vacation and visiting National Parks. Sequoia Tree Trail, created by 28-year-old Canadian builder Daniel Smith (pieceonearth),  is a love letter to parks, rangers, and the largest trees on Earth – the Giant Sequoias. Sequoia Tree Trail contains 3,187 pieces and sells for $269.99. Pre-orders for this set and the rest of BDP Series 6 run through October 13th, 2025 at 12 PM Pacific time.

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

pull on your hiking boots and click to read our review

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.

Mesmerizing miniature Miyazaki models in LEGO

What makes your favorite Miyazaki film? Is it the Adventure of Laputa, the wonder of My Neighbor Totoro, the intricacy of Spirited Away, or the magic of Howl’s Moving Castle? Somehow, builder Tung Man Chun manages to distil the hearts of these films down to 8×8 studs in a series of incredible LEGO vignettes. Each model is anchored by a larger-than-life character, bringing a sense of dynamism to the compact format. Let’s have a look at the full series.

Click to see more of Tung’s incredible Ghibli vignettes

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.

We Arrr Family celebrates LEGO pirates of all stripes [Feature]

September was a busy month for LEGO events, from the Seriously Huge spaceships of SHIPtember to the colorful minidoll-driven ships of Friendshiptember, but another community challenge just wrapped, and it’s the most inclusive one of all – We Arrr Family! The event invites anyone to create a pirate crew of at least 3 characters with the one requirement that all be different skin tones, species, or LEGO line. Join us as we sit down with the captain of this merry event, Llano (femmefromtheblock), and parlay about the event’s origins and celebrate this year’s amazing scallywags.

Our interview with Llano and a gallery of this year’s pirate crews follows

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.

Find solace by the bonfire with these amazing LEGO Dark Souls builds

The dark fantasy worlds of FromSoftware’s games have been a huge influence for many AFOLs with their bold character designs, ornate gear, and haunting medieval settings. Builder panc4kez has been creating LEGO models inspired by From’s genre-defining Dark Souls, which perfectly translate the game’s aesthetics into brick form. After months of individual construction, Dark Sun Gwyndolin, The Nameless King, and Dragon Slayer Ornstein appear together in LEGO.

Dark Souls Core

See more of panc4kez game creations after the fold, From Dark Souls to Zelda

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.

LEGO x Fashion – a theme in the making?

We’ve seen so much creativity in how minifigs can be customized, from creative use of existing parts, to custom printed minifig torsos, to third-party cloth accessories, to hand-crocheted minifig coats! But for fashionistas, there’s only so much that can be done at minifig scale. Recent buildable figure sets for Wednesday and Wicked offer a new template for creative accessorizing, as seen in this custom couture from Maachi.

Click for more thoughts on LEGO x fashion

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.

October 2025 New LEGO Sets Available Now [News]

It’s a stacked month of releases with sets for every taste, from geodes to Gizmos to game consoles to giant death slices! We found a lot to like in this month’s offerings (even if the trend of more big-ticket releases has us questioning who has shelf space to keep up). If you’re looking to add any of these sets to your collection, we’re grateful when you use our affiliate link as it helps fund the site and allows us to keep bringing you the best MOCs and builder stories every day.

Our top pick for October is the new Game Boy set. A near-perfect 1:1 recreation of the vintage handheld, the Game Boy is an incredible build that will make you appreciate LEGO geometry. As a bonus, all graphics but the two cartridge labels are printed elements, and the lenticular screens are a novel treat.

LEGO Super Mario 72046 Game Boy™ | 421 Pieces  | US $59.99 | CAN $79.99 | UK £54.99

Click to see the rest of the major sets releasing today!

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.

Stained glass from cheese slopes? Yes, please.

There’s something magical about creating stained glass in LEGO with transparent colors. We see many techniques for creating patterns in “glass,” but one of the most reliable is using a 1x2x3 window frame to hold 8 cheese slopes. GothGirlBricks uses this technique and adds a beautiful spin by including black slopes as negative space to create a picture in the glass.

Each window pane pairs two complementary colors for a gradient. Blue and purple transition to purple and pink, into pink and red. The completed mosaic art suggests a tree at sunset.

A work-in-progress shot shows the artist’s process, using transparent slopes to hold the black mosaic image in place while she figures out the gradient. So much lovely cheese!

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.

Making magic with mind-bending custom minfigs [Minifig Monday]

Last week’s grab bag installment of Minifig Monday was a lot of fun, but today we return to themed roundups. Specifically, we’re looking at wizards and warlocks and their sorcerous kindred – but the real magic is in the creative use of parts to push the boundaries of minifig creation!

We start this magical Monday collection with a character who is barely a wizard at all – Rincewind from the Discworld novels. As created by legendary minifig photographer Jez Rider, Rincewind is accompanied by The Luggage and a definitely-not-stolen sheep.

Custom minifigs represent! This incredible Wicked duo from LEGO Masters winner Ian Summers (bricktacular_builds) is currently in the LEGO House Masterpiece Gallery, and might be the smallest build to get that honor. The parts usage is mind-blowing, especially the backwards arms, Glinda’s teapot body, and a beard for Elphaba’s broom. I had the chance to speak with Ian at LEGO House and he’s a fan of Minifig Monday and the creations shared here.

Backwards arms? Redbirch ups the ante with legs for arms! The builder has only shared 11 MOCs so far, but they’ve already made Minifig Monday twice with some of the most innovative parts usage we’ve seen. Look at those extended legs, made by slotting a minifig hand into the leg hole.  The handlebar shoulder armor is great too.

Let’s make some more minifig magic after the fold

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.

One of LEGO fandom’s biggest collabs gets shrunk with New Microshima

Since its debut at Brickworld Chicago in 2023, the New Hashima collab has gone viral, spawning new incarnations at LEGO events around the world. (You can learn more about its origins here.) Builder Toltomeja provided cubes  (the modular format from which the city is built) at Bricking Bavaria in 2023 and 2024. Now Toltomeja fuses the cyberpunk city with their talent for microscale with this stunning tribute to the 2024 iteration. At 64×64 studs, it’s quite massive for “micro,” but that’s what it took to showcase the contributions of more than 50 builders.

New Microshima

For reference, here is the full-sized model in all of its glory:

Click to explore more of New Microshima

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.

Meet the LEGO builders behind the 2025 Masterpiece Gallery exhibition!

LEGO House in Billund offers guests an incredible way to connect with the company’s history and playfully engage with bricks, but my favorite wing is the Masterpiece Gallery, which honors fan creations from builders around the world. It’s an amazing way to showcase what LEGO artists are doing with bricks to a wide audience, and for those who follow the MOC world closely, it’s a chance to see favorite builds up close in the best possible venue (alongside three enormous T. rexes!). This year, the space was expanded to include two sections for wall-mounted artwork, bringing the total to 17 artists.

TBB was fortunate to speak with all of the builders this week before their works were opened to the public. Some of the faces and builds are quite familiar to readers of this site – one is even a contributor! Let’s meet these amazing builders:

Seigo Aoki (aka DeRa)Japan

DeRa has created some of the most popular builds of the last two years featured on Brothers Brick, so seeing the amazing models in person was truly an honor. While DeRa‘s featured builds are organic subjects, the builder studies Architecture and has created incredible buildings from LEGO as intricate as his beasts and mechs. DeRa is proud that Japanese builders have been recognized around the world.

Meet the other 16 Masterpiece Gallery builders after the break

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.