With the Lunar New Year less than a week away, we’re seeing a lot of amazing Year of the Snake builds from LEGO builders around the world. In the latest This Week in Bricks, ABrickDreamer puts the spotlight on snakes while highlighting many other incredible MOCs, contests, and builder tips from around the web, like the results of the Colossal Castle Contest (congratulations to Louis of Nutwoood, builder of this incredible castle!)
For LEGO builders who create scale models of real-world vehicles, capturing the distinctive shape of an original is a mighty accomplishment. Doing so with minimal seams can challenge the best builders. Nailing both while also integrating motor functions? That’s the mark of a LEGO modeling master. Max Richter’s Boeing 747-8 in Lufthansa livery is one of the most impressive scale model aircraft we’ve ever seen. At 1.5 meters long (nearly 5 feet!) and with a wingspan of 1.35 meters, clocking in at 12,500 pieces for a weight of 11.4 kg (25 lbs), it’s also one of the biggest, dwarfing LEGO Icons Concorde. The motorized landing gear system is a thing of beauty. This build soars.
To fully appreciate Max’s model, I highly recommend watching his video tour. As a bonus challenge, can you find where he uses a droid body, hockey stick, and pirate hook in the build?
Buckle up for more details on Max’s remarkable LEGO aircraft
According to Linkedin, the illustrious Bibliarius Zakharius Glockta is a certified adventurer, chronist, scientist, and inquisitor. Left off that resume, he’s also an entrepreneur, green energy innovator, and tiny home enthusiast. LEGO builder Dwalin Forkbeard captures this enigmatic and larger-than-life minifig as he roams the land peddling arcane artifacts from his ox-driven mobile hut. With its wonky angles and wheels akimbo, this rolling cottage is a delightful mash-up of Warhammer and Dr. Seuss. The printed wood tiles evoke Seussian ink, and you can’t tell me Biliarius hasn’t crossed paths with a Onceler.
The wagon hides a few brilliant uses of unusual parts like a turkey tail arch over the window, but the real LEGO miracle is how Dwalin Forkbeard managed to capture this barely-together ramshackle build without it falling apart!
Revisit our Dwalin Forkbeard archive to see why this Ukrainian AFOL has become one of our favorite fantasy builders.
The Iron Forge competition just concluded its second week-long sprint where twenty builders were tasked with making creations using the ubiquitous LEGO minifig head as the featured “seed part.” So many delightful builds emerged from the prompt, but one builder kept delivering smiles: Dominique Boeynaems. Each of these builds is worthy of sharing on its own, but together they’re an inspiration to builders and a showcase of what makes the Iron Forge such a wonderful part of LEGO fandom.
Leading with Dominique’s final build, this nearly lifesize accordion came together during a 10-hour sprint and incorporates no less than 44 minifig heads for the keys. Vidyo straps work great for the handles. With the competition name and year worked into the instrument, it’s both a wonderful build and the perfect memento.
Dominque’s frog uses three minifig heads – two for the eyes and one for the fly. A car hood makes for a perfect amphibian forehead.
Click to see more of Dominique’s colorful and heady builds
It’s been 18 years since gamers first explored the fallen “utopia” of Rapture and we still can’t forget the Big Daddies who haunt its undersea halls. In game, those lumbering living diving suits are the stuff of nightmares, but built at minifig scale by BrickAA, they’re not nearly as scary. Shall we call them “L’il Papas” instead? BrickAA has quite a knack for pint-sized mechs and makes many instructions for their builds freely available, including the instructions for this adorable Big Daddy. What are you waiting for? In the words of Andrew Ryan, “a fan chooses to build.”
Should you prefer your Big Daddies a little… bigger, why not revisit this classic build from Eero Okkonen?
Over the past two years, Nathan Don (Woomy World) has become one of the most exciting builders around with a talent for color, shaping, and unlocking the potential in every piece from LEGO’s deep history of parts. The builder leaps into the new year with a new character: Tobu, a Japanese-inspired rabbit swordsman. The face is quite expressive, with parts like minifig casts in the lips giving the character a fluffy intensity. The featured part here is definitely the new leaf mold in magenta from Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet, used for Tobu’s ears and for a dynamic ring of leaves around the model, and which anchor the color scheme. As Nathan explains on his blog, parts in retired colors, like the Scala table used for the figure’s base, can unlock new color combinations when mixed with modern elements.
Should you find yourself in Billund, several of Nathan’s characters can now be seen at the LEGO House Masterpiece Gallery.
In the cyberpunk city of New Hashima, the rich live above the fray (as we’ve seen with this incredible tower) while the have-nots are left to eke out a living in the toxic world below. Brick Ready adds to the massive LEGO collaboration with this artificial island made from shipping containers that shows that there’s beauty even in the city’s slums. The builder brings an eye for detail to the towering creation, such as laundry hanging from windows, splintered wood supports, brick-built graffiti, and broken windows. The shipping container homes might not be luxurious but they feel cozier than many of the neon scenes in New Hashima’s more thriving districts. The transmission tower adds scale and a splash of color that makes the island a triumphant addition to the collaboration that grows more wonderful each year.
Sometimes a “sketch” of a bigger LEGO project can turn into stunning work in its own right. That’s certainly the case with Roanoke Handybuck‘s towering pirate village, where using stilts in place of terrain creates negative space that heightens the fantastical architecture of arches and overhangs, accentuating the surreal beauty. Maybe the results can inspire you to find a hidden masterpiece in your own unfinsihed LEGO projects.
Jeff Friesen has been delighting LEGO fans with his microscale cityscapes for years, maintaining a clean isometric look that looks rendered but is very much real bricks. For his first build of 2025, Jeff erects a gilded city of waterfalls and aqueducts that could have been pulled straight from the beautiful Monument Valley mobile games. Like all of Jeff’s cityscapes, it’s an immersive experience that rewards peeking around every arch as you imagine life in this fantastic place.
If you’re curious about Jeff’s process and inspirations, our interview with the prolific builder is a great place to start.
Aside from a handful of Raya and the Last Dragon sets, LEGO has never explored traditional South-East Asian architecture in official sets, which is a shame, as you can see from this minifig-scale Thai wat built by Brigitte Jonsgard. Brigitte perfectly captures the steep, tiered roof with ornate chofa jutting out like horns. Snaking dragons along the stairs welcome guests into the temple. Birgitte shares a video of the full buddhist complex, with wat and stupa, over on flickr.
Birgitte has a talent for ornate houses of worship. This stave church from her native Norway is one of the most striking LEGO churches I’ve ever seen.
When it comes to building LEGO mechs, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone with as much experience and expertise as Moko. The Japanese builder has been posting and sharing robotic creations with us for 20 years, going back to 2005 and this sad little Gundam! Moko’s latest big project, this incredible combining Mechazord, was one of our most popular articles of 2024. Today Moko is sharing techniques for building mech heads like these.
![LEGO Mech Heads Vol 2 [How to Build]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54261995754_40705b0ddb_b.jpg)
Follow along as Moko guides you through the advanced techniques used to build heads like these from simple parts you probably already have in your collection.
For more mech head tutorials, check out Moko’s previous video with four different styles.
The twisting mass of teeth and bone called Yamikamikusari is the incarnation of a portable shrine that governs reincarnation. This incredible LEGO model also represents a reincarnation of sorts for its creator, Pan Noda, a builder of immense talent and steady reinvention. Pan seems to have found a new muse in the shape of the DUPLO ball tube, featured here in red and used in two other amazing builds late last year. It’s such an un-LEGO piece, curved and studless, defying connection to a bigger build. But Pan manages to tame the tubes, finding the perfect way to nest rings of 2×1 round plates inside to turn an innocent preschool toy into a nightmarish maw. Pan’s shrine construction is also beautiful, incorporating chains, nets, and Modulex elements to create a structure that seems carved from wood, not built of blocks.
With such talent and imagination, it’s no wonder Pan Noda made our shortlist for Builder of the Year.