About Jonathan

LEGO was always Jonathan's favourite toy growing up in Middle Zealand, until around the age of 16 when he was told he was too old for toys. 16 years of Dark Ages later he decided you are never too old for toys and became hooked again with 7477 T-1 Typhoon vs. T-Rex and has since amassed over a hundred thousand bricks to facilitate his MOC building obsession. Jonathan runs a small IT business from home with his wife and three young boys under 5 (who are allowed to play with Daddy's LEGO when they can learn to stop putting it in their mouths!). When not working or spending time with family Jonathan is usually sorting LEGO.

Posts by Jonathan

All’s well that ends well

The annual LEGO build challenge SHIPtember is over, but we’d be failing our obligations to you our readers if we didn’t highlight Simon Liu‘s Frontline Artificial Intelligence Logistics Supervisor. This brutalist, monolithic behemoth has a great contrasting colour scheme of primarily dark grey, with subtle hints of vibrant yellow and brilliant orange. I love the juxtaposed angles that Simon has created with a variety of interesting techniques. The FAILS serves as the logistic hive centre of the SL Drone Fleet. Heavily armoured but completely unarmed, the SL FAILS depends on its fleet to be its defence.

SL FAILS

Monorail, monorail, monorail [Video]

Hearkening back to the 80s LEGO Monorail with its centre-engine car and retro look, Jason Allemann has come up with another fantastic kinetic powered creation. This time he has built a motorised train for the new LEGO rollercoaster system.

Roller Coaster Train

Jason is using an ingenious design with Technic half bushes and rubber tyres to attach and propel the mini monorail. Watch the video to find out more about the challenges he faced and overcame to create this cute little piece of LEGO nostalgia.

Come on, stop trying to hit me and hit me!

Do you ever get the feeling we are living in a simulation? One of the greatest cinema moments of the nineties has been brought to life in LEGO by Douglas Hughes in this scene from The Matrix where Neo asks, puzzled, “I know Kung Fu?” Morpheus looks at him quizzically and challenges, “Show me.” Douglas has captured the simple complexity of the dojo beautifully, adding special lighting for the sword racks. With its stark lines and contrasting colours, Neo deftly dodges one of Morpheus’s relentless attacks.

Hit me if you can

A bridge beneath the tracks

There is so much about this little scene that stands out as awesome. Regularly featured here on TBB, excellent master builder Tim Schwalfenberg does it again with his River Crossing. He says, “You can’t really have a train without some sort of track to display it on,” so he built one. The textures and colours of the rocks and foliage are impeccable. The intricate detail that has gone into the iron framework of the span across the turbulent rapids is amazing, and the brilliant red engine leaps out from the subtle textures of the natural colours and contours on the cliff face.

River Crossing

Have you seen the LEGO linebacker Beebee ate?

The new trilogy’s adorable astromech has appeared in a number of official versions from LEGO, including as a minifig, as a UCS Model, and even as a polybag! However, Brick Spirou has reimagined him again as a kind of Claptrap (from Borderlands). I love the LEGO Technic shoulder pads, the unique poseable fingers, all assembled with a simple yet perfect colour scheme. Could you imagine games of the future featuring huddles of muscled, mono-wheeled, mini-bots charging around a pitch wildly chasing a leather ball? Such a wonderful idea exceptionally executed.

Perhaps this BB-8’s full designation ought to be Borderlands Buddy – 8.

Welcome into the family

There’s more to them than meets the eye

If you are looking for a striking vision of leadership, look no further than the indomitable Optimus Prime! Beautifully Lego-ized by builder Anakin Skywalker, this stunning rendition of the fearless leader of the Autobots captures the shaping of his head and torso superbly. I love the limb articulation and the poseable fingers, as well as the little details like the windscreen wipers. Optimus is posing Roosevelt-like with his “big stick”. Like any true commander, his philosophy was, “There’s a thin line between being a hero and being a memory.”

Lego - Optimus Prime!

Classic Space doesn’t get much better (or smaller) than this

Can you feel the nostalgia oozing out of this gorgeous little trophy-scale homage to LEGO Classic Space? The diorama by Paul Lee is a perfect micro replicant of a Galaxy Explorer, Rocket Launcher and Moonbase as they would appear in a 1980s LEGO catalogue. Special attention has been paid to getting the moon craters as close as possible to the classic baseplates. This build is simple and elegant with a lovely warm after-glow of sentimentality.

Classic Space Trophy Scale

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

At the far end of Bagshot Row at number 10 is the house of Fredregar “Fatty” Bolger, the son of Odovacar Bolger and Rosamunda Took. Patrick B. has captured Fatty with his wife and a furry friend outside his beautiful house at Bag End — another Shire creation for his “ExploringTheShire” project he started a year ago.

Bagshot Row 10 (Hobbiton)

Like many a member of the online LEGO community, Patrick has credited fellow builders in the comments on Flickr to acknowledge where he has “borrowed” Jonas Kramm’s cobble design and appropriated the watering can design from Simon NH. I love how the online LEGO community reminds me very much of Hobbiton in more than a few regards.

Haere Mai! Come Here! Welcome!

Tēnā koe e hoa (Greetings. Hello to you, friend.) from Jed Cameron of New Zealand with his “Not 100%  historically accurate” Early European Settlers arriving at a Māori Village. Inspired by a treasure trove of colonial art he found online, Jed has done a great job recreating the look and feel of a pre-colonial Māori wharenui (large communal house).

Early European Settlers arriving at a Māori Village

Jed used an upside down quiver as the koruru (carved head) at the apex of the meeting house to great effect. I love how the smooth tiles illustrate a well-trodden path through the village and the Pouwhenua (carved wooden posts) mark the boundary of the village. This is a lovely little build and a wonderful representation of a crucial point in New Zealand history.

Kai Pai! (Well Done!)

Beautiful Micro-builds of Niklas Rosén‎

You may remember back in January we featured instructions for a tiny typewriter by Niklas Rosén. After seeing more of his gorgeous builds we decided to feature highlights from his Flickr collection. Niklas tells us it’s the shapes that give him the inspiration to create everyday household objects. Here he is trying to expand his Monofig collection with this nifty airbrush kit with paints.

Soon my monofig collection is ready

His favourite among his eclectic collection is the elegant antique clock. I love the simplicity of his gravity-defying tap with water splash motif.

Antique clock

Floating tap

Click here to see more awesome mini-builds!

Do you know your ABC in Danish?

Growing up learning English as a kid was hard enough with 26 letters, Anne Mette V has 3 whole other letters to contend with in the Danish Alphabet which she has carefully created out of LEGO bricks. LEGO ABC contains a series of simple, beautiful vignettes depicting the different letters. With Dragons, Lions, Pandas and Astronauts all contained in childhood like blocks of beautiful colour, there is plenty to look at. I love the little classroom scene in the bottom right-hand corner.

LEGO ABC

Incredible radio controlled Maggie with Snowball II [Video]

Maggie’s loose again in this quirky creation by Andreas WeißenburgMaggie is posable and completely radio-controlled, cleverly constructed using an SBrick and Power Functions Motors. It features four-wheel steering and tilting trucks, but don’t take our word for it—we’ve got video of Maggie action. 

RC Maggie and Snowball II

We’re trying something a little different at the Brothers Brick to introduce some of the amazing videos our builders are coming up with of their LEGO art, so we had Andreas send us some video and we added a bit of commentary. So check out this video of Maggie cruising around, and also let us know what you think of this style.