About Lino

Lino is an artist, humorist, and occasional responsible adult. He is the co-founder of a challenge-based LEGO car club called LUGNuts which boasts over 1100 members worldwide. He proposed automotive building challenges every month for ten years (120 challenges!) which he and the other members built accordingly. LUGNuts has retired its challenges on its 10th anniversary but still remains a cornerstone for LEGO automotive builders. Between his artistic work and LEGO builds, Lino has been published in several books, including Beautiful LEGO, Beautiful LEGO: Dark, and Beautiful LEGO: Wild. He lives in Washington with his girlfriend and dogs.

Posts by Lino

Got anything that needs tormenting? Cuz I’m The Tormentor. It’s what I do.

My little brother may have described me The Tormentor in the 80s because I might have convinced him that the president was going to send missiles to our house if he wasn’t a good boy. In my defense, Your Honor, it was the 80s and, with plentiful stock footage of MX Missiles on TV, it was easy to convince him of self-caused, yet hilarious impending doom. Plus he was a toddler and toddlers just aren’t cool. So, one could argue, that he really had it coming. While you’re mulling over that legal defense check out this LEGO creation by Titolian. It’s called The Tormentor and apparently it’ll be featured in the game Destiny II: Lightfall.

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The rockstar and her 5-star cabin

Somehow famed LEGO builder Jaap Bijl has made a non-food-related creation look downright delicious. It likely has everything to do with that sweet and refreshing color scheme. I’m imagining the flavors of strawberry ice cream and lemon sherbet. Do they go together? I just might be willing to find out! Aside from seeming dastardly delicious, this cabin is chock full of amazing build techniques. I love the smoke emanating from the chimney (it’s a white serpent!) as well as the gold scorpion nearly hidden among the filagree along the roofline. The chef’s kiss probably goes to the multitude of walkie-talkies making up the thatched roof. I love the musician’s lute but that hair-like lovely cotton candy! I feel like I could stay in this cabin forever but I just might be tempted to take a bite out of the wall just to see if it’s as delicious as I imagine.

A missile bay for every appendage

When Angus MacLane isn’t basking in the glory of being the director of the Lightyear movie he’s a LEGO builder, just like the rest of us. But unlike the rest of us, he basks in the glory of being the director of Lightyear and an all-around big-wig for Pixar. That’s how fame works! Now that that’s all perfectly clear, he took the Robot Warrior from the Series 24 Collectable Minifigures and gave it the mech treatment. He enhanced the arms and legs and gave it some cool wings because, in case you’re still following along, that’s how the mech treatment works. I love the dark green and dark pink color scheme which makes it seem like something that is both somehow healthy to eat and sickeningly sweet. It doesn’t hurt that this mech has, what we’ve all admittedly wanted for ourselves, a missile bay for every appendage. Totally badass!

A distressed badger badgers the Mouse Guard for help

A builder who goes by the name of Evancelt Lego presents a diorama that is called Redwall: A Visitor to Loamhedge. From their Flickr page; “After receiving the distressed badger and hearing his tale, Abbot Gersey sends warrior mice out to aid in his search for his daughter. Weasels had been spotted near Loamhedge a fortnight earlier and the abbot has his suspicions they were behind the badgermaid’s disappearance.” They go on to say that this started as a chance to play around with light lime alongside yellowish green and lime in the base, which incidentally, was the very thing that attracted me to this build. Those of us in the know about such things understand that these colors are as scientifically different as pink and orange and can look pretty neat when presented together.

V is for Classic Space! Wait, what?

Sometimes it takes several tries to come up with a clever name for an article and boy did I miss the mark with that one! That’s OK, famed LEGO builder Bob DeQuarte tells us this was his first time building a Classic Space spaceship and he struggled quite a bit, especially with the engine design. It took a few tries, experimenting with different engine sizes and placements but we think the end result was well worth the effort. Check out why we think building in the Classic Space style is well worth the effort and, while you’re at it, please let me know in the comments what a clever-er title for this article could have been had I have not half-assed it like a total schmuck.

Two scoops of desert goodness

This latest LEGO creation by Tom Loftus has instant appeal for me. I mean, it looks like it’s going super-fast while sitting still. That is partly due to the genius use of the dusty roostertail behind this Desert Speedster. The position of that minifig driver makes it look like he’s really leaning into that turn. I’d be impressed enough with that but there is some brilliant parts usage with the bucket scoops as front fenders and it appears the body of the car is an upside-down boat. Incidentally, this is not the first time Tom has been using parts in clever ways. Not by a long shot! Check out our Tom Loftus archives to see what I mean.

Don’t sail off the edge!

We’ve been impressed by Ralf Langer’s alien and exotic worlds before, by golly! But this time, I’m in awe of that two-stud wide perfectly round base. That is what he had challenged himself to do and not only is this build visually striking, but sturdy enough to hold. It’s also larger than expected at first glance. The white 1×2 plate sort of acts as a reference to the size of it all. Ralf tells us that he certainly could have loaded the composition with greenery but scaling back to a very simplified color scheme does wonders for this scene. The water somehow looks deep but, as the edge shows, it’s only two studs wide. I’m well aware the water and the rest of this world continue outside of the borders of what has been presented here but one can almost imagine the little sailing ship going ass-over-tea kettle off the edge.

A little Star Wars N-1 Naboo Starfighter with big problems

LEGO builder Tim Goddard proves you don’t need a metric ton of bricks to present an epic scene from Star Wars. Here this cute little N-1 Starfighter has equally cute Vulture Droids on its tail. It’s a dicey predicament to be sure but I have faith in the N-1 pilot (is it Anakin?) and their ability to get out of any sticky situation. Tim Goddard has gotten into plenty of sticky situations as of late and somehow most ended up tiny and cute. Click the tiny and cute blue link to see what I mean.

We all remember our first castle

The Castles line holds a special place in the hearts of us Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOLs). For some, a Castle set gifted during childhood brought us back into the hobby as grown-ass adults. For MaxMaMoc their first castle is easy to remember as it dates back to just a few days ago. It’s an impressive creation for a first castle; who am I kidding, it’s impressive even for a seasoned castle builder. I really enjoy the stonework, waterfall, and action going on throughout this diorama. It’s made clear that, even if they’re not primarily into castles, their attention to texture and detail is phenomenal. A quick perusal of their Flickr stream confirms that detail is important to this builder. One detail that is also of note is this seems to be our first time featuring this particular builder, at least under this name. Let’s give them their well-deserved TBB bump and with creations this well-detailed, we look forward to whatever else they may get into.

Teddy Spacepants enjoys the moon in his new rover

LEGO builder Tommy Frost tells us that R is for Rover and according to the very limited research I did just now that checks out. I didn’t really bother to fact-check that because The New York Times we are not. But while we’re here, let us admire the awesomeness that is this rover. I love the camber of the oversized tires and that color scheme is the bee’s knees. Tommy also tells us that he’ll be building a rover every day this FebRovery so that will ensure job security for us, entertainment for you and the continuing adventures of Teddy Spacepants will grease the wheels of this here machine we call The Brothers Brick. Or something. I don’t really know how the internet works. Anyway, hit up our archives to see the other times Tommy Frost had greased up our spacepants.

The Assault on Kobaria isn’t an assault on our senses.

In a LEGO Star Wars universe of Endor, Andor and lovable robots, Stuart N takes us off-off-off world to a lesser-known location with this diorama called The Assault on Kobaria. Kobaria, as we all know, is from that one…thing we really, really like. It features that one guy we love and the other guy, too. And let’s not overlook that one hover-tank-spaceship-y thingie that I’m definitely not drawing a blank on—so don’t get that idea in your heads! Kobaria is home to the Kobarian swamp dogs so that certainly clears everything up. OK, you got me. Look, maybe I’m not as well-versed in the Star Wars expanded universe as I can be but even Wookieepedia wasn’t much help here so you can’t blame a guy for trying. Still, I know a cool LEGO creation when I see one and this is pretty cool. So either show me up on your extensive knowledge of Kobaria in the comments or take a deep dive into our Star Wars archives, whichever floats your hovertank.

Use LEGO flora to build LEGO fauna

I’ll just come out and say the LEGO Botanicals line is the best line to come out in recent history. Each is a refreshing and visually compelling break from the norm and that’s a flowery hill I’m willing to die on. I’ll even fight you freaks who think otherwise. Wow, that escalated fast! Anyway, Ian Hou probably knows what I mean as evidenced by this lovely owl. It repurposes several flowers from at least two copies of the new Wildflower Bouquet set. In the wings, I’m also seeing leaves from the Bird of Paradise set and I’d wager much of the brown tree branch comes from the Bonsai Tree from 2020. Not in the mood to get into fisticuffs over it? Yeah, neither am I. So instead let’s leisurely peruse through our Ian Hou archives to see the decidedly tranquil stuff he likes to build.