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

Leaf pieces are really shaping up nicely.

Builder Azurekingfisher calls this LEGO sculpture Cone Cube Sphere for, well, the obvious reasons. It’s well-photographed, graphicly bold, and, at first glance, can be misconstrued as something other than LEGO. But they make interesting use of the tree leaf part in three different colors. My personal fave is the cube as it makes use of some plates and tiles but the cone and sphere certainly aren’t without their charm. It must take some expert hands to craft these as, I imagine anyway, that cone is a good way to snap those brittle leaf pieces in half. Azurekingfisher, please chime in in the comments if you’ve ever broken any. In the meantime, everyone else click the little blue link above to see many more delights that make use of the leaf part.

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A Summer folding chair in the middle of Autumn

That air is brisk out there! Autumn most certainly has arrived, making me want to don a warm sweater and maybe sip a pumpkin spice latte. But maybe it’s warm where Dicken Liu is because clearly he has summer on his mind as evidenced by this LEGO folding chair. He even titled this piece Summer Nights. If the desired effect was to have me thinking of summer, even as the wind howls and rattles our ghost Halloween decorations, it worked! I can just about feel the comfort and warmth of a starry summer night. The tea and the side table are a nice touch, too. The mushrooms are also neat!

Something turmeric this way comes

We don’t intend to feature nearly every LEGO creation Bart De Dobbelaer has made. But when he’s so masterful at creating beyond-bizarre alien worlds and creatures, the likelihood of us being captivated by his work is as likely as a TikTok influencer being fired from a job, then posting said firing on TikTok. Which, you have to admit, is fairly high odds. Turmeric is an excellent dietary supplement that is said to help with variety of conditions, including arthritis, digestive disorders, respiratory infections, allergies, liver disease and depression. However, these creatures Bart calls Turmeric Nightmares are giving me the heebie-jeebies. Two shades of brown and trans-yellow work well here. The end result is like some sort of malevolent fungus. Creepy stuff! Still we keep coming back for more. Click the link to find out why we think Bart De Dobbelaer is more compelling than a TikTok influencer getting fired.

Have no fear, Chainsaw Man is here! Or something.

For LEGO creations straight from the mind of a weird ten-year old boy, (I know, because I was one once) then look no further than Redverse. Apparently, my ten-year-old self is not the only one to have sketched out something like this. Chainsaw Man is a popular manga series written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto. This build, against that bold background, depicts the volume one cover. The story features Denji, an impoverished young man, who makes a contract that fuses his body with that of a dog-like devil named Pochita, granting him the ability to transform parts of his body into chainsaws. I mean, what kid hasn’t wanted to do that? Wikipedia goes on to say that Denji eventually joins the Public Safety Devil Hunters, a government agency focused on fighting against devils whenever they become a threat to the world. You see? My parents were wrong; job opportunities abound when you have chainsaws for hands and a face! Now if only I knew how to cash in on my deranged juvenile ideas.

Rockhall lights the way to an epic layout

Call me weird but I love a huge LEGO layout with a unified color scheme. Take this striking red and white creation by the eerily named Eric TheSkeleton, for example. The buildings, lighthouse, even the numerous airships stay faithful to that red and white color scheme; it’s kinda like the White Stripes live there. I’m sure there are other real-life examples but with the hill and Mediterranean-style red roofs, this layout reminds me of Coimbra, Portugal. Upon closer inspection, this is actually a microscale build but the island citadel seems to have a more massive footprint than what is true to life. The bones as waves are a masterful touch! That water just might be a bedsheet or a tablecloth but, with the tiny ripples, the effect works amazingly well within the composition. It’s not quite a purist approach but the last time we upset the purists, we had a record number of complaints from folks with AOL email addresses so maybe lightning will strike again this time. Here’s to hoping it does!

This ship leaves us feeling flat but in a good way

In the aftermath of SHIPtember, it is actually refreshing to see a few littler LEGO ships in our midst. Here’s one that David Roberts simply calls A Flat Ship but its striking color scheme and interesting shape leave us feeling anything but flat. It has just the right amount of oomph to make it interesting. David has a surprisingly profound thing to say about ships; “Many LEGO spaceships are just abstract sculptures, that happen to have a cockpit and engines added to make them more accessible!” That certainly is a neat way of putting it.

Walk the wave, if you dare

Marion Weintraut flexes some architectural might and probably more than a few LEGO bricks with this stunning Ruyi Bridge. I’m in awe of its intricate waving construct; a feat that doesn’t look easy. It’s a delicate and beautiful structure that would look handsome as a display at any architectural firm. I would probably be too frightened to traverse such a dizzying structure had it have been real. Well, I should hang on tight and have a sick bag at the ready because, as it turns out, it is!

A trio of Star Wars TIE Fighters to tie you over

Man, I love good LEGO builds in an alternate scale! Here we see a trio of TIE Fighters built by Tim Goddard. They’re not quite microscale, but probably what we’d call closer to Midi-scale. Tim calls it Trophy Scale which would be great to receive such a trophy. The Darth Vader TIE Advanced X1 and its regular TIE escorts are handsome on their stands and showcase just about as much detail as their bigger UCS counterparts.

Tim tells us he has been thinking about building the entire Death Star trench run in this scale, which would still be massive and jaw-droppingly impressive if he pulls it off. In the meantime, just tie yourselves over with a couple of the good guy ships, an X-Wing and A-Wing. Now don’t get cocky! Actually, we prefer when you do get cocky. It usually makes for good LEGO creations and amusing subject matter to write about.

Go for the gold!

Sure we love massive spaceships and huge LEGO dioramas here at The Brothers Brick. But sometimes you’ve gotta appreciate the little things in life. Like this goldfish built by Kashim K, for example. It has just enough pieces to make it interesting; plus it makes use of a Brick Separator so that’s fun. What clever things have you done with your Brick Separators lately? We now return you to your regularly scheduled spaceships and huge LEGO dioramas.

The planet Duplovia processes water so you don’t have to

What’s happening on the planet Duplovia? According to Wami Delthorn they process water there. It’s fun to just (ahem) soak in all the details. It has enough Classic Space LEGO goodness and playability to quench the thirst of any diehard fan. I’m particularly loving the communications tower, spaceship landing pad and the space train that traverses the entire build. The LED lights are also a neat touch. With all this expensive and important science-y space stuff I hope they utilize this water processing plant for something useful, intelligent and practical; like fueling the galaxy’s largest and most epic Slip ‘N Slide!

The Hells Angels set the stage in this massive moving WWI diorama

With the exception of the past couple of years, I’ve been a staple at BrickCon in Seattle since 2005 or so. This year, I wasn’t a registrant but snuck in unnoticed (almost). While there, I was treated to this wonderous LEGO stage show put on by Douglas Hughes. The table presence of this massive creation was quite impressive, even with the curtains closed. But as the curtains parted, the intro music started and the real show began! As described by the builder, “As the curtains part you can see biplanes circling both above and below the zeppelin which maneuvers up and down.The soundtrack transitions to biplane maneuver and machine gun noises, and a red biplane swoops to the center stage from behind a cloud, gently rocking back and forth. Soon enough the red plane sidles back behind cloud cover and the finale begins to unfold – a little biplane corkscrews down in an uncontrolled dive until it hits the zeppelin.” He goes on to say; “Red lights flash, explosions rock the air, and the zeppelin slowly breaks apart revealing smoke and fire rising from within. The curtains begin to close and the finale fanfare plays – the show is over!”

I guess you had to have been there. No, seriously, you had to have been there! The builder hasn’t provided a video of this beast on motion just yet but I can attest that this was an amazing work of art. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out, but this had to have won one of the top prizes, I’m sure. Chime in in the comments to let us know what awards this won or just to tell us what you think.

An Ewok Village redo and redemption

A LEGO builder who goes by the name of Simulterious tells us that they took apart the Ewok Village 10236 set and regretted it. Yeah, we know all about regret here at TBB, don’t we? Wait, what the hell does that mean? Anyway, they turned their regret into a redo and redemption of sorts by building a new version depicting what the set could look like today. I’m enjoying the use of shields as sort of a thatched roof design and the diversity of leaves is a welcome change from the old set. This builder also rectifies the obvious omission of the AT-ST from the original. Even though there seem to be slightly fewer Minifigures (that are visible, anyway) this would be an insta-buy for me if this were a real set. While we most certainly have our regrets, (wait, that again?) showcasing this builder’s work isn’t among them. Check out our Simulterious archives to see what I mean.