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

Mesa so delicious!

What is worse than being trapped in a submersible with Jar Jar Binks? Being trapped on that same submersible while being chased by a huge hungry predator. This LEGO creation by al is depicts a scene from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in which our heroes (and Jar Jar) are in their Gungan Bongo Sub being persued by a ravenous Opee Sea Killer. It also marks right about the first instance in which I started rooting for the bad guys. There were many others to come. Still, it’s pretty impressive that this builder can cram so much detail into such a small build. It just goes to show that you don’t need a lot of pieces to build something neat and well-detailed nor to wish to wring Jar Jar’s scrawny neck all over again. How wuud!

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What the world needs is a shiny, green COE

You may look at that title and think; well that’s just stupid. And believe you me, this wouldn’t be the first time I drop a rock stupid article on y’all. But then when you check out this sick slammed LEGO 1948 COE (Cab Over Engine) Car Hauler built by Sérgio Batista you’re like; OK, that’s pretty dope! Right? At least that’s how it all goes down in my mind, anyway. But seriously, with copious chrome, dropped stance, mean green color, and sexy curves, this COE has probably earned a dope status from you the readers. And that rat rod you see it hauling? It turns out we featured it before as that one was penned by yours truly. I guess I’m just into rat rods and COE haulers. Check it out and another creation by this same builder in our dope archives.

Bored Bionicle Beach Bum

There’s been just a bit too much going on in the news lately so to ease our stress here’s a bored LEGO Bionicle lifeguard built by Patrick Biggs. When a lifeguard is bored that usually means everyone is playing nicely and no one is doing any stupid shiznit in the water. I could get drunk and try to use an ironing board as a surfboard but being rescued by one lifeguard is more than I want to endure in one lifetime. You, on the other hand; go nuts; get recued; good times! This is part of a series in which a group of friends portrayed Bionicle figures acting as ordinary citizens. We’re all perplexed as to how and why they did it but, truth be told, my whole ironing board fiasco perplexed several local citizens as well, so…yeah.

The Jaw Titan is all about unsavory business. Probably

You may remember our Attack Titan featured yesterday. Well, I get the feeling it might be the first of many Titans in your immediate future. A group of friends, including a LEGO builder who goes by the name of VelociJACKtor has built a slew of gruesome Titans from the Attack on Titan anime/manga and now we’re all thrilled and maybe a little perplexed. This Jaw Titan is so strong that even its biceps have pecks and abs. It also has a cool…um…face. That’s all I know. I’ll admit, just like my colleague who penned the previous article, I have not watched or read the source material in which these characters come from but I still love these builds we’ve been seeing anyway. According to some commenters, not knowing the source material that we write about should be grounds for firing. But the joke is on you as we were never hired in the first place! We just sort of loiter around here like that one guy in front of 7-11.

If a Deere dumps in the woods

I don’t know why but I’m way into agricultural equipment. But seriously, I don’t know why. I didn’t grow up on a farm, most of my life has been spent in cities or suburbs so I have no farming background to speak of. Perhaps it’s the exotic-ness of farming that really plows my harvest. So you can imagine, I was pretty thrilled to see this LEGO John Deere tractor and Joskin tipping trailer built by Damian Z. The model is not overly large but it’s a solid construct and well detailed for its size. I can just smell the diesel fumes now. Or is that manure? This city slicker doesn’t seem to know one from another! Still, I get a kick out of this stuff. Check out our farming archives to see what I mean. While you’re at it, take a gander at our other John Deere builds including a twelve-year-old entry by yours truly.

If Tatooine was in 30’s era Detroit

I used to think I was the only one who did this; you look at a Star Wars vehicle and imagine its Earthly counterpart. For example, the Millenium Falcon could be a Ford Falcon, Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter could be a Jedi Starliner and Darth Vader’s TIE-Fighter could be a bitchin’ 70’s era Econoline with shag carpeting, beef jerky dispenser, lava lamps and a Boris Valejo space-wizard airbrushed on the side. Right? Well, it worked better before I put it to writing. Anyway, LEGO car guru and real-life car guru Peter Blackert clearly thinks of this stuff too as evidenced by this terrestrial 1939 Buick Y-Job concept made into Luke’s Landspeeder. There aren’t a lot of these lying around so I had to Google the vehicle but once I did, I can see how Peter saw the retro-futuristic shape of the Landspeeder. This computer render, in my opinion, perfectly melds the swooping curves of both designs.

Doing this sort of thing is a fun and imaginative exercise but if you prefer to keep your Landspeeder designs true to the movie, then try your hand at building the official UCS Luke’s Landspeeder LEGO set that has come out recently. Installing a beef jerky dispenser in the dash would only sweeten the deal.

I really FALL for this simple design

While LEGO builder Carter Witz tells us he has kept this design pretty simple I’m still smitten with it anyway. Granted it doesn’t have mind-blowing techniques and complex gear trains but you can go a long way with a well-appointed layout. I love the trees, the smiling minifigures and the rock patterns. That waterfall though really makes the piece special. The look and feel takes us back to a specific time in LEGO history right in the sweet spot of childhood memories. You know, before all the backaches and sore knees. This builder frequently takes us to special places. Check out the Carter Witz archives to see what I mean.

One guy, one cup: On Stranger Tides indeed

So there’s that moment when you go on a mega-pint bender and wake up next to a pile of your own poo only to realize the poo is not your own after all but rather it belongs to your estranged ex-spouse. I know what you’re thinking; we’ve all been there, right? Right? Well, according to his deposition, Johnny Depp/Jack Sparrow has. (They’re interchangeable, really.) I’d wager that LEGO meme generator and The Brothers Brick alumn Iain Heath probably has as well because he’s a hard-partying dude. Leave it to Iain to have his wine-soaked, dubiously smelling finger on the pulse of what is hot at any given moment! Whether you’ve been following this fiasco or not, you gotta admit Iain tickles our funny bone. Find out what we mean by clicking the little blue link if you dare.

This speedster lifts and separates

The cool thing about designing spaceships is that space travel is more or less in its infancy here on Earth so we can still dream up all sorts of wild and wacky designs. Take this LEGO “Comet” Speedster concept built by Marco De Bon for example. It is chock full of neat build techniques and complex angles. The forward dishes are Ninjago Spinners making the model tricky to balance according to the builder. Speedster implies speed but I imagine the forward mandibles can lift a payload magnetically while the aft section sports four Brick Separators, hence the lifts and separates reference in the title. I definitely wasn’t thinking of a retro bra ad when I thought up the title so don’t get that idea in your heads.

Bee careful these viper drones don’t steal your plans

A LEGO builder who goes by the name of Rubblemaker has built a Queen Bee Royal Viper Drone. Let me break that down for you. Queen. Bee. Royal. Viper. Drone. What part of that don’t you understand? Clearly, she’s out to do some badass queen bee stuff like infiltrating the hives of other bees and stealing their plans for honey, pollination, and other bee-related stuff. But no need to explain it any further. You had me at Queen Bee! Check out why we think Rubblemaker is the bee’s knees.

You should totally Google Googie if you haven’t already

You may not know the word but you know it when you see it; an optimistic, retro-futuristic feel with upswept roofs, curvilinear, geometric shapes, and bold use of glass, steel, and neon. If it reminds you of The Jetsons, then that’s Googie! Famed LEGO artist Paul Hetherington creates the look nicely with this far-out poster depicting a retro-fab Googie eatery aptly named Comet Cafe. They boast that they have charbroiled steaks so you know that it’s going to be good! The standalone cafe would be impressive enough but Paul has integrated it into a 3-D poster. Just behind the cafe, there are hints of an entire Atomic/Space Age world complete with a hotel, a gas station, and apartments similar to what I lived in when I was single. Lest you forget the funny moniker that encompasses this type of design, Paul has built the word Googie in a funky retro-fabulous font.

This view takes us to street level where we get to hang out with everyone from this neighborhood. Like, cool Daddy-O! Be sure to click the little blue link to find out why we think Paul is one of the hippest cats around!

A sick slammed cambered Beetle

In my neighborhood, you can measure douchiness by the angle of the cambered tires. You tilt those puppies more than fifteen degrees and you know that driver has a flat-brimmed ball cap, smells of Axe bodyspray, and never uses their blinkers. But as a car enthusiast, I think I can cool my judgemental jets for this amazing slammed cambered LEGO Beetle built by Hagen Oscarson. With its black and red color scheme, flashy rims and classic air-cooled Beetle shape, this slammed bug has all the makings of something that makes my heart go pitter-patter. It seems that this may be the first time we’ve featured Hagen’s work but with LEGO automotive styling this good, I think we’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever else he might do. And Hagen, this juuuust might inspire me to camber my own snazzy Bug. But then again, maybe I won’t. My blinkers get a lot of use.