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

This little star loves playing with planets

Look at that little star! They’re so adorable when they’re that age, aren’t they? Esteemed LEGO builder Koen Zwanburg tells us that this little star enjoys playing with planets. Don’t we all? Gosh they start off as a cute little gas cloud then before you know it they’re expanding into a Red Giant consuming the planets around it into a fiery hellish doom, then they implode in on themselves into a cold White Dwarf or whatever. But that’s like…a long time from now. We’ll have plenty of time to admire its cuteness before we are all vaporized into oblivion. In the meantime, check out why we’re so intrigued by this builder’s stuff.

This was built for a great cause called Build to Give. Click the little blue link to see what its all about and maybe build your own star to help out.

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Play that funky music, squid-frog

Sometimes y’all are a bit messed up. It’s unsettling and maybe someone ought to check in on your well-being. But as I’m jibing to the same dissonant tune, I’m right there with you and could probably also use a wellness check from time to time. Take this high-flutin’ LEGO creature built by Alex_mocs, for example. You can only imagine what hellish deities that this thing might summon. He calls this piece, The Call of Uūl but maybe you ought to send Uūl back to whatever unfathomable realm from which it came. Just say you butt-dialed it. Wrong number. However, since it’s here I like all the dinosaur parts used and the creative way those dark red tree leaves are stacked in such a way to denote alien coral or maybe some of that non-Euclidian geometry we’ve heard so much about.

While Alex doesn’t cite his inspiration per se I believe it may come from this and if that is the case then I’m totally jibing to your crazy tune and you seem to be just the kind of person I’d love to have a beer with. But let me pick the soundtrack though, OK?

We are Wanderers of the Void

In a LEGO world of massive spaceships and castles, sometimes it’s the simpler things that really draw your attention.Take these Wanderers of the Void, for instance. They were built by someone who goes by the name of VelociJACKtor. I’m equal parts flummoxed, intrigued, weirded out and awestruck, which is pretty good for such a simple LEGO creation. Who are they? What void do they wander? Are there any others like them? Did they do all that wandering in those shoes? This pair generates more questions than answers. But that pretty much makes them the most intriguing things I’ve seen all day. What do you all think?

A Roman border tower keeps an eye on them goats

Whether it be the great natural color scheme, fantastic textures or intricate shapes, there’s a lot to love about this Roman border tower built by Ben Tritschler. But the star of the show, to me anyway, has to be those goats. Clearly I’m not the only TBB contributor thrilled by goats. However, I do seem to be the most vocal about it. What can I say? Goats are pretty much the formula for success around here. Even when they’re scary as hell. I may consider also going gaga for those sheep. They are not without their charm. As a LEGO builder, Ben is also not without his charm. Check out our archives to see what I mean.

Ice Penguin Mechs are go!

LEGO builder Chris Perron has delivered precisely what the world needs now. That being four Ice Planet mechs piloted by penguins that take inspiration by Dungeons and Dragons roles. Do I need to repeat that? Four Ice Planet mechs. Piloted by penguins. Inspired by D&D. What part of that don’t you understand? Our first offering totally rocks out on an icy guitar.

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The Halo ring world has us all running in circles

Sometimes one good idea spawns another. My case in point, this LEGO Halo ring world built by Ralf Langer. It is chock full of great tricky techniques to build this ring and I could get lost in all the details and the landmasses. We’d be impressed enough if this occurred as a creative anomoly but in the very capable hands of Ralf this is not the case. Back in June we featured a seascape on a curved horizon. In March of 2020 we see Ralf employing the same techniques with a scene from Fallout that made the social media cover image for that month. Both, it would seem, were mere practice runs for this stunning Halo ring. If you have a hankering for all things Halo you may want to click the little blue link. And be sure not to miss another builder’s prior Halo ring world featured way back in 2012.

Snout and Buzzer may or may not have good intensions

Meet Snout and Buzzer. They’re not your average mechs. The LEGO builder with the enigmatic name of Sheo. tells us that Snout is a scout mech equipped with a sensitive sensor array. Meanwhile the Buzzer mech emits a powerful field of pure bliss. Anyone affected stands paralyzed. All of this sounds fishy to me. Now why would this pair go looking for people and then give them pure bliss? At what cost does this bliss come by? And what is with those bright red minifigures? Are they a fuel source? This creation boasts more questions than answers. Still, I might like just a sample, a tiny taste, a micro-dose of that pure bliss. It’s the trendy thing nowadays, isn’t it? perhaps rub just a tiny bit of it on my gums and then I can decide if I want to procure more. Wise decision, do you think? While you’re mulling that over, check out the other times we were tempted by this builder’s offerings.

Krossing the Kookie T-Bucket off the T-Bucket list

In 1952 the gregarious larger-than-life Norm Grabowski took a ’31 Ford Model A V8 roadster and, with some unconventional customizations, made hot rodding history with his equally gregarious and larger-than-life Kookie T-Bucket. With its flashy red and blue color scheme and cartoonish proportions it was a pivotal car for sure. Norm’s T-bucket helped push hot rodding to the forefront of American pop culture. In fact, anyone building T-Buckets today borrows some DNA from this Kooky-T. Fast forward nearly 70 years later and LEGO car builder 1saac W. has paid homage to Norm and his Kookie-T and scratched this one off his T-bucket to-do list. Be sure to check out the other times we went totally kookie for 1saac’s stuff.

Morning at the Museum

True story; I had a chance to work after hours at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. I was contracted to paint display backdrops for a Mars exhibit. It was late at night, long after the patrons and staff had gone home and a security guard and I were the only two people there. I can say with confidence that a museum at night is a strange and eerie place. Some lights are on, others are off and incidentally, they leave the animatronic dinosaurs turned on so they were moving and roaring throughout the night. This LEGO creation called Morning at the Museum by Alex Eylar reminds me of that experience. To be clear, the skeleton T-Rex is from this set but the environment Alex has built for it and the lighting makes this a stellar creation indeed. Alex is quite good at setting a mood in LEGO. Check out what I mean in our archives.

Put the pedal to the metal (or punk or rockabilly)

Whether you have a real electric guitar or the new LEGO one it’s only a matter of time before you start tinkering with other sound effects. It would seem that LEGO builder Rubblemaker is also astute at making music. The set came with a tiny, measly foot switch so he remedied that situation with a petal board suitable enough to turn any aspiring guitar player into a rock god. From guitar to amp we have a Cry Baby Wah Wah Pedal, a Rat distortion pedal, BOSS Chromatic Tuner, BOSS Chorus, BOSS Phaser, and lastly (my favorite) the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi providing a nice throaty fuzz.Put it all together and you’re ready to get the band back together. We’ve grooved to Rubblemaker’s tune before, Click the link to see.

This unwelcome visitor makes your opinionated uncle seem delightful

We’ve all had to put up with that one unwelcome visitor, right? Usually it’s an opinionated uncle with some harebrained QAnon conspiracies or a boozy aunt with a penchant for family drama. Both will wreck the toilet and both will ask to borrow $12,000 by the end of the night but they keep getting invited back because they’re family. Well, imagine a visitor so unwelcome that not only is it adept in its toilet wrecking abilities but it’ll also scramble your brain and make you do its unspeakable bidding. That is precisely the kind of unwelcome visitor Ivan Martynov has rendered in LEGO. Meet Ur-Lugal, a being so strange it is clearly not from around here. It isn’t even from Belgium. Its planet of origin is unpronounceable and its tactics are insidious. Still, you have to admit that there are some rather charming built techniques at play here. It’s almost…welcoming.

Or is that the brain scrambling at work? I’m not even sure what’s right anymore. But what I am sure about is I like the stuff Ivan builds. Also where we go one, we go all.

Yngwie Malmsteen arpeggios your face off far beyond the sun

With LEGO coming out with the official Fender Stratocaster set it was only going to be a matter of time before someone becomes inspired to build guitar legends who play the Strat. It has happened and that builder is Steven Wayne Howard and the guitar legend he has built is none other than Yngwie Malmsteen. This guitarist is so legendary that throughout the 80’s I thought his middle name was Freakin’ or some variation thereof. One of the builder’s absolute favorite performances of his was from the live show in Leningrad in 1989. He has rendered Yngwie’s resemblance nicely; his heavy metal hairdo comprises mostly tree sprigs in brown, the ruffles of his shirt use the solar deltoid part. Even his pants appear to be leather thanks to some rendering trickery and lighting. Steven tells us this creation is 2,642 pieces and is 30 inches tall.

This shot offers a close-up view of his face and those aforementioned LEGO solar panel pieces nicely mimicking a ruffled effect.

You LEGO purists may want to cover your tender ears because it’s about to get cray-cray up in here. Steven tells us that this was created digitally using Bricklink Studio, Mecabricks, Cinema4D, Octane, Greyscalegorilla, and Photoshop on a Puget Systems computer. Now that’s freakin’ metal!