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 weird grody space-milk?

I’m no slouch when it comes to writing my own jokes. But sometimes you just want to seek out low-hanging fruit and let someone else do all the heavy lifting and joke writing for you. Thankfully, I found The Brothers Brick alumni Iain Heath to be both low-hanging and fruit. The Last Jedi answered a dubious question that no one wanted to know; how does Luke sustain himself on the remote, rocky, wind-blown planet of southern Ireland? It turns out he gets it right from the tap as illustrated with this creation that Iain made to look like an official LEGO set. (Don’t let that fool you, space travelers!) It features a Thala-siren, a weird marine mammal-creature with her huge rediculous udders flopping out there in front of God and everybody to see.

The title “Crazy Space Wizard Breakfast Assault” is hilarious. The milk on Luke’s face, Rey’s last name are all also pretty damned hilarious. Even the piece count of 420 may offer up a clue as to where Iain gets all his crazy ideas. See what I mean? The jokes just write themselves!

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Springtime in Weydale Valley

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have four distinct seasons. We have a rainy winter and also a rainy spring. We have summer, which this year fell on a Tuesday and we have Spider Season. With that said, I may consider moving to Weydale Valley. Kevin Wu makes the place seem absolutely enchanting with this stunning LEGO layout. Everything from the bubbling brook to the Tudor-style mill just screams peace and serenity. Or rather it whispers peace and serenity. You can forgive the mix-up as spider season is coming upon us here in the Pacific Northwest and there’s a lot of screaming involved, as you can imagine. Anyway, I love the techniques used on the bridge and the roof of the mill. The deer, the chicken, even the little pig is chock full of charm and tranquility.

When you love Classic Space and have a lot of it to haul around

We all love LEGO Classic Space, right? Sure we do, it hits us right in the nostalgic feels. But what happens when you love it so much that you have a lot of it to haul around? It turns out, The Brick Artisan has answered all our prayers and my weird premise with this Classic Space Compact Transport Rover. It can haul your barrels of toxic waste, whatever comes in those blue canisters (probably also toxic), and whatever that greebly doohickey is of questionable toxicity. Let’s just err on the side of safety and assume it’s all toxic. Thankfully these rovers were fitted with sensitive gyroscopic technologies and extremely responsive suspension so we’ve not shaking up things we don’t have to. This isn’t the first time we were totally delighted by this builder’s Classic Space stuff. Check out what I mean in our archives.

We rock out with the LEGO Ideas 21329 Fender Stratocaster Guitar [Review]

Once again the LEGO Ideas team gave the public what they had voted for and this time they had acquired a license with Fender to produce a faithful facsimile of the Fender Stratocaster. The Stratocaster, or the “Strat” as it’s affectionately called, is one of the most iconic electric guitars of all time (it’s within the top two!). Tomáš Letenay is the fan designer for this set, but does LEGO’s interpretation of his design crank the awesomeness up to eleven or does it fall a bit F-flat? Our guitar enthusiast reviewer gets his hands on a copy to find out. LEGO Ideas 21329 Fender Stratocaster consists of 1,074 pieces and retails for US $99 | CAN $139.99 | UK £99 and is available October 1.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Click to read the full review to learn more

Alien Assimilators are assimilating nicely

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be in the mind of LEGO builder Mihai Marius Mihu. He is an artist who seems to exist in a dark, hellish world that’s part H.R. Giger, part H.P. Lovecraft and part Wayne Douglas Barlowe. In other words, he’s precisely the type of person I’d love to have a beer with. Take, for example, this new creation, an Alien Maintenance Bay. In his own words, the bay “is the infirmary of the Mothership, a ward for diagnosing and repairing of the damaged Glider units that were able to return from combat.” The whole structure oozes alien biomechanical menace. With astounding textures and smart color trapping, it’s a masterpiece from an incomprehensible distant world. He also tells us that in the year 2033 mankind is struggling to survive after an overwhelming alien invasion. That’s only like twelve years away! Looks like we’re in for a dreary future. Or maybe we won’t even know it because we’d all be assimilated into their creeptastic alien agenda.

Seriously, Mihai if you’re ever in the Seattle area look me up, you’ve got a local microbrew coming to you on me. And adversely if I’m ever in Romania, I’ll be sure to visit Dracula’s Castle and your place, which I wouldn’t doubt may very well be one in the same.

You have to admit, the Freemasons have some cool iconography

The Freemasons are a super-secret fraternal organization that apparently rules the world and everyone’s dad seems to be a member. Regardless of who they are and what they do exactly, you have to admit they have some cool iconography. Season one LEGO Masters contestant Aaron Newman has been commissioned by the Scottish Rite Masons of Lexington, Massachusetts to build their double-headed eagle logo. I’m in awe of the ruffled textures of the eagle achieved by leaving the studs exposed in some places while covering them in layered tiles in others. The sword and banner are certainly not without their charms but I’m most impressed by the “33” encased inside an equilateral triangle. This is a shape not easily achieved in LEGO but Aaron does it with finesse. The crown and even the eagle itself seem to be floating in space and this is achieved and is quite structurally sound, thanks to the use of transparent Technic beams.

Be sure to check out the video as Aaron explains the model more in-depth. And while you’re admiring this build yourselves, go ahead and forward this article to your dads and they will likely respond in turn with a knowing yet solemn nod.

Teal we meet again

LEGO builder Dan Rubin tells us that he had wanted to build something with teal (aka Dark Turquoise) for a long time. Along comes this Basilisk craft which was his first appempt at anything teal. I’d say his first attempt knocked it out of the park especially with the elegant shaping and greebly accents. All that teal looks great against the marigold (or bright yellow-orange), it gives it sort of a rockabilly/surf rock feel.

Great job, Dan! This is your well-earned chance to…basilisk in the sun. This is probably an inopportune time to point out that puns are the lowest form of humor and a sign of brain damage. I should probably look into that then. Whatever! Just check out this craft from all the good angles.

Journey to the bottom of the baseplate bin

Maybe it’s just the bourbon talking, but baseplates can be hit or miss with us LEGO builders. I have boxes full of them, but they reside in the most inaccessible corners of my LEGO room because (again, this might be the bourbon) I perceive them as “greasy kid stuff.” However Walter Whiteside Jr. just might have me digging out my old plates and rethinking my greasy kid strategy. Everything about this particular shot, from the bright yellow submersible to the way he uses the pattern on the baseplates, is phenomenal. The round bits come from this Fabuland set from 1985. In fact, most of these parts take us to about the mid-eighties to the early nineties.

We may have other things to look forward to from this builder. While this shot is remarkable enough to warrant its own write-up, the bit of monorail track clues us in that this may be part of a larger layout. In fact, here’s another denizen of Walter’s amazing underwater world!

A Classic Space Paraflyer is a fun way to travel

LEGO builder David Roberts tells us the Classic Space Paraflyer is a fun way to travel over planets with any form of atmosphere. I’m inclined to agree, not based on my own experience, but based on the expression of the little space minifigure’s face. I mean, look how happy he is! You can’t be melancholy with a face like that. In fact, every last minifigure produced from 1978 to 1989 had this same exact smiley face. Whether they were robbing banks or laying up in a hospital bed they were damned happy to do it! While we may feature massive spaceships and elaborate castles, sometimes it is the little things that speak to us the most.

David’s fun little builds have spoken to us on several occasions. Here are all the times that we listened.

The MK II Cylon Raider makes a swooshable comeback

2004 was quite the time. It was the year we fathomed the possibility that some of our friends and neighbors just might be Cylons thanks to Battlestar Galactica. Hot on the tail of that pivotal TV series, Rubblemaker has built a minifig scale LEGO MKII Cylon Raider. He’s captured the bat-like shaping and complex curves nicely. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Cylon Raiders here on The Brothers Brick so it’s neat, in a sense, when someone builds something long after its relevance has peaked. There are a lot of great new parts that weren’t available to us back when seeing a slew of these at LEGO conventions was as ubiquitous as used Toyotas. The builder tells us this model is 32.5cm long and 20cm wide and is made of 656 pieces, including the stand. It is also highly swooshable, which is important stuff when building LEGO spaceships.

Now, what is that song I hear? It’s like a weird version of All Along the Watchtower. Do you hear it? Maybe it’s just the bourbon. Or is it? While you’re mulling that over check out more Battlestar Galactica stuff in our archives.

The cicada has one crazy summer

Cicadas are interesting in the sense that they spend most of their lives buried underground then emerge as horny, loud, unruly teenagers. Kinda like all those summer camp movies from the 80s. The sound these insects make is unmistakable and to LEGO builder Thomas Jenkins that distinctive sound means summer. This creature is chock full of nice parts usage including an inside-out tire comprising the thorax and a Constraction figure torso used as the abdomen. With the signature red eyes, the wings, and the stance, the end result bears an uncanny resemblance to the real thing.

While their legendary mating calls may be loud and their parties wild and unruly, the cicada lives its life above ground for only a couple of weeks, a month at most. Then they all end up looking quite like this. Fast times indeed.

The Muppet Show or bust

For me, The Muppet Show was the perfect in-between show for those in-between years. It wasn’t quite a cartoon, and it wasn’t quite as boring as those serious shows the grownups watched. It came on in the evening, so you felt just a little bit grownup watching it without going into Murder, She Wrote territory. A LEGO builder who goes by the name j-p-30 his us right in the between childhood and adulthood feels with these three clever busts of some of our favorite Muppet friends. We have poor Beaker, whose scientific experiments tend to end in fiery calamity. Gonzo was the weird bendy-nosed Muppet Show pianist, and the less said about Animal’s outrageous antics, the better. All together, you’ve got the makings of a trio that could make us giggle even if Trapper John M.D. was totally your jam. Well done, Mr. j-p-30!