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

Life is like...something, something

There’s an old adage I’ve heard somewhere about life being like something or another but damned if I can remember it now. Sometimes the ol’ reptile brain is not as responsive as it used to be. Maybe it’ll come to me at some point. Anyway, for unrelated reasons, here’s a LEGO box of chocolates built by Kale Frost. It’s amazing that you can make LEGO look so tasty and decadent. The sheer variety of chocolate treats here can be written into some kind of clever analogy or another but I’ll leave the creative thinking to you. While you’re mulling that over, here are the other times we’ve been totally smitten by something Kale has built.

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This barber can help get you back into polite society again

I remember barbershops! They were popular before all this COVID stuff. Since lockdown, some of us have taken matters into our own unskilled hands. One neighbor gave himself the “Robocop” haircut while another gave himself the ever-popular “I’ll never recover from this financially” hairdo. As circumstances have it, I’ve been rocking the “Crystal Palace” look for months now. No muss, no fuss, no nothing! With my goatee, I resemble the bassist for a heavy metal band or a tiny bouncer. Once things get back to normal this LEGO barber by Vir-a-cocha should get your hair looking as hip and cool as his own. He seems like he’d be a fun conversationalist, too. I really miss barbershops! Do yourselves a favor, next time you go to a barber or beautician, be sure to tip them well and let them know they are greatly appreciated. I also really miss hair.

Autumn woodlands just in time for Spring

Just as Spring has sprung around here Isaac Snyder has Autumn on the brain with this Tryandal Woodlands. But as it turns out, March signifies the onset of Autumn in the southern hemisphere, so… Yeah, maybe my title and premise aren’t as funny and ironic as initially thought. Plus, last week, it was snowing and 36 degrees Fahrenheit here, so who knows what’s going on in the world. Either way, Isaac tells us Autumn is a magical time for him, and if that inspires him to build a LEGO creation this good, then I’m inclined to agree. With only 101 elements, we are taken to a magical land complete with Elven towers. It’s rather breathtaking, truth be told. Here are some of the other times Isaac had us whisked away to magical lands.

The Spectre haunts the seven seas

Sometimes a builder has an idea but waits for years for the right LEGO pieces to come out. In this case, Sebeus I was inspired by the Queen Anne’s Revenge set that came out ten years ago and wanted to build a ship with a dark brown hull. It took all of this time but finally, his vision could be built. Behold The Spectre! He tells us that it wasn’t smooth sailing though as the 1×2 jumper plate still hasn’t been molded in dark brown. A point of pride for the builder is this isn’t a very flashy ship. Much of what people prefer to build are extravagant seafaring craft but an understated ship like this was more common back then. His main sources of inspiration were the Lady Washington and the HMS Bounty. This is clearly a labor of love well worth the long wait.

“Honey, where are my pants?”

The title was used in both LEGO movies and references an entire series that entertained the citizens of Bricksburg about a guy who is perpetually perplexed about the whereabouts of his pants. This “Piranga” Heavy Artillery 53-R bot is most definitely wearing a pair of red Scala pants but not in the most obvious way. It has an extra set of arms at the waist and the pants are acting as sleeves! This bot also makes use of two LEGO gel pens as guns. It just goes to show that talented builders like Marius Herrmann can make use of even the most “useless” of pieces. This is part of a series of fashion-forward robots he’s been building. We’ve been following them closely and I suggest you sashay over to the Brothers Brick runway to check out more of these fashionable robots.

Tough and mean and olive green! Hoorah!

The reason the original castle set from 1978 was yellow and not gray is that LEGO didn’t want to encourage kids to build military stuff. All that changed with the abundance of gray in the Star Wars sets. Still they had similar hesitancy with olive green. It took the Pixar Cars line in 2011 to introduce the color and military builders rejoiced. So there, the joke is on you, LEGO! (That was much funnier when I thought of it earlier today.) While this particular shade of green is now available in many sets, it’s still a difficult color to amass in large quantities. That is just one of many reasons why this rough and tumble Soviet Ural-375D by Rolands Kirpis is so impressive. Another reason is each axle and the steering functions are run by Power Functions motors. It took a year to collect all the right parts to build this model but the end result is as mighty as the Ural mountains.

Some assembly required indeed

I was an avid model kit builder as a teenager and young adult. There’s one hobby that brought my model building days to an abrupt end and that involved the rediscovery of LEGO. Still, it’s neat to see a builder like Kale Frost illustrate the love for my old hobby with pieces from my newer one. The cutting mat, paint tubes, pencils, the Exacto blade, even the plastic parts on the sprue are all built from LEGO. With sanding, gluing, and painting there certainly were a lot of steps involved in building models. I still have a few kits in my art room closet. Perhaps this might inspire me to rediscover the hobby. If not, it at least provided fond memories of building models in the basement while listening to my parents’ Black Sabbath tapes. Yes, I said tapes! And Black Sabbath. And parents.

We come from the land of ice and snow...

Back in 2005, LEGO came up with a stunning Vikings theme that captured our imaginations for years afterwards. I wish they would (ahem) revisit the line again (ahem). Are you listening, LEGO? I wish you’d revisit the Vikings line. (Cough, cough COUGH!) Pardon me, it must have been one of those dry prickles you get sometimes. Anyway, Ivan Martynov takes us back to a simpler time when I had other haircut options and the world seemed full of possibilities. This stunning Vikings-inspired Krakenveiðar creation looks like it would be fun to play with. That’s because it is a reimagining of a prototype of a set that never came to be. He even used the Vikings logo of yore. Care to have your minds blown? Check out the prototype. Care to have your minds blown again? Then check out the other times we totally freaked out over Ivan’s stuff.

Greek Revolution or bust!

Our readers of Greek descent can rejoice. Talented LEGO builder George Panteleon is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the 1821 Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire in style.
Theodoros Kolokotronis was a prominent military leader and one of the key figures of the Greek Revolution. Frankly, I had to Google him but once I did I had learned that George’s rendition is spot on! The mustache, long gray hair, and helmet are particularly inspiring but my favorite detail is the gold filigree on his jacket. He tackles the gentle slope of the shoulders; not an easy feat in LEGO. Even his epaulets accurately depict the gold lion crest that the real revolutionist wore. George is well-versed as a builder and no stranger to our pages. Check out our archives to see for yourself.

The Mars Flytrap is more terrifying and flytrap-y than the Venus one

I had a Venus Flytrap once. I bought it when I had an infestation of fruitflies several years back. Or were they mayflies? I don’t know, I didn’t ask. Either my flytrap was fussy or they’re not that into fruitflies (or mayflies) because it really wasn’t the fly kill-fest I hoped for. But this LEGO Mars Flytrap by Linus Bohman is the stuff of B-Movie nightmares. It’s big enough to eat cars and it doesn’t seem fussy at all. The Mars Flytrap is expertly crafted with plant bits and I just love that horrific gaping maw. Oh, and before you flood the comment section with what’s LEGO and what isn’t, it’s all LEGO. Yep, even the cars! They’re from a series of LEGO HO Scale offerings from the ’50s and ’60s and are now worth a mint. Tasty!

Zoinks! Get a clue! It’s Scooby-Doo!

If you look up Paul Hetherington in the dictionary you’ll find the definition to be builder of awesomely huge LEGO creations. Probably. I don’t know. Does anyone still have dictionaries anymore? Well, if we did, Paul’s smiling mug would be in it. The man has more talent in his little finger than most of us have in the rest of our fingers combined. Go ahead, look it up. I’ll wait. See? This time he takes us back to our childhoods and Saturday morning cartoons with this stunning Scooby-Doo diorama consisting of over 8000 pieces. Most of us would have just bought the Mystery Machine set from 2015 and called this case closed. But Paul integrates the iconic vehicle with an entire mystery mansion.

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We could all use more capes around here

You could say LEGO builder Marius Herrmann is having the best month ever. Earlier I raved about a Police Enforcer bot in a fashionable blue jacket. Then my colleague “Mr. Waffles” picked up a scoop about a flying bot in a sweet pair of Scala pants. Now I’m here again and this time Marius presents a 51L “Elanoides”-NC Enforcer adorned in a ragged cape. What can I say? I’m a fan of all these fashion-forward bots. It doesn’t hurt that the build techniques here and photography are on a whole ‘nother level.

Why don’t you build something cool that’ll attract our attention? That’s how this all works, you know. You build something neat, we feature it, and the world turns. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. It just seems that Marius shampoos and repeats more often than most and that means clean hair and job security for us!