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

A blue cottage to stave off those COVID blues

In many parts of the world, if you’ve been following COVID safety protocols correctly, you may be itching to get out of the house right about now. Thankfully there is such a thing as contact-free check-in and this cottage may have the cure for what ails us. Is it called cabin fever when you want to leave the house to stay in a cabin? Whatever it’s called, Andrea Lattanzio’s stunning blue LEGO cottage is a sight for sore eyes. The round door and windows, the woodpile under the eave, and the weathered ramshackle texture make this a cottage I’d love to stay at for a weekend or even a month. The fall leaves, the skylights, the birdhouse, and even the mushrooms out front make for a picturesque vacation setting.

I can even forgive the skunk for paying a visit. They don’t spray when you treat them with respect and I’m willing to respect the skunk and all the other woodland creatures for a stay in this cottage. Andrea was The Brothers Brick Builder of the Year in 2019 for good reason. Check out our archives to see what else Andrea Lattanzio has been up to.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Ice cold shenanigans at the Gotham Museum

We’ve seen several very impressive Batcaves over the years but poor Mr. Freeze has been largely thus far given the cold shoulder. Until now. Brothers Brick alumni Tim Lydy invests several months and an ungodly amount of LEGO bricks, both stock and custom, to give Mr. Freeze a fitting lair complete with about seventy individual LED lights. The exterior of the museum is quite impressive with its textured brickwork and massive Spartan statues flanking central Greek-style columns. The icy ornamentation along the top and the frozen tail to the right offers just a glimpse of what’s inside. Let’s take a tour, shall we?

Continue reading →

Going nuclear with this toxic villain

Here is a toxic sludge LEGO Bionicle figure built by Rockmonster2000. It’s here to cramp your style, chap you hide, harsh your mellow, or whatever it is they do with toxic nuclear sludge nowadays. This villain is just oozing with personality! It may not be the personality that’ll win over the nuclear safety inspector but it’s personality nonetheless. Where’s the Toxic Avenger when you need him?

Yo, dawg! We heard you like gold so we pimped your ride!

Who could forget the mid-2000’s show Pimp My Ride? You can be forgiven if you had already forgotten it. The premise was the host and rapper Xzibit, would knock on some young pimple popper’s door, notify them that their broke-ass ride is about to be pimped, then backflips and high-fives would ensue. Then the guys at West Coast Customs would install state-of-the-art stereo systems and gadgets, wild paint schemes, spinner rims, and TVs on nearly every surface including seat rests and mud flaps. Stir in a little drama and a big reveal and you have the makings of what entertained us in the mid-oughts. This LEGO rover by Crimso Giger is pretty much what Pimp My Ride would be like if they had worked on space rovers. It’s way more blingy than the practical but boring rover they just sent to Mars. Consider yourselves pimped!

All that glitters is pure gold

It is the Year of the Ox and we have not yet gotten tired of your OX-related LEGO creations. My case in point, Ian Ying knows that what glitters is pure gold. It’s an ox, it’s expertly crafted in LEGO and it’s entirely gold. What’s not to love? It’s especially poignant being that 2021 is a Golden Ox year and is said to be a very lucky year indeed. We haven’t had a golden ox year since 1961 and I’m told that year wasn’t without its charms. Other builders have used monochrome with some pretty amazing results. Also, check out some other Year of the Ox creations that we have featured.

The choice of the Me Generation

The ’70s were known for plunging necklines and one hell of a fuel crisis. At least one of those things was responsible for making the two best-selling cars in America the Ford Pinto and Plymouth Valiant. However, the Lamborghini Countach snubbed its rather pointed nose at all that and looked and performed like nothing else on Earth at the time. A builder by the name of RGB900 has given the favorite car of 80’s teenagers and strip club owners the LEGO treatment. At only six studs wide this is a truly impressive model. It just goes to show you don’t need a pinky ring and a lifetime membership at Spearmint Rhino to enjoy this ride. With LEGO and skill, you can build this pivotal sportscar on a box wine budget.

The little roadster that could

Anyone even remotely familiar with hot rodding knows that the quintessential dream project is the ’32 Ford roadster. They’re always a favorite at car shows and Ian Ying pretty much reached hot rodding nirvana with this LEGO version. I can assure you, they didn’t look like this off the assembly line but with a bit of imagination and elbow grease, customizers back in the day would turn their Grandpa’s jalopies into these hot little roadsters. The classic black with red trim, whitewalls and flames is the pinnacle of perfection. Copious chrome and gold doesn’t hurt matters, either. Ian is proving to be an automotive LEGO-building legend with a penchant for shiny bling. Click in the blue link there to see what I mean.

I promise you, one day I’ll take you to Elysium.

Graffiti is commonly found in alleyways, on abandoned buildings and railway cars but you don’t think of it as being scrawled on spacecraft. That’s why it is so neat to see it on Peter Stella’s newest LEGO creation. This is a shuttle from the gritty…or partially gritty Elysium movie from 2013. For those who haven’t seen the film, the citizens of Earth live in squalor, filth, pestilence and turmoil. That’s the gritty part. The non-gritty parts of the movie takes place on Elysium, a beautiful, clean utopian space station orbiting the Earth where the rich and powerful live. The station is technologically advanced, with devices that can cure diseases, reverse aging, and even regenerate body parts. Earth, not so much. The film makes deliberate, heavy-handed socio-political commentary and, as you can imagine, tension ensues. Anyway, in a LEGO world of Star Wars and Harry Potter it’s nice to see someone of Peter’s caliber give Elysium a bit of love. And graffiti.

Catapult into action with the Star Wars 125-Z Treadspeeder

“They fly now? They fly now!” That was a memorable quote from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It references the ability of the 125-Z Treadspeeder Bike to sort of springboard First Order Jet Troopers into the air. The concept was fine enough but in comparison to say the Millennium Falcon or the Slave I, The 125-Z, in my opinion anyway, may be one of the more mediocre offerings in terms of Star Wars vehicles. However, in the very capable hands of Mirko Soppelsa, I may have to reconsider that assessment. At nearly 6000 LEGO pieces, this intricate model is truly a sight to behold.The minifigs that accompany the base clues us in on how absolutely massive this model really is.

Continue reading →

This stunning DeLorean takes us Back to the Future

One thing we never get tired of here at The Brothers Brick is LEGO versions of the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Yep, it’s pretty much the formula for success around here. Let’s see, the rules are clean photography, good build techniques and DeLoreans from BTTF. Also it doesn’t hurt to mention The Mandalorian or The Child. Alex Jones (no relation to the chemtrails turning frogs gay conspiracy guy) has followed all our rules of success and that is why he’s a frequent flyer here. I love the details, the gull-wing doors, the greebly bits around the back that makes time travel stuff happen. The complex angles are recreated masterfully using some pretty advanced build techniques. Even Marty’s hover-board is represented nicely!

Oh, the Mandalorian DeLorean. Now that’s a great idea! Somebody get on the horn with Disney and Universal Amblin Entertainment and make that happen!

Sometimes a relaxing bath is in order

After a hard day at work it’s nice to sit and…um…write and edit for Brothers Brick. Ok, maybe tonight is a no-go, but on my nights off, I ought to take the advice of LEGO builder Adrian Drake, clear my calendar and soak in a tub. He has presented a large-scale diorama of a lady relaxing in a bubble bath. The bubbles, the shape of the tub, the faucet, even the scenery out the window are all top notch. My favorite detail, however, is the diamond checker pattern on the floor. It’s not an easy feat when LEGO bricks prefer to be laid out at ninety degree intervals. While ladies are typically more fond of bubblebaths than men, I’d like to remind the fellas that you ought to treat yourself to a hot soak occasionally, even if you are a surly Sasquatch of a dude like me. Wine and candles may enhance the relaxing experience. But remember, always burn candles responsibly.

An oil platform built from oil-based bricks.

We all love to build LEGO creations and occasionally some of us even make a bit of money doing it. I don’t know much about Fitec Supply but I hope they paid handsomely for this stunning oil platform by Niek Geurts. It’s tough to pinpoint what scale this is. It’s bigger than what we’d call micro-scale, maybe more in the realm of midi-scale and certainly smaller than minifig-scale. Regardless, the detail here is top notch. I’m loving the cranes, the oranges lifeboats and the helipad. The overall industrial feel of it makes me want to put on a hard hat and some coveralls and check temperature and pressure gauges or whatever else it is they do on oil platforms. With LEGO creations this good, we’ll be certainly be checking the gauges on what Niek is up to from time to time.