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

Watch(band) me shoot this bazooka!

Meet Bazooka Belatrix, she’s a new LEGO creation by JakTheMad. She lives in a dark alternate reality where people fire guns and there’s a camera on every street corner. Wait…nevermind. Anyway, her bright neo-punk outfit and hair contrast nicely against the rather noir environment. This may be the first instance that we know of where someone uses the new DOTS Watchband for something other than an article of jewelry. Even her projectiles utilize the silly 1×1 printed tiles found among the DOTS sets. Neat-o!

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Hands-on with the new LEGO SPOTS for boys [April Fools]

Hot on the tails of their DOTS success, LEGO has revealed the SPOTS line of accessories for boys ages 6-12. In advance of the theme’s release on April 1st, The Brothers Brick obtained an advance copy to share our impressions of the boys’ extension of the creative tile theme.

Our reviewer got his grubby little hands all over these new sets. Will he deem them totally badass or do they just blow chunks? Maybe a little of both? Read on to find out.

Click to read our full review of LEGO SPOTS.

Emerge: Object 5-D

Just when we thought we had LEGO builder Mitsuru Nikaido all figured out he comes along with something outside of his usual comfort zones. Frankly, seeing a techno-goo monster emerge from withing a cube would be outside the comfort zones of many people. This whole concept has an eerie, otherworldly feel, like the stuff of our strangest nightmares. Even the low placement of the cube in the composition feels a bit unsettling. While he may have shifted his palate, Mitsuru is still experimenting with bold and stark color contrasts. The end result is stunning. I am fascinated by Object 5-D and will surely remain intrigued by what this builder comes up with next.

How about a life-sized Britten V-1000 motorcycle?

What are you doing with your time? If you answered anything other than building a life-sized motorcycle out of LEGO then let me stop you now. Because Australian builder Ryan McNaught and his team has done just that. Cool, right? It’s probably way cooler than whatever the hell you’re doing right now. But before you go wallowing into a swirling cesspool of self-doubt and despair, let me point out that Ryan is a LEGO Certified Professional. He does this kind of stuff for a living, so that is why he builds such cool things. Toyco in Auckland asked them to build something special for their big store event and this is the result. Ryan tells us that “The Britten V-1000 motorcycle is not only a record-breaking piece of revolutionary engineering, but it is also a Kiwi icon and a testament to the vision of a single man.” Wow, I guess not being tied down to anyone-in-particular has its benefits. So now you can feel less sad about your lonely, uncool existence. See, it’s a post with a positive message!

While you’re mulling that over, here is a close-up of just some of the engine and organic exhaust pipes in detail. Toyco is holding a local contest to guess the exact amount of LEGO pieces this motorcycle contains. That figure is still confidential but based on this close-up I’m going to take a well-educated guess and state 42 pieces. Come on, Ryan, am I even close? You can tell me!

Low, square, and fast

With over two-hundred articles into this gig, I still approach most with about this much enthusiasm. I’m shorter and not as buff but just as bald and just as shirtless. It makes everyone here at Brothers Brick Headquarters a bit uncomfortable but I keep telling them I can’t help it if I’m follically challenged. Anyway, you can understand that I was extra giddy when I saw Chris Vesque’s LEGO ’67 Chevy C-10. It has all the things I’d be into; an old-school dragster square-body with ground-scraping stance, a striking color scheme, a blown engine, copious silver bits and a racing number that matches the year of this custom Chevy.

A commenter on Chris’ photostream even mentioned that this would be something I’d totally dig and his response was that indeed I was his inspiration for coming into the LEGO scene. Kinda gets you right in the feels, doesn’t it? I’m glad we can help inspire great builders like Chris in some way or another. Would it be uncouth of me to pull a Sally Field?

Whatever floats your goat

If you’re like me, you’ve probably lost plenty of sleep wondering if there will be goats in outer space. Thankfully, Andreas Lenander has built a LEGO diorama that ought to squelch our nocturnal worries. It’s a rather neat Goat Transport Facility on Epsilon IV that uses robots and other science-y stuff to make sure the future and outer space still have these lovable and occasionally delicious creatures around to chew your socks or whatever. Amazing details abound whether they be the repetitive use of ingots, well placed tire rims or flex-hoses. My favorite part would have to be the adorable goats in their own floating hermetically-sealed containers. You can say the containers are…totes-ma-goats. Tee hee. Hah! Am I right, people? Hilarious, right? No? OK, I’ll just let myself out. Sorry.

The UCS Battlestar Galactica Viper MkII is fraking sweet!

If you’re going to be holed up at home for a while, let Davdup’s awesome LEGO Viper MkII render be a reminder that you can rewatch Battlestar Galactica. It’s a great show that drops frak-bombs like it’s nothing. The censors haven’t caught on to it yet so you too can let it fly like a six-year-old at a slumber party. Frakity-frak-frak! See, doesn’t that feel great? I am just fraking enamored over rendering the complex curves achieved with curved slopes of all different sizes. The dark red stripe along the wings and tailfin are spot-on. The tank treads around the afterburners are inspired but the shaping around the nose is my favorite part.

It seems Davdup is quite keen on sci-fi pop culture. He reminds us that, in these difficult times, you can also rewatch The Fifth Element and Blade Runner. Or adversely, if you’re more of a doer than a loafer, then you can build your own fraking thing and maybe we’ll feature it.

Before skateboarding and punk rock there was Krass and Bernie

LEGO builder Chris Vesque tells us that in a very specific time of his life, before skateboarding, before hip hop, before punk rock, before geeks and fandom…just a bit past Star Wars and Classic Space, there was Krass & Bernie. He goes on to say how CARtoons Magazine and the art of George Trosley captured his imagination and his funny bone. Krass and Bernie is a comic penned by Trosley about two car customizing enthusiasts who are short on good sense but long in creativity and ingenuity. Their misadventures often culminate in something as ridiculous and over-the-top as this dragster-beetle. The beefy tires, the blown V-8 and the Beetle that seems to defy gravity are the stuff that can only exist in CARtoon dreams. I’m smitten! Whether it be the screaming hand Santa Cruz skateboarding logo or the Beastie Boys License to Ill album cover we’ve been smitten with Chris’ counterculture LEGO stuff before.

This fairy cleans 50% better than the other brand

This Coronavirus thing has us a bit wigged-out at the moment. Large events are being canceled, entire countries are closing their borders and friends are now greeting each other with Spock’s Vulcan sign rather than a hug or handshake. While it’s still good policy to wash your hands often and stop touching your gosh damned face for once, LEGO builder Cezium might have the answer to our problems. (We hope.) He has rendered a brilliant cleaning fairy that can help stop the spread of germs. The cleaning bristles are tooth gears and the “germs” are half spike ball pieces found in some Bionicle and Hero Factory sets. The entire idea was inspired by this dish detergent. I’m feeling safer already.

Need a pet? Build one!

Need a pet? Build one out of LEGO. That’s what Oliver Becker did. Meet Fluffy. He’s Oliver’s new home companion. I imagine adoption fees and vet bills would be quite minimal and cleanup is as easy as tossing a few extra pieces into the unsorted bin. His expression is quite endearing and the grass blade plume on his head is some good parts use right there. I’m loving the old elbow hinges as feet. And the best part is this bird won’t rat you out to the cops like other birds I’ve known. Allegedly. I’m speaking on behalf of a friend, that is. Nevermind that, just check out some of Oliver’s other builds that have tickled our funny bone.

I must become more beautiful!

What has Brothers Brick alumni Nannan Zhang been up to lately? Well, apparently he’s been watching this Youtube video and had been inspired to build a LEGO version of the NieR Automata opera singer boss Simone. Knowing nothing of the subject matter, I clicked on the video and was immediately intrigued. Simone is a machine so obsessed with beauty that she cannibalizes other androids and adorns herself with their corpses. (There’s probably a good joke in there somewhere about putting lotion in the basket but damned if I can figure it out!) She has two corpses hanging off her collar assembly and several more linked hand-in-hand around her waist. This effect, Nannan tells us, is achieved using a product from Crazy Bricks which is the only non-LEGO aftermarket feature on this model. The tattered dress is made up of several copies of Lord Vladek’s cape. A video game monster boss obsessed with beauty; now that is terrifying!

The toys that made us loopy

Builder Joe Klang is once again creating realistic LEGO models and this time he has his sights on the classic Etch-A-Sketch toy. My own foray into the Etch-A-Sketch arts was short-lived as I found it frustrating. I could draw, that was no problem, but applying my skill to the screen yielded nothing more complex than a wobbly smiley face. To add further insult to my own deflated ego, there are people who are quite good at it. I’m not sure how Joe fares as an Etch-A-Sketch artist but as a LEGO builder, he is top-notch. The complex lettering both on the red frame and old-school LEGO logo on the screen is a testament to his amazing abilities. We were all equally enamoured with his recent and realistic LEGO camera and Atari 2600.