About Luka

Luka is a Slovenian LEGO builder and a member of Kocke Klub. He is most well known for building dragons, but does not shy away from other themes when time is right. In the community he goes by Deus "Big D." Otiosus (D. stands for "Destiny") and has been around for quite a few years. He is one of those builders who went through their life without a dark age. Besides LEGO he is a biology student that wastes a lot of time in the local forest or in interesting urban areas. MOC Pages Flickr Bricksafe Youtube

Posts by Luka

The art of the butterfly

LEGO artists often title their creations with a cryptic title like “Daydream” or skip the title altogether, allowing the viewer more freedom in interpretation. Dario Minisini’s latest creation surprises with a descriptive and beautiful title: “Life is not always grey. There are colors too.”

Life is not always grey there are colors too

Multiple gray butterflies leading to a rainbow-colored one makes for a powerful composition. Their flight path seemingly implies that the colorful butterfly and its monochromatic counterparts represent a single butterfly, possibly viewed from a different angle or transformed as it flies through the triangle. Supports are made from bent translucent bar pieces that Dario uses in many of his builds. I think it’s great how Dario manages to keep the creation’s message open-ended, even with the descriptive title. However, it is not quite true that the three gray butterflies are void of color – they use sand blue wedge plates for the undersides of the wings. Could this be a subtle message or just a lack of parts?

Attention all Rock Raiders! This is not a drill!

Twenty years after its inception, the often-overlooked yet undeniably cool LEGO Rock Raiders theme finds its way into fan creations as well. In February we featured a collection of vehicles built in honour of this theme, and now it’s Chris Perron‘s turn to show off his gritty tunneling hovercraft, with all its glorious teal and chrome highlights. Chris notes that this creation is actually a year and a half old, but was inspired by friends to give the tunneler a base and finally upload it.

Basalt Borer

The base is a convincing cutout of a rock tunnel, dotted with chrome green crystals (these crystals actually come from the Space Port line from the same year–Rock Raiders featured trans-neon green crystals), and it’s perfect place to show off this cute little drilling drone. The drone itself is quite a perfect representation of its theme. The colour combination has all the characteristics of Rock Raiders; teal highlights, black and yellow warning stripes, a brown rollcage and grays as the main colour. What is especially impressive is the complex drilling head in the front, built of various custom chrome elements.

From the sewers, Warsaw – it’s time to rise now!

In LEGO fan creations, the Second World War is quite a common theme. This is understandable, as this is a historical period that has a very personal connection to many people, while also bringing some action and gritty machinery to the table. Jan T. takes inspiration from an important part of Polish history that’s much less often recreated in LEGO, the ill-fated Warsaw Uprising.

Warsaw Uprising 1944 (main)

The street combat is captured very well with makeshift barricades made of bricks, furniture, and an excellent period street tram surrounded by barricades.

See more of this detailed World War II diorama

A microscale recreation of Predjama Castle from Slovenia

Seeing one of your national icons made in LEGO always gives a wholesome sense of civic pride, like the Mount Rushmore build we shared recently surely did for our American readers. However, living in a small country like Slovenia as I do can make such events scarce at best. Luckily for me, Isaac Snyder has given me this satisfaction and luckily for you, he has informed you about the largest cave castle in the world. Predjama Castle was first mentioned in 1274 as a small defensive fortress built inside a cavern with 6,5 kilometres of cave systems and a vertical 130-meter high cliff behind it. In 1570 it was expanded in the Renaissance style and remains this way to the present day.

Predjama Castle

The microscale build captures the real castle perfectly, as you can see from the reference used by Isaac. The build looks simple at first glance, until you start looking at the seams between bricks and notice how many difficult half-plate offsets and angles are scattered throughout the build. The landscaping is spot-on too, from the slanted cliff extending over the castle to the grass-covered hillside below. My favourite part is the staggered bricks on the side of the rightmost tower

Click to see the castle recreated in LEGO by local builders

When the city wall becomes the city

The smells of a medieval city must have made it a nightmare to live in one. On the other hand, if you lived in a house built on the wall, you could enjoy the fresh countryside air as well as the city’s protection. This handy situation is captured in this creation by Mountain Hobbit.

The Walls Of Stoneharrow

All the various heights of the roofs and the complicated angles really give an impression of homes built on the wall and then new houses built on top of the old. The mixing of colours is done carefully to create a weathered impression that is not overwhelming. For a diorama with only a handful of minifigs, almost all grouped at the gate in the center, it seems to be teeming with life.

A LEGO brick that quite literally oozes with art

I am a big fan of LEGO art, and nothing makes me happier than being able to share it with the world here on the Brothers Brick. Today’s work of art is an abstract creation by jarekwally. It represents a black 1×1 brick leaking colors, but the meaning is left for us to interpret. The builder shares nothing in the description except that the idea was in his head for months.

Brick Art

There are three major components to the build, with each having being well done. First, there is the instantly recognizable upscaled black 1×1 brick. Next, we have colors bursting from its open top, using curved parts to emulate a bubbling effect. The third part is the splash, which conveys a dynamic sense of action. Why is it a 1×1 brick? What is the significance of the colors? What makes them bubble out of the brick? I will let you, the reader, decide.

Get a deeper look into the iconic minifig with this anatomical model

There have been pictures showing anatomical diagrams of minifigs as far back as 2008 and brick-built versions starting in 2009, but this idea is still quite alive, as proven by Brixie63 with her latest creation. This half-dead minifig is not Brixie63’s first attempt at a scaled-up minifig — check out this Santa we featured last Christmas!

Bones

The minifig is built with the iconic red torso and blue legs on one half and a faithfully recreated skeleton on the other. The head is especially well built, capturing all the printing and curves with bricks facing all possible directions. I especially like the skeleton’s teeth made of 1×2 grill tiles.

The next generation of warriors... Baby vikings!

It can be surprising how far a little camera angle and a good idea can go. Sometimes creations that are amazing from a technical standpoint can turn out overwhelming or chaotic, when simplicity is all you need. This creation by Martin Harris is one of the examples where less is more.

Baby Vi-vi-vi-vi-vi-vi Baby Vi- vi - vi- vi- vi- vi- Baby VIKINGS!!!!

The build is indeed simple, but it has everything it needs. The water is essentially just thoughtfully placed curved slopes, and the ship looks like a ship with a nicely sculpted dragonhead and a viking-style sail. All this is photographed cleanly and at an immersive angle. The selling point is the ridiculous idea though. The fierce warriors on the ship are different LEGO baby minifigs, including sewer babies from the LEGO Movie 2, all wearing LEGO Heroica helmets.

A mech that bites....with its hand!

If you love LEGO mecha as much as we do, we bet you will enjoy this sleek and noble Legion Royale V built by Christian Lintan. The builder has quite the repertoire of mecha on his Flickr photostream, so be sure to check out his other models.

Legion Royale V1

The color-blocking looks quite expressive, with the combination of white and red proving to be eye-catching. A few trans-purple accents add a futuristic feeling, regardless of whatever their functional purpose would be. The model is proportionally attractive, and the angles utilized give off an air of sturdiness. While the mecha looks elegant, it almost gives off a pirate vibe, but with a Ninjago dragon head instead of its left hand.

Tarakava, terror of the shores

The earliest LEGO Bionicle sets were drastically different from much later sets in the series, along with the constraction (constructible action) figures of today. The classic Rahi set Tarakava that inspired this revamp by [Jack Frost] uses barely any ball joints or specialized weapon elements from the Bionicle theme. Despite this, I feel it embodies the spirit of Bionicle more than the theme’s later releases. This build is part of a series of Rahi set re-imaginings, of which we recently featured Muaka and a Colony Drone.

Tarakava

I love how the builder kept all the iconic pieces of the original set (or rather half of the set, as there were two creatures in the original), such as the dark turquoise Kanohi mask and claw weapon used to form the creature’s huge fangs. Then there are the older-style Technic panels on the face, which keep the model as silly-looking as the set from 2001. The repetitive use of other teal elements also adds a lot of spiny character to this amphibious predator.

This mech packs a big blue punch

A few days ago, every second post on the Brothers Brick was a mech, robot or cyborg – from classic mecha to four legged robots and Bionicle set remakes. Now that things have cooled off and we all regained some mecha sensitivity, we have a big blue mech with gorilla-like proportions by Jason Corlett to show off. The mech is called Big Blue and the name says it all. Its size is complimented by the bulky proportions, namely huge fists and shoulders.

There is a lot to love in this build, from all sorts of technical details (my favourite being the stacked dark gray Technic pulley wheels on the legs) to part use like the Kaukau Nuva Kanohi mask in the mech’s chest. Jason says he was inspired by LEGO power functions LED lights. The picture below has a better view of the light-up features.

Dark red spaceship in the darkness of space

I feel like a little technical backstory will give you a deeper understanding and hopefully respect for Jonathan Walker‘s huge red spaceship. LEGO bricks are moulded with an accuracy in the range of micrometers, but they do not fit together air-tight – that would make construction and deconstruction difficult and even impossible at hot summer temperatures. At a very close look, two basic bricks have a little seam between them when connected to adjacent studs. Many readers may ask themselves what this has to do with this article, and the answer is – everything! This seam between bricks allows for a chain of 1×2 bricks connected in a staggered line to bend and form a very smooth and large circle – a technique quite popular among space builders for large creations.

Instrument of Sgorbulon

A few years ago the LEGO part of the internet was flooded with angular spaceships built in gray with a line of colour here and there, and even though the theme of space is more diverse now, ships with this many curves still surprise. And about the gray with strips of colour – Jonathan has completely inverted this, creating a dark red beauty that will make an impression on everyone. Obviously this ship is not the first Jonathan has made. Seeing his latest build made me explore his Flickr photostream and you should do so too. Nearly all of his creations are humongous spaceships with beautiful designs, often including rounded shapes like the Instrument of Sgorbulon featured here. Sadly the builder only shared one clean photo of the build, but zooming into the image might still have you hooked for quite a while.