About Iain

Iain Heath is an avid builder specializing in the "Bricks of Character" style, which he helped define. He has been using LEGO to parody popular culture since 2007, when he created the now infamous Stephen Hawking model. He is a SeaLUG member and regular theme coordinator at BrickCon. For five years he also ran a blog called The Living Brick, that showcased the best character-based LEGO creations from around the world. You can find his irreverent body of work on Flickr.

Posts by Iain

It’s a Plutopalooza!

It really doesn’t feel like 9+ years since NASA launched the New Horizons probe on a mission to explore the dwarf planet Pluto and its system of moons. But now the craft’s closest approach is finally less than a week away, and NASA wants you to celebrate the occasion by throwing your very own Plutopalooza party! (Heads up: You’d better make the party last 16 months, because at 1kbps that’s how long the probe will take to transmit back all 64Gb of its data from the encounter)

Since several of my Brothers Bricks co-contributors are hopeless space junkies, I thought I’d mark the occasion by building the above LEGO model of the little probe …accompanied by targets Pluto and Charon naturally! A lot easier to do now that we finally know what color they are.

It’s an interesting milestone for me since my very first true MOC was of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, back in 1979 when it passed Jupiter. Armed with a clothes line, white bed sheet, length of string and basic film camera, I had no idea that the resulting images would be…. hopelessly out of focus! T_T

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.

Presenting BRICKNADO² : The hell we can!

It’s summer time, and that means there’s another goddam Sharknado movie round the corner. Last year’s BRICKNADO contest was heralded as our “dumbest idea ever” so we just had to do it again, this time to celebrate the impending release of Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No. Hec, we couldn’t even get our sequel numbers to line up with theirs, but we don’t care.

The 3rd movie is centered around Florida, Washington DC, and David Hasselhoff’s personality. We can’t wait to see how you exploit these iconic locations. But get cracking, because you’ve only got two weeks!

The Rules of BRICKNADO²

Build a LEGO model – the funnier and more outrageous the better. Then add one photo of your creation to the BRICKNADO² Flickr group. You are welcome to submit more than one creation, but The Brothers Brick reserve the right to SAW YOU IN HALF if you overdo it! No digital creations are allowed.

All entries must be submitted before July 20th. We will announce the results on the 22nd, right before the movie airs. Three lucky winners will receive a variety of shark-tastic prizes, that we’ll reveal next week.

“They’re sharks, they’re scary, and no-one wants to get eaten. But I’ve been eaten, and it takes a lot more than that to bring a good man down…” – Fin Shepard

Have a smurfy day!

Despite more comebacks and fewer female characters than the Star Wars franchise, the Smurfs are still wildly popular today, almost 60 years after their first appearance as a Belgian comic strip. With two new Smurf movies behind us and another one in the works, it was only a matter of time before fans got tired waiting for LEGO to get in on the action, and took matters into their own hands. Which is exactly what Lee Jones and a team of builders did at BrickWorld Chicago did last month!

This huge diorama depicts the Smurf village, complete with forest landscaping, mushroom houses, and a forced-perspective version of Gargamel’s castle. All beautifully rounded off with the giant intruding faces of Gargamel and Azrael (courtesy of Tyler Halliwell and Kevin Lauer).

But the most remarkable part of this display have to be the Smurf minifigs. No, you’re not seeing things… Those aren’t shoddy clone brand figures. And no, LEGO didn’t secretly launch a line of collectible Smurf figs when no-one was looking. These are 100% custom manufactured! Lee’s team worked with BrickForge and Brick Fortress to design and produce custom components (heads, tails, even rotatable arms) all to “LEGO quality”. The results speak for themselves. Our pals at Beyond the Brick talked to Lee at BrickWorld and got the low-down…

Crazy Arms are a crazy cool idea

Regular readers of this blog will be no stranger to Guy Himber’s Crazy Bricks, which has been classing-up the world of figs for years now with top hats, skulls, and all manner of other unique accessories. But Guy’s latest offering, Crazy Arms, could be a game changer for mini-fig fans.

These patent pending replacement arms not only offer better poses for your figs, but also solve the problem of how hard it has always been to remove and re-insert the standard arms into the standard torso. How? Watch the video below to find out!

Crazy Arms will only be available through a Kickstarter project. So if you want to get your posable fleshy hands on some, you’d better back it before the end of the month!

Massive LEGO StarCraft display has more pylons than you’ll ever need

Gaming fans, get ready to reattach your socks once you’ve marveled at this 14 foot long microscale LEGO StarCraft diorama, unveiled at Brickworld Chicago last week:

Whether you identify as Protoss, Terran or Zerg, there is so much detail to enjoy in this monstrous display, built over the course of 3 years by 9 builders in 4 different countries. How many bricks were used? We don’t know – the team lost count! I’m guessing “quite a lot”.

Huge props to the amazing team of Cecilie Fritzvold, Tim Schwalfenburg, Matt De Lanoy, Chris Perron, John Moffat, Bart De Dobbelaer, Sean and Steph Mayo and our very own Simon Liu. And rumor has it parts of this epic layout may be appearing at other LEGO fan conventions in the not-too-distant future.

Meanwhile, check out their cool fly-through video, or pore over dozens of closeup images of the layout and it’s many individual units on their Flickr group:

TBB cover photo: July 2015

Summer is here – and so is the Minions movie! Appropriately, the winner of our informal monthly TBB cover photo contest is this amazing spread of Minion variants by Oliver Kude. Utini!

You can keep up with the Brothers Brick by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter. And for occasional extra goodies, you can also follow us on Flickr or subscribe to us on YouTube.

REMINDER ABOUT COVER PHOTO SUBMISSIONS: Please only submit photos that meet our guidelines and therefore stand a chance of being chosen. Do not use the cover photo group just to promote your latest MOC. It makes more work for us, and your spamming could get you blocked! If you want your MOC to get our attention, simply add it to the Flickr LEGO group. Or send us cupcakes.

Guns don’t kill people... George RR Martin kills people

Winter is coming, and it’s adorable! This chibi-like White Walker by simplybrickingit reminds us that while the television version of Game of Thrones is over for another season, and all your favorite characters are now dead, there are other ways to get your GoT fix. Like building it in LEGO…

DOH-ceptively spacious

Although the LEGO Simpsons House makes a great display model, César Soares was unwilling to fork out the small fortune needed to own one. So instead he debigulated the design to create his own microscale version – complete with working garage door, pink car, and yard furniture. WOO-HOO!

The axe man cometh

Even in the Bionicle universe people need to rock out once in a while. So meet Bio-Klaanian rock star Toa Kyberi, Toa of Sonic! This bad-ass was created by Finnish builder and master of the LEGO System/Bionicle mashup, Eero Okkonen. Read about this character’s full backstory on Eero’s blog.

If you wanna learn more about Eero’s unconventional character creations, or what it’s like to be a Finnish AFOL, check out my interview with him in Issue 31 of Brickjournal magazine.

Emotional display

Pixar is already killing it at the box office with its new animation Inside Out. Angus MacLane wasted no time bringing us the perfect LEGO rendition of Anger. He then laid down the challenge for fellow builders to create the other emotions, to which Miro Dudas responded with this charming version of Joy. Let’s hope more emotions continue to surface (in the good way) in the near future!

Mmmm.... purple

While it employs a style that is recognizably “a la mode” right now amongst castle builders, Kyrrath Fortress (by Guilds of Heroica fan jaapxaap) differentiates itself by making great use of gorgeous gorgeous dark purple as an accent color – a trick he also used effectively in an earlier creation. Add a roof top shaped like a wizard’s hat, and you’ve got a truly magical stronghold!

A human’s best friend

Human sidekicks are so last week. The big videogame trend now is animal companions. And Microsoft has jumped on that bandwagon with it’s new game Recore, announced at the E3 conference last week. So Canadian builder Tyler Sky wasted no time in creating a fully poseable replica of what I suspect will end up being Recore’s most popular character.