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

Comic book classix in brix

Probably better known to our European readers, Asterix the Gaul was a beloved French comic book series that started over half a century ago, and has since been translated into many languages and adapted to both animation and live action formats. It tells the story of the last remaining village in ancient Gaul to hold out against the invading Roman Empire, thanks to the leadership of the titular hero, Asterix.

Flick member IamKritch has faithfully recreated Asterix, his boulder-tossing sidekick Obelix, and Obelix’s faithful hound Dogmatix (aka Idéfix) out of LEGO. The use of mini-fig wings on Asterix’s helmet is ingénieux, while the use of joystick levers and grills for the eyes (instead of using a Sharpie, like I would have) is très puriste!

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Announcing the BRICKNADO building contest winners!

The Brothers Brick BRICKNADO building contest is now over. The contest was in celebration of the cinematic masterpiece Sharknado 2: The Second One, which for our US readers premieres on the SyFy channel tonight at 9pm (8pm Central).

Thank you to all the builders that were brave enough to take part – in the end we had 24 shark-tastic entries. With the chainsaws now put away, the sidewalks hosed down, and a tally of the fallen taken, The Brothers Brick are pleased to announce the winners:

1st PLACE
“I love New Yaaaargh!” by nolnet

2nd PLACE
“NYC Subway Sharknado!” by El Barto

3rd PLACE
“Sharknado!” by SuckMyBrick

We also have a couple of “honorable mentions” for some other entries that we loved too… So big shout-outs go to M<0><0>DSWIM for “Fin Rides the Sharknado!” and Uno Brick for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fisherman”.

While our three winners are now faced with the solemn task of making their prize choices, we’ll leave the rest of you to settle in behind the couch and brace yourselves for the coming storm…

Check out the ABS on that!

Since creating the air hockey table we featured a while ago, Turkish builder Sinan Bitişik has taken to accurately reproducing all manner of real-world machines using LEGO, including a weed wacker, record player, road paver, AC unit and even an oven. But I particularly love the attention to detail in his latest piece, a brick-built lat machine…

…of course, it’s crying out for a Miniland scale body builder to put it through its paces!

Archangel LCAM-01XA from Gundam SEED

While it’s fair to say that a lot of characters in the vast Gundam franchise run around dressed as giant robots (sorry, “mobile suits”), some of them do also use spaceships. And among the more iconic of those is probably the Archangel from ‘Cosmic Era’ spin-off Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, recreated here in mega-swooshable LEGO form by lisqr.

The BRICKNADO building contest ends soon!

Builders! You now have just under a week to submit your entries for The Brothers Brick “BRICKNADO” building contest celebrating next week’s opening of Sharknado 2, SyFy’s hilarious sequel to the original Sharnado. Check the contest page for details. Oh, and if the sheer glory of winning isn’t enough incentive for you, there’s swag to be won too…

Never heard of Sharknado? No shark pieces? Just hate sharks, because they ate your grandfather? WE DON’T CARE! Just build something funny involving sharks. The sequel is set in New York, so extra props for working that into your build: Sharks driving yellow cabs, starring in musicals, imitating landmarks …surprise us!

Friday Night Fights – Fire trucks

Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another round of Friday Night Fights. Since large parts of this blog’s ancestral homeland (Washington State) seem to be going up in smoke this week, we thought it appropriate to turn our attention to mini-fig scale fire trucks.

In the shiny red corner, we have Isaac Mazer and his super-accurate Rescue 134, inspired by an engine from an actual ladder company of the same name, in his native Toronto:

In the even shinier redder corner, Galaktek takes a step away from the real world and goes future-retro with the FutureCity Fire Engine from the planet Incendia XII (which sounds like it probably needs a lot of fire trucks).

As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding, by way of comment, which truck is destined for glory and which is destined to rust in the fire house. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, Concept Art Ships, Jake nailed it to the wall in an 11-4 showdown against Alexander. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!

Be the leaf

It’s a “Summer of Korra” for Avatar fans, with the 3rd season of The Legend of Korra now in full swing on Nickelodeon. We’ve seen Korra go through some big changes in the first two seasons, and the title of the new season is ‘Change’ …go figure.

Letranger Absurde hasn’t wasted any time getting in on the action with this exquisite vignette featuring a minifig Korra demonstrating multiple bending techiques, while her trusty steed Naga looks on. The construction of the water spout (or could it be a Sharknado, I wonder??) is particularly nice.

The Naga model appears to be fully posable (…thankyou Mixels!) and ready for Korra to ride. The Avatar has also been given the perfect sassy expression: “I’m the Avatar, and you gotta deal with it!”

The Brothers Brick present BRICKNADO, a Sharknado building contest!

We at The Brothers Brick love predatory fish and extreme weather. So we’re huge fans of SyFy’s high-brow political thriller and romantic comedy Sharknado. But we also love ridiculous New York movie stereotypes, such as rude cabbies and the pointless destruction of famous landmarks. Not surprisingly then, we’re positively shark-static about the new follow-up movie Sharknado 2: The Second One which airs July 30th on the SyFy channel. We’ll be glued to our TV’s, popcorn in one hand, bucket of chum in the other, for 2 hours of deeply thought-provoking chainsaw-tastic aquatic mayhem.

SyFy is planning Sharknado Week in celebration of its new movie. But we felt that LEGO fans deserved to be a part of that experience too. Our solution…

The Rules of Bricknado

Build a LEGO model! It can feature sharks, nados, chainsaws, New York references, celebrity cameos, whatever you like! Anything goes, the funnier and sillier the better.

Then add one photo of your creation to the Bricknado group on Flickr. You are welcome to submit more than one creation, but The Brothers Brick reserve the right to BITE YOUR FACE OFF if you overdo it! No digital creations are allowed.

All entries must be submitted before July 28th.

Fabulous prizes to be won!

We will announce 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners on the 30th, right before the movie airs. Winners will get to choose (in winning order) from one of the following prizes:

• Rare San Diego Comic Con official Sharknado t-shirt, mens large [donated by Mariann Asanuma]
• “Ye Olde Bag-o-Sharks” [a dozen LEGO sharks, old variety]
• Sharknado pop vinyl figure
• Sharknado on Blu-Ray

You can also expect plenty of honorable mentions, and perhaps a mystery bonus prize or two!

Disclaimer

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, and even more than that to bring a New Yorker down! This is the Big Apple… If something bites us, we bite back. So forget the umbrella, grab a chainsaw, and let’s kill some sharks!

Boba Fret performing his guitar Solo

Individually, Star Wars, chibi-fication, rock music and dark humor will make everything 20% cooler. Scientific fact. But combine all these things together and that’s, er… Ok, well math is not my strong point. But it’s clear what Kevin Ryhal‘s strong point is:

Cooking up a storm

The Italian LEGO Users Group (ItLUG) recently held a kitchen-themed building contest, the prize for which was (appropriately) a copy of the Parisian Restaurant set. The contest had various rules, including one that each entry had to occupy no more than a 16 x 16 stud footprint.

Although not the ultimate winner, my personal favorite was Bye Bye Potato by Devid VII:

But victory went to Fabio Maiorana for this darkly humorous (and possibly rule-bending!) vignette entitled L’Apparenza Inganna (“Appearances Can Be Deceptive”):

“Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive” (Molière)

At the end of this month, some 150,000 people will cram themselves into the San Diego convention center to attend San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC). Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific about five times that number will be attending Ani-Com (ACGHK) at the Hong Kong Convention Center.

LEGO fans are well catered for at ACGHK, and the members of HKLUG always put on a good show. TKH has taken a break from his usual Anime style builds to create this amazing tribute to Cantonese opera especially for the event…

Pictured here in breathtaking detail and accuracy are two classic historical characters from the genre: the scheming bureaucrat Cao Cao, and the heroic General Guan Yu. If you’re not sure which is which, I’ll give you a hint: Like almost every detail in a Chinese opera, the color of the actors’ masks is highly symbolic. But the color code is the opposite to what Westerners might expect ;-)

“The tales and songs fall utterly short of your enormity, oh Smaug the stupendous!”

Regular readers will know that we’ve featured many LEGO dragons over the years, but I think on this occasion YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID now that heavy-duty character builder Shawn Snyder has decided to get in on the game with this recreation of Tolkien’s Smaug. From head to tail it’s 28 inches and the wingspan is a whopping 35 inches!

We used Sauron’s seeing-stone to track down the damp cave that Shawn hides in, and dispatched our goblin hoard to interrogate him about his latest bunker-busting creation…

TBB: You’re best known for creating large figures and busts of humanoid characters from videogames such as Halo and Assassins Creed, or movies like Iron Man and Predator. What inspired you to attempt a monster this time?

SS: I’ve actually wanted to make a dragon for quite some time. It wasn’t until ArchLUG did a collaborative build of Laketown that made me commit to finally attempt it. After all, Laketown needs a Smaug!

TBB: Tell us about the build. How did you get such a large yet detailed model to stay in one piece? Did it present any new building challenges for you?

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