About Chris

Chris Malloy (porschecm2) has been a LEGO fan nearly all his life, having started with System bricks at age 3. He is the co-author of Ultimate LEGO Star Wars, and his creations have been featured in several books and The LEGO Movie. He also helped develop the first LEGO Minecraft set, 21102 Minecraft Micro World: The Forest, which has gone on to inspire a whole theme of sets. He's been active in the online community since 2002, and regularly attends LEGO fan conventions such as BrickCon and BrickCan. He enjoys building in a wide range of themes, but keeps returning to Castle, Space, and Pirates. Check out his LEGO creations and photography here.

Posts by Chris

Relax in luxury in this modular hotel

The Modular building series of Creator Expert sets has become one of LEGO’s most popular home-brewed themes, and in addition to lots of official sets like Assembly Square, it’s inspired countless fans to build their own buildings in the same style. Although the theme has shifted recently to a 1950s Americana aesthetic with sets like the Corner Garage and Downtown Diner, most of the sets feature a quasi-European vintage style. In that vein, Bricked1980 brings us the lovely hotel Queen Bricktoria as a digital model.

The corner module fits perfectly next to Bricked1980’s Brick Square Post Office module, with both featuring gorgeously ornate decorations. Even though it only features three stories, the hotel seems even taller thanks to its tiered look and upper balcony. It looks like the perfect place for a weekend getaway and a relaxing brunch.

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Tube or not tube

As usual, the good folks over at New Elementary are up to hijinks related to new and interesting LEGO pieces, with a stable of talented builders exploring some of the ways fans can use the parts. One such recent exploration was undertaken by Pistash and involved a variety of new coral-colored elements. He’s taken the color exploration quite literally, turning the bubblegum-colored bits into a squirt of paint, complete with a cool mosaic on the side of the container. Fittingly, the splash at the bottom is a large 14-tooth splat gear.

LEGO is using AI to create audio and Braille building instructions as it aims for greater accessibility [News]

Today, LEGO announced a key step in further opening its play experiences to builders with visual impairments, as the company is beginning trials of a new system to aid those with visual disabilities in following LEGO instructions. Called LEGO Audio & Braille Building Instructions, the system uses AI to pair digital traditional-style visual instructions with verbal or tactile Braille directions, and was developed in collaboration with life-long LEGO fan Matthew Shifrin, who is blind. Matthew has been creating his own accessible instructions for years, which are available for free on legofortheblind.com. Similarly, the official instructions created by the new AI-driven program will be available for free from legoaudioinstructions.com. Still in an early trial phase, the system only supports a handful of sets at present while the development team seeks feedback from users. The team then plans to implement the feedback and add more sets in the first half of 2020, with an eventual goal of supporting all new LEGO product launches.

In a separate initiative to create greater accessibility for their products, earlier this year LEGO announced the production of Braille Bricks, a collection of 63 new elements that feature LEGO studs arranged as Braille dots. Developed by The LEGO Foundation, the sets aim to aid in teaching visually impaired children how to read, by making arranging letters and words both easy and fun. Each set contains about 250 bricks in five colors, spread across the alphabet, along with numbers and a few important symbols. The sets will be available in a variety of languages and will be provided for free to visually impaired students through a network of schools around the world. It’s unclear if The LEGO Foundation has any plans to make the Braille Bricks available outside of the school program.

Read the full press release below: Continue reading →

Aircraft, another way

History produced a lot of weird-looking aircraft during WWII, such as famously great P-38 Lightning. But LEGO builder Jon Hall has long been known for turning his skills to the weird-looking aircraft of WWII that history did not produce, designing his own batch of bizarre dogfighters instead. Looking like a cross between the Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought V-173 “Flying Pancake”, Jon’s crafted this crazy airplane with stubby wings and a flat nose, which he’s dubbed the P-65 Tomahawk.

As usual, Jon’s designs are clean and sleek, this time sporting a two-tone Navy color. Presumably, the short wings help with carrier storage. Two of the best details deal with airflow: first there’s the intake, which sports a Technic disk 5×5 behind the propeller, an old-school part that originally hails from the short-lived Robo Rider theme. The second detail I love is the exhaust on the sides of the fuselage, which are a series of ports made of the Nexo bot shoulders.

Just follow the yellow (LEGO) brick road

Thanks to The LEGO Movie 2’s Collectible Minifigures, the full crew from The Wizard of Oz is now available in minifigure form, so the time was ripe to start seeing some great models from the classic film. Enter Livin’TheBrickLife with this amazing diorama that mixes scales to great effect. With the city of Oz a tiny microscale sculpture in the distance, the four adventurers loom large in the foreground.

The whole diorama is much larger, though, incorporating a variety of iconic scenes, each connected by the yellow brick road, made of sideways bricks.

Continue reading →

Sir, we thought you were here to protect us...

For over four months, the citizens of Hong Kong have been protesting a proposed bill that relinquishes some of Hong Kong’s autonomy and places the city-state under more direct influence of mainland China. More than 2 million peaceful demonstrators have been met with increasingly violent responses from the Hong Kong Police Force, who have bolstered their ranks with mainland Chinese forces and decried the protests as riots, shooting thousands of canisters of tear gas at the civilian crowds. LEGO builder Wing Lee, a Hong Kong citizen, has created this poignant vignette of a demonstrator and a riot-gear equipped policeman.

The two figures stand atop a five-petal orchid, the symbol of Hong Kong, while the color fades from the city’s traditional red and white motif beneath the armored officer. The world is watching this time, and may democracy prevail.

Announcing the TBB Banquet brick-built food collab for BrickCon 2019 [News]

Do you like brick-built brunches? Studded snacks? How about AFOL appetizers and MOC munchies? Then you’ll want to attend the TBB Banquet! This year’s TBB reader collaboration at the BrickCon LEGO convention is all about life-size LEGO food. We’re spreading a magnificent feast made of our favorite bricks, and we want your help. The theme is simple: build something to eat and make it life-size. There’s just one twist: we’re featuring all these food items on real dishes and plates!

If you’re planning to attend Seattle’s BrickCon this year as a fully registered AFOL attendee, join us in laying out our parts-pack potluck! We know the title says banquet, but that’s just because we liked the alliteration with our name. Really, we’re not quite that pretentious, and our LEGO lunch is likely to be a lot more laid back. We’ve got a lovely-looking lobster (built by the inimitable Ty Keltner), but we expect the food to range from casserole to croissant. Want to bring potato chips and Coke? Great!

We’ve even got a potluck signup list, so you can sign up your SNOT-covered snacks ahead of time, and see what others are bringing! (Note: you’ll still need to register your MOC with BrickCon.)

Click here to sign up for the Potluck. (A name is all that is required to sign up. Email is optional.)

We’ll have some real plates, bowls, and glasses available to present your MOCs, but if you’ve got a special dish in mind or a MOC that requires a very specific size or type of dish, you’ll want to bring your own. As always with our reader-collab themes, don’t get too caught up in the details. As long as your model is about life-size, we’ll make it work and it will look great.

Now let’s take a closer look at a few of the models we’ve already got, brought to you by Ty. Continue reading →

This Le Mans racer is alternately awesome

Real Le Mans racecars are carefully built and strategized to maximize efficiency and performance over the grueling 24-hour race. So it’s fitting that LEGO builder Milan has chosen to build this sweet Le Mans racer with a key restriction. He’s used only the elements from the LEGO set 42093 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1. That’s especially impressive because the Corvette is about the same size, yet features a radically different shape.

Milan has lots of experience with building custom creations using only the parts from one set, though (AKA alternates). In addition to being an expert Technic builder, alternates are his signature style. He also frequently provides instructions, meaning if you own the Corvette set, you can follow Milan’s guide to build a Le Mans racer of your own.

Looks like Voldemort learned Diminuendo!

It appears that He Who Must Not Be Named has few more unusual spells to use, and he’s got the heroes of Hogwarts down on their luck. These tiny characters by LEGO builder gonkius are the perfect representations of their larger selves. How many pieces do you need to build a great character, after all? It looks like the answer is about seven, and they couldn’t be cuter! The use of the rollerskate wheel for Harry’s glasses is particularly inspired.

And just in case you’re still struggling to figure them out, from left are Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Harry, and Hedwig. Honestly, I’m kind of wishing the official LEGO microscale Hogwarts Castle had used these!

A new day dawns on Mars

Bringing a bit of far-future tech to the exploration of Mars, this Red Morn One drop shuttle by Rat Dude is a gorgeous take on a LEGO microscale spaceship. Alternating with smooth curves and intricate details, the carrier hauls a huge habitat to the Martian surface.

The ship is loaded with great textures, but one of my favorites is the old-school Bionicle feet, which actually made their first appearances on the first generation of Bionicle characters back in 2001. Appearing here in tan, they frame the engine thrusters and make a great repeating pattern with the landspeeder engines on top.

What’s grey and green and shaped like a rover?

The answer is this awesome LEGO Classic Space-inspired vehicle by Alec Hole. Boasting an incredible 32 wheels across 8 axles, this monster moon buggy is one of the greebliest vehicles I’ve seen recently. (If you don’t know what greebles are, be sure to check out our glossary.) Alec says he was inspired by a similar-looking vehicle by Piotr Turecki, which was built using a 1980s palette of LEGO elements. All I can say is, I would have killed to have this thing as a kid.

LEGO Shop Online now selling full cases of Disney Collectible Minifigures [News]

The LEGO Shop Online has now added complete cases of 60 collectible minifigures for sale, marking the first time we can recall the online store selling complete boxes rather than individual figures. Right now, Disney Series 2 is the only series available for purchase in full cases. It remains to be seen if full cases will be available for future series like the recently revealed Collectible Minifigures Series 19, or if this is simply LEGO attempting to move extra stock of the Disney series.

The cases are priced at US $239.99 | CAN $299.99 | UK £179.40, which is roughly the same price as buying 60 individual figures, but ensures you get an unopened case. While purchasing a full case isn’t for everyone, it is the easiest way to ensure you get a full set of minifigures. For those who don’t need a full 60 figures, splitting a case with a friend or two is also a great option. We found that our review case Disney Series 2 had two complete sets of figures, with almost a third complete set. Be sure to read our full review of the Disney Series 2 Collectible Minifigures for the rest of the details on this series.

Complete cases can also be purchased from third-party sellers on Amazon or eBay.