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

A sunny wedding by the sea

This gorgeous piece of Mediterranean architecture is brought to us by Italian builder Gabriele Rava. The church’s asymmetry works beautifully to highlight the bell tower, and the building is loaded with great details, from the mixture of white and tan for the peeling surfaces to the wonderfully simple dark orange textured roof over the nave. The small chapel sits atop a tall quay with a spacious courtyard, which is currently hosting a wedding attended by a wide variety of personages, up to and including Dumbledore officiating.

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Baba Yaga’s black woods

Baba Yaga is the enigmatic mistress of eastern-European folklore, haunting the forests and bestowing spells of good or ill on those bold enough to seek her out, or foolish enough to stumble upon her. Finding Baba Yaga’s home takes a striking amount of bad luck, though, as her home runs about on chicken legs. In Bricksom Parsom‘s LEGO scene, however, a small girl has done just that by wandering into a section of woods gone sour.

The twisted trees and blackened plants are excellently wrought from a variety of elements, on the most interesting being the Nexo Knights mechanical spiders used as grey flowers and a flail as another. The rickety cottage also looks great, with a mix of round tiles for a sickly, bubbled roof.

Take to the skies in swarms with the F11 Locust

Sky-Fi is a niche branch of science fiction, essentially pushing the aesthetic and technology of WWII aircraft to the extremes. This zippy fighter by Thomas W., which he calls the F11 Locust, is a prime example of the artform, mashing up elements of numerous WWII fighters into an awesome new aircraft design. It’s rife with clever bits from a LEGO angle, too, from the minifigure hands as manifolds around the radial engine to the car mudguards with the headlight protrusions as perfect machine gun mounts. The rad sand green, orange, and white color scheme also helps bring a touch more sci-fi to the mix.

A ship of LEGO odds and ends

Anyone who’s been following the adult LEGO builder community for a while knows that one of the things we love best is making novel use of seemingly “useless” pieces. And as far as these clever uses go, the more unusual the element is, the better. Vince Toulouse has dug deep into the bins of useless pieces and come forth with a striking spaceship made almost entirely of these oddities–a tugboat with a rugged utilitarian aesthetic. Vince points out a few of the more unusual elements for us, including the steering compartment made of a Fabuland caravan shell. We also spy a slew of other elements from the quirky Fabuland theme, as well as many other difficult-to-use elements like the skateboard ramp, elephant ear, and even the whole elephant head. See how many more oddities you can spot in Vince’s ship.

The ship isn’t just a vehicle for fun techniques, though. It’s also a great design, and the inside is marvelously detailed.

Click to see more of this ship

The Hagia Sophia is a monument to the ages

This microscale LEGO rendition of Istanbul’s most famous landmark has been masterfully created by George Panteleon. The tan and dark tan elements blend seamlessly together to create the sweeping curves and rounded roofs of the 1,500-year-old building. The huge dome, which encloses a ceiling height of 182 feet, is created from the planet hemisphere element for Bespin. George has rigged the interior with lights, allowing the model to glow warmly, and added a lovely wood base. It all comes together as a wonderful display piece.

LEGO Ideas 21315 Pop-Up Book packs a big fairy-tale surprise [Review]

LEGO has revealed the next LEGO Ideas set: 21315 Pop-Up Book. Chosen back in May from the crowd-sourced LEGO Ideas platform, the book’s final design has been kept secret until now. LEGO has figuratively taken the covers off the set which includes 859 pieces to build the book and two stories that fill its pages, as well as four minifigures and one microfigure. The set retails for $69.99 USD.

The Pop-Up Book is the brainchild of two fans, Jason Allemann and Grant Davis, two names you may recognize. Both Jason and Grant are regulars here on The Brothers Brick, having a long history of building excellent creations. However, Jason’s name may ring a bell for another reason, since this isn’t his first LEGO Ideas set. Jason also created 21305 Maze. (Check out our interview with him about that project.) This brings Jason into the exclusive double-feature LEGO Ideas club, which was previously occupied solely by Ellen Kooijman who created 21110 Research Institute along with 21302 The Big Bang Theory.

Click to open up the new LEGO Pop-Up Book and get a closer look inside

The restoration of a hot rod

Builder Pixeljunkie’s latest creation is a charming old auto shop where a group of builders works to restore a classic car to from its barn-fresh state to a splendid showpiece. A series of images transcribe the journey, beginning with the mottled and rusted car and a simple blueprint of what might be.

Throughout the scenes, the workshop is packed full to bursting with intricate details that bring the scene to life. Surrounding the crew is all the detritus common to a mechanic, from tools and dusty equipment to overflowing waste bins and parts shelves. This shop truly feels lived in. Continue reading →

Classic Space is all grown up

Neo Classic Space has existed for some time as a modern interpretation of the nostalgic grey and blue theme from the early official LEGO space sets of the late 70s into the 80s. But builder AFOL anon is stepping up the game with the sleek space cruiser. The SHIP (easily clocking in the 100-stud length for a SHIPtember entry) retains the styling of its smaller cousins, with an arrowhead shape, side-mounted blasters, and spoiler, while simultaneously smoothing out the hard edges.

I particularly love the shaping from the rear, where it gives off faint vibes of a Super Star Destroyer in classic space livery.

The spindly threads of humanity among the stars

Hard science fiction spaceships often conform to a few venerable aesthetics, key among them a predominance of NASA-like white. However, in LEGO builder halfbeak‘s timeline, a group of disgruntled astronauts have broken ties with NASA and formed their own space agency, so it makes sense they’ve inverted the usual colors. This marvelously gangly spacecraft is powered by antimatter, which it captures in huge nets.

It’s rare that a spaceship can rival a sailing ship for rigging, but the wiry electromagnetic nets surrounding the vessel are a truly fantastic bit of LEGO engineering, painstakingly pieced together with string and a variety of thin LEGO elements, such as fishing rods. The repetitious use of LEGO radar dishes throughout the craft brings a unifying motif, and they make for an especially interesting texture along the ribbed twin prongs on the front.

Just 1 week to BrickCon 2018 [News]

There’s just 1 week left to one of our favorite LEGO conventions, BrickCon. Located in the heart of the Northwest at the foot of Seattle’s famous Space Needle in the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, the event is open to the public Oct. 6-7. You can get your tickets here. Last year tickets sold out, so if you plan on going we recommend not delaying any longer.

If you’re an adult builder who would like to attend the full, 4-day convention (which starts Thursday) with panels, prizes, and more, online registration has closed but you can still register at the door.

The Brothers Brick will be there with a large layout of Ninjago City, a collaborative project we’re hosting with our readers. You can read more about the collaboration and even see some of our building progress.

The Brothers Brick is an official sponsor of BrickCon.

A true whale of a spaceship

Called the Celestial Barracuda, this marine-inspired vessel by LEGO designer Niek Van Slagmaat (most recently of 21311 Voltron fame) is one of the more uniquely designed spaceSHIPs of recent memory. Traversing the inky deeps of space and reality as an interdimensional transport ship, the ship takes the form of a sinuous fish. Niek expertly strikes a balance between placing tiles for a smooth exterior and strategically leaving studs exposed to create a textured, weathered hull. He’s also used a sprinkling of dark tan among the orange bricks, highlighting where the orange paint has peeled over eons of space travel.

The ship’s fish-like features aren’t just for show, though, as they serve a more utilitarian purpose in supporting the small fleet of nimble craft that surrounds it like pilot fish. Continue reading →

This shiny LEGO Mercedes Benz W196 is ready to win the race

The Mercedes Benz W196 was built for the Formula 1 circuit in 1954, and famously carried a very simple livery of silver paint with big red and white numeral badges. A tiny car with the narrow, bulbous body of yesteryear’s racecars, the W196 is a difficult car to capture in LEGO at any scale, let alone minifigure scale. And yet that’s exactly what Pixeljunkie has done, and boy does it look great. Featuring a very large percentage of LEGO’s metallic silver pallette (plus some custom chromed wheels), this remarkable little car looks ready to win the world championship one more time.