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 good egg from the get-go: a LEGO Fabergé egg

Jeweled eggs were meticulously detailed Easter eggs commissioned by nobility in the late 19th and early 20th century. The eggs are wholly artificial, made of materials such as gold and ceramic, and often opened to reveal layers of smaller intricate details, similar to Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls. Fabergé eggs are the most famous of these jeweled eggs, being crafted by Peter Carl Fabergé for the last Czars of Russia, and are today worth millions. In 2014, a junk dealer in the USA was doing research on a trinket he planned to scrap for its metal content, and discovered he was in possession of a lost Fabergé egg valued at $33 million.

Builder Koen’s jeweled egg may be made of humbler materials, but it is like its namesakes in being a fantastic display of craftsmanship. Koen created it as a wedding gift for his bother, and so it opens to reveal a LEGO bridge and groom.

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A castle of a different color

David Hensel is turning towers blue with this beautiful azure magician’s tower. David based the model on an enchanting painting by artist Péah. While the entire model is filled with the sorts of complicated techniques and detailing David is accustomed to using, I particularly like the brick-built blue embellishments over the smaller building’s window. That’s a great detail many builders would have left out.

Real-life Destiny Sword made from LEGO

Check out the Arc Edge from Destiny, Bungie’s newest game, where it appears in the newest expansion, The Taken King. Nick Jensen, known for making super cool life-size LEGO replicas of video game guns, has switched it up a bit and brings us a full-scale melee weapon this time. It takes a good deal of LEGO engineering prowess to create something so long and thin without it warping when held, and Nick is happy to pose with his blade to show its strength and scale.

If you like Nick’s work, check out Creations for Charity, where you can buy one of your very own! Nick has donated his life-size Halo 2 Battle Rifle to be sold to raise money for the charity, which uses the funds to buy LEGO sets for under-privileged children for Christmas.

Waving the summer goodbye

Summer’s officially gone, but summer creations are always in. In this model by Italian builder Devid VII, a perfectly adorable little crab needs to beware lest he be swept away by the crashing tide.

The Perfect Way to Bookend Summer

Deborah Higdon brings us this charming set of brick-built bookends portraying seasonal happiness. The little crab shack is just too cute — a perfect use of its parts, the water in particular. Look closely, and you’ll see that even the books are LEGO too.

1915 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Lenin Style

This 1915 Rolls-Royce 40/50 Silver Ghost was modified to carry the first Premier of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin. A magnificent example of artistry in auto-making to begin with, the heavy modifications turned this Silver Ghost into a terrifyingly capable machine perfectly suited for the far northern reaches and harsh winters of the Russian homeland. The model here by Karwik well captures that capability by placing it in a diorama climbing a snow-covered hill beneath a gnarled tree.

Life-size LEGO RV Sets New Guinness World Record

A life-size, fully functional caravan trailer made entirely from LEGO bricks was presented this week at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK, during the 2015 Motorhome & Caravan Show.

[photo courtesy of Guinness World Records]

The trailer set the surprisingly specific record for “largest caravan built with interlocking plastic bricks.” The model uses 215,158 LEGO bricks to faithfully recreate all the functions of a real RV, including running water and electricity. While sadly the heating elements and stove are non-functional lest the bricks melt, the refrigerator is perfectly capable of keeping its LEGO-built food safely preserved. Impressively, even the table folds down into a functional (albeit very firm) bed, just like real caravan trailers. The caravan will be on display Oct. 13-18 at the show, then again at the end of the month for UK’s Brick 2015 LEGO convention.

The model was created by UK’s Bright Bricks, LEGO Certified Professional Duncan Titmarsh and Ed Diment’s company. We’ve featured Ed’s monstrously large military ships many times here on TBB.

via Guinness World Records.

Biking Large: a Cyberpunk Rocket

This cyberpunk bike would look right at home in Akira, but is actually from the mind of French builder F@bz. Sitting at 55 studs in length, the large scale gives room for plenty of terrific details, the coolest of which are the brilliant incorporation of the hot air balloon panels as a sleek engine cowling and the stacked 2×2 radar dishes for the rear suspension.

The Changing Palette of LEGO: 1975-2014

Dave E. over on the Brickset forums has compiled a fascinating summary of the evolution of the LEGO palette over the past 40 years. Dave wrote an program to analyze the Brickset database, pulling part inventories for the last 40 years’ worth of sets. He says he ignored a few special themes known for their rampant use of unusual colors, such as Duplo and Fabuland.

This chart compiles the colors as a percentage of the total parts produced each year, so while a color’s percentage may decrease from one year to the next, its actual quantity produced may increase if LEGO manufactures more total pieces the next year. This chart also only accounts for a set’s release year, and not the subsequent years in which that set may have been produced, nor the quantities LEGO produces, so it only approximates what a collector would have if they were able to buy one copy of each set in its release year.

Continue reading →

Rob D’s LEGO photography shows Classic Space in a whole new way

When most of us photograph a new creation, we’re satisfied if the photo has clean lighting and a nice backdrop. Some builders, however, take things to the next level. Over the past several years, we’ve seen a number of builders apply their superb photography skills to our favorite plastic toy, including Vesa Lehtimäki and Joe and Will Merzlak. Rob D. is a new addition to the ranks of those builders taking breathtaking shots of LEGO, and he’s got some great building skills to boot. One of Rob’s latest photos, portraying an underwater scene of the new LEGO Deep Sea theme, is featured in the current edition of Blocks, a LEGO fan magazine, but my favorite has to be the shot of Rob’s LL-962 spacecraft being maintenanced.

New Modular: 10251 Brick Bank revealed! [News]

This morning at the Brick Korea fan event in South Korea, LEGO displayed the newest city modular, 10251 Brick Bank. With 2,380 pieces, it’s the third largest modular building yet, and looks just as detailed as its predecessors. It will be available from the LEGO Shop Online beginning in January for $169.99 USD. The full press release is below.

10251 Brick Bank
Ages 16+.
2,380 pieces.
US $169.99 – CA $219.99 – DE 149.99€ – UK £119.99 – DK 1399.00 DKK
*Euro pricing varies by country. Please visit shop.LEGO.com for regional pricing.

Make a safe deposit at the Brick Bank! Make a secure deposit at the highly respected Brick Bank, featuring an array of intricate details and hidden surprises. Easy-to-remove building sections provide access to the detailed interior, comprising a bank with an atrium foyer, tiled floor, arched windows, ornate chandelier, lockable vault and a transaction counter with security glass; a laundromat with printed window, tiled floor and 4 laundry machines; plus 2 second-floor offices with an array of detailed furniture, fixtures and accessories. The exterior of the building features a detailed sidewalk and an elaborate façade with carving and statue décor, decorative roofline, large arched windows, central balcony, clock and an accessible roof terrace featuring a large skylight.

• Includes 5 minifigures: a bank manager, secretary, teller, and a mom and child.
• The Brick Bank features a bank, secretary’s office, bank manager’s office, laundromat and a detailedfaçade and sidewalk.
• Bank features an atrium foyer with wide, arched entrance, triangular-patterned floor tiling, ornate chandelier, oxidized-copper colored skylight, transaction counter with hidden alarm buttons and security glass, and a bank vault with safe deposit boxes and a large round door.
• Laundromat features a printed window, tiled floor and 4 laundry machines.
• Secretary’s office features a wall clock, desk, typewriter, cabinet with opening drawers, fireplace and an espresso machine.
• Bank manager’s office features a large desk with banker’s lamp and approval stamp, leather-look chair, printed portrait, statue and a cabinet.
• Accessory elements include a mug, document, camera, candy, blank white paper, chrome-golden coins, 1 chrome- golden bar and banknotes.
• Remove the building sections to access the detailed interior.
• Unlock the bank vault to access the safe deposit boxes.
• Visit the laundromat for a spot of laundering.
• Stack coins with the coin counting machine.
• Special elements include a printed prize check, printed ground-floor windows, a special printed portrait in the bank manager’s office, plus rare, sand-blue and dark-green bricks, and sand-green window frames.
• Collect and build an entire town with the LEGO® Creator Expert Modular Building series 10243 Parisian Restaurant and 10246 Detective’s Office.
• Brick Bank measures over 10” (26cm) high, 10” (25cm) wide and 10” (25cm) deep.

Check out the rest of the photos of 10251 Brick Bank on flickr.

LEGO Nexo Knights officially unveiled [News]

Today at the New York Comic Con, LEGO officially pulled the curtain from their newest line, Nexo Knights. A cross between Space and Castle, Nexo Knights features knights in robotic power armor riding mechanical hovering horses and driving giant vehicles. The Nexo Knights theme will be accompanied by a companion app titled Merlok 2.0, as well as a 20-episode television series chronicling the adventures of the knights. It airs in December.

While many of our viewers will no doubt be having flashbacks to Knights Kingdom II right about now, it looks like these sets will at the least feature a lot of new parts great for Space and Mecha builders. We also still haven’t seen the full set lineup, so keep your eyes out for the rest of the sets.

Read the full press release after the jump. Continue reading →