This space-faring fleet carrier by Markus Rollbühler is ready to ferry your troops and spacecraft in luxurious style to your next invasion destination vacation. The bright colors and and brilliant blue energy source let your feeble enemies know you’re not just in it for the loot — you’re in it to look good doing it.
It’s good to see more and more space builders branching out from the standard dark-grey-with-light-grey-highlights colorscheme for spaceships. Don’t get me wrong: I love industrial grey as much or more than most builders. But lately, the building community is increasingly branching out to alternative colorschemes, and we’re all better off for the variety that brings.
Posts by Chris
Golem heavy mech: a solid build
Joe and Will Merziak bring us this Golem heavy mech platform, a pair of mecha ready for anything. As usual with the brothers, a lovely cinematic shot is included to show off the stunning industrial beauty of their war machines.
Space: The final frontier for prospecting
When all the planets’ resources are depleted, mankind must turn to space to harvest even the most common of material: iron. And when that time comes, the Iron Mountain will lead the fleet of prospectors to find new sources of wealth. This awesome space miner by Sam Malmberg rings in at a whopping 162 studs long, and like most other large spacecraft you’ll see around here for awhile, was built as part of the “build a giant spaceship in a month” challenge known as SHIPtember. Sam has beautifully blended an armor-plated hull with large technological greebly appendages, but my absolute favorite part is Sam’s use of LEGO’s short-lived Aero Tubes and even more impressively, its accompanying Air Pump — a piece I can’t recall ever seeing in a fan-creation before. Oddly enough, just a few days ago I rediscovered the Air Pump in my collection, and thought to myself “one day I must find a use for this…”
Sam says he’s bringing the model to Brickcon in Seattle, which begins tomorrow for registered attendees, and is open to the public Saturday and Sunday. So if you want to check out this model in person, or many of the other models we feature, be sure to stop by. A number of us from the Brothers Brick — including myself — will be in attendance as well, so seek us out and say hi!
LEGO Dimensions available now! [News]
LEGO Dimensions is finally available for purchase. If you’ve been excited to have LEGO versions of Portal, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, DC Superheroes, Back to the Future, Wizard of Oz, and tons of other themes all interacting together (or maybe you just want the physical minifigs) then there’s no need to wait any longer. Hop over to your local store and pick it up now, or hit the Amazon link below to support The Brothers Brick.
Photo courtesy of AC Pin.
A Siege at Suldanessellar: Enormous LEGO D&D diorama
Ivan Angeli builds big. Really big. His latest diorama, showing the clash of an angelic stronghold with nefarious Drow forces, measures about 12 by 6 feet. The name will be familiar to D&D Forgotten Realms aficionados, as most of Ivan’s models are based in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Shown recently at LUGS United, a fan event in Belgrade, Serbia, Ivan says this diorama includes over 1000 minifigs, and the white tower is over 6 feet tall. Impressively, Ivan says that he has only enough room at home to build about 18 by 18 inches at a time, forcing him to carefully plan so that each section will fit together when assembled at a show. As with most fans who bring builds to shows — especially large builds — Ivan has plenty of tales of woe to tell of parts not connecting properly or structures collapsing the night before the show, requiring hasty on-site reconstruction. Be sure to also check out our interview with Ivan for his previous model, which was similarly as ridiculously large.
Drive your minifig to work in electric style with a LEGO Tesla
The Tesla, arguably what is the world’s first stylish electric car, is a testament to how far electric vehicles have come. The first thing about this minifig scale version by Cole Edmonson was how instantly recognizable it is. Often real life sports cars and sedans translated down to minifig scale loose so much of their distinctive styling that they just look like a generic car, but the proportions of this Tesla give it away. Cole has even provided a very detailed write-up of his design process for this model, which is a cool behind-the-scenes look at what a good builder puts into even a small model.
25% off LEGO Movie 70816 Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, Spaceship! on Amazon
Dear readers, if you love SPACE!, here’s a deal too sweet to pass up. Right now, Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, Spaceship! (70816) is on sale on Amazon for almost 25% off the normal $100 price tag, making it a fantastic deal with 980 pieces for $75.99. It’s rare to see large and popular sets like this go on much of a sale, and this set is surely nearing the end of its availability. If you’re still on the fence about this one, take a look at our review of Benny’s Spaceship (spoiler: we love it).
The Big Cat: Incredibly detailed LEGO Caterpillar bulldozer
Some people build spaceships and castles. Others build more down-to-earth items, but build them amazingly well. It doesn’t get more down to earth or well built than this Caterpillar D11T by Davy Linden, which can plow through mountains of earth with ease. The D11T is an unbelievably large bulldozer, weighing in at 115 tons and just shy of 1000 horsepower, capable of crushing trucks with ease. This model excludes no detail, and is roughly twice minifig scale, giving it a whopping 22 inch length. Take time to carefully pore over the details, as many of the tiny greebles are hard to spot against the yellow body.
The cutest one man band ever
The LEGO version of Pixar’s Tinny by Koen may just be one of the cutest one man bands ever. It doesn’t take many pieces to capture the adorable expression on the marching man’s face, giving it a simple evocativeness that’s straight out of the Pixar short which inspired it. My favorite detail is the ski used a nifty feather on the shako.
A LEGO Brickumentary coming to Blu-ray/DVD Nov. 3 [News]
If you haven’t yet seen A LEGO Brickumentary, find a theater playing it or rent it on Amazon or iTunes. It’s a fascinating look at the impact that our favorite toy brick has on the lives of fans and regular non-fans alike. The documentary covers all aspects of the intersection of bricks and people, from custom models like we feature here at TBB to LEGO being used as a therapy tool. Full disclosure: several of our contributors, including myself, have cameos in the documentary (here’s a picture I took at Brickcon). Just chalk that up as another reason to go see it! The film will be available for purchase Nov. 3, but is now available on Amazon for streaming and pre-order: just click the picture below. You can read the official press release after the jump.
Fill ‘er up! The hey-day of gas stations
Andrew Tate was feeling nostalgic for a time of full-service stations with an art-deco style, so he built this 30’s-inspired filling station. The curved corner window looks perfect for a classy old shop where the attendants would pump your fuel, wash your windows, and check your radiator, and Andrew says it was one of the inspirations for the model.
Fan takes 2.5 years to build gigantic LEGO Zelda castle
Joseph Zawada built this jaw-dropping rendition of Hyrule Castle from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Joseph displayed it at Brickfair Virginia earlier this month, where it was a huge hit. After spending 2.5 years piecing it together, Joseph is rightly very proud of his masterpiece, which features great details such as the gradated water and nifty roof techniques.
Our friends at Beyond the Brick have a great on-location interview with Joseph at Brickfair: