Happy holidays to all of our fellow LEGO builders! As is tradition, we at The Brothers Brick will be opening our advent calendars as we count down to Christmas. We’ll also be sharing commentary on each one, which will be both insightful and hilarious!
This year we have new Harry Potter, Star Wars, City and Friends advent calendars to open. We will be sharing images of the new calendars every day through Christmas, and hope that you’ll join us! Let’s see what there is to open on Day 8.
Happy holidays to all of our fellow LEGO builders! As is tradition, we at The Brothers Brick will be opening our advent calendars as we count down to Christmas. We’ll also be sharing commentary on each one, which will be both insightful and hilarious!
This year we have new Harry Potter, Star Wars, City and Friends advent calendars to open. We will be sharing images of the new calendars every day through Christmas. Let’s see what there is to open on Day 7!
Happy holidays to all of our fellow LEGO builders! As is tradition, we at The Brothers Brick will be opening our advent calendars as we count down to Christmas. We’ll also be sharing commentary on each one, which will be both insightful and hilarious!
This year we have new Harry Potter, Star Wars, City and Friends advent calendars to open. We will be sharing images of the new calendars every day through Christmas. Let’s see what there is to open on Day 6!
Happy holidays to all of our fellow LEGO builders! As is tradition, we at The Brothers Brick will be opening our advent calendars as we count down to Christmas. We’ll also be sharing commentary on each one, which will be both insightful and hilarious!
This year we have new Harry Potter, Star Wars, City and Friends advent calendars to open. We will be sharing images of the new calendars every day through Christmas. Let’s see what there is to open on Day 5!
Happy holidays to all of our fellow LEGO builders! As is tradition, we at The Brothers Brick will be opening our advent calendars as we count down to Christmas. We’ll also be sharing commentary on each one, which will be both insightful and hilarious!
This year we have new Harry Potter, Star Wars, City and Friends advent calendars to open. We will be sharing images of the new calendars every day through Christmas. Let’s see what there is to open on Day 4!
Click to see the LEGO Advent Calendars Day 4
Happy holidays to all of our fellow LEGO builders! As is tradition, we at The Brothers Brick will be opening our advent calendars as we count down to Christmas. We’ll also be sharing commentary on each one, which will be both insightful and hilarious!
This year we have new Harry Potter, Star Wars, City and Friends advent calendars to open! We will be sharing images of the new calendars every day through Christmas. Let’s see what there is to open on Day 3!
Click to see the LEGO Advent Calendars Day 3
Recently TBB’s Chris Doyle shared with us his journey of creating a custom LEGO Art mosaic. One of the tools Chris used, LEGO Art Remix, was an essential step towards getting to the finished product. We took some time to talk to Creator Deb Banerji about the project. With his background in Computer Science, Deb coded the foundation of the LEGO Art Remix tool in about 5 hours, though he’s spent a bit more time refining it since then. I’ve had some hands-on time with it from the first release and to its current final form, and it’s only gotten better. The latest results output close to a finished mosaic design that you can immediately start building within minutes if you had the parts on hand.
Click to read the review and interview with Deb
Once a year, my long-distance partner Alyse Middleton and I, Chris Doyle, try to take a week of vacation together. With the realities of life in the USA in 2020 limiting the potential destinations, this time we opted for a “Quarencation” at my place. Kind of a bummer, but staying here kept us within easy reach of my LEGO workspace…and that paid out some nifty results. We were able to take an idea we had been kicking around all the way from concept to physical model. Working in the style of the new LEGO Art sets, we created a mosaic of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman.
I’d built a number of mosaics in the past, so I had a few ideas on how we could approach making a new one. And while that experience was helpful, we ended up taking a very different route to reach our goal. Come along with us on our journey of highs, lows, seemingly endless moments of “I guess we’re starting over again“, and, yes, eventual triumph.
It’s important to understand as you read this review of the new LEGO 71374 Nintendo Entertainment System that I never owned an NES myself as a kid back in the 80’s. But I wanted one. After all, it felt like nearly every one of my friends in the neighborhood in Japan where I lived had a Famicom, or later the true NES launched in 1985. As I went over to my friends’ houses and played Super Mario and the very first Legend of Zelda, I so very desperately wanted one! But I never did, partly because I was told that I had enough toys in the form of all the LEGO underfoot in my bedroom. Now, I can buy my own (US $229.99 | CAN $299.99 | UK £209.99) and build it for myself from LEGO, which seems even better. Does this marriage of my favorite little plastic bricks with the big plastic brick of my dreams live up to 35 years of pent-up expectations? Let’s find out…
Read our hands-on review of LEGO 71374 Nintendo Entertainment System
Even before I became a UX designer, I’ve always been fascinated by the user interfaces designed for television and motion pictures. Compare the chunky, muted panels in the original Star Trek show with the sleek curves and touch screens of The Next Generation, and you realize that someone, probably an entire team of people, was responsible for designing every button and screen display blinking away in the background.
George Cave, an interaction technologist and design engineer, has written a very insightful article on the history of UI design in LEGO control panels.
Movies like Star Wars and Alien, restricted by available technologies and the capabilities of “modern” screens and monitors, did a pretty amazing job of bringing pivotal scenes to life, like the simple lines of Luke’s targeting computer in the trench run, and the giant display at the center of the Rebels command center, which showed in no small way, just how close they came to total annihilation.
When it comes to LEGO control panels, the small space creates an even bigger challenge for UX designers, who use design principles like color, proximity, and size to create subtle relationships between physical controls like dials, buttons, and switches, and the visual display of information those physical controls affect.
Are you shopping for a rover that can handle rough terrain? (Aren’t we all?) Then Blake Foster has all the answers you seek with this LEGO All-Terrain Classic Space Tank or AT-CST. It makes excellent use of this bubble windscreen as well as this Bionicle shell. If that is giving you just a touch of deja vu, that is because Blake recently used the same parts with this Grumpy Gnat. Blake seems to specialize in spacecraft that tickle the ol’ LEGO nostalgia bone. Check out our archives to see what I mean.
LEGO Train-heads, yes, you’re probably beaming ear-to-ear with pride that you are well aware and know the use of this particular piece. For the rest of you who’s wondering, it’s not too late to extend this little mystery a little longer, take a guess on HOW exactly it’s used in train sets? Still pondering and wondering? Let’s cut to the chase, you’re here to get answers. Read right on to find out.
Click to find the answers you’re looking for