Category Archives: Feature

The Brothers Brick is not just about showcasing the best  fan builds and bringing you the latest LEGO News, we also love to investigate, interview and discuss!  These featured articles are all interesting articles that you can look back and enjoy reading.

The TBB Field Guide to LEGO Dinosaurs: A Jurassic World Compendium [Review and Infographics]

When the new wave of LEGO Jurassic World sets came out, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on the dinosaurs. The children in us immediately began stomping them around and making roaring noises. Here at The Brothers Brick, we are not ashamed to say we get giddy while playing with toy dinosaurs. We’re also not ashamed to say we are serious nerds. After our dino-dueling escapades, we began to wonder how accurate they are to the real things. As far as scientists can hypothesize, that is. So we did some not-so-archaeological digging — after all, it’s palaeontologists who study dinosaurs, not archaeologists, as Andrew our Editor-in-Chief (and resident archaeology buff) likes to remind everybody!

As it turns out, there is a vast amount of knowledge that scientists have obtained from the fossils of these creatures. That being said, there is a lot of information that they still don’t know, as well as much heated debate on the truth about each one. The Jurassic Park and Jurassic World franchise has been both heavily criticized and applauded for its attempts at realism. But without getting too wrapped up in the debates, we’ll take a look at the best working knowledge of these dinosaurs. So put on your favorite leather vest or red bandana and paleontologist’s expedition hat, because away we go!

Read on to unlock the mysteries!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Hold on for a wild ride in LEGO Creator Expert 10261 Roller Coaster [Review]

As soon as rumors of Creator Expert 10261 Roller Coaster started flowing, there seemed to be a huge sigh of, “Finally!” that spread throughout the LEGO fan community. I’ll shamelessly admit that I was one of the ones bouncing up and down, shouting that it was about darn time. But even if you weren’t as excited as I was, I’m guessing that it at least piqued your interest, and perhaps that interest brought you here.

When we recently had the chance to go hands-on with the roller coaster at the 2018 Fall Preview event in New York, it was so much fun that we definitely couldn’t wait to do our own review. We anxiously awaited our copy from Billund and it’s finally here! So step right up! Let’s plunge in and see what the exclusive LEGO Creator Expert 10261 Roller Coaster has to offer!

Read our hands-on review, complete with a video of the motorized roller coaster

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Solo: A Star Wars Story – LEGO sets vs. the movie [Spoiler Review]

Solo: A Star Wars Story opens in theaters today, but if you’re like many of us here at The Brothers Brick, you already saw it yesterday evening at an opening night event. With the movie now in theaters, we’re taking a look back at our reviews of the LEGO Star Wars sets that accompany the movie, comparing them with the real characters and vehicles.

Solo Movie LEGO Comparisons

Obviously, the nature of this follow-up analysis is that it will be full of spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, by all means go out and do that — it’s not a perfect movie, but it’s certainly a fun adventure in the broader Star Wars universe — before coming back and reading this.

Read our in-depth analysis of the LEGO Star Wars sets from the Han Solo movie

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

HispaBricks 10th Anniversary Set [Review]

As we mentioned in our recent interview with the HispaBrick staff, our friends over at HispaBrick are celebrating their 10-year anniversary. One of the ways this free digital magazine for LEGO fans are celebrating is with the release of a limited edition custom set. Although HispaBrick is online only, the set itself channels a more historical form of magazine and newspaper distribution — the kiosk.

Click to read the full review

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Celebrating 10 years of HispaBrick Magazine [Feature]

HispaBrick is a free digital magazine for LEGO fans that is published in both Spanish and English.  There are three full editions of HispaBrick released each year, packed with technical articles, interviews, and features on almost every aspect of LEGO. The very first edition of HispaBrick was released back in 2008, making 2018 the 10th anniversary of the magazine, and there are a few surprises planned to mark the occasion.

Within the 10th anniversary edition, there’s an interview with Carlos Méndez, the LEGO fan who proposed the idea of HispaBrick Magazine ten years ago. You will also find a timeline spanning magazine’s ten years, along with interviews with the current staff members. Other features include Andrea Valcanover showing how to build a beautiful tree, Pau Padrós explaining the secrets behind Modular buildings, an interview with the LEGO Technic team and a report of the latest LEGO event in Bilbao.

Click here to see more from the 10th Anniversary Issue and an Exclusive Interview

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Working LEGO pinball machine built from 15,000 bricks features Benny in all his Classic Space glory [Exclusive Feature]

Pinball machines bring out the kid in all of us, hanging out in an arcade losing quarters and setting high scores. And the Classic Space era of LEGO sets appeals to so many of us who got our first LEGO sets back in the 70’s through 90’s. The Brothers Brick contributor Bre Burns hits it out of the nostalgia ballpark with a fully functional LEGO pinball machine called “Benny’s Spaceship Adventure.” She spent several months perfecting the design with over 15,000 LEGO bricks, including LEGO Mindstorms NXT programmable bricks to make sounds and count your high score.

Bre has kindly shared loads of details about her LEGO masterpiece, which stands over two and a half feet tall, exclusively with The Brothers Brick. Let’s pull back that ball launcher, flick those flippers, and learn more about this amazing LEGO creation!

But first, let’s take a look at the pinball machine in action as Bre shares its working features and tells us a little bit about the design process in our latest TBB video.

Learn more about Benny’s Spaceship Adventure, with more exclusive photos and details!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Top 10 favourite LEGO sci-fi builds inspired by the Star Wars universe [Feature]

Star Wars has touched many generations. The movies, TV shows, games, and books have the power to influence and inspire LEGO builders to explore the many styles, iconic shapes, and infinite possibilities in that galaxy far, far away. We pulled together the Top 10 of our favourites that could deservingly and easily be featured as a vehicle the in movies.

Sidewinder by Rail Blade

A cousin vehicle of the Millennium Falcon, perhaps?

Onwards!

See the rest of our list of favorite LEGO creations inspired by Star Wars

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Top 10 favourite LEGO Star Wars custom vehicle builds [Feature]

Part of the attraction of Star Wars is all the iconic vehicles introduced in the films, each classics that stand the test of time.  To celebrate this year’s Star Wars Day, we put together a list of our top 10 favourite custom-built LEGO mechanical wonders. Each of these LEGO Star Wars creations was built by a LEGO fan — these aren’t sets, and the builder didn’t use instructions. We hope you’ll be inspired to build your own LEGO creations after seeing all these amazing models.

50-inch-long Dreadnought by One Case

Executor class Star Dreadnought

Studless TIE Fighter by Jussi Koskinen

TIE S/F (updated)

See the rest of our list of the best LEGO Star Wars vehicles after the jump

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Top 10 life-size LEGO Star Wars creations [Feature]

Some LEGO builders took Star Wars building to a whole new scale with prop replica weapons you can hold, helmets you can wear, and even starfighters you can pilot. Let’s take a look at the top 10 Star Wars LEGO builds constructed in 1:1 scale that we’ve featured here on The Brothers Brick!

#10: Han Solo’s DL-44 Blaster Pistol

There’s just no match for a blaster at your side. Logan’s DL-44 replica is the perfect tool for shooting Greedo first.

Han Solo's DL-44 Blaster Pistol

#9: Millenium Falcon guitar

Metal cover of Imperial March intensifies. General Kkaebok’s Millenium Falcon guitar is certainly one of the most unique picks for Star Wars in 1:1 scale.

My millennium Falcon Guitar <밀레니엄 팔콘 기타>

See the rest of the Top 10 picks after the jump

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Interview with Jeff Friesen of Cityscapes, The Brothers Brick’s Creation of the Year 2017 [Feature]

We singled out Jeff Friesen’s Cityscapes as our 2017 Creation of the Year. If you’ve missed it then, these are still very much worth a look, and even if you’ve seen them, they’re so mesmerising that you may find something you missed earlier on. It’s almost soothing and appealing to let your eyes wander around these intricate builds.

We could not resist reaching out to have a deeper discussion with Jeff to understand the mind of an artist that could create something so different and unique with the very same bricks all of us see and build with every day.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, e.g. where are you based, your LEGO history, and your work (LEGO/Photography and real life if it is different)?

I’m an award-winning photographer based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, which is on Vancouver Island. I have vivid memories of playing with LEGO from the age of 3 (that was in the early 1970s). I had a shoebox full of white and red bricks in the classic sizes, mostly 2 x 4s. Those bricks were used to make everything from aeroplanes to cities to double-decker car ferries for Matchbox racers. Recently, I was wondering why the brick selection was only red and white. After doing some research it appears the bricks must have been a hand-me-down set from the 1960s. Back then LEGO used to have basic building sets in just red and white.

The late 1970s brought with it the dual treasures of minifigures and Space LEGO. I essentially lived in a Space LEGO drama for a few years. Blue, trans-yellow, and grey were the primary colours of that era. As a child, the actual LEGO building is just the beginning of the fun, and then you get to play with what you’ve made. As an adult, I’ve replaced the play phase with photography.

It’s amazing how LEGO has been there through every stage of life, and now my daughter’s life.

Click here to continue reading our interview with Jeff Friesen

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

For the love of Star Wars: A focus on Douglas Khoo

You never know what you’re going to get when you ask the right questions. Recently, we had the chance to speak with Douglas Khoo about his work. Douglas is a talented builder who seldom showcases his builds online, but does what he does for the love of it. If the builder’s name rings a bell, that’s because he was part of the crew that was invited to create and build an exhibit for the UNESCO’s Piece of Peace exhibition that will travel the world.

Douglas created this magnificent collage of LEGO Star Wars ships with a silent tribute to the Dark Side. This montage only took Douglas about two hours to complete, and if you did not already notice, it’s inspired by a similar piece by artist Louis C. Hébert from the Bleublancrouge advertising agency from the Star Wars Identities Exhibition over at the Montreal Science Centre, back in 2012. The difference though is Douglas makes use of the negative space a lot more to give the Star Wars ships a showcase of their own and individuality. If you still don’t see Vader there, squint your eyes, take a step back and look again!

When asked about how big a fan he was, Douglas’s answer was – you’ve got to be kidding me. That’s when we were introduced to a showcase of his other masterpieces which all center around the beloved Star Wars theme. With each of these builds, Douglas adds his own twists of interpretation and re-imagination to the scene.

Continue reading to see Douglas’s re-imagined LEGO Star Wars creations

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

How I built a 20,000-piece LEGO rice plantation inspired by The LEGO Ninjago Movie [Guest Feature]

Today we’re pleased to welcome Anu Pehrson as a guest contributor to give a special introduction to her latest creation. We spoke with Anu last year about her amazing models, which range from a monastery in Bhutan to the Iron Islands from A Game of Thrones. Her newest model, Master Wu’s Rice Plantation, is just as amazing. She worked on the 20,000-piece model over 3 months, and she’s documented for us the process of how a creation like this goes from idea to completion.

The diorama is enormous, at nearly four feet on each side, and includes multiple buildings, a river, beautiful trees, and lots of incredible landscaping up the staggered terraces of rice paddies.

The Building of Master Wu’s Rice Plantation

By Anu Pehrson

I wanted to build something in the Japanese architectural style, perhaps some smaller cottages where I could try different building techniques for the windows, wall patterns, roofs, and porch railings. I thought a village-like setting for these cottages would be the ideal layout. The second thing I was interested in trying was terraced agricultural fields, and rounded terraces that are used for rice farming in East Asia seemed like an interesting challenge. So bringing these two ideas together formed the basis of this MOC (My Own Creation). I also wanted to build a working gondola from a lower level to a higher level (but that hasn’t happened yet).

The LEGO Ninjago Movie was just being released as I was building this MOC, therefore, it seemed like perfect timing for to create a place for Master Wu to teach and practice with his disciples.

The starting point was a body of water. For any MOC with landscaping, I think a water body adds color and texture. The important part is to make the water interesting. There are a great many methods of doing this, but I began with using blue in the center and different shades of blue on the edges. At this point, I didn’t know how I was going to add to it, but I later added transparent 1×1 plates in a few shades over top of the blue plates.

The next step was to build stone curved walls for the terraced rice fields. However, it turned out that curved walls were very difficult to build upon as terraces.
Continue reading

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.