Category Archives: Models

This is what we’re all about. We scour the web for the best custom LEGO models to share with you. From castles and spaceships to planes, trains, and automobiles, you’ll find the best LEGO creations from builders all over the world right here on The Brothers Brick.

A tale of two LEGO trees

There are few subjects I enjoy seeing in LEGO as much as trees, from the single-mold pine trees in vintage sets to the enormous redwoods of Sequoia Tree Trail. I never cease to be amazed by the creative ways that AFOLs find to make decidedly organic branches and bark out of plastic bricks. At Skærbæk fan weekend, a pair of builds from Finnish builder Niina L show just how evocative a LEGO tree can be. First up is this incredible iron tree with a greeble trunk sitting atop a pile of tires and surrounded by blood-red water. It’s a glimpse of a dystopian world where green has been all but forgotten. A lone sprouting branch offers hope in this dead world.

A second build also showcases Niina’s incredible talent for creating organic forms from irregular parts. This time the trunk incorporates incorporates a mix of Bionicle, constraction, and System parts in brown. The berry-like foliage, made from red helmets, adds a dose of whimsy to this scene where the tree’s resident is greeted by a friend or suitor.

Two amazing trees, each evoking a story of hope and connection.

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Epic interstellar collab builds on LEGO’s City-Space aesthetic with Mission to Thalora Prime

LEGO might not have released a stand-alone Space theme since 2013’s Galaxy Squad, but the spirit of space exploration lives on as a sub-theme of City. Two years of great sets have introduced new uniforms, personal mechs, and swooshable ships with an aesthetic closer to Interstellar than retro sci-fi. At last month’s IDS Brickworld, long-time collaborators and Rogue Bricks membrers Michael Diermann and Sascha Brüning debuted a sprawling tribute to the City Space called “Mission on Thalora Prime.”

The builders adhere to the aesthetics of the line, from the nougat earth to the modular building style to the alien shrubbery, while expanding in scope and variety. The arid alien landscape is wonderfully done and provides a fun foundation for an aerial walkway to the radar module. LEGO 60430 Interstellar Spaceship has never looked better than here, with hangars to hold a squadron.

Michael, aka Boba-1980, shares a video from the event on his feed.

Soft serve toad with a cherry on top

We never get tired of seeing new additions to the Frogust lineup, even in October, and this spin from LEGO’s newest set designer, Nathan Don, is especially sweet. Dubbed ‘Cherritoad’, this frog gives the theme its just desserts with a whimsical design that wouldn’t be out of place in the Pokémon universe. For a LEGO model, the shaping and techniques are incredible. My favorite details are the wide cartoony eyes and the way the ‘cone’ scales upward (we’d love to see what the inside of this build looks like!). You can’t help but love this little guy!

You can read more about this build on Nathan’s Woomy World blog.

A Minecraft Movie’s Game Over World lovingly recreated in LEGO

A Minecraft-inspired modular? Thanks to A Minecraft Movie’s isekai plot taking real-world gamers into the fantasy land of voxel-based construction, it’s not as weird as you might think! Swedish AFOL Jenny Bergensten, a member of Swebrick, is a fan of the film – specifically Game Over World, the retro gaming shop run by Jason Momoa’s Garret “The Garbage Man” – and she spent much of the summer faithfully recreating the set in LEGO.

Jenny recreates the shop inside and out, capturing the faded glory of both Garret, the former arcade star, and a small town main street.

Insert quarter to continue exploring Jenny’s build

Liminal LEGO horror is in bloom

Japanese builder Pan Noda is a master at crafting liminal spaces in LEGO. From ancient ruins to cursed malls to surreal swimming pools, their worlds make the familiar look strange or even haunted. Controlled depth of field and a lack of minifigs make scale confounding and dreamlike. Pan Noda’s latest takes one of the most cheerful LEGO elements, the magenta flower with shaft found in so many kid sets and pick-a-brick-bins, and creates one of their most cursed scenes to date. Titled “A Field of Mocking Flowers,” a column rises from an endless field, a smiling face seen in negative space. Is there a structure beneath the blooms that happens to have a face, or is this the visage of some floral hive-mind? Are the boardwalks there to protect the flowers from pedestrian feet, or are they to protect us from this malevolent magenta force?

Wind turbine transport: a trilogy in a few thousand parts

When I built my Lego mega windmill trailer, for carrying a wind turbine nacelle, I did not think this would be the start of a trilogy. However, I subsequently built a truck that carries a rotor hub. At that point, it was pretty much inevitable that I would also build a vehicle carrying one of the blades.

I put this off for more than two years, though, because I did not relish building the blade. The nacelle represents a Vestas V90 wind turbine. By now, this is something of an old clunker, and it is quite small compared to more modern turbines. Nonetheless, its blades are still 44 m long. This makes them 128 studs long at the scale of my other vehicles (1/43). And I happen to like building small details. This is one reason why I enjoy building minifigure-scale trucks so much. By comparison, the blade’s size and its complicated shape would make building it pretty tedious. And it was tedious, indeed. However, the finale to my wind turbine trilogy is one of the most beautiful shapes I have ever built.

Looks like meat’s back on the menu: 19 custom LEGO orcs [Minifig Monday]

From Tolkien to Warhammer and everything in between, orcs are the biggest, baddest, and often funniest fantasy baddies of any setting they appear in. This week we’ve put together a horrendous horde of LEGO orcs from the custom community. You’ll find more than a few surprises in this one!

A king of cohesion, capt.dark.shark unleashes Commander Kragg the Cleaver. There’s so much to love here, the new(ish) Viking helmet fits so flush with the CMF Orc jaw, while pushing the ears out to make a unique head shape. The oversized olive green arm is actually from Jabba the Hutt, and sticking an axe on the end of a prosthetic is delightfully impractical as it is fiendishly orcish.

Lessor in the orc kingdoms but certainly not in the minifig world, these night goblins from Karp_brick have some excellent black cape layering and subtle diversity in the heads and headwear. We’ve spotted faces from the CMF Goblin, Star Wars Niamoidian and a Ninjago orc.

Older bigfigs are famous for lack of customisation options, but dwalinforkbeard has expertly used black capes to cover a more scifi torso to create something that is right at home in a medieval fantasy setting. Add that to the whimsical mushroom picking vibe and you’ve got a great looking orc dude.

Where there’s a click, there’s a way… to see more orcs! Zug zug.

Mesmerizing miniature Miyazaki models in LEGO

What makes your favorite Miyazaki film? Is it the Adventure of Laputa, the wonder of My Neighbor Totoro, the intricacy of Spirited Away, or the magic of Howl’s Moving Castle? Somehow, builder Tung Man Chun manages to distil the hearts of these films down to 8×8 studs in a series of incredible LEGO vignettes. Each model is anchored by a larger-than-life character, bringing a sense of dynamism to the compact format. Let’s have a look at the full series.

Click to see more of Tung’s incredible Ghibli vignettes

The little space hopper that could

LEGO gave a breath of fresh air to Classic Space with the Space Exploration theme, and Julius Kanand is taking that design sensibility to explore the moons of the outer rim in this clean spaceship. Four occupants fit snuggly between two beautiful engines. I can practically hear the sounds of this ship taking off with the exposed connection arms to the sleek engines. “To the moon!”

Mech-elangelo is ready to party

Long time fans of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles know that it’s Donatello who does machines, but the team’s resident party dude is rocking a mighty machine of his own, courtesy of Bas van Houwelingen. A giant robot suit might not be quite in line with the teachings of the ninja, but the Turtles never really seemed bothered by that kind of thing. Besides, look at all this suit has going for it, from the pizza loaded belt to the giant nunchucks and tonfas. And those trashcan forearms are a detail that it’s easy to imagine someone at Playmates dreaming up in the early nineties.

Speed-limit Champions

Speed cameras have taken over most European metropolitans at this point, but William van Beek may have found the answer: a Mini Cooper may be too short for the cameras to catch a good picture! A wonderful little LEGO vignette, just like other pieces of art, can offer a great commentary for what we see in the world around us.

These chibi builds are Golden

It’s hard to escape the juggernaut that is K-Pop Demon Hunters. The movie just broke another record, holding for its 15th week in Netflix’s Top 10. It’s such a phenomenon, in fact, that I wouldn’t bet against LEGO producing some official sets someday. But, until then, we’ll settle for LegoWyrm’s take on Zoey, Ruma, and Mira. The characters are brought to life in a chibi form that’s a perfect compliment to the film’s tone, with plenty of great technique on display. I love the studs not on top construction of the trio’s eyes. And the way the printed design on Zoey’s pants is brick-built strikes a perfect chord.