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 fin-tastic knight of the sea

Take a trip with us down into the sea where we find a noble seahorse on a knightly quest in this wonderful LEGO scene by Mohamed Marei. Built for the Bio-Cup saltwater biome theme, the scene shows off the creativity of a great builder. The bright colors contrast nicely against the bronze look of the seahorse knight, bringing our attention to the central figure. Floating above the knight is an exquisite jellyfish, using an array of transparent pieces well. The framing of the scene is fluid and I can’t stop looking at it! As is intended in the Bio-Cup, this is one of those builds that pushes the use of LEGO as a medium to new levels. Also, can we acknowledge how nice the use of the stud shooter is for the mouth of the seahorse? It’s like it was meant for such a use all along.

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This medieval-themed skyrock is made of over 22 pounds of LEGO

I wouldn’t have said that you could fit all the fixings LEGO Castle onto a single floating rock, but here Joe (jnj_bricks) has done just that! Clad in dark bluish gray brick, the multi-layer marvel begins at the bottom with a darling windmill. The use of balloon flaps as sails on the mill is a great touch, with its scooped form catching the wind from more complex angles than your standard land-based model. The fortification at the apex of the rocky mass is beautiful, utilizing some great techniques to form the walls of its towers. While impressive, the castle fits in well with the rest of the build, and doesn’t take attention away from the rest of the structure. This allows us to enjoy all the great minifigure scenes hidden throughout. Just check out the fella free soloing up the rock above the mill!

The queen and the king of SNOT

We just love simple LEGO creations that tell a story. And this very smart brick-built sketch by gGh0st tells not one, but two lovely stories. The first is about stunning building solutions. Did you notice all the white bricks in the background composed in some very intricate ways? This is what we call SNOT — studs not on top! And still, with studs facing all four directions, the pieces form a proper shape of a play card, not to mention the rounded corners. And as for the other story the build tells, of course, it’s about love. The forbidden romance between the queen and king that can’t be together… *sigh*

Bartering in Bionicle

If it wasn’t clear from my past posts on Eero Okkonen, I am a huge fan of his LEGO character designs. But he’s really outdone himself with this entry into Round 1 of the 2023 Bio-Cup. Depicting a pair of traveling merchants and their packbeast, the trio immediately reminds me of the Jawas roving over the deserts of Tatooine in Star Wars. And despite their different coloration, I love the clear anatomical link between the two traders in the general shapes of their arms and legs. But nothing can beat the gaping maw of their companion, fashioned from a pair of Skirmix heads.

Chief of the Danish Gauls, Madeoutoflegobrix

The chief of Asterix and Obelix’s little Gaulish village goes by many names. Vitalstatistix, Macroeconomix (in some US editions), and Abracourcix (as I knew him in the original French editions). But perhaps we should refer to Oliver Becker‘s excellent LEGO interpretation as Madeoutoflegobrix! The rotund chieftain and his caricatured proportions are very well done. The head especially is where this build really shines; the tiny helmet with the feathers is both accurate and adorable. And the ball joint and croissants are great respective choices for the big nose and moustache, features so integral to these indomitable Gauls!

The curious case of the Blacktron baggage

Chris Yu has a bit of a thing for LEGO space luggage. We’ve got a bit of a thing for his luggage, too – way back in 2019 his Classic Space suitcase was awarded the TBB Creation of the Year title. At long last, Chris has returned to this awesome concept – but with a more sinister twist! Naturally, the Classic Space case needs some opposing Blacktron baggage. It’s best summed up by one Ben Smith in the comments on Flickr: “I’ll be very surprised if this is not the most awesome thing you see all day”!

Click here to see what makes this build so awesome

War makes gingerbread boys into gingerbread men

“Man the gumdrop cannons! We’re on General Kringle’s naughty list this year!” Builder Mike Sinclair gives us a LEGO scene that has the Christmas season fighting against itself. Maybe you’re rooting for St. Nick and his elven troops, armed with a present catapult and cannon. But if you’re like me, you’re on the side of the Gingerbread Kingdom. With their cookie castle surrounded by a chocolate moat, these confectionary combatants aren’t about to crumble under pressure. The fortress is a beautiful mish-mash of classic castle shapes laced with bits of icing and other sweet treats. It’s an extremely well-executed fusion of themes. And, much like the smell of gingerbread, it’s got me hungry for more!

Where the explorers are tiny and the perils huge!

Gnomes are tiny mythical creatures of European folklore. With that said, it is possible that the monster spider in the center of this LEGO creation by Mihał Ch is normal-sized. Still, a spider of any size gives me the heebie-jeebies so I wouldn’t want to be that wee little gnome explorer. It looks like he’s about to become a snack! I may stick around just long enough to admire the neat build techniques used in this underground terrain; the rocks and web design are amazing. The entire diorama is only six studs deep but the amount of detail rendered makes the cave seem to go on forever. But still, let’s hope the other things we feature soon will be less spider-centric!

Scandinavian power, with a Dutch twist

Lego is not Denmark’s only market-leading company; Vestas, the world’s largest builder of wind turbines, is also Danish. After I built my mega-windmill trailer with a Vestas wind turbine nacelle, I seriously considered building a truck carrying one of the wind turbine’s blades. However, these blades are so big that, even at minifig scale, the model would have to be more than a meter long. This did not strike me as a particularly fun build, but I found a suitable alternative. It is a truck that carries the wind turbine’s hub. The tractor unit is a Volvo FM; another powerhouse from Scandinavia.

There’s a Dutch twist too. It is in the largely orange livery of Dutch heavy haulage specialists Van Der Vlist. And the trailer represents a semi-low loader built by Nooteboom, which is also Dutch. Its load is a lot more manageable than a turbine blade, but it is still a fairly substantial piece of equipment. It is wider than the trailer and so tall that its nose cap is transported separately on the trailer. It tapers and it has a complicated geometry because of the holes for the three blades in the sides. I built three identical sections, with angled panels between them. These all attach to a six-section bottom ring. There is a smaller ring and a separate truncated cone on top. Building all of this did turn out to be a fun challenge.

A Mûmakil kill still only counts as one

My wife and I are re-reading The Lord of the Rings together after having done so 22 years ago before the first Peter Jackson movie was released. By sheer coincidence, on the same day we read the chapter about the Battle of Pelennor Fields in The Return of the King, Kiwi builder Pieter Dennison shared the conclusion of a months-long project to recreate a Mûmak or Oliphaunt of the Haradrim in LEGO, based on how they appear in the movies.

Pieter’s build features all the iconic details of the enormous beast, from its four tusks (built from a series of 2×2 round bricks presumably strung on something like flex-tube), each with spikes on the end, to the war tower on the monstrous beast’s back. A closer look at the war tower shows just how huge this LEGO build really is, with about a score of minifigs riding into battle against the Rohirrim and men of Gondor.

If you want to see this in person, you can see it at the Christchurch Brick Show this July. And don’t miss all the other LEGO Oliphaunts we’ve featured over the years (also proving that this quote is the only one I ever use to write about this creature).

The majesty of the Biocup

We get through all sorts of superlatives to describe LEGO builds here at The Brothers Brick, but there’s surely only one way to describe MySnailEatsPizza‘s Children of the Mountain: majestic. Isn’t it just? It’s reminiscent of the way monarchs were painted in the middle ages. The framing coupled with the forced perspective mountains make this look truly epic. We don’t know who this character is, or what their purpose is, or where they’re going; but that’s not necessary. All we know is that they’re doing it in style.

How Anomalocaris, Opabinia, and the Cambrian Explosion changed my life

The broad range of wonderful LEGO creations built for events like the annual BioCup often spark odd memories of my own life experiences. This beautiful Anomalocaris by Care Creations reminded me of Stephen Jay Gould’s 1989 book Wonderful Life, which first introduced me to the panoply of fantastic lifeforms that emerged during the Cambrian Explosion over half a billion years ago. The book changed my view of how life emerged and evolved on our planet, as well as how scientific understanding itself evolves — both mind-blowing to a young missionary kid. One of the strengths of Bionicle is the system’s ability to reproduce organic shapes, enabling talented builders to create much more than Toa.

I love the minifigure hands on the ends of Anomalocaris’ tentacles, as well as all the smaller creatures the builder has included to give the impression of the early arthropod in its natural habitat.

If you enjoyed this ancient sea creature as much as I did, you’ll love these other Cambrian creatures, as well as this beautiful LEGO ammonite (though of course ammonites emerged about a hundred million years later).