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.

KFC: Kentucky Fried Choo-choo!

When I say meals on wheels, you probably picture a burger van. But Dicken Liu has other ideas! Where these crazy LEGO chicks are going, they don’t need roads – only rails. Which is probably a lot more restrictive when it comes to delivering food actually, not to mention expensive. And the maintenance costs will be astronomical. Seriously, where’s the business case here?! This is what happens when a marketing team is given unlimited access to the purse strings. They come up with mad ideas like this and need to hire builders like Liu to make it come to life.

Props to them, to be fair – he’s done a great job with such a whimsical design. Despite the bright colours of the train, the way the track is done caught my eye. Rather than using existing LEGO track elements, these rails are built using brackets and tiles, and it looks great. The cooking car even has an interior too! Although suddenly this looks a lot more sinister than it did at first glance, with chicken minifigures cooking whole chickens with tridents, feathers and all…

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Tiny LEGO model of El Dorado hides a surprising secret

This LEGO microscale model of El Dorado, the legendary city of gold, by Justus M. packs a lot of tiny details into such a small scene. I love how the leaf element here takes on a different size at this scale. The builder adds many small colored plates and other parts in pastel that are common with South American cultures. But there is more to this model than meets the eye. Subtly included ramps turn this scene into a GBC (Great Ball Contraption) module. See if you can spot the 20 gold handcuffs used in this Iron Builder entry.

Chainsaw Man: the demon-hunting lumberjack’s superhero

The best thing about Japanese anime and manga has to be how absolutely bonkers it can be. One minute you could be watching a heart-wrenching coming-of-age film that will bring you close to tears, the next you’re reading about a man with a chainsaw head and limbs who hunts demons. This beautiful madness is captured superbly in LEGO form by DeRa. Although Denji – the titular Chainsaw Man – does have saws for arms too, we’re presented with just the head here. That does mean the scale can be upped and we get the fantastic detail like the teeth and, er, teeth. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the helmets and busts we’ve had in LEGO sets for the past few years. Except a tad more eye-catching. Just a little bit.

Because the suburbs aren’t rural enough

Because the suburbs weren’t rural enough, I just moved to the exurbs. Out here everything runs on propane, there’s a septic system and just taking out the trash involves a vehicle that apparently isn’t my hipster Beetle. With greenhouses, windmills, sheds, and tractors much of it looks just like this LEGO diorama built by André Pinto. All my new neighbors own tractors and they tell me that I won’t survive a winter without one. While I mull over that ominous portent, I gaze over André’s diorama with its pumpkins, tomatoes, birdhouses, chickens and especially that tractor. I even checked out the tractor catalog and thought; holy schniekes, these things are expensive! Maybe I’ll just settle for buying a trucker hat; I mean, I’ve gone my whole life without tractoring so why should that change now? Maybe I can be like André and just build them in LEGO. That sounds like a plan!

Dream big, build bigger

Nick Jensen, formerly of these pastures, builds life-size LEGO props in ways that us mere mortals can only dream of. Speaking of dreams, that’s a tangential link to his latest effort, depicting the so-called PASIV Device from the Inception film. This is the device used to administer Somnacin, which induces lucid dreaming and dream sharing of the sort seen in the movie. The gadgetry present in the case looks fantastic, and the Dots bracelets are such a perfect fit it makes you wonder if the whole thing was built around them. And if, like yours truly, you didn’t recognise the case at first, then the accessories in front of it help to drive home this mad machine’s provenance!

In the future, navy ships will all be 100 studs long and made of LEGO

I have a friend who used to live near a big naval base, and by virtue of having a view of the sea, he became something of an expert on all the various ships that would sail past. Fast-forward a couple hundred years, and with a space-side apartment, he might have seen ships like Ryan Olsen‘s LEGO frigate fly past instead. Ryan has given this ship a detailed backstory befitting its enormous size. It’s purportedly part of a Space Navy, and it’s easy to see the inspiration behind this behemoth. The grey, angular paneling and bridge surrounded by masts and sensor arrays are nice nods to the navies we know now. But for me, the giveaway was the big numbers on the side. It’s a great detail that makes this spaceship that little bit more believable.

A Pikachu’s thunderbolt, recreated in LEGO

From my childhood days spent playing Pokémon Red and my countless hours in front of the TV watching Ash Ketchum fulfill his quest to be a Pokémon master, there has been nothing more indicative of that great video game franchise than the electric-type pocket monster known as Pikachu. And here LEGO builder Zane Houston has captured the little, yellow ‘mon using its signature move, thunderbolt. The powerful blast of electricity emitting from Pikachu’s red cheeks is captured with an interesting studs-out technique, layering white plates vertically on a column of medium azure bricks. Pikachu’s body is similarly built with studs facing outward, away from the center of the character. It helps to give the Pokémon almost a fuzzy, static-y kind of look, quite befitting given its current attack.

Enter the LEGO D&D dungeon at BrickCon, if you dare!

One of the things I enjoy most about this wonderful LEGO hobby is the people I get to collaborate with on projects. And this year at BrickCon, I have the good fortune to participate in a massive Dungeons & Dragons project with so many talented builders. For the last 5 months, all 24 of us have been working independently on our own rooms for a mega-dungeon, both large and small ones. And I guess builder Doug Hughes stopped reading after “large.” In his intricately-designed room, he’s housed a fearsome lava centipede being controlled by a group of dark elves. The lighting is splendid, the design appropriately ornate, and the technique on the monster gets Volothamp’s seal of approval for sure! Let’s hope our band of adventurers can get past before it escapes its bonds.

And in case you’re wondering what I contributed, I guess I can give you a peek at that below. I wanted to go for something that felt a bit more like a “finale.” Anyone care to roll for initiative? And as for the rest of the dungeon, you’ll have to head to BrickCon or look out for pics from the convention after next weekend of the whole thing assembled and on display.

Raising the stakes when it comes to steaks

Hawaii Toad comes at us with a high-steaks LEGO build. No, that’s not a typo – someone’s brought a really high steak to this barbeque party! The minifigure accessory piece is already as big as a LEGO person’s head, but this really takes the mickey. It raises a lot of questions left unanswered by the build though. Firstly, what animal lends itself to such a big piece of meat? A T-rex?! I’d like to see the size of the butcher who sells that. For that matter, how big does your grill need to be for this? That’s surely going to take an age to cook if you want it done anything more than the rarest of rare!

A dark LEGO knight of a different feather

This armed and armored knight by Dan Ko may look simple at first glance, but there is lots to crow about — starting with the beak made with swords paired with a large claw part. The wide wings made with angled bow pieces give the perfect impression of feathers. But the hero of this build would have to be that great sword that is giving me major Final Fantasy vibes.

This dinky destroyer takes to the skies in a big way

When I first set eyes on this dieselpunk-esque destroyer from Sunder_59, I assumed it was a 100-stud long LEGO brick-built behemoth. (‘Tis the season, after all.) In the end that’s wrong on two counts: this clocks in a fair bit short of 100 studs, and it’s built using virtual LEGO bricks, not real ones. But it’s no less a terrific design for it! The fact I thought it was bigger than it actually was tells me that Sunder has done a great job conveying the heft of a giant spaceship in microscale. That’s a result of both careful parts use, and a really clean design. I like the unconventional colour scheme as well. Always a bonus of working in the digital realm, without its pesky limitation of having to use bricks that actually exist!

In truth, I think the reason I fell for it is because I’m a sucker for dieselpunk. This won’t be the last time we feature some, and it’s certainly not the first. Have a look at the LEGO dieselpunk builds we’ve featured before.

Warships used to look so much flashier

You know what the problem with military vehicles is these days? It’s all so grey. Or stealth black, sometimes. Or a drab green. Or some – anyway! Point is, they’re not very interesting colours. Back in the day, warships on the high seas sometimes had a fair bit of bling on them. Joe (jnj_bricks) harkens back to these flashier days by throwing some golden LEGO handcuffs at this Man-of-War. Coupled with that dark blue, it looks rather smart. Sure, it’s not very practical – you could see this coming a mile off. But isn’t that for the better, so that we can appreciate this masterful little build?