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.

Baba Yaga won’t be contained in a LEGO book nook!

Mixing LEGO and books is in vogue right now, but who says the bricks need to go between your volumes? Roman Shemis built this spellbinding witch’s hut emerging from the page of a brick-built book, which looks great stacked atop books of the paper variety. Based on the Cyrillic text, I can only assume that Baba Yaga herself lives inside the chicken-legged cottage. Technique-wise, it’s that tree trunk on the left I’m pining over! Roman only recently started sharing MOCs, but we’re already big fans of the builder’s skill and range. (Especially the technique Roman employs for this cobblestone street). I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more from Roman in the years to come!

If you want to add a bird-legged hut to your collection but don’t know where to start, the Never Witch’s Midnight Raven is one of my favorite sets in recent years.

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Return of the Mon Calamari Cruiser

Once again, we find ourselves writing about an excellent LEGO diorama by swbuilds. And once again, it’s a Mon Calamari Cruiser full of life! After finishing the bridge, this build apparently followed close behind. But I’m not going to talk about Star Wars here. Instead I’m going to reference another space-faring LEGO theme: Life on Mars. For that is where all that glorious sand purple comes from! This is one of those colours with an extremely limited colour palette: only 18 designs, and six of those are minifigure parts. Fortunately, many of those other 12 parts were larger ones, so you can make them go a long way, as swbuilds does here. I’m particularly fond of the overturned pump from 7317 Aero Tube Hangar in the background!

A demon amplifier? Now that’s metal

Remember in Spinal Tap when they turn up their amplifiers to 11? You might think it’s just a funny gag, but rumour has it if you do that too many times you’ll turn your amplifier into a mischievous demon. Bionicle builder Mischief has seen it, and rendered its likeness in LEGO bricks And what LEGO bricks: the gaping maw hiding the speaker is a goal net, and the design of the quarter-inch jacks using tyres is fantastic. What tricks will this amped-up poltergeist get up to? Creating an annoying feedback hum? De-tuning guitars? If Spinal Tap are to be believed, it has a propensity for blowing up drummers…

“Get away from her, you bricks!”

Like James Cameron, here at the Brothers Brick we never turn down an opportunity to show off a good power suit. Take this Minilander-scale Power Loader from Aliens built by Marco DeBon – equally adept at moving cargo and battling Xenomorphs. This model requires a Class-2 license to operate, but is a class all its own in terms of design, with pleasingly chunky arms and a great use of tiles for a clean look.

Ripley can step out of the loader and is fully poseable. She looks like she’s been training with Chun Li before joining the mission to LV-426. I almost feel sorry for the poor Alien queen that has to face her!

From the side, we can better appreciate Marco’s judicious use of greebles and the excellent application of printed and stickered tiles.

LEGO floating service station keeps the locals in the air

Flying cars and hoverbikes need even more TLC to keep them running smoothly, and drivers need a place to grab an energy drink and a day old hotdog while they’re far from solid ground. That’s where this whymsical floating service station by Brickleas comes in. With something for everyone, and the most skilled robot mechanic in the sector, the only downside is keeping track of where it is when you need it, as the owner likes to move where the wind takes them.

An aquatic bird breaks new ground by flying high

Have you ever dreamed of flying? Me, too. And Matt Goldberg wants to remind us that’s a dream we share with some birds. Matt has done an amazing job of imbuing this brick-built penguin with plenty of personality. You can practically hear it squealing with delight. And I appreciate the little details in this build, like the tiny brown straps going just under the wing to indicate how the rocket pack stays on. Make sure to check out more of Matt’s creative creature work in our archives.

One Piece pirate ship? How about 4,000 Piece?

As excited as we are for the newly revealed One Piece sets, we still hold out hope that LEGO will return to the Age of Sails with sets that aren’t infused with clowns and talking reindeer. For minifig-scale ships, there are few LEGO shipwrights as skilled as Saran (MocYourBricks) who for years has been upgrading designs from LEGO’s past with an AFOL’s eye for detail and custom sails and rigging. This photo comes from bee.brick, who recreated the Black Pearl and Queen Anne’s Revenge from Saran’s instructions. with extra flourishes, like brick-built canon blasts.

Built from 4,000 pieces, the Queen Anne’s Revenge is a thing of beauty, and even if the roughly $1000 cost of sourcing the parts and instructions is out of your price range, you can vicariously experience the joy of building it in this one-hour “speed build.”

Grab a coffee and hop in your upgraded exosuit

Well, if we can’t have flying cars and personal jetpacks like we were promised in turn of the century visions of the future, maybe we can get something like this stylish exosuit by Wynd to make our morning commute to the office a bit more fun. With hands big enough to hold on to our giant Stanley cups and legs sturdy enough to leap over cars and busses on the long drive to work.

Explore Endor in this epic Ewok Village

Back in the 80s, I remember the older kids always showed a certain disdain for Ewoks. But I was just young enough when The Return of the Jedi came out that a giant alien treehouse manned by warrior teddy bears seemed like the coolest thing ever. And Simulterious has made my inner child beam with delight at the sight of this amazing Ewok village build.

Click through to check out the full build!

I always enjoy my crab chilled

LEGO themes might officially come and go, but they live forever in our MOCs. And Braylon Turner is helping keep Ice Planet 2002’s memory alive and well with this Seraphic Scarab Amphibious Vehicle; a unique craft perfect for exploring the frozen frontier with powerful mechanized legs that can handle the harshest terrain. This build makes terrific use of Technic and even Bionicle pieces, giving it a unique look among the Ice Planet 2002 fleet, but the color scheme of black, white, and blue capped off with those trans-neon orange bits is unmistakable.

Heroes of the Star Wars Expanded Universe: Legends but not forgotten

The original Star Wars hadn’t even been released when Alan Dean Foster started writing Splinter of the Minds Eye, the first story in the Star Wars Expanded Universe (later called Legends). Prior to Lucasfilm’s sale to Disney, telling stories in the Star Wars sandbox was a fairly freewheeling business, guided more by a code of honor to not contradict what came before, and to be game to retcon anything that George made canon.( I had first-hand experience writing in this era, penning a choose-your-own-adventure style book full of EU easter eggs.) These days, the Star Wars Universe feels a bit trapped between three aesthetically very different trilogies, with Dave Filoni doing his best to fold EU favorites like Thrawn into the continuity between Clone Wars and Rise of Skywalker. I love The Last Jedi and Andor, but I also miss the era when the Adventures of Luke Skywalker was an endless blue ocean of possibility.

Jan Woźnica certainly carries a torch for the Expanded Universe. In the past, the builder shared an incredible LEGO model of the Moldy Crow from Star Wars: Dark Forces. Now Jan is back with a bevy of expanded universe characters, perfectly assembled from official LEGO parts and staged on custom stands. There are some pretty deep cuts here, so in the gallery that follows, I’ve added links to Wookiepedia if you need a refresher on who’s who.

Take a closer look at Jan’s minifig tributes to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

Don’t lose your head over this elegant mantis

The praying mantis female will sometimes consume the head of the male while mating. What’s this self-made widow’s secret? alex_mocs knows that there’s nothing more alluring than Bionicle and Constraction elements, seamlessly integrated into organic LEGO builds. This model of the
Viridis Mantidae is the pinnacle of elegance with a touch of menace. Like a master sculptor, alex manages to coax disparate LEGO elements together in ways that suggest that this was the role they were destined to play, from the green whip antennae to the Ninjago sail wings to the Bionicle chest.

alex_mocs is one of the organizers of the Bio-Cup. The first round, with the theme “Dreams,” closes on June 9th. If you’re interested in building MOCs that play with non-system elements like alex’s model here, it’s not too late to enter. Don’t worry – they won’t bite!