Santa’s not getting any bigger. It’s the chimneys that are getting smaller, honestly! A Christmas crisis is averted in this LEGO scene by Jérôme Barchietto as the local fire crew turns up just in time to extract jolly ol’ Saint Nick from a tight squeeze. Hope the family at 10267 Gingerbread Lane left out extra cookies for Santa. He’s had a rough night!
Happy Holidays from us all at The Brothers Brick!
LEGO builder Kristel Whitaker presents a sweet little Christmas vignette of a reindeer barn. First we have the good, thich is getting to pet a baby reindeer. Very nice! Next is the bad, which is having to scoop the poopy. I wonder what that elf did to get on the naughty list. Finally we have the…ugly? The funny? The weird? We’re not too sure how to categorize this one but Santa is napping on the roof with what appears to be a liquor bottle and a pizza. There’s no judgements here. We’ve all been there, right?
This is sort of tangentially Christmas-related but here is another vignette that we noticed earlier this month of Mrs.Gingerbread baking some delicious heart cookies. Perhaps they’re laced with a little something extra, which could explain why Santa is napping on the roof.
If ye be dreamin’ of a white Christmas, legend has it that there’s an uncharted isle where snow falls but once a year. Ye don’t believe me? Well, Jo Marte captured the whole jolly affair in LEGO! Featuring crows nests, skull-shaped caves, and shipwrecks, the scene bears all the trappings of classic Pirate, only things are looking a lot merrier for this motley crew of scallywags.
Swap yer grog for eggnog and cozy up by the fire as we await the arrival of White Beard’s booty. Here comes the jolly devil himself on his dolphin-pulled skiff. “On Flipper! On Skipper!” the festive freebooter calls.
Ye best be staying silent about what you’ve seen. Dead men tell no tales. “Now swim away, swim away, swim away all!” Until next year.
Eero Okkonen is back with a fantastic new LEGO creation! This time he’s brought us a version of one the most heroic scenes in the Lord of the Rings film series; King Théoden’s charge at the Pelennor Fields. Both Théoden, and his steed Snowmane, are fully kitted out for battle. Snowmane’s bridle features golden dragon hilt details and his fluffy widdle ears are made from the wings of the collectable chicken man. Théoden is carrying a regal shield with heavy gold-inlay, as befits his station. Eero actually repurposed the first build of his we here at The Brothers Brick ever covered; the mighty viking warrior Ragnfast! But that isn’t this build’s only secret. That train controller means this sculpture is powered, so let’s take a look at Théoden riding at full tilt!
Click here to see this sculpture brought to life
Few builders in the LEGO community are as prolific and full of surprises as Australian artist Shannon Sproule, whose work we’ve admired since the site’s early years. During the fall of this year, Shannon focused on building “Z-Bots” – retro robots in bright colors inspired by the toy line of the early ’90s, many of which were donated to the Creations for Charity auction. For his latest build, Shannon sticks with the retro robots while bringing in a Zoids-inspired wind-up look for a new type of toy he calls the Strydor.
Click to see more of Shannon’s playful robot walkers
Anyone fancy some fish and ships? This flying craft darts through the air without the aid of feathers or wings thanks to the imagination of filbrick. A striking color palette (love that red webbing between the gold spines for the fins) combines with a streamlined design to create a truly memorable vehicle. I can imagine that golden propeller spinning as the segmented body weaves its way through the clouds. The question is: would this fish out of water handle just as well under the sea?
It’s been over a decade since Portal 2 reunited Chell and GLaDOS for one last round of physics-based puzzles and razor-sharp comedy, but the game still holds a special place in our hearts. Thanks to builders adotnamedstud and _standaartwoudt_, Aperture Labs is open again for testing, this time in LEGO! The scene has it all: A button! Switches! Gravity! Science! Potato! Minifig Chell is joined by familiar friends GLaDOS (in a potato) and Companion Cube, while new sidekick Wheatly keeps an eye on things from above. The Aperture logo made from tiles is a wonderful touch. Seeing this scene makes me want to dig out the game to play through it again. In case you missed the LEGO Dimensions wave of gaming sets, the Companion Cube tiles and Chell minifig were a real thing!
Of the many great things about the Andor series, one was a short post-credits scene which showed… Well, I won’t spoil it – go and watch the Narkina 5 prison arc, and you’ll see what I mean. Suffice to say it has a link to this LEGO build, created jointly by Stefan Johansson and Robert Lundmark. It depicts a couple of TIE fighters flying over an unfinished part of the Empire’s infamous Death Star. And very nicely built, too! I like how the shape of TIE’s wings are reflected in the surface the droids are building. But that gold really makes it pop, in contrast to the blacks and greys of both the Empire and space as a whole. And of course it’s reminiscent of solar panels in real-world space stations, really putting the science into science-fiction!
Descend to the depths of imagination with “The Echoing Mines of the Mountain’s Heart” by syrdarian. This fantastic cross-section of some fabled dwarven caverns is a gold mine mithril mine of detail, conveying a sense of scale from the faint light at the top of the staircase all the way down to the rivulets of lava far below. A big part of any great model is presentation, and these mines are no exception, with superb lighting in the right places. Thanks to that light, along with the combination of natural-looking rock formations and easily recognizable dwarven architecture, it’s easy to see the dwarves’ masterworks deep within the earth. Let’s just hope these particular dwarves resist the temptation to delve too greedily and too deep.
The gearhead kid in Michael Jasper‘s latest vignette might not be ready for their first tattoo, but in every other way, they’re a chip off the old motor block. Dad’s ride is a masterpiece of minifig scale engineering, combining tools, droid arms, and precious chrome details to form a motorcycle of uncanny detail. Junior’s RC chopper, with its beanie propeller handlebars, is a six-element wonder. Of course, Michael’s minifig designs and expressions bring the scene to life.
While Michael Jasper hasn’t been as prolific of late, he was one of the most featured builders during the early years of this site and his skill at recreating furniture and objects at minifig scale continues to inspire builders to this day. He impressed us long ago with his mini motorcycles, like this sidecar duo from 2007 and this blinged-out chopper from 2009. A new Michael Jasper motorcycle build is a wonderful holiday gift indeed!
When LEGO released the excellent Creator Expert 10295 Porsche 911 it came with two variants right out of the box. For auto enthusiast Nathanael Kuipers, other car models are always waiting to be found within the parts of official sets, like this alternate build Audi TT. As Nathanael explains in his blog, the biggest challenge is working with the limited selection of curves and wheel arches from one set to find the unique shape of another model. The results here speak for themselves as you’d be forgiven for thinking this alternate build was an official set!
The model features opening doors, bonnet, and boot, as well as a working steering wheel. Nathanael’s solution for the iconic Audi logo in the grille is especially genius.
Nathanael regularly shares alt builds of official LEGO automotive sets. We also loved his pickup truck alt of 10265 Ford Mustang. I wonder what set Nathanael will remix next?
Alex “Orion Pax” Jones is a legend in the LEGO community thanks to his spot-on replicas of ’80s toys in LEGO form, especially the Transformers. A year after debuting his high-flying Aerialbots, the undisputed champ of transforming toy tributes is back to ring out the Transformers’ 40th anniversary year with his latest masterpiece: the Trainbots! It’s hard to imagine transforming locomotives picking up much steam with kids today, but if there’s anyone in the middle of the Venn diagram overlap of LEGO, Transformers, and trains, it’s our TBB readers!
Each of the six Trainbots is fully transformable and can couple together to run on LEGO tracks, with the red diesel engine equipped with a power unit to pull the others. The combined form, Raiden, towers at 65cm tall and stands atop a track base with cherry blossoms and a torii gate. Ever the master of presentation, Alex unveils the transforming trains on rails with all the pomp of a proper ’80s toy commercial.
There’s more to these bots than meets the eye. Click to read on!