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.

Mortgages are truly horrifying

I’m not the kind of guy who likes to watch horror movies; real life is scary enough, so why should my entertainment be scary, too? I mean, have you ever considered how much money you pay in interest on a 30-year mortgage? Terrifying! Add in taxes and maintenance, and it really does feel like my house is eating me. Now, I realize that Pieter Dennison built this incredible LEGO monster house after watching, well, Monster House, but I haven’t seen it. That doesn’t stop me from being frightened. Seriously, look at the state of those shingles, probably a slate roof that would take more than my left kidney to repair. And that siding needs fresh paint, if not a total tear-off (unless you slap some vinyl siding on top, like lipstick on a pig). And that front porch? There’s no way that railing is up to code. This is true horror, folks.

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This warship is all about the curves

From the wedge-shaped Star Destroyer to the cylindrical Saturn V, we’ve seen a lot of different shapes used in spacecraft design. This one built by F@bz, however, is a completely new direction.

I have never seen so many sloped downward curves in my entire life, and I don’t think I’ll see them anywhere else but here. F@bz’s ship looks like something that Thor might sail out of Asgard, or a vessel of Humanity in Warhammer 40k. Either way, I’m buying a ticket for the next cruise onboard.

Seriously. Almost nobody can find a use for these weird parts that hail from the mid-2000s LEGO Sports theme, and then F@bz goes and uses all of them. Nicely done!

Miniature Mount Olympus for the world’s smallest gods

If you are going to live high above the earth, looking down on the many millions of us humans on the surface, there can be no better place than Mount Olympus, built in miniature by KitKat1414 featuring some excellent rockwork, and a sparkling river flowing right through the middle, and some lovely light fluffy clouds, a few of which are fittingly made from white croissants.

Fishing in muddy waters

To me, LEGO builder Ralf Langer is known for his quite technical timbered buildings. This creation is no exception. We all know building a round structure with square LEGO bricks can be quite a challenge. As you can see a lot of the creation is round: the roof, the wooden staircase made of bars and tread links beside the tower, the bay window on the building on the right, the bridge between the two buildings, and that domed roof made with triangular road signs. Ralf almost makes it look easy. One of the best things about this creation is the usage of black sausages, round 1×1 plates with an open stud and brown 1×6 arches to create a round shape for the tower. Very clever! Another thing that deserves a mention is the use of the plant stem with 3 leaves to create the foliage for the trees. There are a lot of nice techniques and details to discover, but I’ll let you discover those yourself.

Gotta shake those TIEs

I’m always impressed to see different LEGO parts, techniques, and scales used to recreate iconic Star Wars ships. Lennart Cort’s Millennium Falcon and TIE Fighters are the latest to impress the heck outta me. Whether the scale or the technique, I’m loving this fresh take.

Achieving the shaping of the TIE Fighter wing panels, while also wrapping them in the gray border is impressive. The laser bolts being fired make great use of trans neon green antennae! The Falcon itself is impressively done too with some equally entertaining parts usages at a scale that’s similar to the Midi-Scale Millennium Falcon. The round technic connector is perfect for the sides of the Correllian freighter, and bladed claw weapon makes the perfect quadlaser. It’s time for that quadlaser to turn around and blast those TIEs!

A-Frame Bringing the Autumn A-Game

We are mid-way through October, and autumn, as well as spooky season, is in full effect, Andrea Lattanzio’s cozy LEGO A-Frame home located amongst some beautiful fall-colored conifers is the perfect build to capture the moment we are in.

The key to the main architectural build here is definitely in the tiling – we’ve got plenty of tiling on the roof, tiling for the deck, and more tiling to cover the house’s base structure. Printed tiles also help render the lumber packed away in the left, maybe for firewood. I love Lattanzio’s use of tree limb elements arranged in such a way to create pointed evergreen trees – different colors are also utilized for that autumn color-changing aesthetic. Perhaps the most interesting example of parts used in this work would be the hammer minifigure utensil which is applied in multiples to compose the foundation of the home. Many small details in this build are eye-catching, including the broken stairs leading up to this shack-like a-frame dwelling. Even if some home-improvement is needed on this little getaway house, it still looks like a great place to escape to on an autumn weekend.

Brickin’ out some tunes

Everyone loves a good throwback to the ’80s or ’90s, and these days people are opting for analog musical devices over digital. What better build encapsulates these trends than Jonas Kramm’s boom box LEGO model?

All of the details on this build are done exactly right – from the dials to the tape deck. The speakers, as well as the switches, are composed mostly of yellow 9V track switches with black minifigure hands for extra detailing. The majority of the model comprises teal bricks and tiling; some yellow 1×2 slopes also form a stylish border around the box’s perimeter. Kramm even includes a couple of brick-built mix-tapes ready to be played. Overall this build really brings me back to the days before iPhones, iPods, and wireless internet, back when all we had was FM-AM radio and maybe some tapes to play around with.

Brickin’ the gap

You’ve probably never seen the Golden Gate like this before – so minimal and so orange. Simon Liu really gives us the essence of the iconic bridge down at micro-scale with this LEGO model.

Liu renders San Francisco and Marin County using a variety of light brown slopes and tiles. The star of the build – the bridge itself is comprised of 1×4 tiles, minifigure hands, and binoculars all in a lovely orange color; the use of these parts is clever indeed. The micro-build as a whole sits on some trans-clear blue tiles, which serve as the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Although it is a minimal micro-scale build, this model certainly conveys the idea of the revered structure very well.

The cards you were dealt

A jack and an ace. In blackjack, this is a winning hand. In the hands of Ivan Martynov? They’re something a bit more scary. The Jack of Clubs, here, is full of twisty organic shapes that lure the eye towards the center of this digitally-created image. There you find that the red highlights are actually a demonic figure (Jack, I presume) entwined into the larger club shape. Is Jack on some sort of throne? Are those wings? Is this a torture rack? Ivan doesn’t give us any firm answers. I have a feeling we wouldn’t like them anyway.

But that’s not the only card in this deck. You also get get the Ace of Diamonds. I’m even less sure what’s going on here. But suddenly I’m very glad that some of these parts don’t exist in our reality. Yet.

Ivan excels at creating nightmares out of digital LEGO. Don’t believe me? Go look at our archives.

Follow the yellow brick...castle?

If you’ve been seeing a lot of yellow LEGO creations around here lately, that’s because Eli Willsea has been engaged in a competition with Jonas Kramm to see who can put the yellow 9V train track switch to use best. This striking microscale castle is one of my favorites from Eli, in part because everything in the picture is brick-built, except the blue sky. There’s some great forced perspective among the tiny jagged mountains in the distance, the castle in the middle, and the cave in the foreground, but the best detail for me is the parapet over the castle gate, which is made with yellow lever bases attached to the bottom of an upside-down 1×4 plate.

Cute or terrifying? You decide.

Adult male fans of LEGO were probably not the target audience for the erstwhile Elves theme, but I loved it. A major part of that was the plethora of recolors of existing pieces, finally released in bright purples, pinks, and blues, as well as the hairpieces, which are great for fantasy-inspired builds. But often overlooked in my own collection are the cute little animals. Fortunately I have a three-year-old daughter, who does everything except overlook the cute little animals, so they are strewn about and squirreled away throughout my LEGO room. And when it came time to build a series of mechs for Mechtober (I know, eyeroll, another sci-fi-themed LEGO month), I could not help but be drawn to incorporating the little baby dragons in some heavy-duty mechanical suits.

I had a lot of fun building this “Heavy Lifter” suit, using as many greebles as possible while still maintaining a coherent look. I wanted thick arms and sturdy legs to convey the sense that this thing could so some serious lifting, like peak Arnold in the gym. I feel like I succeeded, and the whole thing is remarkably sturdy, especially for being largely bar-in-hole and clip-on-bar connections. It might not be the best mech out there, but it is the best mech I have ever made, and that cute, colorful little dragon juxtaposed with the drab grey industrial atmosphere is fun. But maybe you disagree, and think cute animals piloting heavy machinery is the scariest thing this side of stepping on LEGO bricks in the middle of the night…

This Loxodon wins by a nose

In the event that you haven’t nerded out enough lately, Eero Okkonen has you covered. He has recently built a LEGO version of Jörn, a Loxodon ranger from northern Nordovik. This is a character he’s playing in a quarantined Dungeons & Dragons campaign called Heroes of Auronia. Eero scores extra nerd street cred as this bipedal beast was inspired by the Woolly Loxodon from Magic: The Gathering. I like the use of the baskets as feet as well as the dragon wings in dark green. Check out our archives to see more of this builder’s stuff. As for playing D&D while in quarantine, I feel your pain, Eero. Most of my own gaming has become a solitary endeavor due to the pandemic. And let me tell you what a soul-crushing embarrassment it is when someone walks in on your one-handed solo campaign.