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 desert dwelling worth gold ingots

As any builder knows, the release of an existing LEGO piece in a new colour provides lots of opportunities for building. Such was Andreas Lenander‘s thinking when getting hold of the gold ingot in tan, a new colour for the piece. His build of the aptly named Kumi’dia residence utilises this part all over the middle-eastern style dwelling. The ground is packed with these ingots to represent cobblestone brickwork as well as the textured base of the build. But my favourite is their combination with masonry bricks and 1×2 rounded plates for the textured wall. With a sprinkle of dark tan here and there, it perfectly conveys the weathered wall of the desert retreat.

Some gold and transparent light blue parts adorn the top of the building, conveying the resident’s wealth. In addition, Andreas uses a Bespin hemisphere part (from the Star Wars: Planet series) for the dome. Aside from the building itself I really like the small tree in the courtyard. It uses lasso and whip parts connect the leaves, which is a unique building technique and difficult to get right.

See more of Andreas Lenander’s builds here on TBB, as well on his Flickr, where he has similar architectural builds.

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These Gauls are crazy!

European readers will recognise these busts of two big-nosed cartoon characters named Asterix and Obelix. These Gaulish warriors are from a French comic series with the same name, following their fantastic adventures and fight against the Roman Empire. They sometimes get temporary superhuman strength by drinking a magic potion brewed by their village druid. George Panteleon built the perfect portraits of the titular heroes, each instantly recognisable by their characteristics. Asterix is the small but strong warrior with his signature winged helmet. Obelix is his sidekick, overweight with permanent superhuman strength because he fell into the cauldron of magic potion as a baby. Obelix’s double chin and broad shoulders set him apart from Asterix, all with the clever usage of rounded bricks. Smaller quarter-dome bricks give the shape of the noses, cheeks, and helmets of these cute but fierce characters.

See more of George Panteleon‘s wonderful builds, including his impressive Joker bust.

The natural wonders of the raised baseplate

I think we can all agree, raised baseplates can be a pain to deal with. Not only are they large and clunky, but these baseplates also come with all sorts of odd features, typically as a result of special molds designed to function best in their original LEGO sets. Bram tackles a raised baseplate from the 1998 Adventurers Sphinx Secret Surprise set featuring a pre-fabricated ramp, off-set staircases, and heavy printing on all sides of its raised platforms. But in Bram’s Ara’Hith Estate, this baseplate virtually disappears into the architecture and seamless landscaping. The baseplate’s wide printed stone ramp transforms into a grand entrance into a shaded portico, and its irregular stud configurations have been cleverly filled in with palm trees and flower beds. Bram has worked around every tricky aspect of this challenge and the result is fantastic. We’re looking at a major NPU right here!

Click here to see more views of this stunning baseplate build

Not your grandma’s lace tablecloth

LEGO builder and co-fan-designer for the Ideas Pop-Up Book set, Grant Davis is on a roll lately. As in, one of the best runs of excellent builds in a short time I’ve ever seen. In this latest project, the candlestick holder and rose are lovely. But the real hero of the display is the “lace” tablecloth. Made up of 16 white nets and adorned with both older and new flower elements, it’s certainly convincing. Anyone who has worked with nets in this way knows how tricky and fiddly they can be, but these are expertly held together with carefully hidden connections. There are even white tusks/tails clipped to octagonal parabolic rings for the more intricate center. LEGO has never looked so delicate.

To see the rest of this excellent series of builds, check out Grant’s giant playing card, gingerbread house, renaissance man, and sheep.

Ice road dumper

When you’re an up-and-coming builder someone along the way makes it clear that you’re supposed to say and type it as “LEGO” and not “Legos”. It was a LEGO designer who initially made it clear to me. As a seasoned builder and writer for The Brothers Brick, I’m pretty much by now contractually obligated to use the word correctly. However, in a fit of rebellion, I’ll sometimes misuse it for humor’s sake. Legos! See, it’s funny, right? That’s why it’s so refreshing to discover an up-and-coming entity (debuting a few months ago) who goes by the name of LEGOZ ;). The winky face means that he (we think his name is Sean) gets the joke too and what an amazing builder he seems to be! To be clear, this WEGENER Mining Dump Truck is a render created with Bricklink Studio 2.0, and the image was enhanced and edited in Photoshop. However existing parts were used and, as far as I can tell, can be constructed legitimately. I am just enamored with this thing!

Click to see more and to unveil an even bigger surprise!

A shack in the woods might be all you need.

I generally don’t broadcast my vacation whereabouts to potentially millions of readers but since I’m back I can say I’ve just spent a week in a tiny home similar to this one. With nothing but my own amusing self to keep me company, I have a new appreciation for living minimally. Daniel Barwegen may know what I mean as evidenced by this LEGO shack. Multidirectional bricks, plates, and slopes make for some neat textures here. I really enjoy the barren trees here and the all-around rustic feel. In my tiny rental, I fancied myself as a rugged old hermit (gray beard and all) just like the minifigure here. He’s doing it right with solar panels. And just when I started to smell like a guy who lived in a shack in the woods, it was time to come back to civilization, car payments, Zoom-room meetings, mortgage, and all that. But would I do it again? Totally! In a heartbeat.

Rock, papercuts, scissors, wait...

The players of the game that settles it all can get a little carried away sometimes. In this cute LEGO vignette by Pedro Sequeira some of our favorite players; rock, paper, and scissors are brought to life in three dimensions and we can see the consequences of such rough play!

Each player – rock, paper, and scissors are made up of some pretty standard small elements such as slopes, tiles, and small bricks. The faces on the objects and their expressions are what make this scene both adorable and hilarious. The rock and paper characters feature woodoo balls with eye prints, while printed round 1×1 tiles with mischievous squinting eyes decorate the face of scissors. A stream of tears on poor cut-up paper’s face is cleverly rendered with a couple translucent clear dragon’s fire elements. I enjoy the lines on the paper created with grey plates to give it that loose-leaf paper aesthetic. Maybe rock can talk some sense into scissors while poor paper heals its wounds from battle. Sequeira does mention that this brick-built vignette is based off of an illustration which can be viewed here.

Now those are some happy trees

Most artists I know are usually intimidated by a blank canvas. That doesn’t seem to bother this painter adding color to an otherwise monochrome landscape, by Carter Witz. By choosing to make most of the landscape unpainted, Carter is able to use some great LEGO parts that come in limited colors, like teeth, claws, and horns, and even a few skeleton arms. Plus, as a bonus, the green frog serves as a large paint blob spilling out of the bucket. It’s a happy accident that Bob Ross would be proud of.

RuinScape

The ruinous landscape – a popular pictorial theme is recreated in the LEGO medium here in this beautiful vignette by Jaap Bijl. Of course, LEGO is great for construction, but even more so LEGO can provide builders with an opportunity to be forces of deconstruction and deterioration – creators of ruin. This sublime energy is perfectly captured in Bijl’s build.

The main part of this built scene is arguably the decaying classical temple. The triangular roof at the top – the pediment is depicted as half existent and utilizes the 4×4 petaled flower piece and some white wing pieces as ornament. The broken columns are built using 2×2 round profile bricks. Perhaps my favorite mini-build here is the broken statue which is made out of a pair of white minifigure legs with some random elements piled on top. The statue on the left looks rather intact but creatively uses the 4×4 petaled flower once again, this time as a shield. Bijl generously applies a variety of LEGO plant elements to give viewers a sense of natural reclamation. I really appreciate how Bijl builds the ruins in such a way that they appear to be sinking into a swamp of green tiles. No ruinous destination is complete without some tourists taking in the sights, and we can see here some minifigures making their way across the swamp in a brick-built boat ready for adventure.

With this giant LEGO Northrop XB-35, “Winging it” takes on a whole new meaning

When you’re looking at a LEGO creation from someone who’s Flickr handle is “BigPlanes,” you’d expect to see something massive and aeronautical. And, sure enough, this LEGO Northrop XB-35 Flying Wing by Jack Carleson checks those boxes. If you’re looking for information about the technology behind the real XB-35, I’d suggest a trip to Wikipedia. But here at the Brothers Brick, we’re more taken by the excellent building techniques of this model. A masterful combination of SNOT building and Technic wizardry makes this not only a beautiful model but a functional one as well. This huge aircraft has motorized engines, a retractable undercarriage, and even a detailed interior including bomb bays.

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Brutalist beauty in bricks

Builder Nikita Sukhodolov refers to this great monolithic LEGO masterpiece as “The Decaying Hive.” Personally, I don’t see a sense of decay here, probably because I cannot look past its brutalist brilliance. In this build Nikita demonstrates how LEGO and boxy modern architecture are the perfect pairing.

The two main towers of this building feature some great tiling as well as excellent use of 1×1 slope pieces (AKA cheese slopes) in grey and translucent black to create an intricate window design. While the housing units with their carved out of concrete appearance are uniform in their shape; Nikita utilizes translucent clear bricks, 1×2 palisade bricks, as well as 1×2 profile bricks to give each unit a slight variation. The palisade bricks appear as blinds, while some minifigure inhabitants prefer shutters which are created by the profile bricks. There are some splashes of color to liven up the structure such as the pink potted plant and green umbrella on the top of the building as well as the landscape scene which the main build sits upon. Overall I think it’s safe to say that the rigid geometric look of brutalist architecture is clearly well translated into LEGO and Nikita makes this translation look easy with his expert use of some pretty common elements.

Sheena: queen of the jungle or maybe the zoo

LEGO figure builder Letranger Absurde is at it again and this time he’s built Sheena: Queen of the Jungle. Where else but the jungle or possibly the zoo can a bald eagle and a zebra live in the same ecosystem? The builder tells us this idea has been a work in progress since 1874. If you’re like me and believe everything you read on the internet this means he had knowledge of Sheena sixty-three years before she made her comic book debut in 1937. No wonder Letranger is so talented! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to respond to an email from a super-polite Nigerian prince who has a lucrative business proposition in exchange for just a little account information. He seems to be a nice fellah. In the meantime, check out Letranger’s impressive archives, especially the Stone Age Huntress we recently featured.