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.

Swoosh swiftly across the stars

Every year in November, talented builders turn out spaceships with a very particular style as a friendly themed challenge. Unlike SHIPtember, when the goal is to build a huge spaceship, Novvember is all about the Vic Viper, a style of racing spaceship made popular in several video games. Tino Poutiainen brings a lovely addition to the fleet of Vipers with this clean and elegant model. It is microscale, with some Apollo astronauts at the helm, which is surprising but cool, and I can count all of four visible studs on the whole darn thing. That’s impressive given the angles involved. And the color blocking is perfect. The black stand gives it a display presence that sets it apart from the pack, too.

Looking at the ship, there are two pieces that jump out to me right away. The first is the old Blacktron II jet pack, one of my favorite childhood accessories, tucked seamlessly between the cockpit and the tail. The second is the cockpit itself, a Ninjago spinner dome; that’s a part that I’ve always wanted to use but have yet to find a good way to integrate it. The rest is just so smooth and refined that nothing leaps out. It makes me wonder how it all holds together, which is a great puzzle to have when looking at a build. Novvember might be come and gone, but we can still enjoy spaceships.

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Where’s your mother, little one?

This piece by Tino Poutiainen is titled “where’s your mother, little one?” Little one’s mother, as it turns out, is right behind our protagonist. She’s the size of a St. Bernard and has razor sharp tentacles, but let’s not spoil that little surprise. I’m not sure if that’s malicious intent or motherly pride in her giant bugged-out eyes, but I, for one, would like to see how it all turns out. Despite how this debacle may unfold, what we are witnessing here is an endearing act of kindness. Tino is participating in sort of a Secret Santa creation exchange in which he has built something for Aaron Van Cleave who tends to hide little frogs into much of his work. We’ve done our research and the story pans out.

But can we have square lily pads? You betcha! Bob Ross, who was the very personification of endearing acts of kindness, says so. In your world you can have anything you want. There are no mistakes in your world, only happy little accidents. Let’s go crazy and build some happy square lily pads right in there, shall we? Yeah, that’s great!

Santa’s got a new kind of sleigh

Santa is going to give the reindeer the day off this year because his sweet new ride is horse-powered instead! Sylon-tw, an excellent ship builder, decided to use his skills this holiday season to give Santa something slick to deliver presents with. His new sleigh is complete with a sleek body shape, thrusters, and plenty of cargo space. He’s even got his own chauffer, the builder’s sig-fig!

While you’re in the spirit, take a look at a Santa macro-figure as well as this year’s advent calendar!

Slower than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive

I was recently at the Caterpillar Visitors Center in Peoria, looking at the big construction vehicles made for shaping the Earth in a profound way, from the gigantic mining dump trucks to the tiny little excavators. Somewhere in between are the bulldozers, offered in nearly a dozen sizes. The biggest Caterpillar, the D11, is one huge rig, but shockingly it isn’t the biggest dozer around. That title belongs to the Komatsu D575A-3 Super Dozer, weighing in at 336,400 pounds and measuring 38+ feet long, 24+ feet wide at the blade, and 16 feet high. While Beat Felber‘s LEGO model is not quite so large, it is not small, either. The builder has a whole series of 1:28.5 scale machines, from dump trucks to mining shovels, and the Super Dozer is a super addition to the lineup. The little kid inside of me is drooling all over the keyboard as I look at this beast, because this is the bulldozer every kid imagines driving as a construction worker.

Click to see more, including a video of the dozer at work

Magic keeps Hogsmeade Village together

The Harry Potter universe’s village of Hogsmeade continues to be a great source of inspiration for LEGO builders. I don’t know if it’s the lure of crafting medievalesque buildings in a non-castle creation or the fact that it’s a winter-themed town that isn’t decked out in red and green, but I know it works. The latest one to catch my eye is Roanoke Handybuck’s Hogsmeade Village. The two buildings pushed against each other, bookended by three happy little trees, and blanketed in snow, really captures the feeling of cozy wizarding town. Looking deeper into the scene, you’ll notice a few amazing parts usages that make these cottages look old and ramshackle. Maybe magic is the only thing keeping them standing. The first thing to notice is the lantern made from a pair of brown Witch-king crowns. Most interesting to me though, are the windows framed with neck brackets. Well a relatively stable connection of LEGO parts, it gives an especially rickety look for the windows’ muntins.

Hands-on with 21052 LEGO Architecture Dubai [Review]

The LEGO Architecture sets have recently taken us to London, Paris, Shanghai, and New York, amongst other famous world cities, but the latest places to receive the LEGO skyline treatment are Tokyo and Dubai. 21052 Dubai depicts five famous landmarks of the United Arab Emirates’ most populous city, contains 740 pieces, and will be available in January 2020. It will retail for US $59.99 | EU €59.99 | UK £54.99.

Join us as we take a detailed look at this new stop-off on LEGO Architecture’s world tour…

Read our full review of 21052 LEGO Architecture Dubai

World’s first AI-powered LEGO sorting machine built with 10,000 LEGO bricks [Exclusive Feature]

There are some individuals who find sorting LEGO pieces therapeutic, but most of us loathe the task. And there are entirely non-LEGO machines that could do it, although what fun is that? Some people have tried to use LEGO to build sorting machines, yet their limitations have been quickly apparent. Enter Daniel West and his incredible Universal LEGO Sorting Machine! This baby uses Artificial Intelligence, with the most extensive index to date, to sort parts at a speedy one brick every 2 seconds!

Watch a video of the sorting machine in action!

LEGO popcorn (the one that got away)

We don’t see many creations from real LEGO designers. I mean…yes we do, but they end up being featured in The Brothers Brick news sections when they launch as official sets. Since LEGO designers are so busy designing actual sets, it is rare to see what they build for fun. Former LEGO Designer Tiago Catarino tells us that this is “one of the first MOCs (My Own Creation) I did while working for LEGO in Denmark, and one of the few that ever got to see the light of day, since 99% of the building I did there was, after all, confidential.” There we have it, the 1% he did for fun.

So what does Tiago do when not having fun with LEGO popcorn and gets locked down to conduct some serious business? Well, perhaps you might recognize this one or this other one. Serious business, indeed!

Keeping track of the Cuthbertson Land Rover 2A.

Here’s something you don’t see every day. That is precisely how John O’Shea started his write-up, which is fortuitous for me as it offers a neat segue into the rest of this article. Lazy writing? No, call it “opportunistic”. This model is based on the Cuthbertson tracked Land Rover created by J.Cuthbertson in Scotland. Here we see it employs tank tracks bolted onto an extra frame beneath the vehicle. This setup allowed Scottish farmers to navigate through uneven boggy terrain as they tended to their farms. The idea was so popular that it eventually became a factory option.

This particular Land Rover is equipped with spotlights on the roof as well as a snorkel just in case the farmer gets into some deep doo-doo. Topping out at a little over 20 mph (32 kph) this wouldn’t make an ideal getaway car but if the aforementioned deep doo-doo is in your cards, then the snorkel shall accommodate nicely.

Real rebels recycle and reuse

The grungy aesthetic of the Star Wars original trilogy showed a worn-down, lived-in universe where a scrappy Rebellion used whatever they could find to fight the mighty Empire. It’s clear that the iconic ships like the X-wings, Y-wings, and especially the Millennium Falcon are all hand-me-downs. But surely the Rebellion would have used whatever they could lay their hands on, even if it was 30-year-old tech like this Naboo Royal N-1 Starfighter. LEGO builder Hypolite Bricks has crafted this detailed diorama of the Rebel’s Yavin 4 base as they as they attempt to return the classic fighter to flying shape. Look closely at the ship, as it’s not merely the official set but an impressive custom model with lots of details, including missing panels.

The builder notes that they were inspired by the N-1’s appearance in the recent trailer for The Rise of Skywalker, where it appears fleetingly along with seemingly every other ship in the Star Wars canon.

Trio of triangular mechs

What is better than a well-armed hard suit? How about three of them? Moko has put together a hard-hitting squad of brightly colored power armor mechs, each one sharing certain design elements, while sporting very different weapons and other capabilities.

First off, that heavy assault mech, with what looks like a laser-guided rocket launcher, and a shoulder-mounted machine gun. Next, a sniper model complete with some sort of sensor package, and lastly, if you can’t shoot ’em, you can pummel them with punches with the brawler on the right.

The Bugatti Centodieci is a nod to its own legacy

Do you like the LEGO automotive work of Firas Abu-Jaber? Do you enjoy everything Bugatti has to offer? Do you have $8.9 million burning a hole in your pocket? Well, two out of three isn’t bad. Only ten of youse with deep pockets would have already placed your order for the 2020 Bugatti Centodieci, the rest of us average schlubs will just have to settle for drooling over Firas’ stunning LEGO rendition. I’m particularly fond of the turntable plates that comprises sort of a “cheese grater” vent at the B-pillar, which is an obvious nod to the Bugatti EB110SS supercar of the 90’s but the larger iconic horseshoe grille is reminiscent of the more modern Veyron and Chiron. Complex and subtle curves is what gives all of Firas’s work his signature style.

The 2020 Centodieci is so new and so rare that Firas had to guess how the doors and engine lid opened as there are no photographs online yet showing how it all works. He made an educated guess that it would go something like this.

No matter how the doors open in real life, the 2020 Bugatti Centodieci is a nod to its own legacy and is one of many, many reasons our hearts go pitter-patter whenever we see Firas’ work.