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 stately castle fit for a pocket-sized king

This tiny castle by prolific LEGO microscale builder Jeff Friesen has all it takes to make a towering appearance. As the builder notes, this is not a castle built for defense. This is a regal structure built to show wealth and power, or perhaps serve as the central focus for a theme park.

We’ve featured Jeff’s incredible work in the past and this model is quite different from his usual fanciful style. He trades in whimsical landscapes and modern cities for a more uncomplicated look. Clean, straight lines are the order of the day in this kingdom. But straight lines need not be boring! There is just enough asymmetry here to keep it architecturally interesting without straying into high fantasy territory. The subdued color palette works nicely, especially when offset by the small pops of color from the brown trees and red flag. The shield with crown decoration is a nice finishing touch that draws the eye to the entrance and lets the viewer know exactly who presides over this Lilliputian domain.

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Skate for your life!

Kids, always wear protective gear when skating or cycling – unless you take part in a wild futuristic survival race, and your life depends on your score. Paddy Bricksplitter reveals a roller skater of the future: a courageous racer running in a pair of very high-tech roller-skates. The dynamics of the scene and posture of the figure tell a story of some death-or-glory showdown. Besides the excellent composition, the build is remarkable for its scale, which perfectly suits Rey’s head. Finishing everything off is spot-on use of multiple stickers from various LEGO themes.

Fragile beauty of the Arctic circle

Thanks to the enormous diversity of LEGO pieces it’s increasingly easier to design and assemble sturdy and robust models. But sometimes the things that inspire us are way more fragile and vulnerable than we can imagine. Chinese builder vincentkiew builds a gorgeous polar bear. Placed on a tiny piece of ice in the Arctic waters, the bear embodies the unique part of the global ecosystem, which is being damaged by humans especially hard. For me, this simple composition works great as yet another reminder that if we don’t change, LEGO fans soon won’t need a lot of bricks and plates in white to depict the dying beauty of the extreme North.

An iBird before you go

Are you here for massive castles, mechs and spaceships? Well hang on there, Sonny Jim, you’ll still get plenty of that. But sometimes you have to stop to appreciate the smaller things, like this iBird built by Dicky Laban. This tiny fellow is comprised of under 30 pieces and is a robotic bird inspired by the cassowary, which is a dinosaur-like bird that lives in the tropical forests of New Guinea, East Nusa Tenggara, the Maluku Islands, and Northeastern Australia. See, we have robots, dinosaurs and birds in one post; all three can be just as cool as castles, mechs, and spaceships any day. Aren’t you glad you stopped in? We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

The original chicken walker

Long before Chicken Walkers (a.k.a. AT-STs) wobbled about on snowy plains and through thick forests in a galaxy far, far away, another walker with chicken legs wobbled about through the thick forests of Eastern Europe. That walker is the house of Baba Yaga. Despite the ambiguous intentions of that misshapen old woman, if I were wandering about lost I think I would prefer to meet some stormtroopers rather than her. Jessica Farrell brings us the hut of the notorious hag, complete with the pestle-wielding witch herself clad in black robes and a large cauldron that perhaps contains the stewed remains of some unwary traveler.

The house has some nice shaping to the walls and roof, along with a convincing wooden texture. The trees of the forest are also nice, with good use of parts to make for lovely bark. The Ninjago ghost swords make for surprisingly good plants, which complement the rest of the foliage beautifully. I especially like the tires stacked up to form the chicken-leg pattern on the house supports. So, who wants to go walking the woods of Eastern Europe? Not I, not with a woman like this lurking about.

Bounty Hunting is a complicated profession. So is mosaic building.

There’s a lot to get excited about with regards to Star Wars these days. I admit I was feeling pretty burnt out on the franchise, but then I watched the trailer for the upcoming Mandalorian series. The visuals are nice, but I’ve come to expect that from Disney. The story concept sounds interesting, but I’ve been fooled by story promises before. No, what really gets my blood pumping is hearing my favorite filmmaker, Werner Herzog, utter the line “Bounty hunting is a complicated profession.” Builder Ethen T is also pretty excited for the series, as evidenced by their latest digital mosaic.

Using 4675 pieces, Ethen has managed to capture the dusty, gun-slinging feel of the trailer. A dark tan background grid is the platform for a replica of the Mandalorian’s helmet. The helmet itself is a mixture of tiles and plates, making use of the various shades of grey LEGO has released over the years. There’s even a single piece in white, adding a tiny pop of contrast. It’s the little touches, though, that make this an outstanding build for me. The use of rounded tiles keeps the build from looking boxy, and the orientation of the grille tiles in the center of the helmet convey a sense of motion, drawing the eye to other areas of the build. Bounty hunting may be complicated, but I think Ethen’s mosaic is up there, too.

The bigger they are, the harder they...smash your face in.

The first thing you might be thinking when you look at the head of this monstrous figure is “OMG, run away!” Alternatively, if you enjoy geeking out about cool LEGO creations (and since you are reading this, you probably do) you might be thinking, “How is that head even LEGO?” Djokson has masterfully connected an assortment of shield, sword, claw, and robot parts – not to mention gleaming golden one rings – to create a most frightening visage.

The organic structure of this mighty destroyer is continued throughout the head and torso with macaroni tubes forming ribs and other musculature, and more muscles are crafted with the use of ribbed tubing. That blue flaming ball and chain he’s swinging is not a business end you want to be anywhere near. Seriously, run away.

Cat with a big dumper

When LEGO came out with these massive tires a few years back vehicle builders rejoiced, but sometimes you need something more for building large tractors, monster trucks, post-apocalyptic mono-wheels, or other things needing outrageous tires. A builder who goes by the name of Sariel found some amazing non-LEGO tires that fit LEGO hubs perfectly, and used them on this legendary Caterpillar 797F Dump Truck. The real thing is 25 feet (7.7m) high to the canopy, 49 ft 6 in (15.1 m) long and weighs in at a staggering 624 tons when empty. This model is considerably smaller but no less impressive and, as LEGO vehicles go, it is a force to be reckoned with.

With its rugged stance and attention to detail, I would have been impressed enough if this were a stagnant model. However, as this image illustrates, it is jam-packed with Power Functions and a robotic Mindstorms EV3 unit to give it that extra push of awesomeness. I can see myself playing with this big Cat for hours all the while making truck noises like a six-year-old. It doesn’t take much for me to revert back to a six-year-old but, given this post’s title, you would have guessed that already.

In fact, you can even see it in action in Sariel’s video!

[Update: an earlier version of this article mistakenly identified the tires as LEGO elements. We regret this error.]

A balanced approach to drone construction

LEGO builder Markus Rollbühler returns to the Brothers Brick with WheelSpin, a mono-wheel utility drone. Part of the year-long Mech Monday project, WheelSpin is a self-balancing mono-wheel drone with multiple configuration options. The base of the mech is filled with great texturing, with greebles including Technic chain links, hammers, and space blasters. The lime green of the armor creates a nice contrast to the transparent blue of the eye sensor, blade shield, and the shock absorber at the base of the leg.

The industrial version shown here comes complete with a grabbing claw and saw blade — advertised as “perfect for any kind of industrial job.” Personally, I see it as greeter at Wal-Mart in a very dystopian future. Your mileage may vary.

This menacing mech may be considering it’s life-choices

Of all the possible uses for a LEGO tire, I think my favorite is masterfully demonstrated by Marco Marozzi, who uses them to flesh out his many mech creations. One example is this heavily armed mechanoid soldier, the tire forming the seal around his neck. As he looks to be examining the back of his hand thoughtfully, I have to wonder if either a butterfly has landed there, or he’s thinking about how hard the blood will be to wash out. This solder features a number of cleverly re-purposed minifig and vehicle accessories, like the snowshoe on the shoulder, and this tread for the feet. The use of several older dark gray elements that are off-color really gives the model a well-weathered look.

Enormous LEGO castle dominates the shoreline

If a medieval castle was an exercise in the projection of power, we’ve got a new Lord of the Manor on the scene in Joel Midgley. His latest LEGO project is Hingston Castle, a formidable fortress, impressive in both scale and details. The sheer size of the castle grabs the initial attention, but then you’re sucked in by the little touches — the lovely shoreline landscaping, the water, the roughness of the walls, the off-grid angles of the outer rampart. And as for that dark grey line tracing the contours of the crenellations — beautiful!

Joel has lavished as much attention to detail on the action within the walls as without. The central yard plays host to grazing animals, trees and flowers, patrolling guards, and stables…

Best of all, hinged panels in those walls allow visibility of the castle’s fully-detailed interior. Click to take a tour of this incredible LEGO castle…

“Great ambition is the passion of a great character”

When a statue is erected of someone riding a horse, they usually follow certain rules. If the rider died in battle the horse would be rearing on two legs. If the horse has one leg up, the rider died of an injury and if the horse is standing on all four legs, then the rider died of natural causes. With this in mind Filbrick has built a statue of Napoleon Bonaparte on a horse standing on all fours. I particularly like the textured “greebling” effect on the horse using wheels, gears, Bionicle parts, radar dishes and other bits usually employed in building spaceships.

Some statues of Napoleon on horseback have been erected in all three leg configurations, because the cause of his death can be a topic of hot debate. Did he die bravely in battle defending the French army? Was he poisoned by enemies while in exile on St. Helena as so many history books suggest or was it just the unkind fate of the winds? Autopsies reveal that the cause of death was stomach cancer which may have been brought on by excessive levels of arsenic. (A-ha!) However, later studies, not available during his time, stated that Napoleon (and so many others of his day) were being exposed to arsenic throughout his entire lifetime from glues and dyes and not by purposeful murderous intent. It would seem that Filbrick’s depiction of a serene horse on all four legs may be the correct configuration all along.