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.

GLaDos is doing science and she’s still alive

GLaDos is back and she’s serving up some vengeance on Chell and Wheatley in this Portal vignette by hachiroku24. Way back in 2007, the video game industry was taken by storm by Portal, a mind-bending game that pitted a human test subject against technology run amok. A sequel followed in 2011 and the series proved popular enough that LEGO included it as a playable world in LEGO Dimensions, even producing an official Chell minifigure and the beloved Weighted Companion Cube. Hachiroku24 has taken that Chell minifig and built this spot-on recreation of a scene with the evil GLaDos and Portal 2’s friendly AI, Wheatley.

GLaDos is perfectly rendered here utilizing a variety of visible Technic parts to create that feeling of exposed machine technology. The hoses and wires are especially effective and add a touch of realism that make the whole machine seem plausible. I’m very fond of the combination of pieces used to create GLaDos’ elegantly curved “face”. Comical sidekick Wheatley, in contrast to his larger relative, gets a similarly ideal treatment but using only a small number of parts. As a builder, I like “breaking the square” so I really love the use of hinges and angled plates to create a more irregular shaped base for this scene. Although 12 years may have passed, thanks to hachiroku24, GLaDos is still getting the science done for the people who are still alive.

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The future of space travel is looking good

We have already seen one Tesla launched into space last February when the SpaceX Falcon Heavy blasted off, but it looks like this super-sleek personal spaceship by GolPlaysWithLego just might be a Tesla from the future, that has traveled across time and space from a human colony on Mars. This stylish ship is the perfect blend of form and fashion and is full of great details. One of my favorites is the revolver between the two rounded white accents on the front.

The model makes excellent use of one of the windscreen parts from the Speed Champions theme. I honestly can’t decide whether I like the slim contours of the body more or the fin-riddled engine assembly. In any case, this is one sleek spaceship.

Need to take on something big, green and angry? Build your own Hulkbuster! [Instructions]

If LEGO instruction builders could be ranked, Hachiroku24 would be close to the top — both for his designs and the videos he uses to share those designs. His most recent set of instructions comes from the armory of Tony Stark: the Hulkbuster. This well-designed, fully articulated and heavily armoured power suit is a well-balanced build as well as an easy to follow instruction guide. Each section is beautifully structured, incorporating a great array of plates with ball joints and bars to give this Minifig scale behemoth some excellent functionality. The mid section, where we find the flat silver ingots and printed 1×1 half circle tiles really does it for me. It’s not just that silvery band of simplistic greebles, but the pivot articulation from the waist up.

See step-by-step instructions on how to build your own Hulkbuster

A chicken walker just waiting for Ewoks to crack it like an egg

Despite the vehicles from the Star Wars movies being built time and time again, from endlessly re-hashed official sets to uncountable builds from the LEGO community, sometimes a fan creation comes around that makes you say “Wow.” This Imperial AT-ST by GolPlaysWithLego is one such build, capturing the likeness of the scout walker impeccably. The hips have the wobbly look that is so distinctive of the aptly-nicknamed chicken walker, always sorely lacking in official sets, yet it still seems solidly put together while maintaining excellent proportions — it’s certainly the best I have seen.

See more of this excellent LEGO Star Wars AT-ST

Two tapirs to tickle your fancy

Animals always makes my day just a little brighter. My case in point, Marco Gan has built this pair of endangered Malayan Tapirs (Tapirus indicus) and I am tickled pink…or tickled black and white as it were. The adult looks dashing with its striking black and white piebald pattern but the baby steals my heart away with its horizontal stripes. The artist palette in green make for excellent lily pads while a nearly hidden pushbroom and paddle heads adds neat textures to the jungle flora. Marco tells us that in the Malay language, the tapir is commonly referred to as cipan, tenuk or badak tampung. No matter what you call it, this duo just might be the best thing I’ve seen all day, and I’ve seen a guy in an inflated dinosaur costume bouncing on a pogo stick.

20 parts bird, 100 parts awesome

Here’s a little something different courtesy of aukbricks. This piece of art was created using just twenty elements, ten each in yellow and black. Compared to most LEGO models, there’s not much physical cohesion to this build. In fact, it looks like there are only two pieces actually connected to each other. The image of the bird comes from careful part placement and alignment.

This is a digital render, but it could be replicated in the real world as it uses only existing part/color combinations. I particularly like the use of tentacles for the tail feathers. The bananas that do double duty as claws and as detail in the head are a close second.

Lower the deflector shields and fire photon torpedos!

NCC-2112 USS Jefferies may not be based on any particular ship in the official Star Trek canon, but it probably should be canon. I particularly like how Ben Smith designed the placement of the auxiliary engines swooping forward like a Klingon Bird of Prey instead of the traditional Star Trek ships we typically see. Points also scored for a primary hull that’s closely shaped like a saucer, as that’s as good as it’s going to get with the limitation of a LEGO build angles.

And if that isn’t cool enough, Ben’s made a secondary starship made for planetary exploration and landing.

A village with a bit of everything

Oftentimes castle builds focus on the impenetrable keep with its solid grey walls, or else they depict a single building, like an inn or a blacksmith shop. Then there are the occasional massive dioramas that have everything, but also require five tables to display and several vans to haul. In a comfortable middle place, Peter Ilmrud brings us a charming village with enough shops to be believable and a footprint that is reasonable. There is a blacksmith, an armorer, a baker, a cheesemaker, stables, a cooper, and even a mage-astronomer’s tower. Add in some nice trees and architectural details around Wyvernstone Village, and this makes for a fine build that does not even take up all of one table.

See more of Wyvernstone Village here

This constellation leads straight to Uranus

Uranus stinks. No, seriously, it does. According to scientists, the ice giant’s atmosphere is comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium but also large quantities of ammonia and methane, which are highly volatile in terms of “those who smelt it dealt it” schoolyard logic. If you’d like to head there anyway, you might want to take a gander (or a whiff) at this Night Sky Colossus built by the mysteriously named [VB]. It is a depiction of the dubious sky-god Uranus as an avatar of the night sky. His black form is augmented with a constellation design that utilizes these claw bits in white as well as 1×1 tiles in azure. His head reverses the color scheme for a truly stellar effect. The only other bit of info this builder offers is this; “And Heaven rejoiced in his evil doing.” In other words, this is probably why we can’t have nice things.

This builder is fairly new to us but surely one to be on the lookout for. Be sure to check out this heart that we previously featured.

Fabulous Fabuland friends take Billy Goat’s Steamboat for a ride

Fabuland holds a beautiful place of reminisce for me and somehow Pete Strege seems to have encompassed that feeling in an incredible new LEGO creation. Billy Goat’s Steamboat is an incredible display of fine colour choice, confined motorisation and great shaping without compromising stability. The dark blue of the cabin walls and hull are framed nicely with white, while the rest of the colour wheel comes to life with a combination of dark azure and yellow. Though please don’t be fooled, take a closer look. Weaved throughout the yellow are trace amounts of bright light orange, which adds some real warmth to the model, as subtle as it may be. There is also a sublime amount of blue pinstriping, which tops off the build high up, with two blue half barrel containers.

Come and check out more of this beautiful steamboat

Beautiful rendition gives new twist to LEGO Architecture

Constructed in 2016 on the Coconut Grove in Miami, the Grove at Grand Bay brought a new twist to architecture. This is just what creative builder Lego Fjotten has done for LEGO Architecture. This fantastic rendition of the dual twenty storey towers, is spot on. The multi-teared garden beds weave perfectly throughout the base. Built predominantly from 2×2 and 4×4 macaroni bricks topped with correlating tiles, their shaping is near identical to the real coastal complex. Their pattern gives the pathways and pool quite an amount of character by itself.

Designed to follow the consistent twist from the ground to the top six or so floors, Lego Fjotten has handled this challenge incredibly well. Though if my calculations are correct, he would have been building with a touch over three thousand trans-clear 1x2x3 panels, an impressive feet by itself. The constructed twist allows practically every condo a slightly different view of the horizon, which makes me wonder what the tiny figs would think living there? I can only begin to imagine the views from the top.

LEGO Star Wars fan builds animated Death Star trench run & Death Star II destruction scenes with 50,000 LEGO pieces [Video]

LEGO Star Wars builder Anthony Ducre recently shared a massive diorama featuring scenes from both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. Built from over 50,000 LEGO bricks, the diorama includes Darth Vader chasing Luke Skywalker down the trench of the first Death Star, animated by placing the starfighters on classic LEGO 9-volt train tracks.

Watch videos of this huge LEGO Star Wars diorama after the jump