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.

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

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

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

Win the 24 Hours of Le Mans with this 1968 Ford GT40 Mk1 in gorgeous Gulf livery

As much as the LEGO Speed Champions 1966 Ford GT40 remains one of my favorites of the theme, it’s always been disappointing that LEGO has not been able to release one in the iconic Gulf Oil livery, for the very reasonable reason that LEGO does not have a licensing deal with Gulf Oil. But LEGO fans like Jonathan Elliott have stepped into the light blue and orange void with beautiful cars like this one, at about Speed Champions scale. Jonathan’s version uses plates and tiles wedged at all different angles to achieve the unique curves and angles of the original car, structured completely differently from the 1966 GT40 in the official set.

If you like Jonathan’s GT40 in Gulf livery, you’ll also love Joachim Klang’s Ford GT40 in Gulf livery.

Guardian stands at the ready, through rain or shine

If Marius Herrmann hasn’t been a name gracing your feed with his iconic sci-fi and game culture builds, this is an excellent example of what you’re bound to find. Based on a previous design, this Guardian of the Shrine is the lead commander of the 2041 police force. Its imposing stance, strong and at the ready, undeterred by the surrounding rain. This gorgeous Photoshop edit really shows this character off, showing purpose behind his being. Great part use comes naturally to Marius and this pillar of authority is no different. His use of a Scala denim jacket as a short Hakama sets the bar, while the socket wrench found on each limb brings continuity in construction. I feel that the small space blasters on the sides of the head, add to its formidable appearance, leaving me to question if I he would know more about me that I do.

For another view of Marius Herrmann’s atmospheric LEGO creations, have a look at his Alfheim from God of War.

Hammer of the Gods

We’re seeing a lot of planetary themed builds lately and I couldn’t be more pleased. This time builder Jayfa takes on Pluto, deemed a planet in 1930, then shunned into the cold abyss of non-planetary status in the early aughts and then (depending on which publications you read) has been recategorized as a planet. Maybe. Wait, is Pluto a planet again this week? No matter what its official status, you can’t help but give some love to the distant little dwarf. Here Pluto has been embodied as a hammer-wielding dwarven cyclopian blacksmith with icy claw bits for a mustache and even his fists are an icy blue. Massive Viking wheels and trans-light blue webbed radar dishes make up the hammer. The photography, with its light and dark elements, is nothing short of magic. The end result is a blacksmith who makes weapons and armor fitting of the gods.

If you enjoyed this tribute to distant Pluto, be sure to check out Jayfa’s haunting huntsman mech and ferocious flower.

This LEGO Freddie Mercury is the perfect epitome and embodiment of a legend

If they can build a Freddie Mercury like that, there’s little doubt AlexParkDesigns is a fan of Queen. Although the model is simple at first glance, there’s so much to admire about the parts usage to be impressed with. Let’s start with the inverted rubber tires which seamlessly join the torso armour from buildable figures. For a split second, I thought I was looking at a Technic tooth bar, but the lapels on the jacket are brick built with 1×2 slopes on a 1×6 plate. Who says you can’t live forever? Well, at least you can be immortalised in LEGO bricks with this perfect pose.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Freddy in LEGO form, as TBB’s own Iain Heath brought us an excellent larger-scale LEGO Freddy Mercury figure back in 2011.

Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world

Miro Dudas takes us on a surfin’ safari with a lovely figural model. After working with this surfer girl since 2015, Dudas has finally achieved the look he wants, proving that even smaller models can benefit from extensive tinkering.

This California girl has a wonderfully fluid pose and the limited color palette consisting of only six colors really highlights the elegant figure. It also contains some fantastic parts usage such as the minifig bandanas for the bikini top and the Battle Droid torsos as shoulders. Her windswept hairdo also features a ninja helmet horn standing in for bangs and brown carrot tops that add some nice additional detail to the coiffure. I’m also very fond of the overall smooth look achieved by showing very few studs.

Dudas says he will soon be offering instructions for this beauty so you too can ride the waves all the way to Surf City.

These tires might not be racing slicks, but the racing is sure slick

Everyone likes to watch a racecar speed around a corner at a break-neck pace, caroming nearly out of control, tires barely maintaining friction with the pavement. Add in a bit of ice and snow to reduce that friction to almost nothing, and the excitement increases. Builder Simon Pickard brings us a rally car in just that situation, seemingly mere seconds from sliding into a drift. I love the composition of the shot, with the beautiful movement implied by the curved road.

While the car is the MINI Cooper from Speed Champions set 75894 (be sure to check out our review), the setting for the vehicle is what sets this apart from the pack. The curvature of the road is the detail that catches the eye above all else, with the excellent tire tracks. Formed from tiles and plates arranged carefully, the path and the posing of the car give it all a profound sense of movement, especially with the 1×1 round plates kicked up by the skidding tires. My only quibble is that the front tires are still straight, when all of my highly technical race knowledge gleaned from watching Cars with my kids tells me that he should be turning left to go right…

Stunning designs of the vehicles from Jurassic Park that you can now build in LEGO [Instructions]

Fans sorely missed the various vehicles from the 75936 T.rex Rampage LEGO set that was revealed and reviewed by our team. But as always, there’s the great fan base of builders that will give us what we all need to complete our dioramas or dino chase scenes. Thanks to Miro Dudas, we now have both the Staff Jeep (Wrangler) and Park Tour Transport (Ford Explorer) complete with free instructions for you to build your own.

Park Tour (Ford Explorer) Instructions
Staff Jeep (Wrangler) Instructions

Tip: To download the instructions, scroll down on the Rebrickable page and keep an eye on the right of the screen and look for “Building Instructions” if you’re on a desktop.

Don’t forget to also check out our review of the T.rex Rampage with an interview of designer Mark Stafford if you’re hungry for all things Jurassic Park.

A whale of an opportunity at the Pick-a-Brick wall

If you have ever visited a LEGO store you probably would have noticed the formidable floor-to-ceiling Pick-a-Brick wall. One bin may contain thousands of flower stems and another may have a crap-ton of these pointy bits (metric crap-ton if you’re Canadian). There’s no telling what you’ll find there and you can take this stuff home by the cup loads. For me, I’m like a kid in…some kind of store. While loading cups full of LEGO bricks can be exciting, building something cohesive exclusively with what you found at the Pick-a-Brick wall can be a tricky endeavor, but Mansur Soeleman clearly saw…a whale of an opportunity.

I see plenty of white 2×2 corner plates, lots of 2×2 plates in light bluish gray and plenty of clips make up the baleen. The end result is a pretty good facsimile of a blue whale. You can say Mansur had…a whale of a good time with this. You see, brilliant puns like that is why I am the highest paid Brothers Brick contributor ever. At least that’s what they told me…or at least that’s what I understood when they said “voluntary”. Wait, what does “conditional trial period” mean?

And if you liked this cetacean built from a limited palette of bricks as much as you enjoyed my puns, we’re sure you’ll also enjoy André Pinto’s bonsai tree, also built from nothing but Pick-a-Brick parts.

This planter will grow on you

Realism in LEGO sculpture is a difficult thing to achieve, and when it’s done right it can be amazing. Barbara Hoel has created a tiny slice of (plant) life that feels very real indeed with Small Planter on Books. The human-scaled books each have their own unique style and size. The variations in the spines make this feel like a real pile of tomes, and not just a repeated build in different colors.

The planter and greenery really are what really caught my eye, though. Seeing a plant that is, perhaps, not the perfect specimen of health is pretty unusual. One side of the plant looks like it’s been kept out of the sun a little too long, while other parts are thriving. Unicorn horns and transparent green ball joints represent new growth. Rare blue capes and technic gears make for some vibrant flowering bodies and buds.

There is a detail view of an alternate build of the planter in Barbara’s photostream. I recommend checking it out for even more great botanical creations.