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.

In the Shire, there’s always time to take a break from your chores

J. R. R. Tolkien imagined Bilbo Baggins’ door as a circular construction, green and impressive in size (for a hobbit). Peter Jackson ran with the description and the gently rustic feel of the Shire and created an organic-and-tudor style mix that Gus has wonderfully captured here in the blocky medium of LEGO. There are so many details to love in this scene; the fence is made from a pair of whips, while the circular window to the right of the door is a bicycle tire! The organic side of the hobbit style is on full display as Gus has achieved both a cobbled circle for the windmill tower, and a smooth roof-line mimicking the slope of the of the hill – not to mention the striking red of the wood slats in the door. With all of this excellent building on display only one question remains; are these two folks Bagginses or Tooks?

The shire

Imagine a bowling ball, but angrier

“Carcinisation”; a very fancy word that means “some animals tend to look more like crabs over time”. This build by Djokson demonstrates what might happen if even our tanks turn into crabs! Djokson has tone a fantastic job of creating a round rolling shape for the tank using unusual parts. The Crab-Tank’s forehead is made from a handful of rubber handles from the short-lived Vidiyo line, the yellow disks on either side of the body come from the old X-Pod line (oh the nostalgia!), and the little warrior in the cockpit is sporting a old technic helmet for protection. I don’t know about you, but I’d feel crabby if I had to square up against that thing!

Roller

From the ashes, a LEGO build arises

Built of a bevy of LEGO Bionicle bits, this phoenix by Dan V is quite the fiery triumph! All the trans-orange flames play well in the backlit model, highlighting the fringes of the bird’s wings, as well as sufficiently obscuring the model’s base. In fact, quite a bit of the design here is hidden from view, with so many dark red spiked panels at work hiding the skeleton of the wings and body. There’s certainly a bit of sorrow for the dark figure at the base of the flames, but clearly this mythical beast has got nothing but rebirth on its mind.

Walpurgis

Take a look, it’s in a LEGO book...

When he’s not busy designing LEGO sets like 40505 LEGO Building Systems, Markus Rollbühler finds the time to make creations of a less-official variety. His latest is an entry into this year’s RogueOlympics, a competition where each round’s entry must clock in at 101 bricks or less. And with this limited palette, Markus still tells quite the story, full of forced perspective and hard-to-use fabric pieces. But I think the real victory here is the integration of some of the oldest LEGO trees, circa 1960.

101 Bricks: Storybook Adventures

Watch for the right time to build something new

It’s that time again, LEGO fans! We’ve got yet another exceptional creation by Dicken Liu, and this one is the embodiment of exceptional timing. Well, maybe not exactly in the way you were thinking. This goofy, anthropomorphized alarm clock is an exceptional accessory, with it’s cartoonish arms and legs jutting out from a watch face adorned with a blue boomerang for hands. And while it may not actually tell time, at least the band does clip together to make it the perfect brick-built fashion statement.

Alarm Clock03

An artist’s journey in full bloom

As a three-time member of the LEGO Ideas 10K club with some of the most stunning modular buildings we’ve ever seen, Jiwoo Seon has become something of a celebrity in the LEGO community. But those past works didn’t prepare us for her latest masterpiece: a gallery-ready floral artwork built for the (now-concluded) Create Your Own Exhibition contest. Overture of Blossoms: Journey to Freedom is the builder’s most personal work to date.

Overture of Blossoms : Journey to Freedom⠀

Click for more details of Jiwoo’s floral masterpiece!

Send out an exploratory party like it’s 1999

Before there was Star Wars, there was Space: 1999, which told the story of the residents of a moon base blown into the unknown (along with the moon itself) by a thermonuclear explosion. The vehicle of choice for those unlucky explorers was the Eagle, rendered here in LEGO by builder klaupacius. Unlike a certain well-known Corellian freighter named after a different bird (which appeared on big screens in 1977, two years after Space: 1999), the Eagle was inspired by actual Earth-built exploratory spacecraft. This build accurately conveys the transporter’s utilitarian nature from those nuclear fusion rockets all the way to its sleek nose cone.

Eagle01

Our princess is in this castle, Mario!

We’ve seen some amazing LEGO microscale builds this month thanks to the Marchitecture contest. Matthias Bartsch jumps into the game with a delightful and instantly recognizable recreation of Peach’s Castle from Super Mario 64. A version of the castle appears in the official Super Mario 64 Question Block set, but Matthias’ take greatly expands on the homage with gorgeous landscaping, a larger interior and careful fidelity to the beloved in-game design. Mathias leverages the printed tiles from the official LEGO set but finds clever solutions of his own for details like the micro warp pipe, here represented with a technic pin, and poofy trees made from ice cream toppers.

LEGO Peach's Castle 2

The roof lifts off to reveal the castle’s interior, with a tiled floor and tiny staircase.

LEGO Peach's Castle (interior 1)

Architectural grandeur infused into a Great Ball Contraption

Another impressive creation from TBB regular Andreas Lenander, this LEGO build of what appears to be an aqueduct offers more depth than its striking foliage and eye-catching architectural design might suggest at first glance. This build marks Andreas’ debut in the realm of Great Ball Contraptions, a term commonly abbreviated “GBC” in LEGO enthusiast circles.

Aqueduct GBC-module

In this GBC module, the LEGO ball follows a pathway mimicking the flow of water from start to finish. Be sure to check out the video below of this GBC module in action, and explore some of the other LEGO Great Ball Contraption models that have been featured here on TBB.

Check out the model in action as well.

Building Scrabble words with tile-built tiles

Squint and you might think the only thing LEGO about this elegant build from Galarie d’Antha is the word spelled across the tile rack. Antha created these giant-sized scrabble tiles for a typography challenge at the BrickPirate forum (a venerable haven for francophone builders). As a Scrabble player with no less than four sets in my collection, I appreciate the classic wooden tray design with the little lip for holding the tiles upright, and the tiles look so real I can practically feel my hand rummaging through a bag of them. Of course, my Scrabble brain looks at those sets of letters and screams that brand names are not legal plays, and HOLE or HOG would both be worth more points. And even if you could play LEGO legally, my AFOL brain bristles at the idea of someone trying to pluralize it with an S. You know what’s a great Scrabble word? BRICK. 13 points, or 36 points on your first play.

Giant Scrabble - One word to win

Storm the beaches of Kashyyyk with this faithfully recreated tank droid

Whatever your feelings toward the Star Wars prequels, it’s hard to deny the quality of their production design. This LEGO incarnation of the NR-N99 Persuader-class tank droid by builder Matt (from Revenge of the Sith) is just one example of the many instantly iconic vehicles the prequels bestowed upon us. The build does its on-screen counterpart justice—from the fencing foils used for the antennae to the “I” typewriter keys cleverly repurposed as the droid’s photoreceptors. You can almost hear the pew-pew-pew of those heavy repeating blasters.

NR-N99 Persuader Class Tank Droid

We need to go bigger with our digger!

When it comes to enormous LEGO machinery, there are few modelers out there better than Dennis Bosman. So when he turns his hand to an excavator that’s already pretty hefty by industrial plant standards, you know it’s going to be great. And when he combines it with a truck that was impressive enough to be featured on its own a few months ago, that results are downright spectacular. Not to mention enormous – this whole thing is some 1.75m (5’10) long. On a good day, that’s almost as long as I am tall!

Scania R143E H.C. Wilson Ltd.

When we first featured the lorry, it had a skip on the back rather than a flatbed trailer. But make no mistake, this whole convoy was designed as a unit! Dennis tells us that the trailer is used by H.C. Wilson – which is a real company – in the UK. So it’s feasible that this could be seen trundling up and down the motorways and highways, transporting the Liebherr 964 to its next big job. Speaking of which – here’s a closer look at it! If you want a clue as to how big this colossus is, that guard on the windscreen is a 9×13 lattice piece. Yeah, this is big!

Liebherr R964C