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.

Heartlake City Central Base Station

This Friends-themed Star Wars diorama by Tyler Sky is simply delightful! I can’t imagine these mini-dolls preparing for a battle, but it’s pretty much a winner in my books anyway. It’s got a great theme, and the Friends sparkle isn’t overwhelming–just enough of a touch of the familiar colour palette to give it the feeling of a semi-serious scene from Heart Lake City. The mini-dolls sporting Rebel helmets are a perfect fit as the brave pilots. A closer look shows the typical slot where the Astromechs are seated is now co-piloted by favourite furries, with a transparent dome for protection.

Theme aside, the construction of the Friendly Y-Wing is also quite well thought out. Clever uses of parts include a basketball net for the ion jet turbine exhausts and tread links to form the vectral rings at the very end of the engine pods.

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Don’t be sheepish [Video]

Sheep by Maxime Marion is a cute brickfilm about being true to yourself instead of following the flock. It is also a joyous celebration of the 1×1 round eye tile and its siblings the eyelash tile and the stink eye tile. Maxime creates a wide variety of emotions and expressions using various combinations of these three simple pieces.

I would argue that these eye tiles are some of the most important parts added to the LEGO palette in the last decade. Just as the introduction of the minifigure led to a major shift in the scale of vehicles and buildings, the introduction of the eye tile has led to a huge increase in character-focused creations, both in official sets and in fan creations. I hope more brickfilmers follow Maxime’s award-winning example and start incorporating brick-built characters into their films. Watch Sheep below.

Complete set of LEGO Space X rockets and vehicles – Go for launch!

Space and space exploration is also a very popular subject when it comes to LEGO creations. Valerie Roche and Matthew Nolan have designed a collection of SpaceX vehicles and put it on LEGO’s crowd-sourcing platform Ideas, where it’s already well on its way towards the needed 10,000 supporters. One of the coolest things about this project is that the designers have received input from people working on the real SpaceX program to help make the models even more accurate.

Check out the full collection of vehicles

The Kakapo: not your average Kiwi

Most people know that New Zealanders got their “Kiwi” nickname from their beloved national symbol, the Kiwi bird. But did you know that there is another iconic bird from that country that is just as important? Its name is actually Kākāpō, which means “owl parrot” and it really is quite unique! Flancrest Enterprises is so passionate about this bird, that they recreated it in LEGO, with posable wings!

What makes the Kakapo so unique is that it’s not like any other parrot in the world. It is large, heavy, flightless, and nocturnal. Their wings and tail are quite short, and they have large feet for climbing and cruising around on the forest floor. In addition, one of their most interesting features is that they don’t form tight bonds. Males engage in “lekking” where they gather together to engage in competitive display and entice females. Males will then mate with multiple females, while the females mate with a single male, and there is no paternal help with the young.

Above all, the most notable thing about the Kākāpō is that it’s critically endangered. There are less than 150 left. Naturally they don’t have any predators, but humans have both destroyed habitats and hunted them to near extinction. Fortunately, there are amazing people working on conservation and recovery programs. If you’re like me and think these special, adorable birds deserve a comeback, learn more and give them your support!

A lurching demon from the beyond

This shambling horror is brought to you courtesy of Leonid An, who sculpted the creature’s bony ridges from quite an odd collection of parts. Called Preta the Demon, stacked jawbones make his spiny shins, which somehow seems fitting. Meanwhile, an exposed kraata stands in for the unnerving brain in the middle of the demon’s split skull. Here’s hoping you don’t stumble upon this bit of LEGO in the darkness.

Technology, uh, finds a way...

Sometimes to create an awesome new design you just have to skillfully mix a couple of the most trendy things. Anthony Wilson picked up dinosaurs and Nexo Knights, and the Tyrannosaurus Nex was born. Fast on foot, this monster has no mercy on the enemies of the Nexo kingdom. What I love the most about this creation is that it’s not just a dinosaur covered with laser guns, but an actual two-legged robot designed as a fierce animal.

Traversing the mountain, in search of medicine

Dr. Hisoto and his trusty pal, Jun, are on their way up the mountain. Amongst the cherry blossoms, they are searching for the herbs the doctor needs to make medicine. This lovely build is the work of Jme Wheeler. We have featured Jme’s builds several times, and they are all packed with character and detail. This is a wonderful addition to his repertoire.

Read on to see additional angles of this unique build

It’s over 9,000!

While the piece count for this Dragon Ball Z creation by Moko might not numerically match Vegeta’s most famous quote, our enthusiasm level for this LEGO rendition of his Great Ape form certainly does. The face is a knockout, with a great use of minifigure arms to define the eyes and a strategic use of anti-studs to add texture to the ears and nostrils. The rest of the model is full of subtly impressive techniques, like the dinosaur tails to add definition to the shoulder’s edges, the tail made out of tires, and the inverted and slightly angled pectorals.

Be sure to visit Moko’s blog for additional photos of this phenomenal creation.

The art of painting with bricks

I love how LEGO bricks can be used to express and build subjects other than the usual way we see 3-dimensional stacks of bricks. Sheo pulls this off very well with a portrait entitled “Evelyn.” When I first had a look at this, it reminded me of an art form that’s so very familiar yet I still can’t put my finger on it — elegant and polished with clever use of tiny accessories or parts that seem to just blend in like that cutlass forming the bridge of her nose.

While the portrait of Evelyn enchants, the Trickster featured below hints at an evil, mysterious character.

Size isn’t everything in this tiny Jurassic World encounter

Sometimes it’s easy to be amazed by the extremely large creations, and overlook incredible small ones. But some micro-builds are a constant reminder of just how impressive “little” can be. Small size definitely doesn’t mean less detailed or less complicated, and this build is a great example. One of our favorite builders, Grantmasters, has delivered another mini-masterpiece with this build he calls, “When a Kingdom Falls.” Yet again, his eye for unique parts usage has really shown through.

Easily recognizable as a scene from Jurassic World, you may also recognize that those T. rex legs are actually the arms from the full-size LEGO fig. There’s also a Battle Droid body used for the jaw. But my favorite part of this build is the pod. It’s cleverly crafted from 2×2 plates with rounded bottoms and Technic rubber bands. All these elements line up to make for perfect scaling and an eye-catching scene.

Massive collaborative LEGO project shows Vikings invading a Spanish village

Group LEGO building projects are a great way to create something much more impressive than what an individual builder might accomplish, and this recent collaboration between a group of builders called The Brickstons and several friends from the LEGO club ALE is a great example. Considering that there were 14 builders involved, the scene is very well designed, with carefully laid out building standards and many unifying design elements helping everything fit together. This isn’t their first experience with large displays though, and we highlighted their 1930s Harlem display last month.

The diorama portrays a Viking raid on the coast of Spain in approximately the year 859, a real historic event. The villa shown here isn’t any specific port, but rather an amalgamation of what a typical village in the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba would have looked like at the time.

See all the amazing details in the images below.

Check out more details

Fighting “Yankee Air Pirates” with the S-75 missile

From the way pop culture depicts the war in Vietnam, one would think it was all about fighting guerillas, involving lots of helicopters, close combat in jungles or rice paddies and music by the Rolling Stones. However, the US was simultaneously fighting a high-tech war, with US combat aircraft bombing targets in the North and duelling with air defenses of ever-increasing sophistication. Peter Dorbach has expertly recreated some of the North’s main tools in their fight against the so-called “Yankee Air Pirates”: the “Fan Song” guidance radar and a matching missile with its launcher.

These missile systems were part of the Soviet-built S-75 “Dvina” / SA-2 “Guideline” surface-to-air system. The comparison with the minifigs shows the size of these missiles. They had two stages and flew at 3.5 times the speed of sound. They weren’t particularly agile and they could be evaded, but this required careful timing. Initiating the evasive manoeuvre too soon gave the missile time to compensate. Manoeuvre too late and its massive warhead, with a 75 m blast radius, would do its job. S-75 missiles shot down dozens of aircraft during the conflict, with many crew members being killed or captured.

The model is part of a Vietnam War collaboration that will be displayed at BrickFair Virginia this summer. A surface-to-air missile may be a slightly unusual choice of subject, but it is certainly historically significant. The introduction of these systems completely changed air warfare. The S-75 is famous for shooting down Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spyplane on a secret mission over Russia in 1960, and another over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It is a Cold War classic and amazingly is still in service in about two dozen countries almost 60 years later.