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.

Information superhighway

Originally, the so-called “information superhighway” was a metaphor. Information would still be flowing along telecom trunk lines, just like it had before. The amount of info available through those same old lines was the real story of the early 1990s. But fast forward a few decades, to a future imagined by Carter Baldwin and Simon Liu: there’s so much information that a highway can barely contain it. Miles and miles of high-speed cable, just below the actual roadway. I’m not sure what’s going on in the wild undergrowth beneath the infrastructure, but that doesn’t interest me nearly as much as the infrastructure itself. The tubes! The girders!

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Soaring towers are the pinnacle of LEGO castle-building

Fresh from wowing us with his banana-roofed treehouse, alego alego has been building a range of microscale castles. This one is my favorite — a wonderful fantasy castle with soaring spires, surrounded by a crystal clear moat and a pleasant greenwood. This fortress wouldn’t look out of place in Hyrule, or the Magic Kingdom for that matter. Very nice use of the new “weapon spear tip with fins” part from Nexo Knights for the tower roofs too…

I’d recommend checking out alego alego’s photostream for more microscale castle goodness, like this one fit for any prince or princess.

Brick-built Star Trek phaser is set to “stunning”

hachiroku24 is bound to set Trekkie hearts a-flutter with this lovely rendition of a LEGO phaser from the original TV series. The colors and shaping on this model are just spot-on, with some fabulous greeble touches that give it a real old-school sci-fi vibe. This makes me want to seek out new life and new civilizations and then shoot them.

Crow Warrior custom minifig is a thing of nightmares

Customizing minifigure is a skill unto itself. We do occasionally feature particularly lovely specimens, and this fantastically creepy Crow Warrior from Ser Eathan is an excellent example.

The customized headpiece reminds me an awful lot of the masks worn by doctors treating plague victims, which adds another level of creepy to the minifig. I don’t know what he’s doing with the axe, but I don’t think he’s doling out medical advice.

Avatar: The Last Airbender and the final Agni Kai

I am a big Avatar: The Last Airbender fan. Of the three glorious seasons, it’s the final Agni Kai between Zuko and Azula that sticks with me the most. I feel it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of animation I’ve seen, and the music gives me chills. NeverEnoughLEGO built a mini-land scale version of Zuko and Azula, locked in their final battle.

Click through to see more photos of this LEGO Avatar: The Last Airbender model

Looking beyond the veil in the Department of Mysteries

I still remember reading the action-packed and intensely emotional scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where Harry and his friends battle the Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries in front of the unsettling archway known as the veil. This fantastic little build by Wookieewarrior brought all of those emotions back to the surface for me. The archway design here is quite lovely and I love the asymmetry of the build. Best of all, Wookiee was able to create a stunning shimmery effect of the veil using nothing other than a LEGO plastic bag. That’s LEGO purism and innovation at it’s finest.

Tiny nuclear cooling towers look less ominous in LEGO

Admittedly power plants are not a common subject for LEGO builders, so seeing one is always fun. WHBRICKS gives us this adorable tiny nuclear plant, which is lovely in its simplicity. It’s highly recognizable and barely 12 studs long. The billowing steam is particularly nice and adds to the overall look and feel of the tiny build. This would be an excellent addition to any microscale layout!

Need a lift? This steampunk airship will get you there in style!

Alexis Dos Santos has you and your cargo covered with his steampunk skyboat to ferry it all across the skies. This multi-layered blimp is the first of its kind that I’ve seen that’s also excellently crafted and presented. The sand-green cabin is a nice touch to break the earth-toned colors.

It’s easy to get lost in the vastness of space

This LEGO Star Trek bridge by Guy Smiley is remarkable. Just look at all those panels, screens, lights, and switches! Guy managed to capture the tense emotion of the opening scene of the newest movie in the franchise, Star Trek Beyond, and at the same time, he also captured some of the swanky 70s-style pizzaz of the original series. Seriously, is that a Chris Pine minifig or a William Shatner one?

Incredible 5,000 piece LEGO Star Wars AT-AT is properly scaled to minifigures

We’ve seen a number of official LEGO Star Wars AT-ATs over the years, but they’ve all shared one fatal flaw: They’re just not as enormous as the menacing, walking beasts that first strode across the screen in The Empire Strikes Back. Mechanical engineering student Noah has built a properly scaled, 5,000-piece LEGO AT-AT that — at 2 feet tall — towers over minifig Snowtroopers and Hoth Rebel troops alike.

Noah tells The Brothers Brick that it took him about a year to build his AT-AT — a bit longer than it might have taken if he hadn’t been at school.

You can see a walk-around video that Noah posted on his YouTube channel, where he also has in-progress videos showing the internal structure.

We asked Noah whether his schooling in mechanical engineering helped him build such a large model. He tells us that the AT-AT’s head is particularly heavy, causing a moment of force, with the head extending far out from the AT-AT’s main body and affecting its center of gravity, which he solved by integrating Technic beams into the neck.

Click through to see more photos of this huge LEGO AT-AT

Replying to “How did you build that?” at Brickfair Virginia

Two weeks ago I had the good fortune to attend Brickfair Virginia. As always, I had a great time talking to other builders and seeing their excellent models in real life. I also got to show off my own Tomcat model. I know that a fair few builders dread the public days on Saturday and Sunday, but despite having to answer the same questions over and over again, I love chatting to the public. One of the more commonly asked questions is: “How did you build that?”. I can’t give a satisfactory reply in a single sentence, but thanks to Brickfair, I now have two somewhat more complete replies to share with you.

Inspired by a great talk on building landscapes I saw at Brickfair last year, this year I gave my own talk on how to build military aircraft. Without me talking you through them, the slides don’t tell the whole story, of course, but I was also interviewed by the delightful Matthew Kay from Beyond the Brick. In the interview, I got to show off some of the Tomcat’s features and got to talk about the building process.

I hope you’ll agree that both of these are more satisfying than my default answer: “by sticking one part to another and repeating this until the model is finished.”

Those goody-goody Smurfs make me sick!

I never quite understood the appeal of the Smurfs. Growing up in the 80’s surrounded by an entirely different cultural tradition, the poorly animated, cutesy TV show just wasn’t interesting. But the wonderful thing about the world of LEGO is that I can appreciate a fantastic build even if I have negative interest in the subject matter. Koen is taking a break from building a large LEGO spaceship to build something using a bunch of the rare medium blue parts in his collection — from minifig helmets for his nose and tail to a plate for his ear.

I love Koen’s description: “The Smurfs are blue humanoids who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest.” This smurf seems to be as surprised by his own existence as I am.