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.

What were they shmoking? Tires, most likely.

No, there is no spelling error; it’s the deliberate result of me, a Dutchman, trying to mimic Jeremy Clarkson impersonating a Dutch person speaking English. I know that this is perhaps confusing, but bear with me. It was prompted by the great Donkervoort built by Vinny Turbo.

Donkervoort is a small Dutch manufacturer of sport cars inspired by the classic Lotus Seven, and I’m pretty sure that if Top Gear were to review one, there would be lots of tire smoke and Clarkson would try to speak in a mock Dutch accent. The overall look of the model is somewhat reminiscent of the great Caterhams built by Carl Greatrix, but at a smaller scale.

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Painting with LEGO

The style of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian lends itself well to being reproduced in LEGO, but the mesmerizing new video by Cheesy Bricks takes this to another level.

[WARNING: contains classical music]

Thanks to Martin Long for bringing this to my attention, via The Brickish Association.

One does not simply build Mordor

This collaborative display of Mordor by Chris Perron and Scott Semple incorporates lights to make the lava look unbelievably realistic. Check out the details shots on Flickr, and don’t miss seeing the microscale Minas Morgul dwarfed by the rest of the build.

Build your own working Lego ballista

Jason Allemann has come up with a design for Lego ballista that can launch a 2×4 brick 15 feet (which will let you hit almost any target in even the biggest dioramas). The best part is that he has posted step-by-step instructions for you to build your own. Time to get ready for battle!

Not all Japanese cars are boring

Friends of mine in the US used to own a Japanese minivan and it was reliable, comfortable and great for road trips, but about as exciting as wet noodles. When I think of Japanese cars in general, the first ones that spring to mind are tiny little boxes on wheels that seem more suitable for a shopping trolley and the second ones are competent but boring sedans. However, this impression isn’t fair at all, as shown by the Datsun Z240 by LegoMarat.

Z-cars are exciting. The 240Z had the looks of a classic long-bonneted sports car, but without the dodgy electrics that plagued similar endeavours from England. The roof on the model looks a bit too flat to me and the wheel arches are a bit awkward, but the model has presence. This is helped by its dark blue colour and the nicely curved flanks.

It doesn’t just look good; it too has some very clever engineering inside. It drives, powered by two Power Functions motors and using a servo motor for the steering. These are controlled via a nifty third-party Bluetooth controller, called an SBrick, which is specifically designed to interface with Lego Power Functions. It allows the user to operate them via an app on their smart-phone or via the internet. Its development was funded via a kickstarter campaign that Nannan reported on in July last year. You could be forgiven for thinking that this too must be Japanese, but it was actually designed in Hungary.

It’s all in the wrists

To many of you, this may look like just another building created in the popular “Café Corner” style. But to those of us that were creatures of the Eighties, it’s immediately recognizable as Flynn’s, the videogame arcade featured in the 1982 pre-cyberspace pre-Matrix movie TRON.

Using fluorescent bricks and black light, Joel Baker has managed to impart his creation with the neon look and feel of the original. It has a complete interior featuring all manner of vintage arcade machines, and even the secret doorway that appeared in the 2010 follow-up TRON Legacy.

Cloudy with a chance of fireballs

Conveying action in a microscale LEGO scene is impossible unless it’s action on an epic scale. Pascal Schmidt demonstrates this perfectly with his model of a volcano raining fiery death on what I assume is some poorly-situated Roman era town. Note the NPU (“nice part usage”) of white ray guns in the pyroclastic cloud.

For some reason this reminded me of a build from last year that we kinda overlooked, a microscale tornado by Jimmy Fortel, created during a round of Iron Builder, and featuring some more NPU (the seed part for the contest was Mixel ball and socket joints).

The Great Harbor Ship

The Homeworld series of games featured some truly fantastic space ship designs, providing inspiration for tons of Lego space ships, but I’ve never seen anyone attempt to render a copy of this particular ship before now. De_chef has built a micro scale version of the epic Bentusi harbor ship from the games. As you can see above, he’s incorporated lights, and delivered photos that really show off the shape and illumination. Beyond that, he also built a series of smaller ships to accompany it in display, really bringing the scale to the forefront.

Right back at ya!

While Mario may be one of Nintendo’s most enduring videogame characters, Kirby has been around almost as long. And this lovable ball of fun has some pretty cool powers too, like inhaling his enemies to steal their abilities, and not being a ridiculous cultural stereotype. Heck, he even had his own cartoon show once …suck on that Mario!

Fun fact #1: During development of the first Dream Land game in 1992, Kirkby was intended merely as a simple placeholder graphic for the real character, but the designers loved him so much they used him in the final game. Fun fact #2: This LEGO version of Kirby by Swan Dutchman uses the Bram Sphere technique, which is anything but simple.

Awesome Star Trek NCC-1701 Enterprise model made of LEGO

To boldly go to space – the final frontier – and prosper, my friend.

My mangled Star Trek quotes aside, this magnificent Enterprise model comes to us from Chris Melby. Chris has done a fantastic job with the circular disk of this iconic ship, managing to make it entirely studless. Don’t be deceived, though, this is actually a huge model at over 5 feet in length.

Sexy Italian spider

We tend to focus on LEGO system on this blog, in part because most of us are not really into the aesthetics of Technic models. However, as the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider by Jeroen Ottens shows, sometimes a clever combination of curved Technic panels and soft axles can be a really effective way of capturing the shape of a voluptuous car body.

The Italian tricolore striping also adds to the model’s visual appeal.

Figuring it all out

The printed micro-figs introduced with LEGO’s new SHIELD Helicarrier set seem to be generally well received by fans. Our Facebook poll suggests 2 out of 3 of you are in favor of them! So I expect before too long we’ll see people customizing them. Customization of classic mini-figs is nothing new, but customization of the newer Friends mini-dolls is way less common….

And that’s a shame, because I for one find them more aesthetically pleasing. If LEGO could just fix their rather limited range of motion, I think it’d be great to see them used in future Movie or TV based LEGO themes. Flickr user JustJon obviously agrees, and has been repainting one Friends fig every week along those very lines:

Pictured above, as if they needed any introduction: Luke Skywalker; Sailor Moon; Ghostbuster; Deadpool; Catniss Everdeen; Red Sonja.

UPDATE: The creator just pointed out that he previously created an entire set of superhero Friends customs, which are equally awesome and can be seen here.