Category Archives: LEGO

You’d probably expect a lot of the posts on a LEGO website like The Brothers Brick to be about LEGO, and you’d be right. If you’re browsing this page, you might want to consider narrowing what you’re looking for by checking out categories like “Space” and “Castle.” We’re sure there’s something here that’ll fascinate and amaze you.

Animated LEGO Mario Bros scene features truly old-school side-scrolling action [Video]

How do you recreate a video game using LEGO? You could build the game’s characters, or even a 3D version of a level. But that doesn’t capture the movement videogames have. Or you could do what Jason Cichon has done, and take the term “side-scrolling platformer” quite literally by turning the classic Mario Bros into a moving diorama.

The various pieces of the level are attached to a conveyor belt out of sight, and a crank on the diorama’s side scrolls the level past the viewing screen, duplicating in 3-dimensional bricks the feeling of moving through the level.

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Skyrim’s Bits and Pieces store made of bits and pieces

Even though this medieval store by Isaac Snyder uses textures and techniques we see very often in medieval builds lately, it still manages to look unique; first by its complex layout and secondly by its use of dark gray as the stone bricks, which is for some reason rather uncommon. While the model is called Sigurd’s General Goods and is not a direct recreation, it is obviously inspired by the Bits and Pieces general store in Solitude, from Skyrim.

Isaac’s shop even has a full interior.

See more of this delightful Skyrim building

Ares-3 off the drawing board

The friendliest looking starfighter you’ve ever seen has made the leap from LEGO Digital Designer to the real world. BobDeQuatre designed this ship three years ago in LDD and has made excellent use of several new bricks to take the design from “cool” to “really something else” during its translation to physical form.

The soft, bubbly white curves stand out against the blackness of space with flashy spectral pink and purple highlights, so at first you might miss the pair of giant, black-armored cannons on the front.
Take a moment to compare this ship to its original digital incarnation, since they’re very much similar ships built with very different styles.

You do not make modifications on a Countach. That car is perfect!

I imagine making any car instantly recognizable at minifigure scale would be difficult, and George Panteleon does it beautifully with his LEGO Lamborghini Countach. He made great part choices for the windscreen and the headlights, and the lines of the sports car are captured rather well in a 7-stud-wide package.

See more of George’s minifigure-scaled vehicles on his Flickr.

Rescue the Chancellor in this microscale Jedi Interceptor

Hot on the heels of his smart little LEGO TIE Fighter, Tim Goddard is at it again with a nice microscale rendition of Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor. The model captures the shape and styling of the Eta-2 fighter brilliantly, but the undoubted highlight is the teeny tiny R2D2 — all set to take care of any nano-sized Buzz Droids.

Delivery of a cute LEGO cat called Jiji [Instructions]

Kiki’s Delivery Service is a 1989 Japanese animated fantasy film produced, written, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The film’s protagonist Kiki is a trainee witch who has a black cat called Jiji as her best friend, and CK HO has built a fantastically cute LEGO version of Jiji the cat. Like most cats, Jiji has a lot of personality, but the English-dubbed version of the film showed Jiji with a cynical and sarcastic attitude as opposed to cautious and conscientious in the original Japanese.

We loved Jiji so much here at TBB that we asked CK to make some instructions and he very kindly obliged to allow us all to have a best friend called Jiji.

Click here to build your own Jiji!

Someone call for an exterminator?

I’m not fan of rats, cockroaches, and alien critters skittering around my spaceship, but I’m also not sure I’d like to have Djokson‘s character around either. He’s stocky, he’s menacing, he has a big gun and probably leaves a trail of aliens to match.
There is a lot of excellent color contrast in this build, with a few bright-colored pieces popping against the black armor and background. The blue hose caught my eye first, but then you look up and see the dark red eyes of the mask and suddenly the exterminator seems a lot less friendly. And be sure to keep four eyes out for some really excellent parts use on his alien trophy.

A blip patrols the executive corridor in Alpha Zero Niner

At first glance Jeremy Williams‘ Night Patrol might not look like much is going on, but this atmospheric space corridor with patrolling “blip” is fantastic. Simple yet brilliant, I love the clever use of the 1×4 spring shooter for the door details. Combined with clever creative lighting, the scene feels real. You can almost feel the silence, waiting for the whhhhhsht of the door as it opens and the automated electronic beep as the blip passes through. Then whhhhhsht the door closes again, leaving the corridor silent and empty once more.

When LEGO needs a trim, use a LEGO mower

We have all been there: it’s summertime and the plate grass is getting long… well Anthony Séjourné has sorted out our lawnmower needs with his excellent LEGO mower. The garden gnome has sought a place of safety as this is a serious looking mower — look at the beautifully neat grass it is leaving in its wake! Using layered plates for the grass was an extra step well worth the effort to ensure the tiled cut grass is below the level of the top plate. This is a cute little scene that really shows how to highlight this small mower model in the best light.

The lawnmower itself is a great little build with nice curvy shape and good use of the Bionicle mechanical arm to create the angles and attachment for the handle.

My only issue is that I cannot work out where the cut grass has gone?

The monstrous Vengeful Spirit

A “SHIP” is a large scale LEGO spaceship, specifically one of at least 100 studs in length (or height!). They are a popular theme to build, especially for convention displays. This specific SHIP by Tim Clark appeared at Brickworld 2016, but apparently the photos had to travel for seven months to reach the internet. Worth the wait? It sure is!

The builder has created quite a few SHIPs over the years, which you can see in his MOC Pages album, but this one is his largest so far at amazing 164 studs of length. It is also his first one that is not mostly light gray, which is a colour all too often used on large builds. Tim used many of his already tested techniques that he used in his other capital ships, but the larger scale called for new implementations of these techniques for more stability. The overall shape is what is the most important in large spaceships, and the Vengeful Spirit hits the nail on the head here. The small details like trans light-blue elements and turrets are the cherry on the top.

There are many more detail photos on the builder’s MOC page of the Vengeful Spirit, as well as the inspiration picture.

If you can’t beat them, join the Space Marines

The LEGO Group have wandered into the realm of wearable LEGO with things like the LEGO Friends Friends Jewelery Set #853440, but this helmet and shoulder armour by Timofey_Tkachev takes wearable LEGO to a whole other level. Tomofey’s LEGO cosplay is inspired by the Space Marines from Warhammer 40K, originally the tabletop miniatures game and now a video game.

The shaping of the helmet is particularly impressive, especially around the eye sockets and the mouth where accuracy has been maintained despite the difficulties when using LEGO pieces to build curves.

Room with a View, Baby Doll and Building in Bed: a conversation with Romanian super-builder Vitreolum [Interview]

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Pacurar Andrei, also known as Vitreolum (Letranger Absurde). Pacurar lives in Romania and builds in a wide range of styles and genres. His work is highly regarded and his build, Room with a View, made our short-list of the year’s best creations. Please walk with us as we explore the mind of a builder!

TBB: How did you get into the LEGO hobby and what inspires you to build?

Pacurar Andrei: I got into the hobby when I decided to sell my childhood collection. They were all mixed together in two large bags, so I had to sort and build everything… by the time I was done with this I ended up buying sets instead of selling. Everything inspires me, from someone else’s build to things that surround me. Sometimes just looking at a certain part will be enough. Or just an idea that suddenly pops in my head. Although my biggest source of inspiration has always been movies, games and literature. The challenge is whether I can translate it into bricks.

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