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.

Rare sighting of a LEGO elephant in the room

British builder Tim Goddard is well known for his fantastic Neo-Classic Space creations, but his latest build provides a change of scenery. We are not the only people admiring this lovely scene of a mother elephant and her calf — there’s a brave photographer filming their every move. Her camera is mounted on a professional looking LEGO tripod and she has managed to locate a rare ‘Classic Space safari outfit’ for the event. Up in the tree, a vulture seems to be keeping watch.

The elephants are minifig-scale and ingeniously constructed with Mixel joints providing movement of the calf’s legs and the mother’s ears. Tim has designed their skin with a mix of textures; studs on show, smooth tiles and the odd light bluish grey ingot to provide a wrinkle or two.

I was going to make a clever comment about the mother’s knee joints and impossible movements but remember, this is LEGO and anything is possible!

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Plowing Tractor

Some LEGO builders have no tolerance for any creation less than perfect. Kosmas Santosa from Indonesia is among those people who keep bricking flawless models. The latest addition to his portfolio is just a simple tractor, but he manages to present it in a very delicate manner. His choice of pastel colors is accompanied by a simple but effective topography and his photographing skills shows off the tractor by keeping the background out of focus. The result is minimalistic perfection.

You may also want to check his secondary Flickr account for more pictures. Enjoy it!

LEGO punk beasts will rock and/or roll you

Ever since the 70314 Beast Master’s Chaos Chariot was unveiled I’ve been looking for a clever way to use the two unique, domed printed pieces which form the heads of the two large Globlins pulling Mr.Master’s chariot. James zhan beat me to it with a double build — turning the two monsters into punk rock beats complete with an instrument, microphone, and mohawk hairdos.

For those of you about to build (we salute you).

LEGO Digital Designer updated [News]

LEGO has released an update for LEGO Digital Designer (LDD), the company’s proprietary virtual building program. Update 4.3.9 is available for free on both OSX and Windows operating platforms. If you already have LDD, the latest update will install automatically when connected to the internet. The update is approximately 275MB in size and includes over 300 new parts such as CMF Series 15 minifigure parts, Speed Champions, Elves, Jurassic Park, Nexo Knights and so on. The new parts are available by opening a project using LDD’s Extended tab.

After bringing you the news that LEGO Digital Designer was officially defunded and unsupported back in January, it’s safe to say that this latest update was unexpected. It is hard not to believe that the huge backlash in response to that sudden announcement of LDD’s demise was a factor in the decision to now release a long awaited update.

Since the LDD community has waited over 2 years since the previous update, there is no doubt that the new one will be well received. Enjoy the update, there’s no knowing when/if another update will be released in the future. Flickr user Nachapon S. has put together an image showing all the new pieces.

One tiny mech, lots of clever building

Saying Moko is a great mecha builder is like saying water is wet. We’ve featured this builder’s work countless times before and while this creation, called “Mechatro WeGo” is certainly on the small side, it’s ingenious once you start peeling the layers away.

While plain on the outside, the other interior shot on the builder’s blog show off the inner detail.

Beautiful Soviet spacecraft – now THIS is classic space

This year we celebrate 55 years since the first human spaceflight in history. Tyler takes on the role of a Soviet space program chief designer and commemorates the event in a stunning couple of spacecraft — Vostok-1 and Soyuz — classic craft from the early days of putting cosmonauts into orbit.

Take a moment to notice the choice of pieces. Pretty unpretentious, yet with ordinary slopes and wedges Tyler magically creates curved shapes of various diameters, which look fascinating even in plain grey colors. The aerials and dishes are especially heartwarming as they resemble the style of the legendary Discovery sets from 2003. What is so outstanding about the Soyuz model is the use of studs of various colors under trans-blue tiles — a simple and amazingly effective solution. These solar panels look even cooler than stickers from the said Discovery sets.

Incredible LEGO model of Liebherr LTM 1750 mobile crane

Huib van der Hart is a master of large LEGO cranes. His latest effort is a Liebherr LTM 1750-9.1 mobile crane owned by Northwest Crane Service. At 1:16 scale, the model packs in loads of detail, and Huib tells us the crane uses close to 15,000 pieces, is over 4 feet in length and weighs 33 pounds. It’s even completely drivable with 18-wheel steering thanks to LEGO Power Functions. This isn’t Huib’s first humongous crane, either, as he previously built this crane’s sibling, the Liebherr LTM 11200 9.1. He’s continuing to work on the 1750 model, and has plans to make the boom arm fully extendable.

Alien vs. Predator

Crossovers in your mind often end up being more epic than they do on the big screen, but nonetheless they should be applauded for jumping tremendous logistical and legal hurdles alone. Say what you will about the quality of the Alien vs. Predator films, simply seeing two of Hollywood’s greatest space monsters duke it out was well worth it. Kiwi builder Grantmasters is aware of the crossover appeal, and having previously built separate portraits of the Predator and Alien, he has now constructed a scene with them fighting to a literal death.

The Mirage IV was a beautiful jet with a sinister purpose

In the sixties, under president Charles De Gaulle, France started to follow a fiercely independent foreign policy that included reliance on its own nuclear deterrence force, often known as the Force de Frappe. Nowadays, its core is formed by a small number of submarines armed with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, but from 1964 to 1996 France also operated Mirage IV medium-range supersonic bombers armed with nuclear weapons. It took Dutch builder Kenneth Vaessen about a month to build his 1/36 scale model of this relatively little-known Cold-War jet.

In the logic typical of the era, these bombers were intended to deter a Soviet nuclear attack on France, by being able to destroy Soviet cities in retaliation. Few sane people would like to think about this sinister mission for long, but you’ve got to admit that the jet looks beautiful. With its tall undercarriage, sharply angled delta wing, and long and slender forward fuselage, it completely follows the unofficial rule in aeronautical design stating that, if it looks right, it flies right. The excellent model has a retractable undercarriage, opening cockpit canopies and working airbrakes and is built in a realistic two-tone camouflage scheme.

With LEGO, you can make the Balrog from LOTR even scarier

Although LEGO has been making officially licenced Lord of the Rings sets for some years now, there’s been a noticeable gap in the product line: Durin’s Bane, the infamous terror of Moria and slayer of Gandalf, the Balrog. While we did get a digital version in the LEGO Lord of the Rings videogame, it’s been up to fans to create it in the brick. Chak hei Mok is happy to oblige with this rendition which is decidedly menacing.

At the (literal) center of the build is the printed chest piece which completed the monster from the set 70316 Jestro’s Evil Mobile. While everyone seems to be buying Nexo Knights sets for the new pieces accompanying the knights, it’s great to see the parts from team bad guy getting some love too.

In space, size matters

There are a lot of neat play features packed into this tiny space exploration vehicle. But it’s the ambiguous scale that tickles me. Is it a remote-controlled rover, barely larger than a cat? Or a mammoth-sized truck, so tall you could walk under it without ducking? It could hold fifty people — or less than five. Only Shannon Sproule knows for sure.

FOTC Hawk from Destiny

I’m not really into video games unless they have the name Zelda in the title. But the kids seem to dig some sci-fi game called Destiny, and there are a lot of great LEGO models based on its concept art. This FOTC Hawk from Jake Mundy is the latest example, and there are a heap of nifty techniques in this angular contraption. Check out the full gallery for some inspirational detail and cutaway pictures.