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.

The color of magic: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld characters in LEGO

It’s time to travel to Discworld and enjoy this fantastic series of characters from the works of Sir Terry Pratchett, brought to us by Eero Okkonen (Pate-keetongu). Eero started these shortly after the death of Pratchett in March this year. His first build was a large-scale creation of his favourite Discworld character, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully (back-row, far left in the photo below).

The Ones Who Meddle With The Fabric Of Reality

The Archchancellor, Professor of Unusual and Cruel Geography, Dean, Librarian and The Luggage.

If you’re not familiar with Terry Pratchett, he was the author of a series of 41 comic fantasy books that take place in the Discworld, a flat circular world that rests on the backs of four elephants who are standing on the back of a turtle.

I simply must point out a few of my favourite parts, although it is hard to narrow this down to only my top three. In no particular order: the Archchancellor’s ‘winged’ beard; bananas used to represent the peeled banana skin held by the Librarian; and the dark red windscreen used as the Luggage’s tongue! Well one more… look below, Commander Vimes toes are minifigure legs!

Commander Vimes

Susan Sto Helit, Granddaughter of Death

Now that Finnish builder Eero “Pate-keetongu” Okkonen has completed his LEGO Discworld characters (well, completed them for the moment, he happily admits), TBB asked him a few questions about the experience:

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Issue 14 of Blocks magazine out tomorrow [News]

Prepare for a journey into the space-time vortex with the Doctor and his TARDIS in the latest issue of Blocks magazine, available in UK stores November 19th. As well as an in-depth review of the latest LEGO Ideas set, there’s also an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how the Ideas platform really works, including what the review process involves, why larger projects don’t make the cut, and more.

Blocks also takes a look at how LEGO’s spaceship designs have changed over the decades, the most profitable LEGO sets to invest in, how to build a supercar, and whether LEGO Dimensions really is worth your money. Plus a Christmas consumer guide to help you figure out the perfect gifts for the LEGO fanatics in your family.

3 years to create huge LEGO version of Halo’s Infinity

I’ve been playing a LOT of Halo 5 recently – it’s a welcome return to form for the series after the slight let-down of Halo 4. As a result, I’m embarrassed I missed this stunning build until now. Cody Fowler took 3 years to put together this excellent recreation of UNSC Infinity, the spaceship star of the Halo franchise…

Cody has managed to perfectly capture the ship’s lines — no small feat when it’s such a collection of angles. I’m sure he was pleased, but also slightly nervous, when the latest game featured the Infinity so prominently on its loading screen. If you’re building a model from a source with such a rabid fan-base, you’re going to have to get the details right!

Beyond the shaping and the impressive scale (134 studs long), the blue LED lights within the vessel really add to the feel of a working starship. But for me, the little touch that sets this model apart is the attention Cody paid to the base. Often big spaceship builds like this are supported on ugly stacks – a functional afterthought detracting from the appearance of the model as a whole. Here, Cody has gone the extra mile, lavishing the same attention to detail on this element as the main ship itself. Great stuff.

You can now program your MINDSTORMS EV3 on the go [News]

The latest iteration of LEGO robotics sets, the MINDSTORMS EV3, just got an upgrade in the form of a new app. The EV3 Programmer app brings the ability to fully program your creations from a tablet or mobile phone.

If you have any experiance with programming, this probably sounds like a nightmare , but it’s not that bad. The official programming for MINDSTORMS uses logic blocks that are dragged and dropped to create a working piece of code, with little to no input from a keyboard needed.

Get the app:

In search of the perfect beat... I found my own rhythm

German-based Australian builder Arran Hearn is ready to fill the dancefloor and raise the roof with his 1:2 scale DJ setup! This creation started with a brick, namely part 58846 (Brick Round Corner 10 x 10 with Slope 33 Edge). Four of these bricks make up each of the platters on the turntable and, from that simple beginning, the 1:2 scale creation began to take shape. Arran’s DJ setup is complete with two turntables and a mixer, in the brilliantly named ‘battle-mode’ position – definitely beyond my knowledge as a mere easy-listening, sing-a-long chick!

Arran went to great lengths to accurately reflect the details with custom chromed “Barraki eyes” used for the spindles, custom designed transparent stickers for the outside rim of the platters and the custom boat studs used for the detailing on mixer controls. I had to look twice at the initial Flickr photograph to check I was actually looking at LEGO. It is all hooked up and ready to go, look at those cable tidies keeping all the wires in position.

And as if the attention to detail was not enough, power functions are brought via a 9V train controller to light the LEDs on the mixer and spin those platters. Arran also created this video showing off his model next to the real deal:

Bricksy: Unauthorized Underground Brick Street Art [Review]

File this under “ideas I wish I’d thought of first”. From Jeff Friesen, award-winning photographer and author of United States of LEGO: A Brick Tour of America, comes a delightful new book of LEGO dioramas paying homage to the work of enigmatic graffiti artist Banksy.

Inside its 9″ x 9″ hard cover, the very inexpensive Bricksy: Unauthorized Underground Brick Street Art features 84 carefully constructed and beautifully photographed scenes, each based on a different Banksy work. For reference purposes, thumbnails of the originals appear on every page, and are also compiled into a visual index at the back that even cites the original image sources.

Rather than merely trying to mimic Banksy’s works in LEGO, Jeff embellishes them and expands upon them to service his own unique sense of humor. It’s as though we are pulling the camera back from the original, and seeing it in the context of a whole new backstory. This definitely makes the book more appealing, although true Banksy aficionados may balk at such brazen reinterpretations.

As this gallery of images shows, many Banksy standards make an appearance – my personal favorite being the meat wagon “mobile installation” featured in the documentary Banksy Does New York. As you might expect, the scenes are all built to minifig scale, making extensive use of the rich array of collectible minifig components now at LEGO fans’ disposal (this book could not have existed 5 years ago). All the buildings and other background details are completely brick-built, with some skillful use of forced perspective. I also enjoyed the repeated appearance of a large brick-built rat!

Bricksy: Unauthorized Underground Brick Street Art is available on Amazon in both physical and digital formats. And it’s currently less than $10, so I recommend you grab a copy of this awesome picture book right now, to fill that spot on your coffee table next to the Beautiful LEGO trilogy.

These CHIBI starfighters are just chubby little balls of cuteness

Star Wars microfighters — although being a fine source of minifigures — aren’t always the best in terms of both collecting value and building experience, mostly because of their size and scale. We all know: if you’re looking for aesthetically pleasing models, you should go in for sophisticated UCS-sets. I have been sharing this opinion, but only til last night when my eye was caught by a couple of CHIBI (cute-huggable-idiotic-baby-inspired) spaceships by Kim Do-hyun.

Building large Star Wars ships in such a peculiar scale and style is an advanced challenge in itself. However, Kim nailed it — and not at the expense of elaborate greebling. All the dished and tiles on Millennium Falcon are pretty familiar and look absolutely cute. At the same time, the Imperial Shuttle is genius in its simplicity. It’s just a couple of regular and curved slopes and a wedge at the nose that make the shuttle so recognizable. A slight disproportion in the size of its parts gives the model its totally adorable look.

I just want to take both ships in my hands, embrace them softly and never let them fly away. Full stop. Sorry, ewoks, you’re not my favorite any longer.

One beautiful black mech

Benjamin Cheh Ming Hann brings us a new bit of mechanised walking glory with his Black Boa “Blitz” BB3 Infantry Assault Division (Type Flight Mode). Wow, both those names had a lot of words in them. Anyway, this is definitely a model you should zoom in on and appreciate the details and the fine shaping.

Microscale spacecraft explores white space

The latest creation from Tim Goddard (aka roguebantha) is a beautiful microscale space exploration vehicle. It’s a great model with a real sense of heft – you can just imagine it pushing its bulk out into the cosmos, the crew peering out from the stubby bridge.

The build features a load of Tim’s signature greebles, the fiddly grey machinery details which do so much to suggest the model is much bigger than it is. Alongside those, the azure striping is an obvious treat against the relatively blank canvas of the white hull. The way the stripe continues back around the domes and the little disc at the rear is just clean and classy building. Tim says this model was an exploration in broadening his use of color. It’s a success as far as I’m concerned.

But away from the colors, what I’m enjoying most is the little gaps in the main body, offering glimpses of machinery within. All too often spaceship models can look as if they’re just tombstones of bricks strapped sideways onto a hollow shell. The gaps here suggest there’s actual stuff going on inside that pretty hull – a really nice little touch.

“Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty Ewok!”

Our Pimp Rey’s Speeder contest continues to heat up, with over 70 entries now submitted, and builders demonstrating the same flair, imagination and downright weirdness that we enjoyed with last year’s Micro Fighter contest. Not surprisingly, movie and TV adaptations of this Star Wars speeder design seem to be popular, as you can see from the examples below. Get your entry in before December 5th for a chance to win!

WALL-E-Speeder by smallestrobot

You Will Ride Eternal, Shiny and Chrome by IamKritch

Men in Brick’s Speeder by Priovit70

Screw hoverboards, we want these hoverbikes

In October it was “Back to the Future Day”, the day irresponsible time travelers Marty McFly and Doc Brown caught up with the future. Now that we’ve reached and passed that time, we’re all a bit disappointed that we’re not scooting around on floating skateboards. What would be even better though, are these nifty little scooters from nobu_tary. The green one reminds us of the hovercars from Dragonball Z.

1:10 Scale Lamborghini Aventador

Nick Barrett proves it is possible to capture the lines of a Lamborghini Aventador beautifully with LEGO parts. His 1:10 scale replica includes working suspension and steering, a detailed interior and V12 engine covered by cleverly built glass panels.