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.

Review: Brick Wheels by Warren Elsmore

Brick Wheels: Amazing Air, Land & Sea Machines to Build from Legois the fourth book by British builder Warren Elsmore, who, together with his wife Kitty, is also the driving force behind the Afolcon/ Brick LEGO events due to take place later this year in Birmingham and London.

This is a substantial book, with 258 pages. It is crisply printed on sturdy semi-glossy paper and it has a flexible cover. It looks and feels like a quality product, which, given the low price point of just £12.99 in the UK, is pleasantly surprising. The US edition, called Brick Vehicles, costs only $13.

The book consists of five chapters. The introductory chapter covers such topics as names for parts, where to buy LEGO, on-line resources and sorting. This is probably mainly useful for builders who are just discovering that there are more people like them out there or as a guide for parents whose children are getting into building. The other four chapters deal with, respectively, road vehicles, trains, ships and flying vehicles. This is where things get more interesting, with pictures of inspirational models built by Warren himself and by friends of his, including about a dozen by yours truly, interspersed with pages of instructions for mostly smaller models that readers can build themselves.

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Spinput GBC

Great Ball Contraptions (GBCs) are a staple of most LEGO conventions, the idea is simple create: a mechanical device to move balls from point A to point B, with a certain set standard. Then sit back and watch a) balls go flying b) kids be mesmerized for hours. It’s a challenging feet of engineering to create a mechanism that can withstand hours of continuous operation, typically the most prized honour for a GBC builder is the ‘Most Reliable’ award (or some variant). Unlike a lot of LEGO builds we see on The Brothers Bricks, aesthetics is not primary goal.

But sometimes, someone steps forward and combines all the above, and makes it beautiful, just cause. For example, Benjamin Corey (Bricktech) built this gorgeous GBC at BFVA this year:

You can watch it in action here:

You can also check out the whole GBC video from our friends at Beyond the Brick.

Out with the old, in with the new – BB-8 joins R2-D2

When I first saw The Phantom Menance, the most memorable moment was when R2-D2 made his heroic entrance – the entire audience cheered! I have no idea if Artoo is planning a similar reprieve in The Force Awakens, but I think he’s going to have a hard time upstaging his even more adorable replacement, BB-8. Not even if he shows off all his bells and whistles, as builder Takamichi Irie imagines him doing here:

In the overall robot pecking order, I suspect a gyroscopically self-balancing sphere probably beats a metal drum with a guy inside. Who knows, maybe this’ll become a divisive issue for Star Wars fans? Of course, if they met on screen, it certainly would be a touching moment. Although I’d worry about half the audience spontaniously losing bladder control.

I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again, at last.

After blogging old Han & Leia, I remembered that I hadn’t highlighted this classic scene from Star Wars: A New Hope. Even though your eye is drawn to the two stock minifigs, the real stars of this scene by Andrew JN are the backdrop, lighting, and photo editing. I can hear the buzz of those lightsabers now!

Via BrickNerd.

Prepare for a swarm of TIE/D automated starfighters

I really enjoyed the growth of the Star Wars Expanded Universe back in the 90’s, from the gorgeous Dark Empire graphic novels by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy to the stellar Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Though I stopped paying attention following the Prequel Trilogy, I’ve always liked seeing the unique vehicles and vessels from the EU. Dead Frog, Inc. built this compact little TIE/D droid fighter, capturing the iconic look of the larger, manned TIE fighters while reducing the size to match the EU source material. Now imagine thousands of these spewing out of a World Devastator, swarming a Mon Calamari city…

Star Wars: A New Hip

We’re starting to see a lot more LEGO Star Wars creations as we ramp up toward the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens LEGO sets — or maybe as I get excited myself, I’m just noticing them more. Either way, this little Miniland scene by Matt De Lanoy had me laughing uproariously. I realize it’s not a new joke, but Matt’s LEGO build is very well executed, with instantly recognizable characters, innovative parts usage (more on that below), and very cool lighting.

Matt built this as part of the current Iron Builder challenge, with the barbell accessory piece as the seed part. Expect to see a lot of posts over the coming days featuring this piece…

Exclusive review of LEGO Ideas Wall•E set designed by Angus MacLane [Review]

Last July, the LEGO Wall-E designed by Pixar director/animator Angus MacLane achieved 10,000 votes on LEGO Ideas, and its approval as an upcoming official set was announced in February. LEGO officially unveiled the set just yesterday, but thanks to the good people of Billund, we already have a copy of the set for a hands on review!

Spoiler alert: Wall•E is a a fantastic model with some great building techniques, lots of parts in an unusual color, and quite a good value for the money. I expect strong popularity from the subject matter alone, so I strongly recommend you pick up your LEGO Wall•E while supplies last.

Read the full review after the jump!

Lumière and Cogsworth

Koen (Swan Dutchman) recreates the lovable characters Lumière and Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast out of Lego, and he uses clever techniques to capture each ones expression. Take a look at the use of black sausages for the eyebrows and using an upside-down arch with curved slopes to make Cogsworth’s smile.

3LUG Presents: A Tale of Two Cities

As regular readers of the blog may know, Nick Kappatos and I build a joint display every year for BrickFair. This year, we wanted to contrast between organic and mechanical, as well as high-tech sci-fi and low-tech creations. We also just really wanted to build a bustling bazaar. It was also high time to work some motion into the display, even it it was simple. While the motion isn’t terribly complex, I have to say that I think Nick’s rotating ring has a perfectly sci-fi feel to it that I love (and can’t take credit for). I also tried my wobbly hand at a fly-through video… with an iphone.

First official images of Star Wars: The Force Awakens LEGO sets! [News]

Here’s your first look at the lineup of sets for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. No word yet on precisely when these will hit stores, but you can probably look for them in the next month or two. See the full list below the jump (mild spoilers possible).

75101 First Order Special Forces TIE fighter ($69.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online

75099 Rey’s Speeder ($19.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online

75100 First Order Snowspeeder ($39.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online

75102 Poe’s X-Wing Fighter ($79.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online

75103 First Order Transporter ($89.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online

75104 Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle ($119.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online

75105 Millennium Falcon ($149.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online

Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution

Hello minions! Claptrap, everyone’s favorite/most hated robot from the Borderlands game is back again. We’ve featured some fantastic renditions of this iconic character before, from Medium scale to stupidly large-life scale, but I think this build by Davyn (Rifflestein) is my favorite version yet, in adorable minifig scale:

What most readers don’t know is I actually built a minifig scale version of Claptrap, and while there has been times people have based work off of my builds, it’s rare someone like Davyn comes along and basically goes: “I can do way better.”

Which he did!

What resulted was an incredibly well thought out build, using the lamp holder as the wheel, and minifig hands as the entire arm is just perfect. It was also really cool how he presented his build in the same unique cel shading of the game …

… I think I have to go build me a set of these now.

LEGO official Wall•E set finally revealed [News]

LEGO has raised the curtain on its latest set, 21303 Wall•E. This is our first official glimpse of the finished product since an official Wall•E set was announced over a year ago, and we’re excited to bring our readers a full hands-on review of this set tomorrow!

LEGO Ideas member MacLane is an animator and director at Pixar Animation Studios, and built his original WALL•E model around the same time the character was being built digitally at Pixar in late 2005. Since then, Angus has refined his model, most recently by collaborating with LEGO Designer Steen Sig Andersen and WALL•E director Andrew Stanton to bring the official LEGO Ideas version to life.
You’ll be able to purchase your own WALL•E starting September 1, for a recommended retail price of $49.99 / EUR 49,99.

You can read the rest of the press release over at the LEGO Ideas blog.

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