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.

Presenting BRICKNADO² : The hell we can!

It’s summer time, and that means there’s another goddam Sharknado movie round the corner. Last year’s BRICKNADO contest was heralded as our “dumbest idea ever” so we just had to do it again, this time to celebrate the impending release of Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No. Hec, we couldn’t even get our sequel numbers to line up with theirs, but we don’t care.

The 3rd movie is centered around Florida, Washington DC, and David Hasselhoff’s personality. We can’t wait to see how you exploit these iconic locations. But get cracking, because you’ve only got two weeks!

The Rules of BRICKNADO²

Build a LEGO model – the funnier and more outrageous the better. Then add one photo of your creation to the BRICKNADO² Flickr group. You are welcome to submit more than one creation, but The Brothers Brick reserve the right to SAW YOU IN HALF if you overdo it! No digital creations are allowed.

All entries must be submitted before July 20th. We will announce the results on the 22nd, right before the movie airs. Three lucky winners will receive a variety of shark-tastic prizes, that we’ll reveal next week.

“They’re sharks, they’re scary, and no-one wants to get eaten. But I’ve been eaten, and it takes a lot more than that to bring a good man down…” – Fin Shepard

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Shooty Spider Mech

This deliciously detailed minimech by Flavio is a feast for the eyes. The greebling is practical and the shape is a novel take that reverses the proportions of the ubiquitous tachikoma.

Apartment life

César Soares built a series of vignettes depicting various rooms of a stylish apartment. The presentation of the vignettes by stacksing the rooms creates an illusion of the tight quarters of an actual apartment.

Microscale Jurassic Park

Maybe a T. rex chasing after you won’t be as scary if it’s only 2 inches tall. That’s what’s going on in Sami Mustonen‘s mini Jurassic Park. The rendering of the models look so real you probably didn’t think it was all digital Lego.

Have a smurfy day!

Despite more comebacks and fewer female characters than the Star Wars franchise, the Smurfs are still wildly popular today, almost 60 years after their first appearance as a Belgian comic strip. With two new Smurf movies behind us and another one in the works, it was only a matter of time before fans got tired waiting for LEGO to get in on the action, and took matters into their own hands. Which is exactly what Lee Jones and a team of builders did at BrickWorld Chicago did last month!

This huge diorama depicts the Smurf village, complete with forest landscaping, mushroom houses, and a forced-perspective version of Gargamel’s castle. All beautifully rounded off with the giant intruding faces of Gargamel and Azrael (courtesy of Tyler Halliwell and Kevin Lauer).

But the most remarkable part of this display have to be the Smurf minifigs. No, you’re not seeing things… Those aren’t shoddy clone brand figures. And no, LEGO didn’t secretly launch a line of collectible Smurf figs when no-one was looking. These are 100% custom manufactured! Lee’s team worked with BrickForge and Brick Fortress to design and produce custom components (heads, tails, even rotatable arms) all to “LEGO quality”. The results speak for themselves. Our pals at Beyond the Brick talked to Lee at BrickWorld and got the low-down…

Crazy Arms are a crazy cool idea

Regular readers of this blog will be no stranger to Guy Himber’s Crazy Bricks, which has been classing-up the world of figs for years now with top hats, skulls, and all manner of other unique accessories. But Guy’s latest offering, Crazy Arms, could be a game changer for mini-fig fans.

These patent pending replacement arms not only offer better poses for your figs, but also solve the problem of how hard it has always been to remove and re-insert the standard arms into the standard torso. How? Watch the video below to find out!

Crazy Arms will only be available through a Kickstarter project. So if you want to get your posable fleshy hands on some, you’d better back it before the end of the month!

I live, I die. I LIVE AGAIN!

Jordan Schwartz built the vehicle driven by Immortan Joe from the latest Mad Max movie. It features the stacked 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Villes along with the powerful engine and front plow. Surely getting a ride in this bad boy will take you straight to the gates of Valhalla!

Avro Arrow

The Avro Arrow is steeped in Canadian History as it was once the leader in advanced aviation, and to this day is still regarded with special heart in many Canadians. So today as we were setting up for Canada’s largest LEGO convention, Brickfete, I spotted this amazing recreation of this fabled fighter by Bill Kernohan (CapitalBricks):

Usually known for his Starwars MaxiFigs, Bill’s use of stickers for both cockpit as well as the details on the wings shows that he can build just as well at minifig scale.

If you’re in Toronto this weekend, you can check out Bill’s MaxiFigs and his Avro Arrow, and a host of other builds this Saturday and Sunday at Brickfete.

Massive LEGO StarCraft display has more pylons than you’ll ever need

Gaming fans, get ready to reattach your socks once you’ve marveled at this 14 foot long microscale LEGO StarCraft diorama, unveiled at Brickworld Chicago last week:

Whether you identify as Protoss, Terran or Zerg, there is so much detail to enjoy in this monstrous display, built over the course of 3 years by 9 builders in 4 different countries. How many bricks were used? We don’t know – the team lost count! I’m guessing “quite a lot”.

Huge props to the amazing team of Cecilie Fritzvold, Tim Schwalfenburg, Matt De Lanoy, Chris Perron, John Moffat, Bart De Dobbelaer, Sean and Steph Mayo and our very own Simon Liu. And rumor has it parts of this epic layout may be appearing at other LEGO fan conventions in the not-too-distant future.

Meanwhile, check out their cool fly-through video, or pore over dozens of closeup images of the layout and it’s many individual units on their Flickr group:

Crowbar from Transformers

There’s no shortage of greebles and details in this Lego model of Crowbar from Transformers by jake_tp. While the model makes use of some custom elements, they blend in well and contributes to the organic biomechanical look of this villain.

TBB cover photo: July 2015

Summer is here – and so is the Minions movie! Appropriately, the winner of our informal monthly TBB cover photo contest is this amazing spread of Minion variants by Oliver Kude. Utini!

You can keep up with the Brothers Brick by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter. And for occasional extra goodies, you can also follow us on Flickr or subscribe to us on YouTube.

REMINDER ABOUT COVER PHOTO SUBMISSIONS: Please only submit photos that meet our guidelines and therefore stand a chance of being chosen. Do not use the cover photo group just to promote your latest MOC. It makes more work for us, and your spamming could get you blocked! If you want your MOC to get our attention, simply add it to the Flickr LEGO group. Or send us cupcakes.

Around the World in 80 Days

One of the great joys of Brickworld is to see the massive collaborations that take place, and this year’s most ambitious and massive feat of LEGO engineering was VirtuaLUG’s Around the World in 80 Days:

Based off the movie and book, written by Jules Verne, it tells the story of the misadventures of Mr. Phileas Fogg, his manservant Passepartout and Inspector Fixx. Much like the Fogg, the tale of this group build stretches all around the world, with 25 contributors, bricks were sent from all over the United States, Canada, Belgium and even New Zealand to complete this masterpiece.

This build was an amazing 10 feet by 20 feet in size and a whole year of planning, organizing and building, not just LEGO bricks, but custom table and supports for the series of mosaics chronicling the 80 day adventure. It is made up of of 224x 32×32 stud baseplates littered with both minifgure-scale and micro-scale builds, several operating trains, and one big world – with spinning sign.

Our friends at Beyond the Brick take us through an in depth interview with the Project Leader Heath Flor about this layout:

You can see more details photos of this display in the Flickr Group