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 tales and songs fall utterly short of your enormity, oh Smaug the stupendous!”

Regular readers will know that we’ve featured many LEGO dragons over the years, but I think on this occasion YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID now that heavy-duty character builder Shawn Snyder has decided to get in on the game with this recreation of Tolkien’s Smaug. From head to tail it’s 28 inches and the wingspan is a whopping 35 inches!

We used Sauron’s seeing-stone to track down the damp cave that Shawn hides in, and dispatched our goblin hoard to interrogate him about his latest bunker-busting creation…

TBB: You’re best known for creating large figures and busts of humanoid characters from videogames such as Halo and Assassins Creed, or movies like Iron Man and Predator. What inspired you to attempt a monster this time?

SS: I’ve actually wanted to make a dragon for quite some time. It wasn’t until ArchLUG did a collaborative build of Laketown that made me commit to finally attempt it. After all, Laketown needs a Smaug!

TBB: Tell us about the build. How did you get such a large yet detailed model to stay in one piece? Did it present any new building challenges for you?

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Definitely no ugly duckling

Not many people have mastered the LEGOLAND building style, outside of the master builders of LEGOLAND themselves. But for several years now, teen builder Joshua Christenson has been employing this technique to create convincing sculptures far smaller than those you’d typically see in the theme parks, as illustrated by this beautiful swan…

Forestry Crane Truck

Toronto got hit pretty bad last year with an ice storm and destroyed a lot of Toronto’s tree cover, which took weeks to clean up all the poor trees. The only cool part was I got to see a lot of the Toronto Forestry trucks rolling around, which Isaac Mazer (Ricecracker.) was able to recreate with stunning accuracy:

This Freightliner 108SD truck is operated by the City of Toronto’s Department of Forestry, and Isaac has been able to recreate the truck’s distinctive hood – in minifig scale – by shaping an official LEGO eraser!

This truck also has a functional truck bed to dump out trees and a knuckle-boom crane to pick up trees:

The Grand Budapest Hotel made with over 50,000 Lego bricks

Ryan Ziegelbauer led a team of Lego designers to create this massive replica of The Grand Budapest Hotel from the Wes Anderson film. Together they spent around 575 hours and used more than 50,000 Lego blocks to make this 7-foot-tall model. Check out the video below for a glimpse of the building process.

Homer’s The Odyssey – Ὀδύσσεια

Those lucky enough to go to Brickworld Chicago this year were treated to VirtuaLUG‘s story time with their incredible 300 square foot retelling of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.

This amazing collaborative layout tells the story of the Greek hero Odysseus and his 10 year adventure home after the battle of Troy. Feel free to take the video tour of this massive Layout, courtesy of our friends at Beyond the Brick:

VirtuaLUG of course is the mega-group that brought us Lord of the Rings (2011), Alice in Wonderland (2012) and The Wizard of Oz (2013). So it came as no surprise that they took home Brickworld’s top prize (and Master Builder to boot!):

image (1) VirtuaLUG (Not pictured: Bart, Kevin, Kyle, Mark and Leo)

Follow the story of Odysseus as told by VirtuaLUG →

Friday Night Fights – Exo Suits

Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another round of Friday Night Fights. Tonight we celebrate the release of Pete Reid’s Exo Suit. Space fans (my self included) have been eagerly waiting for news and now finally the reveal of this fan favorite Ideas set.Let’s go to the tale of the tape.

In the light grey corner we have BillyBurg with his midi-Exo Suit:

In the dark grey corner we have Ilya T(traples) with his B.A.R. Exo Suit:

As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding, by way of comment, which of these Exo Suits you would want on your SHIP. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, Ships of the fleet, Showing that size doesn’t always matter the Corvette Beatrix won 4-2! Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!

Happy Exploding Christmas! (...aka the Fourth of July)

My fellow ‘Murrricans! We at The Brothers Brick hope you have all been enjoying a relaxing and safe Independence Day. As you digest your fine barbequed meats and drink some approximation to beer in preparation for the Final Detonation, let’s take look at some of the better holiday-themed LEGO creations that appeared today. America is known for its rich cultural diversity and freedom of speech, and today’s builds certainly reflect that…

On this day, some like to take a more serious stance, and look back at our nation’s founding:

Tyler Clites (legohaulic)

While some prefer to look a little less far back, and go the more popular route:

Chris McVeigh (powerpig)

While others decide to just be brutally honest:

Brailey (That WWII Guy)

And as an immigrant to this fine nation of ours, let me just close by saying: “God bless America, and oh crap I can’t understand your language and everything here scares me!”

Win cool prizes in the Fairy Bricks charity raffle

The annual Fairy Bricks charity raffle has begun! For £1, you can purchase a raffle ticket through PayPal to win Lego products from autographed sets to the newest exclusives like the 10242 Mini Cooper. Fairy Bricks is a UK based charity that donates Lego sets to children’s hospitals across the world. Check out photos of their donations and learn more about this awesome charity on fairybricks.org.

LEGO Ideas Exo Suit Officially Revealed [News]

LEGO has just released an announcement video for the forthcoming LEGO Ideas (née Cuusoo) set, 21109 Exo Suit, based on Peter Reid’s terrific design submission. This is one of the more imaginative videos LEGO has done for an announcement, and it fits perfectly into Peter’s Space universe that he lays out in his book, LEGO Space: Building the Future. See our previous coverage of this set here and here. There appears to still be no word on the price or part count, though it is set to be released in August.

As straight as an arrow

If my local comic book store is any indicator, comic fans are often action figure fans too. So I’d imagine followers of DC’s Green Arrow would just love to get their hands on this LEGO version by French builder Nicolas “icare” Picot. Standing 50cm tall, it has 44 points of articulation, which qualifies it as ready for action in my book!

A case of the blues

Kurt Vinnedge (vinn) has been slowly crafting this sweet microscale ship over the past year. The Helena debuted at BrickWorld a few weeks ago and somehow looks even better in person – just don’t bump it, or those awesome faceted angles will fracture into a thousand blue shards.

Reckless Abandon Starfighter

Even among some of the best Starfighter builders around, Chris Maddison manages to stand out as he puts in this phenomenal entry into the Starfighter Telephone Game:

Combining the styling of the previous Stafighters, Chris takes it to the next level with the amazing use of the light brick inside the Galaxy Squad pod, which gives this already very alien ship that extra exotic look.