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.

SD Command Gundam by Moko

Growing up in Japan in the 80’s, one of my favorite toys (other than LEGO, of course) was little plastic models of the SD Gundam characters. Moko (Flickr) might be a bit younger than I am, but we do share a love of these adorable little mecha.

Don’t be deceived by the diminutive source material — this is a substantial model with an amazing amount of detail. Just look at the subtle grooves around Gundam’s mouth!

The full load-out is also impressive:

See more pictures on Flickr, along with break-down shots on Moko’s blog.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

3...2...1...Launch!

In little more than a week, I’ll be joining more than a dozen other members of the Brickish Association at Brighton Modelworld in the UK. This is a show for scale models of just about any kind imaginable. In the last years it has seen an ever-growing contingent of LEGO builders displaying their models to a discerning audience. Brighton is a wonderful town and the show is always huge fun. Expect a report in due time. At Brighton, among other things, we’ll be displaying a collection of rockets and missiles, including the whopping minifig scale rocket from Tintin built by Ian Greig (bluemoose). This idea prompted me to have a go at a few of the military models that have been on my to-do-list for months.

The first is a Patriot missile Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL), as used by the Dutch military. Patriot is an American surface-to-air missile system intended against aircraft and ballistic missiles. A single system consists of a number of trucks with a radar, command post, generator and communications equipment, coupled to a number of launchers. In the Dutch military, these launchers are mounted on trailers pulled by DAF YAZ-2300 tractor units. Dutch, American and German Patriot units are currently deployed to Southern Turkey, to defend against Syrian ballistic missiles.

My second model is a ballistic missile on its TEL. The (in)famous R-17 Elbrus, better known as the Scud, was developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was widely exported to Soviet allies, including several Warsaw-pact countries as well as various counties in the Middle East, such as Syria, Libya and Iraq. Scud missiles also found their way to North Korea, which developed its own versions and in turn exported those to Iran. My model represents an Iranian missile, known locally as the Shahab-2, on its Russian-built MAZ-543 TEL.

Ballistic missile defense is a fascinating high-tech and high-stakes business. A typical short-range ballistic missile, such as the Scud, travels through the upper reaches of the atmosphere and plummets down towards its target at about five times the speed of sound. To intercept it far enough from its target, the interceptor missile travels at a similar speed. The intercept has also been described as hitting a bullet with a bullet.

The models were interesting to build, because they have lots of details and things that hinge, but also because of their camouflage. Camouflage is designed to break up the contours of an object and to allow it to blend into the background. The colours tend to be arranged in patches. Randomly throwing bits with different colours together doesn’t give you the right look. I tend to use the following guidelines:
1) the border between colours should ideally never be a straight line of more than 3 or 4 studs long before it changes direction.
2) once a border has changed direction once, it should change direction again quickly
Of course, this gets progressively more difficult as the number of colours in the scheme increases and as you move to smaller scales. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t finally gotten my hands on decent numbers of small dark green plates.

And the winners of the 75th LUGnuts challenge are

About four weeks ago, I announced the 75th build challenge organised by LUGNuts, the online group for LEGO car nuts. There normally are no prizes for the challenges, but because this was our 75th we decided to add a little extra incentive. Members could build a car, obviously, but with other members assigning the car in question. The builders of the winning cars get prizes, but also the members who suggested them. The judges had a hard time choosing, but after I tallied up all the votes, we reached a conclusion. Without further ado, here are the winners of the 75th LUGnuts challenge. The comments below the images, written in italic script, are by Lino Martins ( Lino M), who, for lack of a better word, serves as LUGNuts’ ringleader.

In first place:

Pēteris Sproģis shows us all how its done with his stunning1967 Ford GT500. He could have stopped at just building the car, but he sets the scene and tells a story with an entire diorama of a Mustang car pulling a Mustang horse.

In second place:

What happens when Lamborghini turns 50 and has a midlife crisis? The Egoista, as built by Curtis D. Collins (curtydc). Trophy brides half your age will forgive a guy’s pot belly and comb-over if he owned this baby. But you can’t take her with you as its only a one-seater. Awesome job, Curty!

In third place:

Lego Junkie. lives up to his name with his totally awesome Ford RS-200. (…) Good show, Junkie. May you never seek recovery for your addiction.

The winning cars were assigned by Raphael Granas (r a p h y ), Rolands Kirpis (Rolic) and Dylan Denton (/>ylan/>.), respectively.

We post contest announcements on TBB fairly regularly, but I realise that we don’t actually always show the outcome. If it is this good, however, that’s a big omission. Congratulations guys!

Friday Night Fights (Round 35)

Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another awesome round of Friday Night Fights! I was going to pick some Movie related builds to square off tonight, but much like Benny, I got distracted by spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIPS!!!

In the red corner, we have Bob DeQuatre with his Zenith SPACESHIP:

In the blue corner, we have iomedes and his Nodens SPACESHIP:

As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding the outcome of this bout by way of comment. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, the horse race was a bit of a no show with Schfio winning by a score of 3-1. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!

The LEGO Movie, now playing at a theater near you!

The LEGO Movie is out today, and since you’re reading this blog you’re probably making plans to go see it in the near future! Unlike Andrew, I’d been hyped to see this movie ever since the first trailer, and somehow the final product managed to exceed my lofty expectations.

Nick (DarthNick) built this diorama as part of a display for the Toronto premiere, and I think the build (background included) does an excellent job of capturing the spirit of the film.

You can run, but you won’t get far

Milo_Z comes back from hiatus with a vengeance, posting this killer mech inspired by concept art from St Theo. Possessing a gangly greeblyness that’s not often seen in mecha, this is the last thing any fugitive would want to see on their trail.

The color combinations are particularly nice, with each color tied to a different function on the mech. And despite the spindly appearance, it even fits a fig!

Green Machine

While the mech in the foreground might be the focus of this latest scene from Nooreuyed, the dense foliage and vibrant greenery of the jungle background is the real star here. The action isn’t lacking either, with muzzle flashes and splashing water all combining to really bring this scene to life.

LEGO Starcraft Protoss Zealot

The original Starcraft game came out almost 15 years ago and has spawned a decade and a half of Starcraft inspired LEGO builds, from the humble probe, to the hydralisk troops to even the imposing Battle Cruisers.

And today we add another great Starcraft build to the ranks – ccy_8086 has built this fantastic Protoss Zealot with a great mix of bionicle and system:

While there’s tons of great piece usages, the face in particular I thought was fantastic. But this isn’t the first time CCY has embraced his inner gamer, his last build was an equally impressive Space Marine, which he still has built:

Astro Kitty & Angry Kitty

Simon is playing shy and not wanting to blog his own stellar creations it appears. So I will be more than happy to post this in his stead. Here’s Simon’s interpretation of Unikitty dressed in Classic Space garb from the upcoming LEGO Movie.

Edit:
I appear to have missed the fact that Simon based his Astro Kitty on Evan’s Angry Kitty. Which, no offence to Simon, is even more awesome.

I have yet to see the movie, but am anxiously awaiting the release date in my home town (despite my local theatre being old and smelly). In the meantime I will just continue to enjoy all the fan built creations inspired by what appears to be a hit in the making.

LEGO Space: Building the Future [Book Review]

We had previously mentioned the release of Peter Reid & Tim Goddard’s book, LEGO Space: Building the Future, published by No Starch Press. Well it has been a few months since the book was released, and I finally got around to finish reading it with my son and felt it was time for a review.

Let me start by saying that this has to be the highest quality fan-created LEGO book I have yet to lay my geeky hands on. From cover to cover, the quality of photography and overall style is absolutely top notch. You really can tell that this was a labour of love for everyone involved.

I actually had pre-ordered the book on Amazonso received it as soon as it was available, however, I purchased it to give to my 6 year old son for Christmas. I didn’t want to read through it before he got a chance so reluctantly put it away for almost 2 months. I think I was just as excited as he was about opening it up Christmas morning. For the week or so following Christmas, I would find Tate flipping through the book quite often. He is reading now on his own, but the amount of text in the book was a bit overwhelming for him. However, that certainly didn’t stop him from staring in wonder at all the beautiful photographs. He even promptly built his own turtle from the instructions provided (and added some spacemen with laser snowboards for good measure).

The thing that sets this book apart for me is that it reads as a fantastic story throughout the history of space travel, and far into the future. It’s a science fiction novel illustrated with rockin’ LEGO models. Throughout the telling of the book, photographs of LEGO spaceships, alien landscapes, and space stations illustrate the story. And instructions are included for many of the models so the reader can build their own. I found it incredibly entertaining and inspiring to read through, and Tate even more so. As a family of LEGO spacers, I know this book will be read and re-read for years to come. The pictures on their own would inspire any right minded LEGO maniac to build SPACE!, but when coupled with the fantastic story it kicks that inspiration to a whole other level.

So needless to say I highly recommend this book whether you are a 30 something man-child like myself, or need a fantastic and inspiring gift for a child in your life.

Also check out this brilliant Trailer by Chris Salt.

Please follow the links below to buy your own copy and help The Brothers Brick at the same time:

US readers: LEGO Space: Building the Future on Amazon.com
Canadian readers: LEGO Space: Building the Future on Amazon.ca

Brickmania Track Links roll into production [Review]

Last May, Dan Siskind of Brickmania launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of a new kind of track elements designed to work with LEGO. Early this year, my backer reward package arrived, and I’ve been building (and rebuilding) furiously ever since.

My new M4A1 Sherman with a dozer attachment is typical of the engineering vehicles used during the invasion of Normandy, with deep wading snorkels that enabled the tank to be dropped off farther from shore and drive mostly underwater on the sea floor. (I think Dan’s design for his early-production M4 Sherman turret can’t be improved, so I replicated his turret design while adding my own gun barrel for consistency with the rest of my tanks.) Both the M4A3 on the left and the dozer tank use two-wide Track Links, while the M4A3E2 Sherman “Jumbo” on the right uses official three-wide LEGO tracks.

In order to switch the M4A3 with the short 75mm gun barrel from its existing three-wide LEGO track to Track Links, I had to rebuild the suspension. As a result, I don’t think this version — possibly my last — shares more than a few bricks with my original attempt at a Sherman that I first posted nearly four years ago.

LEGO currently produces three types of elements that builders use as tank treads, and all of them are hard to get in any significant quantity (and thus fairly expensive). For those of us who build historical or real-world LEGO models, each of these also has unique problems:

One-wide Technic chain link: The open chain links don’t look a whole lot like actual tank treads.
Three-wide Technic tread: The best official LEGO option for many tanks, but three studs wide is one stud too many for most American tanks of World War II.
Five-wide tread with Technic pin holes: Far too huge for anything most minifig-scale applications.

The most significant gap in available parts is the lack of any official two-wide track. Using two parallel sets of Technic chain link (as I did on my M7 Priest) is cost-prohibitive at best, and doesn’t look all that great. From a historical standpoint, German and Russian tank designers realized that relatively narrow track would just sink in mud, miring and thus disabling the tank. As WWII veteran Belton Cooper described in Death Traps, American tank designers didn’t get that memo. To build historically accurate American tanks, LEGO military modelers need something other than the official LEGO options.

The two-wide Track Links tracks work beautifully on American medium tanks like the M3 Lee/Grant, M4 Sherman, and all the tracked vehicles based on their chassis (such as the M7 Priest and most WWII tank destroyers). Dan himself has been replacing the existing track on many of his vehicles with Track Links, including this beautifully camouflage-patterned M3 Grant and M10 tank destroyer.

Just like regular LEGO track, Track Links clip together with small pins on each side, and they work well with a variety of LEGO gears. Both the single-wide and double-wide Track Links wrap around the gears better than LEGO tracks or chain links, and they roll just as well. Here’s my M3A1 Stuart light tank sporting the single-wide Track Links.

On a related note, you’ll notice that many military builders have begun using the new BrickArms M2HB .50 caliber machine gun. I still like my own brick-built .50 cal, but it’s also nice to have an absolutely accurate option that’s consistent with the BrickArms .30 caliber M1919 Browning machine gun.

In addition to Track Links and a .50 cal, my M8 Scott 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage (with a gun that elevates/depresses and an ammunition trailer) includes several other custom elements:

Brickmania armored division minifig
BrickArms shells
Citizen Brick diamond plate tiles

Will Chapman gave away several prototype M2HBs at BrickCon, and now the production version is available from resellers like Brickmania and G.I. Brick. One difference between the initial prototype and the final production version is that the ammunition canister is a bit looser. It won’t fall out, but it does have a tendency to flop around a bit. Based on the high quality we’ve come to expect from BrickArms over the years, I’m confident that a bit of retooling will address this minor issue soon.

Brickmania Track Links are available in three colors — black, steel, and reddish brown (great for mud/rust) — on Brickmania.com, along with the new BrickArms M2HB.

I’ll also be posting reviews of several Brickmania kits that include Track Links over the next week or two, so check back here for more.

This LEGO oliphaunt still only counts as one

We’ve featured a few oliphaunts from The Lord of the Rings over the years, but I think this one by Elliot Feldman (Simply Complex Simplicity) just might be the biggest. But Elliot’s oliphaunt isn’t just big and static — he’s placed it into an action-packed scene during the battle between Faramir’s men and the Haradrim when Sam and Frodo are trying to reach Mordor.