The upcoming DC FanDome event has announced that a new LEGO Exclusive Supergirl Minifigure will be given away during the online experience. A total of 1,495 figures will be part of the sweepstakes. This version of the Supergirl minifigure is inspired by the CW DC Comics Television Series Supergirl featuring Melissa Benoist in the lead role as Kara Zor-El.
Click to find out more about the event and giveaway details
Most artists I know are usually intimidated by a blank canvas. That doesn’t seem to bother this painter adding color to an otherwise monochrome landscape, by Carter Witz. By choosing to make most of the landscape unpainted, Carter is able to use some great LEGO parts that come in limited colors, like teeth, claws, and horns, and even a few skeleton arms. Plus, as a bonus, the green frog serves as a large paint blob spilling out of the bucket. It’s a happy accident that Bob Ross would be proud of.
The ruinous landscape – a popular pictorial theme is recreated in the LEGO medium here in this beautiful vignette by Jaap Bijl. Of course, LEGO is great for construction, but even more so LEGO can provide builders with an opportunity to be forces of deconstruction and deterioration – creators of ruin. This sublime energy is perfectly captured in Bijl’s build.
The main part of this built scene is arguably the decaying classical temple. The triangular roof at the top – the pediment is depicted as half existent and utilizes the 4×4 petaled flower piece and some white wing pieces as ornament. The broken columns are built using 2×2 round profile bricks. Perhaps my favorite mini-build here is the broken statue which is made out of a pair of white minifigure legs with some random elements piled on top. The statue on the left looks rather intact but creatively uses the 4×4 petaled flower once again, this time as a shield. Bijl generously applies a variety of LEGO plant elements to give viewers a sense of natural reclamation. I really appreciate how Bijl builds the ruins in such a way that they appear to be sinking into a swamp of green tiles. No ruinous destination is complete without some tourists taking in the sights, and we can see here some minifigures making their way across the swamp in a brick-built boat ready for adventure.
A few months ago we reported that LEGO was discontinuing its Creator Expert branding in favor of a broader array of adult-targeted LEGO sets. There’s no longer a handy moniker to round up these sets, but most of them bear the new 18+ age recommendation, which simply denotes their focus on adults rather than signifying anything about the difficulty of the set, as the age bracket has traditionally done. However, most of the sets that have come out of the new initiative fall neatly within the familiar styles from previous years, such as the Star Wars UCS A-wing, Crocodile Locomotive, or the Haunted House. One new assortment stands out, though, with the LEGO Art line featuring a series of four sets that let you assemble your own wall decor mosaic-style. Today we’re taking a look at 31199 Marvel Studios Iron Man, which is available now for US $119.99 | CAN $149.99 | UK £114.99. It has 3,167 pieces, and includes instructions to assemble one of three different portraits of various Iron Man suits. Alternatively, if you purchase three copies of the sets, you can build a huge Iron Man image that’s three times the size. So let’s take a look at the new mosaic set and see if it lives up to expectations.
When you’re looking at a LEGO creation from someone who’s Flickr handle is “BigPlanes,” you’d expect to see something massive and aeronautical. And, sure enough, this LEGO Northrop XB-35 Flying Wing by Jack Carleson checks those boxes. If you’re looking for information about the technology behind the real XB-35, I’d suggest a trip to Wikipedia. But here at the Brothers Brick, we’re more taken by the excellent building techniques of this model. A masterful combination of SNOT building and Technic wizardry makes this not only a beautiful model but a functional one as well. This huge aircraft has motorized engines, a retractable undercarriage, and even a detailed interior including bomb bays.
Builder Nikita Sukhodolov refers to this great monolithic LEGO masterpiece as “The Decaying Hive.” Personally, I don’t see a sense of decay here, probably because I cannot look past its brutalist brilliance. In this build Nikita demonstrates how LEGO and boxy modern architecture are the perfect pairing.
The two main towers of this building feature some great tiling as well as excellent use of 1×1 slope pieces (AKA cheese slopes) in grey and translucent black to create an intricate window design. While the housing units with their carved out of concrete appearance are uniform in their shape; Nikita utilizes translucent clear bricks, 1×2 palisade bricks, as well as 1×2 profile bricks to give each unit a slight variation. The palisade bricks appear as blinds, while some minifigure inhabitants prefer shutters which are created by the profile bricks. There are some splashes of color to liven up the structure such as the pink potted plant and green umbrella on the top of the building as well as the landscape scene which the main build sits upon. Overall I think it’s safe to say that the rigid geometric look of brutalist architecture is clearly well translated into LEGO and Nikita makes this translation look easy with his expert use of some pretty common elements.
LEGO figure builder Letranger Absurde is at it again and this time he’s built Sheena: Queen of the Jungle. Where else but the jungle or possibly the zoo can a bald eagle and a zebra live in the same ecosystem? The builder tells us this idea has been a work in progress since 1874. If you’re like me and believe everything you read on the internet this means he had knowledge of Sheena sixty-three years before she made her comic book debut in 1937. No wonder Letranger is so talented! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to respond to an email from a super-polite Nigerian prince who has a lucrative business proposition in exchange for just a little account information. He seems to be a nice fellah. In the meantime, check out Letranger’s impressive archives, especially the Stone Age Huntress we recently featured.
LEGO Builder Grant Davis has been having a lot of fun lately with the 4×4 flower part. Here he’s used it to decorate the roof of this Gingerbread House. But this isn’t the only smart usage of parts in this sweet treat. A gingerbread house is typically decorated by piping icing onto the gingerbread base, and Grant used all sorts of organically shaped white parts to mimic this. Among the parts he used are the egg, the candle and a lot of round, half-round and quarter-round tiles. The use of rubber bands beneath the eaves and for the X-shaped windows deserves a quick mention too. Did you spot the different types of helmets he used for candy?
Last year, the LEGO Foundation revealed Braille Bricks, a tool to “help children with vision impairment learn critical thinking, problem-solving and collaboration through play.” Today, they are announcing that the bricks are being officially launched in Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, the UK and the US after a successful pilot and testing program. The toolkits will be distributed free of charge to select institutions and schools serving the needs of children with visual impairments. Training and teaching supplements are available to everyone at LEGObraillebricks.com.
LEGO Braille Bricks are molded so that the studs on top represent individual letters and numbers in the Braille alphabet. They are also printed with the letters and numbers so they can be used in a collaborative and inclusive way with sighted peers. The LEGO Foundation will launch Braille Bricks in an additional 13 additional countries in early 2021, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
Read the official Braille Bricks announcement from LEGO and see an expanded gallery of photos.
LEGO builder MorlornEmpire shows us how to add structure to a build in his LEGO temple named Deeper. There are so many parts used in an unconventional way that my eyes do not know where to look first. So let’s start from the top. The build features some palm trees made with flex tubing to give it the organic, not so static look and a ‘temple’ entrance covered in sand. The entrance is made of plates with tiles stuck between the studs to create a pattern. It’s almost as if there is a message written on the facade of the building.
Underneath the surface is the actual inside of the ‘temple’ and the walls are packed with intricate details. In the top we see cat tail elements, and the half round spoked window part filled with cheese slopes. Further down we come across the good old groove brick with a bar filling up the groove hole. To continue with 1×2 bricks filled with bucket handles. The columns have some stacked 1×2 panels to add texture and the tiled floor is made of inlaid cheese slopes.
I wonder how much of this creation is staying in place thanks to friction and gravity.
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part was a fun and amusing romp that reunited us with our friends Emmet, Lucy, and LEGO Batman. More importantly, though it released a few sets that featured a new color; coral. It’s a pretty color but limited and potentially difficult in its use. But builders like Simon Hundsbichler step up to the challenge and do it with amazing results. There are only three colors in this creation: Dark Tan, Light Royal Blue, and the aforementioned Vibrant Coral. A mix of plates and tiles adds intricate texture to the ground while a variety of coral bricks makes for a vibrant splash of color. Simon has proven to be a master of the LEGO medium, even with a limited palette. We’ve been smitten with Simon’s build techniques and color choices before.
In ancient times, humans domesticated dogs to help them hunt, and they became our best friends. But what if we’d chosen cats instead, as this LEGO huntress, depicted by Letranger Absurde has? While the one-piece sabretooth tigers are considered big cats to minifigures, to this brick-built character, they’re positively darling little killing machines.
The huntress herself is no slouch either – this Paleolithic predator is built to survive. I mean, just look at those palisade brick abs! Hopefully it was warm back then, because those bucket handles and ingots don’t look like that warm of an outfit. Maybe she’s just a Stone Age cat lady? She even has tangled hair, expertly crafted out of LEGO chain, to match the stereotype.