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.

If you’re going to create a portal, make sure you know where you’re going

My favorite LEGO builds are always ones that contain story, humor and lots of color. Builder Victor hits all three of these points perfectly and throws in a little absurdity for good measure. As the story goes, Diogenes Trexler ordered a pizza on his home planet that smelled so delicious it attracted the attention of a giant worm. Plotting his escape, our pizza-loving hero created an ill-advised portal that opened on to the bathroom of one very surprised bather.

The landscaping and colorwork in this piece are gorgeous and there is a minimum of visible studs, giving it a very slick look. The worm really pops with its blue colors and excellent shape. The alien fauna is colorful and appropriately weird and creepy. The portal is nicely rendered with transparent pieces and the change between the two universes is wonderful, going from organic shapes to the clean tiles of a modern bathroom. The surprised bather, caught in mid blow-dry is the perfect punch line with his terrified face and hair blowing toward the ceiling. In my opinion, it’s little touches like these that make the difference between a good model and a great one.

Check out the model from another angle to see all the details

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Hello there, General Grievous

TBB newcomer VelociJACKtor has built the dastardly leader of the Separatist’s droid army from Star Wars. I dig the textured dark grey legs and ribs juxtaposed against the smooth tan armor plates. The arms also split as appropriate for the General’s main gimmick. As expected for a model depicting one of the most nefarious — if incompetent — villains in the Star Wars films, General Grievous has several fine lightsabers in his collection from hunting Jedi after being trained by Count Dooku. Maybe the next LEGO Grievous will have a new one.

Not getting enough Grievous in your life? Here’s a model from Marcin Otreba from last summer, or check out the official sets from 2008 and 2015.

Tanksegrity

The LEGO community has been on a big Tensegrity kick lately, and I for one couldn’t be happier. While the art-lover in me is fond of the abstract sculptural versions, there’s just something cool when builders combine the mind-bending physics with their own choice of theme. Carrier Lost has chosen to take things into the realm of science fiction with this Tensegrity Tank. The sleek design and neon highlights makes this feel like it was lifted directly from some TRON:Legacy concept art. Is it a stretch to label this as a new take on a “hovertank” as well?

Where does he get those wonderful toys?

It turns out most people don’t stop collecting toys as adults. For us adult LEGO enthusiasts, we have literal toys but for other grown-ups their toys are a bit harder to define. Take Daniel Church’s “Grownup’s Toy Box” for example. It depicts a nicely built LEGO garage. A motorcycle and a snowblower sit front and center while a hefty toolbox and an array of other tools adorns the background. The brackets holding up the ladder, roof trusses and even the lawnmower handles are constructed from wrenches. The panoramic shot serves this composition nicely. This build even has a soundtrack. These are all neat grown-up toys indeed but is it weird that I still want to play Hungry Hungry Hippos?

LEGO Designers Q&A featuring Marcos Bessa and Jamie Berard [Feature]

On the 30th of April, LEGO hosted a live Instagram session where the LEGO community was able to interact and ask questions directly to two prominent LEGO Designers – Marcos Bessa, and Jamie Berard. With social distancing in place, this new feature is slated to be a weekly event and is a great way to learn more about LEGO and the insights into the mind of a designer. The session was insightful indeed, and we transcribed it here (as best we could) so that you can learn more interesting bits and facts about what LEGO designers do.

Click for the full Q and A session

This hummingbird is more than the sum of its nice parts usage

In the LEGO community, nice parts usage (or NPU) is something many builders strive to achieve. Using parts in an interesting way never fails to garner notice and compliments. Often these types of techniques are scattered throughout the model, but in the case of this hummingbird, builder Jaap Bijl gives us a figure that consists almost entirely of NPU. So, where does one begin?

The tree branch and leaves may be common, but the whips for vines and the small minifigure hammers for the flower stamens take us into unusual territory. The minifigure spanner used for the feet and the clever eye and beak area are stand outs. The wings, however, are a thing of beauty. They’re a terrific combo of flexible tubes, small wrenches and a variety of blue Technic pins and 1×1 round plates to create the wing feathers. The lavender grass pieces and purple antennae make for a nice finisher as tail feathers. They body and silhouette of the bird are quite nice as well and really bring the entire model together as a cohesive whole.

Just another pyramid scheme to leave you ruined

There’s a definite art to building ruins out of LEGO bricks. They aren’t the best medium for it, quite frankly, since the plastic is usually (unless they’re old and much loved) bright and shiny, the edges crisp and square. And ruins are usually dull, dirty, and broken apart. There’s a tendency to try to over-do it and add studs everywhere, or round elements, or a bunch of different colors, and the shape often gets lost in the busy clutter that the build ends up being. But in the hands of an eminently talented builder like Josiah Durand (a.k.a W. Navarre), ruins can be a glorious thing, awe-inspiring just like the real thing in the jungles of the Yucatan. This one is not any one in particular, but the Mayan ruins at Tikal and the Aztec ones at Tenochtitlan served as inspirations.

The steps are excellent with their grille-brick texture, and the mix of smooth surfaces and studs is just right. There are many colors, but the muted earth tones all work together, and even match the printing next to the steps. The skulls give it the grim ambiance associated with the human sacrifices performed at many such sites, and the tiny statuettes give it some scale. And the lighting is perfect on this one, with slightly overcast South American sky giving it a real-world vibe. It looks almost like the real thing! Now that is the mark of some good LEGO ruin building. Take notes, aspiring builders!

The ultimate ride with a tiny horsepower

This is a little unusual, but I’d like to poll our readers out there on this little vehicle. Is this type of bike familiar to you? During my travels, I find that this is a very popular choice of vehicle in many parts of Asia, but not very prominent to almost non-existent, especially in the United States. Perhaps its a very affordable and economical option for shorter distances and developing countries, but seeing something so staple like this is pretty amazing, triggering memories as a child. This stunning bike built by Vietnamese builder Khang Huynh built this Honda Cub that’s in abundance and a main mode of transportation in the country.

It’s used for almost everything you can think of transporting, and he’s even added a sample of a modded vehicle which actually happens a lot on the roads, in this case, to transport a little greenery of pots and plants.

Building Hands built by building hands

For a medium that’s based around the core idea of “you can make anything you want,” LEGO builders just love to impose limitations on their creations. Things like “use only one color of brick” or “it has to be symmetrical,” or even the tricky “you can’t have any exposed studs.” Once again drawing inspiration from the drawings of M.C. Escher, Simon Liu takes that particular set of challenges and overcomes them. (Again.) Escher’s Drawing Hands transforms from flat art into a sculpture of hands creating themselves out of LEGO. Building Hands adds just the right touch of meta-level humor to a great build.

I particularly like how Simon found a clever way around the “no exposed studs” limit. By replicating the studs out of 1×1 round tiles, they both flaunted and followed the rules. Sure, the use of red lights may annoy the “monochromatic purists” among us, but I have a feeling they’re in the minority. No one said anything about limiting the light sources, after all. Or if they did, I didn’t hear about it.

The art and science of LEGO tensegrity builds

The recent trend in the LEGO-sphere community has all been about magical floating compression structures, better known as a tensegrity – a portmanteau of “tensional integrity”. The fad started with a very rudimentary build on a Reddit and soon spawned many more creative iterations. We pick a few of the more outstanding ones that we’ve seen that has impressed us. A couple of them come with build videos and instruction guides for you to build your very own.

Click to see some of the best we’ve spotted around

Star Wars: This place is the pits

Ever wonder what happened after Boba Fett and others fell into the Sarlacc Pit? Jabba sort of hinted there would be a thousand years of slow digestion but according to Cube Brick these LEGO denizens of the pit are having the time of their lives.

Below the sand and the menacing toothy pit lies a lively cantina scene. Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes belts out the only tune they know while a Gungan serves up hard drinks (or blue milk) for the less inebriated. A Twi’lek tantalizes patrons with a pole dance floor show.

And just when a thousand years of slow digestion seems like it couldn’t get any more enticing, the whole shebang shifts to accommodate mood lighting. Now everyone looks totally swanky! Bottoms up, weirdos!

How do you get down from a Bantha? Keep reading and find out!

Ah, the bantha. In Star Wars lore, these giant horned beasts serve as steeds and companions to the bandage-fetishist Tusken Raiders. In the film, they were portrayed by an elephant named Mardji in a giant costume. Not sure why I bring that up, other than to mention that wow, that’s a lot of hair. In related news, Andrew Miller has created a LEGO version of a bantha that somehow transforms plastic elements into the best representation of matted fur that I’ve ever seen.

The effect is created by a skillful combination of curved slope, claws, horns, and even modified plate rock. The legs get their textured look thanks to the inclusion of ridged 2×2 round brick. The use of all the various shades of brown in the LEGO color palete also helps to sell the effect.

But despite the apparent need for a bath, this minifigure scaled beast is still just adorable. I’d love to see this level of detail show up the next time LEGO includes a bantha in a released set.

Oh. And how do you get down from a bantha? You don’t. You get down from a goose. Silly of you to even ask.