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.

LEGO Star Wars UCS Imperial Star Destroyer and Winter Village Gingerbread House now available for VIPs [News]

Two new exclusive sets are now available for purchase to LEGO VIPs (free to join). The first is the massive Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series 75252 Imperial Star Destroyer which comes with 4,784 pieces and two Imperial minifigures for US $699.99 | CAN $849.99 | UK £649.99. The second is the 2019 Winter Village set, 10267 Gingerbread House, which comes with 1,477 pieces and, two gingerbread minifigures for US $99.99 | CAN $139.99 | UK £84.99.

Purchases of 75252 Imperial Star Destroyer also qualify for double VIP points for a short time through the 22nd, which means you’ll accumulate a hefty amount of points for more LEGO purchases or other swag in the future. These sets will likely go out of stock quickly ahead of the holidays. (Fair warning that the newly overhauled LEGO Shop Online may need a few moments to get both sets listed and available, so make sure you are logged into your LEGO VIP account before attempting to purchase.)

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Devour the delicious LEGO 10267 Winter Village Gingerbread House [Review]

The Winter Village series is always highly anticipated, keeping LEGO fans on their toes regarding what the next set will be in the ever-growing storybook town. The series is celebrating eleven years of beloved Christmas scenes, the first of which was introduced in 2009. Now, fans of the theme can build the Winter Village Gingerbread House. Minus the re-release of the very first Winter Village Toy Shop in 2015, this is the tenth set in the series. It consists of 1477 pieces, the second-highest piece count in this series after the Winter Village Cottage (1490 pieces). Set 10267 Gingerbread House is priced at US $99.99 | CAN $139.99 | UK £89.99 and will be available on the 1st of October.

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Sea green boat is full of charm, and fishermen

When you live on a planet where 71% of its surface is covered in water, boats are a pretty common sight and an important part of many of the population’s livelihood. Considering this, it is no surprise that boats are such a popular subject with LEGO builders around the world. This digital model built by Edouard Clo is full of great details familiar to anyone who has spent time on a fishing boat. There are winches for pulling the days catch fore and aft, and a small dingy as well as racks of fishing poles, and car tires used to protect the hull when it comes in to dock. The model also features a very nicely curved hull, which can be almost as challenging as getting your sea-legs.

LEGO version of Florence’s Santa Maria del Fiore

Good LEGO microscale buildings manage to capture the essence of their subject, but the very best also trick the eye into looking much bigger than they really are. Rocco Buttliere showcases his skills once more, this time tackling the UNESCO-listed Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

The real thing took 140 years to complete and is a masterpiece of Italian Gothic. Rocco’s version is a masterpiece of microscale, standing maybe only 20 bricks high, but somehow feeling much larger. That’s a testament to the level of detail packed into the model, the result of studs-in and studs-out building, and a great selection of parts, including two types of turntable bases, grille tiles, tooth bricks, Technic pins, and lightsaber hilts. Match all that with a beautifully captured dome, and a smart colour scheme, and you end up with a LEGO church which is fully worth of your praise.

Built for speed and set the standard

1967 was the year Formula 1 changed forever, as the birth of the Lotus 49 set the bar not only as the car to beat, but also to replicate. Fifty-two years on, Pixeljunkie has presented us with a gorgeous homage to this feat of engineering mastery. Sporting the classic colour scheme and markings of driver Jim Clark, this brick rendition has some stunning custom chrome pins as well as some nicely employed stickers to really bring the realism to the fore. Working within the Minifig scale can be an obscure challenge that restricts an amount of detail. I feel Pixeljunkie has made some excellent compromises without straying too far from the source material.

Looking at the rear of this beautiful build, we find a minifig hammer head used ingeniously as the gearbox. I’m not sure another piece could have been used so well in this application. I’m also a massive fan of the many uses builders find for the rubber tread attachments. Using them as wheel hubs on top those metallic silver dish rims, has really captured the era well.

If this open-wheel beast inspires you, check out another of Pixeljunkie’s classic race machines, the Alfa Romeo P3.

LEGO launches “Rebuild the World” campaign to inspire creativity in kids around the globe [News]

LEGO launched a new initiative today called Rebuild the World, a campaign with the purpose to “help nurture the creative skills of the next generation.” The company has partnered with musician Mark Ronson, British designer and inventor Dominic Wilcox, and 19-year-old David Aguilar, who built a prosthetic arm out of LEGO to ultimately “nurture the creativity and problem solving-capabilities every child is born with.”

To mark the occasion, LEGO is hosting some events at the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark and launched a series of videos that discuss how we can “Rebuild the World.” LEGO CEO Niels B. Christiansen and LEGO Brand Group Chairman Jørgen Vig Knudstorp also filmed a video explaining the initiative with a special message to AFOLs around the world.

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The Demon’s price seems reasonable — he only wants your soul

Demons stalk the night. Or at least they do in Jayfa‘s world. This LEGO Bionicle creation is a wonderfully dark and brooding character, put together using a prototype mask and custom-designed wing membranes. The pose is excellent, powerful and intimidating, and the colour scheme is spot-on — those splashes of trans-blue work brilliantly with the pearl gold against all the black. Inexperienced warlocks beware, this probably wasn’t the low-level denizen of the Netherworld you meant to summon…

Close your eyes and repeat after me: less is more

It is safe to say that most builds featured here on The Brothers Brick are large. Not all of them are massive dioramas that take up a kitchen table, but they usually require at least hundreds, if not many thousands, of pieces. This build by alego alego is an exception. I count no more than 15 or 16 elements used in the whole build! However, it perfectly captures the essence of a small hut surrounded by stony paths and grass, a water feature, bridge, and blossoming cherry tree. Nothing is out of place, nothing is extraneous. Each element is chosen for its job with precision.

The base is a shield from the Knights Kingdom II Sir Rascus constraction figure, which most builders have probably set aside in a box as unusable for any future build due to its awkward size and shape (I know I have a few of the KKII shields gathering dust somewhere, never used — picked up on a whim from BrickLink). The printing on the hut looks even better than it did as part of an ice cream cone, and the conical hat is the perfect roof; a sausage makes a lovely curved bridge, too. Leaving the flowers still on the sprue was a nice touch to give the tree a more spreading foliage. I’d love to sit by the water for a while, eyes closed, sleep–, er, “meditating”.

The concrete results of artistic abstraction

When building with LEGO bricks, most people opt for recreating something that mirrors our experiences. We draw inspiration from the real world — maybe we look to movies, literature, or some other media, but our creations look like things that exist…or could possibly exist…in our reality. What, then, should we make of the artistic abstractions of Crimso Giger? Even though they exist as physical models, these spaces are like nothing we’d expect to encounter. Crimso has combined geometric abstraction with sculpture, leading us into an unfamiliar world without giving us a roadmap.
Sure, you can try and make sense of these images by trying to force some sort of logic onto them. Take Abstract – Yellow Grey Black, for example. The choice of colors and shapes reminds me of the interior of a computer, or a cityscape that’s been bent like a scene from Inception or Doctor Strange. But that’s just my perspective – maybe this is something else entirely.

Abstract – White Black Red makes me think of gaming. The red and black tiles seem to form a checkerboard, and the black and white groupings remind me of backgammon boards and dice. But what is that construction in the center? Is the “x” shape in the 1x6x5 rectangular girder a call out to Tic-Tac-Toe? Have I completely missed the point? I just don’t know!

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Whatever they offer you, don’t feed the plants!

Builder Frost takes us to a forbidden planet where the plants have a mind of their own. We’ve featured some of his terrific space builds here in the past and he doesn’t disappoint in this latest offering. While this couldn’t be considered “Classic Space” in the LEGO sense, it exudes a wonderfully vintage vibe.

I’m a big fan of old science fiction pulp novels. Their covers, painted in lurid colors, have a certain take on weird fantasy visuals that doesn’t really exist anymore. This model really captures the feeling of those old covers with its oversized alien-looking, tentacled plants. I appreciate the thoughtful use of transparent pieces that really help sell the bizarreness of the landscape. In particular, I’m quite fond of the blue and purple lighting pieces and the pink half domes. The decision to use the Flash Gordon style suits on the space travelers further drives home the whole 1940s look.

Not satisfied with a purely stationary LEGO creation, Frost has built animation into it and as an added bonus, the large green egg-like centers glow under blacklight. As you can see in this video, the large tentacled plants move and sway, beckoning our heroes ever closer to what may be a gruesome fate.

A little thought about big spaceships...along with a big spaceship

Large spaceships get the geeky type quite excited, and we LEGO builders are some of the geekiest. Over the decades, this has lead to a standardized criteria of what qualifies as a large space ship – 100 studs in length. While I do love every large spaceship out there (as the especially geeky type of person I am), I wonder if this criteria has started to impede creativity. With an annual celebration of large LEGO spaceships (also known as SHIPs) every September, the bricks of the world have been concentrated to bring us many elongated spacecraft that quite often measure exactly or just over 100 LEGO studs long. What about bulkier 90 or 80-stud spaceships that so rarely get made? On the other side of the coin, this cultural phenomenon has been a great source of inspiration to builders who may not have otherwise built a big hunk of space metal, not even a medium sized one! Another point is that this common perception of what qualifies as “large” is a uniting factor in the community.

The third side of this (apparently three-sided) coin are builds that are basically the definition of an elongated spaceship, but still manage to impress immensely! Anthony Wilson brings us a creation that has some amazing textures, negative space and colour blocking. What I love most about Anthony’s Pelicon-3 is the bridge area, with windows on either side, revealing a busy interior filled with trophy minifigures.

Jumping on board the Mexican bandwagon

Most Western-themed LEGO creations take their architectural inspiration from the single-street towns of the Gold Rush — clapperboard buildings, usually saloons and general stores. It makes for a pleasant change to see something a little more Southwestern in tone with Andrea Lattanzio‘s build of a classic whitewashed adobe flat-roofed house. And even better, there’s not a gunfighter in sight; instead, we’re treated to a mariachi band arriving in their wagon to serenade the farmer’s beautiful daughter. The house is a visual treat, covered with nice details, from the use of printed 1×1 round tiles on the protruding ends of the logs to the plant-covered arbors that provide shady spots on the flat roof. The use of woodgrain tiles above the windows and doors adds some welcome texture amongst the white. Bien hecho, Andrea!