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 Millennium Falcon hides in plain sight

It’s one of the coolest moments in The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo evades the Imperials by hiding his ship in plain sight, latched on to the hull of a Star Destroyer. Here this memorable scene is recreated in LEGO bricks by Didier Burtin. The model is immediately recognisable — indeed, at first glance it’s practically indistinguishable from a still from the movie. The Star Destroyer’s surface is impressively detailed, packed with a generous level of detail that breaks up all that grey, and the lighting for the photo is spot-on, managing to capture the stark contrast and drama of the original scene.

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The city of Cyrene falls to the Pierian Empire

Despite the inclusion of Classical or Greco-Roman characters in several waves of Collectible Minifigures, the ancient world just isn’t as popular with LEGO Castle builders as the big gray castles of the medieval era. As a result, it’s always refreshing to see great LEGO models from that earlier era. Talented TBB alum Mark Erickson has created a fictional battle between rivals the Pierian Empire and the great city of Tylis. Mark’s diorama is full of fantastic architectural detail — I particularly love the contrast between the tan city walls and the shining white temple with its gold details and green roof.

See more of Mark’s fantastic Greco-Roman city

1% inspiration, 99% perspiration

That was Thomas Edison’s recipe for innovation. But he failed to mention the importance of keeping things simple. When it comes to LEGO creations, sometimes the simplest models are the most impressive, and this wonderful LEGO lightbulb by Josephine Monterosso is a great example. It may be comprised of only seven pieces, but this economy of parts only makes it all the more impressive. The transparent minifigure head and clear space helmet make for the perfect recreation of retro lightbulb curves, and the short length of silver ribbed hose is a nice way to evoke a screw thread. Maybe this LEGO lightbulb will give other builders ideas too!

Block-rocking beats from this LEGO Walkman

When Ralf Langer put together his excellent LEGO headphones and tape cassette, all that was missing was something to provide the tunes. Now he’s filled the gap with a brick rendition of the innovative 80s hardware that reinvented how we listened to music — the Sony Walkman. The colour scheme is a perfect match for the 1979 original, and the details down the side are simply spot-on — don’t miss the use of a silver ingot piece and grille bricks to recreate the volume slider, the offsets so the buttons stand out from the casing, and the nice deployment of the “back-to-back grille tile” technique to make those tiny square holes. I also love that silver stripe separating the blue from the grey — excellent attention to detail.

Just the LEGO tree you were looking for

When it comes to fun landscape techniques, Emil Lidé has you covered. This tree made out of slopes is whimsical and creative. For me, it’s a little mesmerizing. It almost looks like it has been turned into 3D fractals!

But this is just a small sample of Emil’s handiwork. He’s not only an expert at building unique flora, he is gracious enough to create instructions on how to build them. His free instructions for both the trunk and canopy of this tree are on his personal website fullplatebuilds.com. You can also check out our article about one of his part experimentations, or another featuring multiple techniques in a single build.

Impressively detailed “Ugly Duckling” Long Range Research Vessel is over 4 feet long

Years in the making, Blake Foster presents one of the finest examples of LEGO spacecraft masterwork with the Ugly Duckling Long Range Research Vessel. It’s a rare achievement; it boasts impressive measurements at 168 studs long, 47 studs wide, and 45 studs high (approximately 52.5×14.5×14 inches), yet its size doesn’t prevent Blake from carefully considering every stud on his craft inside and out.

See more photos of this amazing and huge LEGO spaceship

Zoom zoom through Tokyo with the RX-8 patrol car

Japanese cars well-engineered and sometimes innovative, but in my opinion they are often not all that exciting. However, Japanese manufacturers do have a history of building some pretty neat sports cars, like the 240Z /Fairlady or Nissan GT-R or the Honda CRX.

A little more than a year ago, during a work trip, I was lucky to spend a day in Tokyo. It is an amazing city and ever since I’ve been thinking about building some Japan-themed LEGO models. I already have a collection of LEGO emergency vehicles, so adding a Japanese police car seemed like a good idea. Their typical vehicle is the Toyota Crown, which certainly fits the not-all-that-exciting category. However, a bit of internet research revealed that, until a few years ago, the Tokyo Police department also had Mazda RX-8 patrol cars. It’s a curvy coupé with suicide doors that was mainly used for traffic duties. Building one of those was a much more interesting prospect. I simply had to have one.

TBB Weekly Brick Report: LEGO news roundup for February 3, 2019 [News]

In addition to the amazing LEGO models created by builders all over the world, The Brothers Brick brings you the best of LEGO news and reviews. This is our weekly Brick Report for the first week of February 2019.

TBB NEWS: Just like last week, The LEGO Movie 2 is dominating the news, while some awesome Star Wars sets are coming back to celebrate the theme’s anniversary.

LEGO Star Wars 20th Anniversary sets and minifigures revealed – Remakes of five of the most iconic LEGO Star Wars sets are hitting store shelves this spring. Check out our in-depth analysis of the new sets for the anniversary of the iconic product line.
Crowdfunding for LEGO and BrickLink’s AFOL Designer Program sets has started – You can now pre-order some of your favorite fan-designed sets, and some have already hit their crowdfunding goals. Which projects do you support?
BrickHeadz from The LEGO Movie 2 revealed – Don’t say you didn’t expect new LEGO Movie 2 BrickHeadz sets! Building instructions for four of the sets have been now been revealed.
The LEGO Movie 2 Collectible Minifigures, Apocalypseburg and more now available – New LEGO sets and minifigures are now on sale including a new porky promotion.
FEATURE: Everything you want to know about the Star Wars Finch Dallow Minifigure replacement – We dug deep to find out everything we could about the new Finch Dallow replacement minifigure in set 75188 Resistance Bomber.

OTHER NEWS: There were quite a few other interesting LEGO news articles from around the web this week. Here are the best of the rest:

Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi eats some hot wings, YouTube – Sean from First We Feast goes head-to-head with the shape-shifting LEGO Movie 2 queen.
LEGOLAND Announces New Lego Movie World with Three New Rides, People – LEGOLAND Florida announced a big expansion opening in Spring 2019.
The LEGO Movie 2’s Director Tried To Talk Phil Lord And Chris Miller Out Of Making The Film, CinemaBlend – Sequels can be a risky business that thankfully LEGO and WB got right this time around.

Everything you want to know about the Star Wars Finch Dallow Minifigure replacement [Feature]

LEGO seldom makes changes to their sets once they’re already in production, but it does happen from time to time, usually to correct a section of a model that’s discovered to be too fragile for play. However, the most recent case is an oddity even in this rare class of updated sets. Nearly a year after its release, set 75188 Resistance Bomber has been updated with a minifigure swapout, changing one of the pilots from a generic “Resistance Bomber Pilot” figure to Finch Dallow, a named minifigure sporting a new head and helmet. So, why did Finch Dallow suddenly become important?

Continue reading →

Rocket barrage incoming from Overwatch’s Pharah

Pharah is such a unique character in Overwatch, combining the classic rocket launcher/jump jet pairing with a futuristic armor suit influenced by Egyptian culture. The team at Build Better Bricks has built an impressive LEGO sculpture of this formidable flying hero. Their model features outstanding attention to detail in her blue armor with gold embellishments throughout and detail in her partially exposed face and braided hair.

B3’s Pharah model is fully articulated to duplicate several flying poses from the game. My favorite is the Ultimate pose, which reveals rocket salvos primed to rain justice from above. Also notable is the clever, compact build of the Overwatch logo on the display stand.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, unless it’s a Trojan horse

The story of the Trojan horse is one of the most well known in ancient Hellenic lore. In the classical version, following a fruitless and decade-long siege of the city of Troy, the Greeks constructed a gigantic wooden horse in which they had hidden their finest warriors. The Greeks feigned defeat, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night, the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of night. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city of Troy, ending the war. It was a brilliant coup, though historians have argued its veracity ever since. Regardless of whether or not the Trojan horse actually existed, Martin Harris wonderfully brings the story to life in LEGO form with his depiction of that fateful gift-giving moment.

One has to admire the simple but imposing Trojan walls and gate, which stood up to 10 years of determined Greek attacks (the angled walls are a great touch, though a bit more landscaping around the bottom edge would help break up the abrupt edges). The Trojans lined up along the battlements and the Greeks laboriously pushing the horse depict the sheer scale of this creation. Continue reading →

These life-size LEGO ice sculptures glow with elegance

When builder Tomáš Kašpařík takes on a project, you can almost bet it’s going to be unpredictable and stunning. These two statues, an athletic woman and a child, are beautiful and have a feeling of piercing tranquility. Made mostly with 1×2 transparent LEGO bricks lit with LED strips from the inside, the sculptures contain about 20,000 bricks and 10,000 bricks respectively. For them to be stable for display and transportation, the pieces are glued using similar methods to those employed in the models at Legoland.

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