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.

Tokyo’s Sensō-ji Thunder Gate and Beijing’s Hall of Supreme Harmony in LEGO

The oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo is Sensō-ji, founded in 645 AD and dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon. Taiwanese builder ZiO Chao, whose massive SHIELD Helicarrier we featured last year, has been building travel themed LEGO mosaics over the last few months, and his latest is the iconic “Thunder Gate” at Sensō-ji. Beyond the gate, a street of shops leads up to the temple itself, and ZiO has captured the roofs of the shops using forced perspective.

Thunder Gate(雷門), Senso-ji(淺草寺), Tokyo, Japan

While not quite as intricate a LEGO build, ZiO has also built the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing. I love the beautiful simplicity of the yellow roof and red columns against a clear, blue sky.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony (太和殿), Forbidden City(紫禁城), Beijing, China

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A heavenly alignment

The great American eclipse of 2017 may have passed, but this microscale build by “why.not?” still casts a cool shadow. The backdrop uses dark blue tiles to create the effect of the eclipsed area. It goes to show that a simple concept is sometimes all it takes to make a wonderful creation.

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Nya, the dragon slaying warrior

In the world of LEGO Ninjago, Nya is the current Elemental Master and Ninja of Water, as well as Kai’s younger sister. Daniel Huang has crafted a large figure version of her using a mixture of Bionicle, System and Technic elements. Daniel has posed Nya slaying the Green Dragon, with her samurai sword plunged deep into the head. The clever use of tyres and tracks within her leg structure contrasts with cloth robes and some ample CCBS assets for a unique blend of styles.NYA the Samurai Girl

Contrasting with her dragon-slaying pose, Nya also has a clear feminine side, albeit with a few weapons in tow. I particularly like her head, as it’s well constructed with her helmet, and she gives off a ton of attitude in ABS.NYA the Samurai Girl

 

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TBB Weekly Brick Report: LEGO news roundup for August 27, 2017 [News]

In addition to the best LEGO models created by builders all over the world, The Brothers Brick also brings you the best of LEGO news and reviews. This is our weekly Brick Report for the last week of August 2017.

TBB NEWS: With winter just around the corner, we have a chilly new set announcement, a fantastic sale, and some instructions to keep you busy.


OTHER LEGO NEWS: This week had a few other interesting LEGO-related news articles. Here are the best of the rest.

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A slice of Medieval coastal life

We go back in time to experience Medieval life in this diorama of a coastal village by goilive. To describe this as a village seems an understatement to me as there are a lot of buildings and infrastructure, even a port with a ship moored up. I love the changing colour gradient of the sea as it reaches the sand and the host of details little wooden jetty located centrally or the market stalls in front of the large castle.

Medieval Village

From a slightly different angle, it is easier to see some of the activities going on in this busy scene.  There’s a fisherman trying to catch lunch down on the beach, a cargo load being transferred onto the ship, while a jester and unicorn entertain some onlookers in the central park. This diorama is going on display at a couple of locations in France later this month and the next; it’s definitely well worth a close-up look in person to enjoy the full scene.

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Post-apocalyptic friendships are the best

It’s not often we re-visit a LEGO model, especially after only a few days. But when we shared an atmospheric post-apocalyptic scene from Adam Sochorec earlier this week we didn’t realise there was more to come. It turns out Adam’s build was only part of a larger collaborative build with Jan T I love the way the rough terrain has crept over to cover the road, and how the two builds have been united with lovely rock work and landscaping. Jan’s harbour with its little fish market and decrepit building really adds to the whole scene. Clearly, even after the apocalypse, life goes on despite the struggles.

Apoc Outpost Collab (main)

Collaborative builds are not unusual but what makes this one special is the story behind it. As Jan puts it…

“We started planning it about two months ago. Adam is from Czech Republic, so he had to convince his parents to let him go to Poland. Luckily, he made it and his 5.5 hours of travel were worth it. He stayed in my house for 4 days. We traded some parts and minifigs and spent two days and one night building the collab. We shared the bricks, Polish food, and a bottle of Becherovka with each other.”

Authors (and Becherovka).

Two builders are clearly better than one and the resulting collaborative build is a great scene. What a perfect reminder of how LEGO can be a source of fun,  learning, community and life-long friendship.

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In the blink of an eye

Travel through space in speedy style with WormHole Inc. This unusual LEGO spacecraft from Sheo brings the far-future of space travel to life — wormholes opened by “portal ships” allowing instantaneous travel between distant regions of the galaxy. The detail and texture built into the ship’s central ring is beautiful, adding a real sense of scale to the creation.

Portal Spaceship - Arriving Ship

The close-up shot with the arriving craft is excellent, but I also loved the image of the portal ship in orbit around an alien world.

Portal Spaceship

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An elegant room from a more civilized age

Any gentleman needs a place to do his paperwork and this fancy room built by Rylie Howerter looks just about pefrect. Though simple at first glance due to plain walls, a few seconds of looking at the creation reveals an incredibly intricate floor, which is at least 3, but probably 4 studs deep. It is made of brown bars set between sand green tiles stackedsideways, with dark green tiles in the middle.

Andrew Johnson

In the description, Rylie is not a fan of the minifigure per se, but was happy for any excuse to build appropriately scaled furniture – and the results are well-designed indeed! The chair is made out of plant elements, pneumatic tubing, and similar fine detail pieces, and the ink bottle on the table is an especially interesting part use, although on the border of purism – a carefully cut piece of a ribbed hose.

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LEGO shuttle from Star Trek: The Next Generation [Instructions]

We’re probably gonna see more Trek builds than usual this year, it being the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Such as this minifig scale Type 6 shuttle designed by Jerry builds LEGO, which captures the lines of this iconic vessel perfectly, thanks to deft use of some canopies probably from a Star Wars set (I’m not even gonna check, I assume it’s a Star Wars set, since there’s not exactly a shortage of those to choose from).

As an added treat, Mr Builds With LEGO has even put together this neat instructional video, showing you how to build one of these for yourself. I like the format of this video, in which each step is shown being built so you can easily follow along. The video doesn’t show which sets you’ll have to rip apart to get those lovely canopies, or how far you’ll have to search to find matching STNG minifigs — that’s an exercise left for the viewer.

Of course in the Star Trek universe, transporters are method of choice for getting from point A to point B. But if you think really hard about it they’re actually just giant death machines and the entire franchise is just the story of hoards of people (and their subsequent clones) willingly stepping into oblivion. So it’s no wonder there a few characters in the show actually opt to travel exclusively by shuttle craft. Slower, and more tedious, but at least it gets to you your destination without being bloody vaporized.

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Chevrolet Corvette C7.R is not just yet another racing car

For his latest scale model Lasse Deleuran has chosen a magnificent Chevrolet Corvette C7.R Le Mans Edition, which is famous for its multiple victories in the most prestigious endurance races in the motorsport world. Lasse recreates the car’s wide hood with some sharp wedges and slopes so that the vehicle definitely looks more aggressive than the smooth original. Bonus points are for very accurate custom stickers, which are an inevitable part of a true racing car’s design.

Chevrolet Corvette C7.R 2017 LMGTE PRO (Le Mans) Edition

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Modern castle is just a tower with no walls

This very aesthetically pleasing microscale skyscraper by Sheo. definitely houses something evil inside. It totally looks like a villain’s headquarters from a dystopian movie or a book, plus “Nasty tower” is a very peculiar choice of name for a building! Although its design seems to be advanced, this tower is just a polygonal hinged core with attached vertical stripes, and this is what makes this build a very smart and remarkable creation.

Nasty Tower

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Even a LEGO Lamborghini goes faster in red

Only five Lamborghini Venenos were ever produced to celebrate Lamborghini’s 50th anniversary back in 2013. While Lamborhini kept two, the other three were sold for US$4,500,000 each. Lachlan Cameron has built a LEGO version of the road-worthy, racing prototype Lamborghini Veneno, and it’s certainly a head-turner. Lachlan has mainly used Technic parts to achieve the aggressive, aerodynamic shaping, with some clever techniques to achieve the wheel arches and the steeply sloped hood.

Lamborghini Veneno 2 Continue reading

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