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.

TBB Weekly Brick Report: LEGO news roundup for June 11, 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 second week of June 2017.

TBB NEWS & REVIEWS: TBB reports from LEGO headquarters in Billund, Denmark, and we get to escape the rathtars ourselves. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Interview with LEGO Star Wars designers — We sat down with the LEGO Star Wars Design Director as well as the Graphic Designer to pick their brains about how your favorite sets go from concept to finished product.
Three huge LEGO dinosaurs move into LEGO House — TBB reports live from the nearly-completed LEGO House that three massive dinosaurs now calls home. One each of DUPLO, TECHNIC and a SYSTEM, each dinosaur is three meters tall!
Advance look inside LEGO House reveals dinosaurs and mountains — TBB got a behind-the-scenes peek at some of the impressive models, displays, and creative experiences in the LEGO House in Billund, opening September 28th
Review of LEGO Star Wars 75180 Rathtar Escape — With this playset, you get raging rathtars, new Star Wars minifigs (Kinjiklub and Guavian death gangs!) and the classic aging pair of Han Solo and Chewbacca.
Review of LEGO City Jungle 60161 Jungle Exploration Site — We dive into this huge set to check out all the new elements from the Jungle theme, like the jaguar, spider, and kayak, plus eight awesome minifigures.
The Brothers Brick 2017 Readers’ Survey — Speaking of Han Solo, this is your last week to win 75105 Millennium Falcon by filling out our TBB Readers’ Survey. We want to hear what you think about what we do.

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

Adam Savage and Tested Crew Build the Epic LEGO Saturn V Rocket, Nerdist — Do you even knoll!? The Tested crew tackle another hard-to-find LEGO set and discover the true pleasures of advanced SNOT techniques.
Meet a giant Wonder Woman and her DC pals, made of LEGO, CNET — The Art of the Brick: DC Superheroes jumps across the pond from London to Washington D.C. to save the day! Nathan Sawaya used more than two million bricks to bring these classic comics to life.
Biggest mosaic made of LEGO bricks in Malaysia unveiled, The Sun Daily — This eight meter by 3 meter mosaic made of 87,000 bricks in Malaysia kicks off its “Let’s Go Raya” celebration. A fan-built Kampung House Diorama is also on display.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

We don’t need a bigger boat

Although a bigger boat is sometimes a necessity, shrinking your favourite LEGO ships into more manageable proportions can be useful. Brick LeKao might have run out of display space, or perhaps he’s just a fan of more petite sets judging by his collection of cute Pirates of the Caribbean microscale ships. Silent Mary, the Black Pearl, and Queen Ann’s Revenge are all built in microscale, but despite their small size, they are completely recognisable as the famous vessels.

Click to see more adorably miniaturized pirate ships

It takes a cop from the future to fight a game from the past

In my opinion, the best movie from the 80’s has to be Kung Fury. Which is funny considering it’s actually a crowdfunded Swedish short made in 2015. This completely over-the-top parody pays homage to martial arts and cop action movies of the era. It features a murderous arcade machine, dinosaur-riding barbarian women, an army of incompetent Nazis, and even a cameo by David Hasselhoff. Watch it today! I loved it so much I even recreated a scene from the movie in LEGO…

Click here to go behind the scenes of this time hacking build

The dinosaurs will rule the earth again

Thin, mechanical-looking elements highlighted by translucent orange come together in a fantastically frightening mecha Dilophosaurus built by ckb ckd. The facial features of the mecha dinosaur make especially great use of parts, including Space Batman wings and various minifigure weapons.

Gangsters beware, the cops are coming

When LEGO gangsters cause mayhem in your town, you need to call in Dario Minisini‘s police flying squad in their vintage car! The shaping on this model is great — I particularly like the curve at the base of the rear bodywork — and the use of skis as front mudguards is inspired. I can almost hear the throaty old-school klaxon’s wail as this beauty skids around the corners of Old Chicago.

This vehicle wouldn’t look out of place in the vintage street scene Dario put together last year…

Sultans of sneak

In the depths of the Medina, behind the bazaar, the Sultan sneaks incognito through the arcade. Andrew JN evokes the architecture of the Middle East, and creates a nice sense of mystery and intrigue, in a LEGO diorama with a tiny 8×8 footprint. I love the restrained use of colour and the clean building style on display here. The use of turntable bases around the bottom is particularly effective, the layered archways are excellent, and the mosaic floor inside the arcade is nice touch.

LEGO church worthy of your worship

It’s a long-standing policy that LEGO will not develop any models containing religious elements. I’ve always thought that’s a shame for the Castle theme in particular, where churches and cathedrals would have been some of the most important buildings. Thankfully LEGO fans have stepped in to fill the void, and this hilltop church by Simon NH is a great example.

The landscaping is done well, with a nice mix of earthy colours, a few trees, and a couple of gravestones to break things up. But the main attraction is clearly the church itself. It’s well-shaped, with diverse colours that still hang together as a cohesive whole, and the roof and steeple are excellent. The steeple also has some nice parts usage going on — don’t miss the boat hulls creating arched windows, and the lovely little cross on top.

LEGO Star Wars designers answer questions on stickers, set redesigns and more [Interview]

The Brothers Brick were fortunate enough to spend some time talking with LEGO Designer Jens Kronvold Frederiksen who is the Design director for Star Wars theme, and Jakob who is a LEGO graphic designer within the Star Wars theme. Jens has designed sets for the Star Wars theme for 18 out of the 19 years he has been working for LEGO—an unusual situation, he admits, but one he is very happy with. Right at the beginning back in 1998, when Jens heard that LEGO and Star Wars were going to be collaborating, he felt it was a perfect combination of a fantasy universe with sets and vehicles that would work well with LEGO along with a strong storyline about good versus evil.

Jens Kronvold Frederiksen is famous for designing the UCS Millenium Falcon, a product he created back in 2006. Designing the biggest LEGO set at that time under the Star Wars theme was very exciting for him. It is no wonder it remains on his short list of favourite sets, along with the Death Star, which is a set he considers a ‘family build’ (when an adult can help a younger fan to build a complex final creation). He has a hand in lots of sets now as Design Director, but explains that although he oversees the designs, he can’t help but continue to build and get involved with the model designers.

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Microscale A-10 Warthog [Instructions]

For the enjoyment of his fellow military aviation buffs, builder ama77what has beautifully reverse-engineered this microscale A-10 “Warthog” fighter jet from a knock-off brand of building block, recreating it using bona-fide LEGO pieces and presenting it in the form of this handy single-page building guide. There really is nothing more to say here than go build it and SWOOOSH it!

He who adventures and runs away lives to adventure another day

British builder Spencer Stone has cunningly repurposed the portal beast from 76060 Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum (which we reviewed here last year) as the focus of this neat little dungeon scene. By placing the beast in a corner and shooting the build up close from the warrior’s level, Spencer creates an almost expressionist image that puts the viewer right inside the action. A few carefully placed dungeon accoutrements and wall features beautfully round out the scene.

All that remains now is for the Dungeon Master to figure out whether our cowardly protagonist earned any experience points from this encounter. But suffice to say that he’s probably in the market for a new +1 battle axe.

Let’s light this candle

Master of the mechanized build Jason Allemann does it again, this time taking the new LEGO Ideas set 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V and incorporating lights and sounds using the PFx Brick, as well giving it a custom launch pad.

Jason’s other ingenious creations include an ever-toiling sculpture of Sisyphus, and the LEGO Ideas set 21305 Maze, which we interviewed him about last year.

Sleep forever in the ocean’s cold, dark embrace

How did Captain Morgan die? Was he dragged to the depths by a loose cannon? Was he struck down by the kraken? Or did Poseidon himself drag the captain’s ship into his realm? All we know is that the last time Captain Morgan was seen, he was on the forecastle of his sinking ship, the Queen Annetta’s Revenge, according to builder Jacob Nion.

The scene was built for a story on the Eurobricks forum. The build itself is very dynamic, with excellent broken masts and just enough flotsam to represent convincing traces of a legendary battle. The ship itself is very good, with Jacob giving us an undamaged view.