Tag Archives: Book

The Brothers Brick isn’t just about bricks! When we’re not building with LEGO or writing about LEGO, we enjoy reading about it, too. Thankfully, there’s a plethora of page-turners ready for our perusal.

LEGO gearpunk pop-up book

Builders Jason Allemann and Grant Davis have collaborated on a project for LEGO Ideas: a LEGO pop-up book. We were happy to share with you the first models that Jason built last year. Now it’s Grant’s turn. He’s brought us this lovely gearpunk pop-up book, and it’s just fantastic.

Gearpunk Popup Book

It’s fun to look at, but like many of Jason’s ideas, it moves! Grant and Jason even put together a video showing all the functionality of this great book, starting with opening of the book itself and then making all the gears go:

Something Hobbity this way comes

Built by david zambito for the ABS Builder Challenge, this snapshot from The Hobbit is terrific. This great scene has great use of the seed piece for the lid of the treasure chest and for Smaug’s fingers reaching over piles of gold. The best part for me is the tantalizing tiled tessellations on the floor surrounded by the creatively cracked and broken floor.

The Hobbit: Inside Information

Expanding The Expanse with this UNN freighter

One of the most interesting aspects of LEGO is the opportunity builders have to recreate and expand the universes of their favorite books, movies and TV shows. It’s awesome watching builders bring these stories to life and creating whole new elements through the use of bricks. Shannon Sproule does just that with a series of spaceships inspired by the book/TV series, The Expanse, such as this United Nations Navy fast transport vessel:

UNN "Coelacanth"

The builder has chosen to design an entirely new ship to the UNN fleet, which, though numerous, is less technologically advanced than its counterparts. That is evident in the utilitarian design of the ship and its appropriately blocky shape. The cargo containers help round out the imagined role of this UNN workhorse. The builder is working on a series of The Expanse-inspired ships, so make sure to take a look at his Flickr for more.

An insane hat trick

This bobble headed Mad Hatter by Julius von Brunk seems to contain both regular LEGO bricks and an element of madness. You might remember one of Julius’ previous works we featured back in September — a menacing set of aces from Alice’s Wonderland. According to the builder, this Hatter figure will be starring in an upcoming stop-motion animation parody. I can’t wait!

The Hatter

Interview with The LEGO Christmas Ornaments Book author Chris McVeigh

Canadian brick artist Chris McVeigh is one of our favorite builders, and No Starch Press is one of our favorite LEGO-friendly book publishers, so their new book The LEGO Christmas Ornaments Book: 15 Designs to Spread Holiday Cheer is a match made in holiday heaven.

The LEGO Christmas Ornaments Book

No Starch released the book back in September, but between a lengthy overseas trip for work followed by BrickCon, I simply dropped the ball — my sincerest apologies to Chris and our friends at No Starch for the delay. But the good news is that it’s now officially the Christmas season, so I guess this is even more timely? Enough excuses. On to the interview!

The Brothers Brick: We first featured you here on The Brothers Brick way back in 2008, when you were taking pictures of chipmunks with action figures. When did you start focusing more exclusively on LEGO?

Chris McVeigh: It happened rather quickly! Pairing Star Wars action figures and chipmunks was a fun challenge, and it motivated me to do more photography of action figures and other toys. Unfortunately, Hasbro wasn’t producing any play sets (aside from large ships), so it fell to me to create my own sets and backdrops for action figure photos. This was a rather time-consuming task that ultimately prevented me from getting on with toy photography.

Trouble at the Quarry

Click through for our full interview with Chris McVeigh

The Adventures of Captain Underpants in LEGO

Builder Deus Otiosus used LEGO to bring characters from the classic children’s book The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey to life. Everyone’s favorite fourth graders, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, along with the Captain himself are off to fight evil. But which villain will they face today? Wedgie Woman? The Bionic Booger Boy? Maybe Professor Pippy Pee-Pee Poopypants?

Captain underpants

I love the sense of motion in this build. The fabric of the cape and flag really look fluid, even though they are built from brick. And of course, the characters look great (if not a little terrified to be flying out the window).

Start your Halloween weekend with Tales from the Crypt

It’s Friday before Halloween, and all good ghouls and ghosts are starting their haunts. Can you hear it now? The creaking iron door, the thunder clashing? Can you see the dusty, dilapidated mansion? I can. It’s time for Tales from the Crypt. Jason Allemann has given us a spooky Halloween version of his pop-up book, with an appropriately spooky gate inside. Step inside, if you dare!

Into the woods with Tom Bombadil

While Tom Bombadil is an overlooked character in the Lord of the Ring films, this LEGO rendition of his home is too good to let slip by without mention. legostrator has given us a colorful woodland scene, with the character in question front and center. The house itself is quite wonderful and full of color.

The combination of finger hinges and minifig hands gives a nice texture to the roof, while the different methods for the siding on the house make it visually interesting. Barrels in the corners are easy to miss! I particularly love the spindly tree to the right of the house. The lady’s dress is lovely, too!

An old tale of horror in black and white

This LEGO portrait of Frankenstein’s monster by David Alexander Smith employs a nifty negative-space technique to create a classic movie-poster feel. The lurching lines lend an air of misshapen monstrosity to the face, and the monotone palette imitates the harsh lighting of ancient horror flicks.

Expressionist Portrait

Droogs, viddy this horrorshow Clockwork Orange sculpture

Meet Alex. Alex is the main character in Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange (later immortalized in film by Stanley Kubrick). Alex is depicted as a sociopath who robs, rapes, and assaults innocent people for his own amusement. David Hughes‘ LEGO sculpture of Alex is inspired by the 1972 book cover and I think his decision to stick with simple monotone shades and skin tone works very well.

Clockwork Orange

The sculpture itself uses over 2,700 bricks and is 15″ wide x 12″ deep x 17″ high. And while the eye and eye-liner are certainly eye-catching, I particularly like the shaping of the Bowler hat.

Clockwork Orange 2

Ace’s high, low, and wild in Alice’s Wonderland

I don’t envy Alice, and her upcoming confrontation with these Card Knights. Julius von Brunk has been working on these LEGO Card Knight minifigures for an upcoming Alice in Wonderland display. We’re treated to a hand full of Aces, along with the Joker. It’s certainly a hand full of dangerous cards no matter which game you play!

Click here to meet the Cards

LEGO City: Build Your Own Adventure [Review]

This summer, British publisher DK have continued their Build Your Own Adventure series with two new volumes that explore the themes of City and Star Wars. LEGO City: Build Your Own Adventure is an 80-page hard cover book that comes with an exclusive 99 piece LEGO vehicle set and minifgure.

The book’s storyline follows a rather hectic day in the life of LEGO City’s heroic firefighter Brave Ed as he journeys through typical locations within LEGO City, on a mission to get to the end of his shift with enough time to challenge his fellow fire-fighters to a game of table tennis (oh, and to spend the day helping out with rescues, accident scenes and fighting fires of course!).

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