Tag Archives: Characters

We love builds with character! Creating characters from LEGO elements, whether traditional System bricks or using elements from Bionicle and Constraction themes, is an amazing way to showcase your building skills. Brining out emotion and personality in bricks is an art!

Sometimes the biggest heroes come in the smallest packages

It’s not exactly the Ant-Man we know from the movies or comics, but Daniel Huang still captures the essence of this superhero. With the perfect shiny red and grey color scheme and parts to pull off a great build with enough articulation to give it great flexibility for poses. I actually like how his Imperial army issued boots have their tongues sticking out to give them that Converse look.

The torso is made from a combination of technic parts and ball joints combined with Bionicle armor plates from the Star Wars action figure series. The red shoulders blend in nicely and seem inspired by the mech from the new 76077 Iron Man Detroit Steel Strikes set.

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Distracting children make #BBCdad a viral star

The recent live BBC interview with Robert Kelly, a political science expert in Korean politics, took an unexpected turn when his study door burst open to allow a front row view of his 4-year old daughter dancing into the room, followed swiftly by 8-month old James scooting through in his baby walker. The clip went viral as the professor tried not to crawl under his desk with the adorable clash of roles; dad vs expert interviewee. We all know that a clip or photograph is not truly viral until someone has captured the moment in LEGO. Well thanks to Sergio, Robert Kelly can now make his LEGO claim to fame.

A brief history of LEGO Stephen Hawking

My little LEGO model of scientist Stephen Hawking just turned 10 years old, which led me to reflect upon the history of this peculiar creation and the path that my life took as a result of creating it. And to mark the occasion, last week I took this LEGO version of the Professor on a special trip to follow in his namesake’s footsteps!

Ten years ago I was just beginning to experiment with building my own creations (or “MOCs” as we LEGO fans like to call them). I had a limited bricks, limited experience, limited skill, and no real direction. Then Stephen Hawking announced his plans to experience zero gravity aboard the infamous Vomet Comet airplane, which inspired me to model him as a “miniland” scale LEGO figure.

I was pleased with the result, and having it featured here on The Brothers Brick was a pleasant surprise. But an even bigger surprise came when the creation was picked up by pop culture websites and went “viral”.

It was at that moment that I had my LEGO epiphany… Firstly, that characters seemed like an under-exploited genre of LEGO building, one that seemed like a more interesting challenge to me than say vehicles or buildings. Secondly, that there was a much larger audience – beyond the core fan community – for LEGO creations based on pop culture.

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Serious games for serious men

Chess fans from the 80’s will instantly recognise this battle between two brilliant masterminds at the Chess Championships held in Moscow. The match between Garry Kasparov and defending champion Anatoly Karpov in 1985 was the only championship match to be abandoned without a result to date. Builder Leonid An brilliantly captures the deep thought process and tense atmosphere of this famous match. The small touches that bring it to life include the use of red capes to represent the two flags of the countrymen.

Bunny-bot out to do some damage

While this almost bunny-mecha looking contraption looks pretty cute, take a moment and do give it some thought. Why would a bunny minifigure need a mechanical bot such as this? The only reason I can think of is to get some damage done! With those huge feet, I’m sure a stomp or two would take any other enemy minifigure out flat. Just a reminder from IamKritch that all things cute are not what they seem, perhaps… Bring out the weapons, I say!

Nice ABS!

Who needs to hit the gym when you have abs made of ABS? This stud by timofey_tkachev has the perfect grin to show off his six-pack—or should that be six-brix? The use of the tan large-figure parts for the pecs, lats and calves are spot on.

A place where a technical mind is at peace

I am not here to downplay the classic minifig’s ability to convey emotion, but it is a fact that its range of movement is much more limited than that of a Technic figure. Heikki Mattila uses this posability to great effect in his large scale vignette called “Thinking at night”. The technic figure is set in a convincingly contemplating and perfectly peaceful pose, while the setting is full of nice details like tyres, boxes and more. The backlit window makes for a convincing nighttime effect as well. I could not imagine a better happy place for a Technic figure than a workshop or garage.

The question is: Who... are you?

Although often offering wise words to Simba, the wizened old Rafiki nevertheless delights in riddles and unorthodox tutelage. Channeling that spirit of unconventionality, builder SephiMoc FF7 uses quite an interesting assortment of LEGO pieces to bring life to this sage from Disney’s The Lion King. The eccentric mandrill is recognizable with his brightly colored face, which is framed with white fur made of feathered wings and various horn elements. Look closely and you’ll spot that Rafiki’s eyebrows are a handlebar, while the ball joints give this character plenty of poseability.

The bold choice of a purple background works splendidly, offsetting both the white face and the grey body, as well as complementing the orange logo nicely. There’s even a tiny Simba cub for Rafiki to gloriously hold aloft:

Dynamic Duo scaling old heights

Some things in pop culture are so iconic as to be forever ingrained in the collective memory. Builder Martin Redfern brings us a dose of instantly recognizable brick-built nostalgia with the wall-climbing dynamic duo from the 60’s TV Series. While the “na na na na na na na… Batman!!!” themed earworm starts to play in your head, you can almost hear the Boy Wonder whine “Holy predictable moves, Batman! Could we start working on a flight contraption? Let’s call it the Bat Wing perhaps?”

Loaf at first sight

Finnish builder Eero Okkonen is known for his excellent character builds, and his last one stunned us all with an eerily perfect Admiral Ackbar. The character he brings to life in his latest work is Mistral Nereis, the pirate gal from the baking-saturated anime adaptation of PSP SEGA game Shining Hearts.

The details included and techniques used to recreate not only the pose but also bring out the key features of this lovely character are stunning—for instance, the multi-layering and natural flow of her skirt. You can read all about how this build came together on Eero’s blog.

Let’s build some meat! [Instructions]

DOOM is still a thing, right?! A couple of years ago I built a Miniland scale diorama of this classic videogame (there’s even a video that will take you right back to 1993). Below is a building guide for the game’s hero, commonly known as “DOOM Guy” (click here for embiggened version). This version is equipped with a basic shotgun. If you wanna kit him out with other hardware, or build him some enemies to blast, I’d suggest using photos of the original DOOM diorama as inspiration.

The Dark Knight, the hero that LEGO deserves

Character builds are one of the hardest to accomplish with bricks and it’s likely the reason you don’t see Billund doing much of these aside from the Constraction series. Builder Roy of Floremheim
does a pretty cool Batman with the parts at his disposal and with clever use of elements. While you’ve got to love that 6-pack, my favourite use of parts are the reversed Minifiigure flippers representing the bat insignia.