Famous a capella group Pentatonix gets LEGO-ified in their new music video for the Christmas classic “Up on the Housetop.” The video uses YouTube’s new 360° functionality, meaning you can pan around in the video to see in every direction. While the graphic fidelity won’t be winning any awards, being able to see what’s “behind” the camera is pretty cool even without VR, and will look even better if you have Google Cardboard or another VR device.
Tag Archives: Christmas
Classic LEGO nutcracker brings holiday cheer
German builder Robert Heim has recreated the classic king nutcracker in LEGO, complete with gold crown, upturned mustache, and a mouth that opens with a lever on his back. But my favorite detail in Robert’s creation is the trio of pieces lying next to the tall nutcracker — perfect use of a LEGO globe and brown minifig head.
John Lewis Christmas adverts recreated in LEGO [News]
UK retailer John Lewis have teamed up with the UK’s only LEGO Certified Professional Bright Bricks to recreate 5 years of classic John Lewis Christmas adverts. Something of a UK Christmas tradition for the past 10 years, the John Lewis’ adverts are eagerly awaited at the beginning of each festive season, ready to tug on heart-strings, bring a smile, and generally start the festive snowball rolling. The brick-built creations took a team of seven expert LEGO builders 116 hours to construct and comprise a staggering 9,400 bricks in total.
The 5 John Lewis adverts were shown between 2012 – 2016 and Bright Bricks captures the iconic moment from each advert. In 2012, the advert depicted a snowman’s epic journey across mountain, highway and manic shoppers to return to his waiting ‘snow-woman’ on Christmas morning. The Journey has 1,800 bricks and took 18 hours to build.
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.
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.
Click through for our full interview with Chris McVeigh
The Brothers Brick “Create-a-calendar” Contest [News]
The holiday season is underway, and for many LEGO fans that means it’s time to crack open the first door on their official LEGO Advent calendars. This year LEGO once again offers the choice of three calendar themes: Town, Friends, and Star Wars. The Brothers Brick will even be joining in the fun, as each day we reveal the daily mini-models from all three sets.
If you could wish for any LEGO Advent calendar theme, what would it be? Ninjago? Space? Wild West? Well, we’d like to know. But we don’t want to you just tell us, we want you to show us in The Brothers Brick “Create-a-calendar” Contest. Simply choose your dream theme for an Advent calendar, and build some example mini-models to illustrate it. The contest runs from now through December 17th, and we’ll announce the winners on Christmas Day.
Click here to learn more about the contest
The weather outside is frightful, but the microscale’s delightful
I don’t know about everywhere else, but this weekend saw winter begin to take hold in Scotland. Appropriately enough, along come two lovely little LEGO builds which perfectly capture the chill in the air. First up, IamKritch‘s cabin looks like a great place to sit out the blizzard. The trees and the frozen stream are smart, but it’s the simple use of a brown grille brick for the cabin’s log walls which grabs the attention.
And then there’s Brick Blue Wren‘s wonderful winter diorama. I like the variety of techniques used for the trees, and the curved backdrop and base evoking the shape of a snow globe. The color scheme properly pops off the page, particularly those hefty snowflakes against the blue sky. A few more models like this and I’ll be all set for Christmas.
LEGO Nutcrackers for your holiday chestnuts
I’m sure many of you have your chestnuts roasting by the open fire. Those of us NOT in Florida or the northeast might even have jack frost nipping at our noses. The Cascade Mountains have certainly made up for last winter with nearly 12 feet of snow in the last 25 days.
Julius von Brunk gives us these festive, whimsical nutcrackers to join in all of our festivities. Like real nutcrackers, these open and close their jaws by means of a lever. You too can have these as part of your traditions, as he’s been kind enough to provide a tutorial on Instructables.
Tragic end for a snowman
It’s a tough world right now for a snowman. Is anyone forecast for snow tomorrow? Rocky Mountains, put your hand down. We’re talking about everyone else, who are going to experience the great joy of a warm, sunny Christmas morning. As a former Florida resident, I’m so, so sorry.
Also, please someone tell Dorothy that tornado season might not be over.
I could never quite get behind a Florida Christmas, and this snowman very clearly couldn’t either. Fortunately, Earl Ware was on hand to capture the snowman’s fate.
Someone might want to tell Olaf.
2015 LEGO Star Wars & LEGO Friends Advent Calendars (Day 24)
It’s Christmas Eve, which means it’s the final day of this year’s virtual LEGO Advent Calendar series here on The Brothers Brick.
As I predicted, the lazy git C-3PO has forced the hardest-working droid in the galaxy, R2-D2, to pull him along in the sled revealed yesterday — as proved in this photo by #yslego.
Click to see the Day 24 mini-kits!
The Santa 3000
This build was inspired by a small child asking how Santa managed to get all over the world in one evening. I figured he’d need something a bit beefier than a team of flying ungulates…
I build a Christmas-themed LEGO creation every year as part of our decorations, but am generally too busy to get it photographed and posted during the run up, and it never feels appropriate after the day itself. However, I managed to grab some time today to get a photo and I thought I’d post it here to wish you all a happy holiday season.
Relax, eat too much, have a few drinks, and maybe build some stuff. That’s what I’ll be doing.
2015 LEGO Star Wars & LEGO Friends Advent Calendars (Day 23)
The day after tomorrow is Christmas! That means we’re on Day 23 of TBB’s virtual LEGO Advent Calendar series, with another pair of LEGO Friends and LEGO Star Wars minikits.
We’ll be unveiling the mini-kits or minifigs from each Advent Calendar around this time every day, and we won’t ruin the surprise — you’ll need to click through to reveal the LEGO behind the tiny doors.
Click to see the Day 23 mini-kits!
2015 LEGO Star Wars & LEGO Friends Advent Calendars (Day 22)
It’s Christmas on Friday, and we’re down to just the last three batches of LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Friends mini-kits in TBB’s virtual LEGO Advent Calendar.
We’ll be unveiling the mini-kits or minifigs from each Advent Calendar around this time every day, and we won’t ruin the surprise — you’ll need to click through to reveal the LEGO behind the tiny doors.
Click to see the Day 22 mini-kits!