Tag Archives: Custom

This is not the page for LEGO purists. From heavily customized minifigures to LEGO pieces chopped, painted, and stickered to within an inch of their little plastic lives, this is where you’ll find some of the most creative uses — and abuses — of LEGO anywhere.

Rock Raiders meets Star Wars in this awesome display

Two epic themes collide in this wonderful creation by PaulvilleMOCs. An AT-ST from Star Wars has been recreated with features and colours found in the Rock Raiders sets. The brown roll cage is custom-made, using a mixture of bars, clip handle pieces, and minifigure hands. A classic fork handle piece acts as the tip of the antenna at the back of the walker and instead of having guns the machine is equipped with a drill at the front. This will definitely assist with the search for precious energy crystals!

Rock (AT-ST) Raiders

Time for some DI-What?

I’m busy renovating my home at the moment and this LEGO build from Thomas Gion made me do a double-take as I originally thought it was a targeted advert! It’s a stunning example of an everyday object recreated in LEGO.
The caulking gun features Brick separators for the trigger and handle alongside making good use of technic tube pieces for the plunger. I’m particularly fond of the Caulk tube too and how Thomas has shown that he’s almost empty by introducing the black elements for the end of the sealant, now, time to build that next tube…

Caulk Gun

Citizen Brick raises over $145,000 to support Ukrainian humanitarian aid [News]

Well-known custom LEGO makers Citizen Brick‘s founder Joe Trupia recently made headlines with a massive fundraising effort to help Ukrainians in need. Fond of the fringes of society when it comes to their custom products, Joe chose to help how he could. Citizen Brick made use of their “unique designs” to produce a custom Volodymyr Zelenskyy minifigure and accompanying toy Molotov cocktails. By the end of their efforts, Citizen Brick had raised over $145,000 for Ukraine through the DirectRelief fund.

Though Citizen Brick has since stopped production of these items, they urge LEGO collectors and fans all over the world to donate to support organizations such as DirectRelief that are supporting humanitarian efforts for the victims of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.

Read more about this unique fundraising for humanitarian aid

Even Bionicles need to fish!

This fun build by Lache takes us back to the days of LEGO Bionicle with this upgraded version of a Matoran villager. Through the use of bright yellows and soft blues, the model has been provided with a striking colour scheme. A classic mask forms part of the torso on each side with Lache making good use of the open section in the mask. The thick rubber boots of the model have been created by inversing tyre parts which complete the fisher aesthetic. The bucket is a nice simple build with some familiar squid projectiles from the Barraki line. This is one that makes me want to fish out my Bionicles and make a village of Matoran. It’s easy to imagine this colourful character working down at the docks of a town and fishing out on a vast ocean.

Kai the Angler

The little roadster that could

Anyone even remotely familiar with hot rodding knows that the quintessential dream project is the ’32 Ford roadster. They’re always a favorite at car shows and Ian Ying pretty much reached hot rodding nirvana with this LEGO version. I can assure you, they didn’t look like this off the assembly line but with a bit of imagination and elbow grease, customizers back in the day would turn their Grandpa’s jalopies into these hot little roadsters. The classic black with red trim, whitewalls and flames is the pinnacle of perfection. Copious chrome and gold doesn’t hurt matters, either. Ian is proving to be an automotive LEGO-building legend with a penchant for shiny bling. Click in the blue link there to see what I mean.

32FordRoadster4

Yvan drops a powerful Deuce

It is moments like this that make me love this whole Brothers Brick gig. We find something cool while surfing the interwebs such as this custom LEGO Deuce Roadster by Yvan Bourdeau. We share this cool discovery with you. You, in turn, shower us with likes and comments and then maybe you are inspired to build something yourself. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. This custom roadster looks to be dropped, channeled and lowered, giving it a low and aggressive stance. Burnt orange and a light blue makes for a neat flashy color scheme and the exposed exhaust pipes are not without their charms. Throw in a cleanly built base and retro gas pump and you have yourself the makings of a day made just a little sweeter. If you’re like me, vehicles in general would make your heart go pitter-patter so enjoy clicking through the archives.

BURNT ORANGE #34 DEUCE ROADSTER

Automotive rebellion, the Japanese way

For a long time, I didn’t really get the point of car customization. I can understand why people might want to make some changes to improve performance. Manufacturers aim their products at a particular market segment and operate under constraints such as environmental regulations. So, if you want to use your car differently, say to tear up the drag strip, some changes make sense. Rebuilding older cars using newer components to improve comfort or handling also makes sense to me. What I didn’t get were things that make a car worse in objectively measurable ways: such as stanced wheels and ill-fitting body kits. However, after building my latest car model, I think I finally get it. It’s a Nissan Skyline C110, modified in a Japanese style popularly known as Bōsōzoku (暴走族).

Trying to distinguish between the many different specific styles covered by his name is like an obscure form of zoology. They all do share some features, though. Modifications can include multiple rear spoilers and a deppa, which is the huge front-end splitter. Externally mounted oil coolers, with lines running through the radiator or a headlight mount, are also popular. This stuff is all race-inspired, but none of it improves the car’s performance. The cars usually have large fender flares, with small wheels and negative camber, particularly on the rear wheels. This reduces the ride height to the point of scraping the road and probably ruins the handling. The cars can also have a lurid paint job, often involving purple or magenta, and oversized exhaust pipes, called takeyari, inspired by bamboo spears. It is all very much over the top. And that is the point.

Japanese society is full of rules on how to behave in order to maintain harmony or Wa (和). But more restrictive norms seem to lead to more extreme rebellion. Bōsōzoku cars aren’t about improved performance or about making the cars look pretty. They’re about being different from the norm to the point where it gets obnoxious.

Citizen Brick’s custom LEGO minifigure elements for Halloween 2020 [Review]

In addition to excellent custom minifig parts and minifigs inspired by the likes of the Beastie Boys and Bob Ross, our friends at Citizen Brick have begun producing their own injection-molded items. For Halloween 2020 the CB team have released a bevy of creepy custom minifig parts for you to mix and match with your LEGO.

We’ve said before that what’s so awesome about Citizen Brick products is that they’re the sort of thing that LEGO themselves will likely never release, while remaining compatible with LEGO. This makes custom parts produces like Citizen Brick distinct from knockoffs and clone brands that compete with LEGO and are often of inferior quality. Because CB has earned our respect with printing quality that’s indistinguishable from LEGO’s own, it’s exciting to see them branch out to custom parts, allowing LEGO fans to go beyond the confines of the staid bricks from Billund. Let’s take a look at what the mad scientists of Chicago have cooked up.

Read our full hands-on review of this year’s Citizen Brick Halloween release

TBB Cover Photo for September 2020: Fit for the Gods

This month’s cover photo, from Aaron Newman, features the Gods of Olympus. From Hades to Zeus, Aaron has recreated these Greek Mythological Gods in LEGO, while capturing the essence of what makes each of these mythological characters unique. Hit up Aaron’s blog post to learn more about his approach to each minifig.

Gods of Olympus

And if you’re looking for even more Greek minifigs, Aaron has also recreated some of the most well-known Mortals and Monsters from the pantheon of Greek myth. I’m a big fan of Icarus, who looks to have just flown too close to the sun, but honestly, these all look great.

Mortals & Monsters

Submit your LEGO creations for a chance to be featured across TBB social media for a month! Check out the submission guidelines share your builds today.

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TBB cover photo for February 2020: Taking in the sights

From the incredible detail to the creative forced perspective execution, this build from collaborative team Grant DavisEli Willsea, and Micah Beideman, does not disappoint. With every glance, you’ll notice something new (oooh, look at that AC unit and that awning made of 1×1 cones), which is one of the many reasons we chose it for our February cover photo. Read our original article to see how this trio used LEGO to bring a painting to life.

The Painted City

Want to see your own LEGO creation featured across TBB social media for a month? Then read the submission guidelines and submit your photo today. Photos that do not meet the submission guidelines will not be considered, and will be removed from the group.

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By popular demand, here’s more The Mandalorian stuff!

We expected a lot from Disney+ and The Mandalorian. We knew it was going to be a gritty western-style drama set in the Star Wars universe and starring a no-nonsense bounty hunter but perhaps we didn’t expect him to win surrogate father-of-the-year in some heart-warming hijinks with an adorable “baby Yoda” (not really Yoda). I’m one of the few holdouts waiting to see the series at a later date, but week after week the internet is apparently delighted with the relationship between “Mando” and his 600-month-old infant ward. I’m sure Omar Ovalle is much more attuned to their weekly shenanigans than I am as evidenced by these neat constraction figures. Here we see The Child in his spherical bassinet, The Mandalorian in his custom painted helmet and chest armor, and a nicely built speeder bike.

Mandalorian Speeder Bike -

It is a safe bet that Omar enjoys building custom figures. Here is a previous time he customized Technic figures into Star Wars characters and another time he customized constraction figures as the cast of Game of Thrones.

Star Wars X-Wing squared

Do you love the X-Wing but think those round engines have a bit too much sass for your parochial, straight-laced sensibilities? Do you fancy yourself as a square peg trying to fit in an increasingly round world? Then consider yourself and my odd premise vindicated, Jeb! Your day of reckoning has come because Sam K Bricks has answered your prayers and outfitted this X-Wing with honest to goodness squared-off engines a Shaker could have designed. In the Star Wars universe many ships, Rebel ones in particular, were pieced together from whatever they could find so it would make sense someone would customize their X-Wing in this manner. I bet the pilot is a real straight-shooter with a name like Rusty or Dwight who loves his mama and apple pie but probably wouldn’t try anything weird like focaccia bread. Even the Astromech droid has a head as straight and flat as an Illinois wheat field.

T-65 Engine Variant X-wing

I really like the flashes of sand green and marigold yellow but I am someone who stays up past sundown listening to that rock and/or roll the kids like so much so you should probably take my opinions with a grain of salt.