Tag Archives: Star Wars

LEGO Star Wars is one of the most popular LEGO themes of all time. Far beyond X-wings and TIE fighters, there’s a whole expanded universe of inspiration, and an army of LEGO fans ready to build whatever comes out of George Lucas’s head next.

Most popular LEGO models featured on TBB in 2015 [News]

Time for another list; the top ten of fan-built models, based on how popular they were on TBB’s Facebook page and right here on Brothers-Brick.com. We may write about news and set-reviews, but the custom creations from builders around the world are the bread and butter of this blog. If you are sick to death of Star Wars, it’s best for you to ignore this list, as it is rather heavy on models based on the movie franchise. In fact, perhaps you are better off ignoring this blog altogether for the next few weeks, as I suspect there will be many more Star Wars models to come.

Fan spends a year building 7,500-piece Millennium Falcon from the Force Awakens

It happens to be the newest model in our Top Ten, but the Millenium Falcon from The Force Awakens built by flickr user marshal banana shot to the top of the list even faster than it could make the Kessel run. It ticks multiple boxes: it’s from Star Wars, large, immaculately detailed and has working lights to boot. It was also nicely photographed and came out just after the movie. Well played Mr. Banana, well played. Look for an interview with the builder in the new year.

For more of the list, click through

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Pocket-sized BB-8 for your adventuring needs

I think we can all agree that BB-8 is pretty darn adorable and an excellent addition to the Star Wars universe. Don’t you just want to cuddle him? Marketing ploy or not, his fiery thumbs-up made me giggle. Everybody needs a little droid in their life, and Irwan Prabowo gives us the perfect pocket-sized LEGO version.

LEGO fan finds solace in hobby after tragedy

Brothers Brick daily covers cool fan-built models and LEGO news, but sometimes we get a chance to highlight a story from the human side of our favorite hobby. This touching story by the State Journal Register, an Illinois newspaper, shows how sometimes LEGO can be more than just a toy or a fun hobby. Sometimes it can be a means for healing.

After his wife, Tricia, died in the spring of 2011, Ray Hofman was having a hard, hard time. They had been married 39 years and, understandably, Ray felt lost.
“It was two years of long, long days,” he says.
The Christmas before Tricia died, Ray’s nephew, Jason Stokes, gave him a present. It was a replica of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater home, made out of Legos.
It is on such small things life sometimes turns.
“I didn’t know much about Legos,” Ray says. “When I grew up, it was Lincoln Logs.”
But something about that gift resonated with him.

Ray discovered the joy of receiving a LEGO set as a gift, and set out to bring that delight to others. First he built and donated a Taj Mahal to a cancer treatment center charity auction, but soon fell in love with the idea of building LEGO sets and giving them as gifts to everyone around him, including those who least expected it. His postman received sets for his grandchildren, and a local restaurant owner received a Space Shuttle because Hofman knew he was a space enthusiast. His favorite though, is giving gifts to children, and Hofman’s fridge is covered with heart-felt thank-you cards from children.

Hofman has spent the last two years building LEGO sets and giving them away to friends, family, and charities. “It filled a void,” he says.

Read the full story on the State Journal Register.

This is not the ‘tower’ you are looking for

Apologies if you were hoping to avoid a Star Wars related post but there is a tenuous link to castles and towers, I promise. TBB regular Simply Bricking It, has built our favourite Star Wars droid, R2-D2.

The builder uses a mix of round and regular parts to allow a slight offset position, resulting in the curved shape. The use of alternate round and regular bricks is a technique that has been used frequently in the past for curved ‘tower’ structures (eg. castles, windmills, lighthouses and even spaceships). But I believe this is the first droid I have seen built using this particular technique.

I can’t finish this post without mentioning the vintage tap parts used for R2D2’s leg detailing — a ‘splash’ of inspiration there.

Lock legs into attack position

These Star Wars-themed minifig costumes by solscud are impressive. Most impressive. With just a handful of pieces, each “outfit” is packed with enough tiny details to produce an instantly recognizable Star Wars vehicle. I’ll admit I giggled when I first saw these. They are certainly cute enough to give the microfighters series a run for their money. I especially love that red sleeve on the First Order TIE Fighter. Solscud selected vehicles from all three original-trilogy films, Attack of the Clones, and The Force Awakens.

Check out even more of solscud’s costumes on Flickr.

Fan spends a year building 7,500-piece Millennium Falcon from the Force Awakens

I half joked in my post about improving Rey’s speeder that my next project would be to mod my 5,000-piece UCS Millennium Falcon set into the version seen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Hannes Tscharner planned a bit more ahead of me, and has spent the last year planning, designing, gathering the LEGO parts, and building his own Millennium Falcon from Episode VII.

At 7,500 pieces, Marshal’s Millennium Falcon uses fully 50% more parts than the 5,195-piece official 10179 UCS Millennium Falcon (the second-largest LEGO set ever sold by part count, and arguably physically the largest set ever). This LEGO Millennium Falcon measures 82 x 54 x 18 cm, or nearly three feet long.

Hit the jump to see more photos of this amazing Star Wars model!

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!

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!

That’s one hell of a pilot!

Surprisingly, the Light side is much stronger with our favorite builders than the Dark. This is the only explanation I can find of why we already have the whole blue squadron of T-70 X-wing fighters (and not a single TIE fighter yet!). This time GHLego keeps David Hensel and Peter C. company in a cruel battle against the First Order.

I like how this fighter is not overloaded with sophisticated building techniques. GHLego managed to keep it simple and plain – in the finest sense of the word, of course. The dock representing a section of a hangar suits the fighter rather well. Both parts look quite robust and definitely make my want to spend an evening playing with this model recreating all the unbelievable twists and turns from the movie.

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.

Click to see the Day 22 mini-kits!

Flight of the Millennium Falcon on Jakku

One of the most spectacular scenes in the trailers for The Force Awakens was seeing the Millennium Falcon flying into the engine of a crashed Star Destroyer, chased by TIE Fighters. Simon Pickard has recreated this iconic scene in LEGO, with the maw of the engine about to swallow the Falcon and its pursuing TIE Fighter. The chunk of tan desert landscape surrounding the grey engine complements the scene beautifully, with a bit of sand spilling into the engine.

(Don’t worry, dear readers, we won’t be posting any LEGO creations that reveal spoilers from Episode VII for a long time, and certainly not without warning, as we’ve done in reviews. But the trailers are fair game, and still a rich source for LEGO creations.)

Unpimping Rey’s Speeder – kitbashing a movie-accurate Jakku speeder

I obviously hadn’t seen the movie yet when I reviewed 75099 Rey’s Speeder on the day the set came out back in September, so I had no idea whether the LEGO set was in any way accurate. I was most suspicious of all the fun play features built into the set — the stud-flinger weapons, the opening doors, the inner compartment, and so on. Now that I’ve seen The Force Awakens twice (my inner Star Wars nerd having also reawakened), I wanted to mod the LEGO set to make it a bit more accurate to the movie.

To be honest, the stock LEGO set now feels a bit like an entry in our Pimp Rey’s Speeder contest — though I still love it. When I got home from the movie again yesterday, I pulled out my two copies of this lovely little set along with a few choice pieces from my existing collection and set to work to build a movie-accurate, unmpimped version of Rey’s speeder.

Rather than a LEGO creation built entirely from scratch like nearly all the models we feature here on TBB, this is a lot like the “kitbash” process plastic modelers use, so I thought my build process might be interesting enough to share. I’ll avoid plot spoilers, but in case I mess up, hit the jump for my full write-up.

Read all about the differences between the LEGO set and my kitbash