With the largest LEGO Star Wars playset soon hitting shelves (and wallets), we thought it would be a prime opportunity to review some of the best location builds from around the MOC galaxy. The Star Wars community is no stranger to incredible landscapes and structures, and these are some of the best that the Holonet has to offer. Whether you’re a Republic loyalist, a Rebel freedom-fighter, or sympathetic to The Resistance, there’s something here for everyone to enjoy. Where better to start than where it all began? Our first stop is Naboo, where interstellar_bricks shows off a stunning recreation of the Duel of the Fates. The giant beam pillars here are as imposing as they are in The Phantom Menace, making this a perfect location for a Hero Showdown match in Star Wars Battlefront II. Our next stop is Teal Tower, a presumably fictional location from builder Tim Goddard. The colors...

Ever since LEGO transported the Castle theme to medieval Japan in the ’90s, samurai have inspired countless LEGO builds. artist_davs pays tribute to perhaps the most famous samurai of all, Miyamoto Musashi, in an incredible LEGO vignette that looks more like a museum diorama than a model built from bricks. Musashi, the famous duelist and philosopher, is uses a minifig head and a cloth-covered brick-built body for realistic proportions. Musashi’s armor is as impressive as the man himself, incorporating cloth and string. The tatami floor, made from profile bricks laid on their side, is artfully raised a half tile above the floor. If you’re wondering where the kanji scroll comes from, it’s a sticker from the Hanzo vs Genji set and reads “Dragon Head, Snake Tail.” I don’t think that comes from the Book of Five Rings, but it makes sense that Musashi would display it as he was famously fond of...

Everything is bigger in the United States. Well, maybe not everything, but American vehicles certainly tend to be rather large. Case in point: my Peterbilt heavy haul. I have been building minifigure scale heavy haulage vehicles for a couple of years now. They are vehicles carrying loads too large or heavy to be carried by a regular truck. Two examples are my modular truck carrying a transformer and a specialised windmill transporter. So far, all of them were European. For my next project, I wanted something different, though. I wanted an American truck. The load is obviously central to these builds. In this case, I chose a large bulldozer: a Caterpillar D9. Building this made me realise how little I know about these things. I had no real concept of their size, for instance. Compared to a minifigure, it is pretty big, but I was surprised at how small the model...

In a surprise follow-up to his Bugs of Hallownest series (see our summary here), creature builder extraordinaire Joss Ivanwood (jayfa_mocs) presents the final boss of the original Hollow Knight entry. We’re once again captivated by how well he was able to capture this character, which is also perfectly to scale with the other buggy builds. Joss shared a few unique parts easter eggs, including using fabric wing membranes from the Harry Potter thestral and a rare neon orange Bionicle mask tucked within. He also teased the potential for Silksong characters in the future, and we can’t wait to see what he builds next. The post A grand finale: The Hollow Knight appeared first on The Brothers Brick. Original linkOriginal author: Jarrett Gercken

I’m in Billund this week, representing The Brothers Brick at Fan Media Days, where we’re lucky to get an inside look at what projects LEGO is cooking up for the months to come. As cool as those sneak peeks are, a highlight of this experience has been the chance to see the MOCs on display in the LEGO employee campus, especially The Great Turtle Race by Ghaniaian/Canadian artist Ekow Nimakow. I’ve admired pictures of  Nimakow’s work online, with the unmistakable use of black bricks to create large-scale models embodying the spirit of Afrofuturism. Still, pictures didn’t prepare me for seeing the artist’s work in person. The sculptures are massive, but that alone isn’t noteworthy in Billund where you’re surrounded by large-scale brick installations designed to inspire and delight. It’s the non-system elements, like the Technic plates used for the turtle shells, used at such a large scale that seamless curves emerge....

When LEGO goth queen Pernilla Johansson (legonillan) shows up with her sigfig, you know things are about to get spooky! The Swedish builder found a lot to love about the recent Beauty and the Beast Castle, but the lilac and gold simply would not do for Pernilla’s coterie of vampires and ghouls. In Extreme Makeover: LEGO Home Edition fashion, Pernilla strips the castle down to the studs and paints it black. Of course, a project like this is too big for one minifig, so legonillan invites a few sigfig friends to help out with the remodel. Even some hitchhiking ghosts get into the spirit of things. Pernilla matches the original castle nearly brick-for-brick, while adding additional flourishes like bats and spooky foliage. It’s a great example of the joy that comes from treating official sets as a jumping off point for creativity. The post LEGO goth queen reimagines Beauty and the...

Greebles are famously the extraneous bits added to the outside of a model to add texture. Builder Aidan Webb dares to ask, what if a model were nothing but greebles? The Wasteland Strider is inspired by the mechanical wildlife of the Horizon games, with Aidan exploring what a creature might look like if its rider was constantly scavenging for parts to keep the mount functional. A work-in-progress look at the build process reveals how precariously assembled the Strider is – a barely contained skeleton of clips and minifig arms. As fragile as the beast appears, Aidan managed to wrangle it into a rideable state for a desert nomad and their supplies. It’s an incredible amount of detail for such a compact creature. The post Scavenging the wastelands for greebles appeared first on The Brothers Brick. Original linkOriginal author: Jake Forbes (TBB Managing Editor)

What constitutes “a lot of bricks” these days? When you see a sprawling diorama from a LEGO expo or a giant new display set, it’s clear you’re staring at “a lot of bricks.” But size can be deceiving when it comes to the number of elements. Take this incredible model from Satnis Creations.  It’s a Tudor-style street scene less than half the size of a LEGO Modular, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were close to 10,000 bricks involved. The roof alone has roughly a thousand blue tiles, the walls are packed with 1×1 tiles and cheese slopes, and of course, that sidewalk.  Using small parts lets Satnis create stunning detail with maximum precision, like the half-plate offset window frames and intricate half-timbering effects. Excellent period-appropriate minifigs bring the scene to life. The post This half-timbered beauty is more than the sum of its parts appeared first on The Brothers...

Ten years ago, Italian builder Marco De Bon emerged from his “dark age” and began sharing incredible LEGO creations of giant robots inspired by the anime of his childhood. In the years since, Marco has continued to hone his craft, building mecha that are both highly articulated and exceptionally clean. Here at The Brothers Brick, we’ve long been fans of Marco’s mecha, hardsuits, and sci-fi crafts, so in celebration of this milestone, we sat down with Marco to look back on a decade of building MOCs. TBB: You just celebrated 10 years of building and sharing your MOCs. Is it true that 2015 was the first time you started creating with LEGO? Did you not build as a child, or was it that you didn’t take building seriously until then? Marco De Bon: Of course, as a child and a little teen LEGO was one of my favorite games, along with...

The indie RPG Lancer was a breakout success on Kickstarter in part because D&D with mechs is a compelling hook, but mostly thanks to the incredible art of Tom Bloom, whose mech designs brilliantly fuse hi-tech and adventure. LEGO builder Dane Erland previously shared a series of MOCs based on Lancer designs, and now he’s back with four more incredible brick adaptations. First up is the HORUS Balor, a protean mech of loosely contained nanobots called the Hellswarm. With the swarm churning like smokey blue flames, the long whip, and digitigrade legs, it evokes a cybernetic balrog. Dane draws on an excellent mix of trans blue elements for the Hellswarm. The Raleigh from IPS-Northstar is a close-range striker mech. Dane nails the lanky gunslinger posture and rugged cloak. The smoking barrel is perfect. Another Striker-class, the Metalmark from Smith-Shimano Corpro was a military prototype that was retired and now sees use...