May is almost over already - but full of great features, insightful articles and deep dives from all across the LEGO community it was! We are lucky to have this many outlets and channels that keep creating incredible content, and these are the best of the month. Here at BrickNerd, we modded shells and cinemas, traveled to Oregon, Australia, Denmark and Germany, and hacked Studio and storage. We mangled minifigs, explored X-wings, and built botanicals. We drove classic cars, pumped pneumatics, and learned where to post MOCs. And on top of that, we’re going big at Brickworld. In fact, we’ve published so many interesting articles in May, that we’ve included an interactive calendar of them at the bottom of this post so you can make sure you didn’t miss a thing. But there are many more fascinating stories to be told from within the LEGO community, so here are some of...

A year ago, I looked at two Hogwarts Moments sets to see how they can be used as natural backdrops for minifigure photography. Today that journey continues as we explore the Divination classroom to see how simple things like light, some photo editing, and composition can transform a LEGO set into a storytelling extravaganza. While these sets are no longer available from LEGO, their spiritual successor—the House Banners—carry on the tradition of a foldable set that serves as a background for photography and provides lots of little details for minifgures to interact with. So break out the popcorn and sit back as I tell you a few of the tales that happened in the Divination classroom through immersive photography. (Fair warning, there are some spoilers for the third and fourth Harry Potter books.) Be warned that there may be a few unexpected cut scenes along the way… Open the tiny magical...

There is only one LEGO House—“The Home of the Brick”. Built as the ultimate expression of the LEGO hobby, any LEGO fans wanting to experience this awesome attraction must make the pilgrimage to Billund, Denmark. For such an exclusive destination, it’s only natural that they have exclusive LEGO sets available, so this article will showcase the sets that have only been available at the LEGO House, updated for 2023. LEGO House (4000010) The first LEGO House model from 2014 pre-dates the actual building which opened in 2017. My understanding is that LEGO produced these sets and gave them to local businesses that were affected by the construction. The businesses could sell them as they saw fit. It was probably a good idea to make a goodwill gesture like this since construction took much longer than first anticipated! LEGO House (4000010 - 215 pieces) The building is all white, placed on a...

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published April 28, 2022. Bionicle… even mention of that word can be intimidating and confusing which causes many builders to stay away from it altogether. With hundreds of unique pieces, avoidance by LEGO builders is understandable—how do you even sort all those crazy pieces!? Hopefully, this article can show you a small bit of the potential of Bionicle pieces within System creations as the spark of NPU that makes people look twice. Fortunately, some of the characteristics of Bionicle pieces lend themselves naturally to different themes. Vehicles—especially space ships—have countless opportunities for Bionicle usage, either with highly greebled and mechanical parts or smooth shell pieces for a sleek sci-fi look. Other Bionicle pieces have very natural and organic shaping, lending themselves as all kinds of plant life. Although seemingly complete opposites, architecture and Bionicle even have their own special way of working together. Let’s take...

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published April 19, 2022. In a hidden laboratory, located deep in Eastern Europe, there's a mad scientist who breathes life into LEGO beasts and robots. His creations are beautiful, organic, and sometimes scary, but they all share great part usages. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize We sat down with builder Djokson (Flickr/Instagram) to unveil the secrets behind his building process and if there is magic involved in the creation of his characters. Dan: Hey man, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. To be honest it's very exciting to learn more about you and your beautiful creations. Can you tell us who is the man behind the menacing yellow eye, which is the first thing everyone sees when they open your accounts on social media? Djordje: Thanks for having me! My name is Djordje and...

LEGO conventions are some of the most fun you will ever have as a LEGO fan—you’ll meet new AFOLs, hang out with old friends, and interact with the thousands of public visitors. From my short time attending conventions, though, there is a less fun part about them… traveling to them and having to rebuild all your MOCs when you arrive. A few weeks ago I went through this exact experience because I ventured across the United States from Florida to Portland, Oregon for Bricks Cascade. The trip there ended up being around seven hours of flying between two flights which was the perfect excuse to experiment with different ways of flying with MOCs. Baggage Handling Baggage Handling system in Seattle. Besides LEGO, I love learning about and working in the airline industry, so before I get to what I discovered on my trip, I want to share a little bit about...

How should you store all of your loose LEGO parts? This is my personal and highly opinionated guide as an AFOL and MOC builder. This article could alternatively be titled “How To Spend Less Money On Storage and More Time Building!” but that seemed a bit clickbaity. What not to do with your LEGO colelction for easy access. The purpose of this guide is to share my methods of LEGO sorting and storage. I hope that you will find this helpful, whether you are new to the prospect of having a growing LEGO collection that needs organization or a longtime fan looking to upgrade their LEGO room and cut down on the time spent sorting. (I want to give credit to Matt Chiles for his guide on LEGO storage. While I don’t share his methods of LEGO storage, his website is what inspired this guide.) A Guide To This Guide This...

“Bio-Cup 2023 preliminary round starts when?” you ask? Why, it has already started! The preliminary round of the Bio-Cup 2023 building contest is now underway, and the theme of this qualifying round is Villain. What type of villain you create is entirely up to you. Contestants have until June 6th (23:59 PDT) to submit their entries, with the highest-scoring entrants moving on to the subsequent “head-to-head” elimination rounds (detailed rules can be found here). If for some reason you have no idea what the Bio-Cup is, even after all all of our prior contest coverage, below is a refresher of our past contest kick-off article by Grayson Moses. It provides such a great summary of what the contest is all about, that we shamelessly dust it off and put it back to use again each year - it’s tradition for us at this stage. Here’s hoping that participating in the Bio-Cup...

The Western River Steamboat by CTDpower is the latest project to achieve 10,000 supporters on LEGO Ideas. The boat is about 30″ long and 7.5″ wide and can separate into four parts for easy access. It is also minifigure scale. The project joins “Big Boy” Locomotive, Retro Arcade, Spartan Helmet of Leonidas, Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider, The Muppet Show, Red Bull Racing F1 Team RB18 1:12, and Scooby Doo Mystery Machine as the ones to reach the Second 2023 Review Stage. The post LEGO Ideas Western River Steamboat Achieves 10,000 Supporters appeared first on The Brick Fan. Original linkOriginal author: Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

To mark the announcement of LEGO’s new Technic 42158 NASA Mars Rover Perseverance, we thought we would republish an exceptionally nerdy article about an actual MOC on Mars. Today we showcase the first LEGO Ingenuity helicopter (complete with instructions) built by engineer Stephen Pakbaz who worked on the actual Perseverance chassis which is now roaming our neighboring Red Planet. This article was originally published on June 13, 2021. You are probably more familiar with builder Stephen Pakbaz than you realize. In fact, Stephen designed the fifth LEGO Ideas set, the iconic 21104 Curiosity Rover. Every year, Stephen brings out-of-this-world (sorry, I had to) motorized content to the space theme at Bricks LA. It feels like next year might give us those thrills again. Stephen has given us a preview of the good things we’ll have on the other side of lockdown, this time by building a stunning 1:1 scale LEGO model...