In today’s guest article, LEGO builder Ben Smith shares an inside view of his rotating Ark spaceship, how it is constructed, how it moves, and some of the hard lessons he learned along the way. Overview & Video When Dave asked me to write a piece on The Ark for BrickNerd, I didn’t know what else I could possibly say about it, having done a presentation on it for Bricks at Home and BrickCon, written an article for BrickJournal and made a 10-minute video for at Comic-Con. Then I realised BrickNerd is for more of a hardcore AFOL audience and the idea of a piece digging deeper into the construction techniques of the model might be of interest, so… here it is! I won’t repeat what’s been said before, so just go and watch the Comic-Con video below to find out all about the model before I wade in. Video Block...

Every now and then a LEGO train MOC comes by that takes your breath away and steams things up. Today is one of those days! Not just a train but a wonderful Swedish Class S1 2-6-4. Doesn't ring a train bell? Well, I get that because the name doesn't say much to me either. What does speak to me is the elegance of the MOC that carries that name. It's a cleverly built steam engine made by Sven J. I admire MOCs like this, but I know very little about trains or building trains. Good thing Sven J was kind enough to give us a bit more insight!  Marco: You've mentioned that it's your all-time favorite engine. Can you elaborate a bit more on why that is? Sven: I know the “real“ S1 1916, which is preserved on the “Angelner Dampfeisenbahn“ in Northern Germany. I saw it when I was 14 years...

Where does time fly? August is nearly over, the first Christmas candy has invaded grocery stores, and once again we got a lot less building done than what we promised ourselves. But today we’re serving you a good excuse and are delighted to present another smorgasbord of insightful articles, interesting features and deep dives from all across the LEGO community! 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 got started with GBC, looked at LEGO radios and LEGO letters and visited visited San Diego Comic Con. We dressed up with Jack Skellington, learned about magical creatures in LEGO Harry Potter and admired life-sized LEGO cars. We looked at life after LEGO Masters and reflected on 20 years in the LEGO community. And we even looked at appreciation tokens and their Gugick origins...

Today’s guest article comes from Aubree Moctura (moctura_), one of the driving forces behind Friendshiptember and known for her fandom of the spooktacular. We reached out to Aubree to see if she would like to review LEGO’s new 21351 Disney Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas set on BrickNerd’s behalf. She replied, “The Nightmare Before Christmas is my favorite movie of all time!!!” Will this tribute set also become her family’s favorite LEGO set of all time? Read on to find out! A Welcome Nightmare Before Christmas T’was a long time ago, longer now than it seemsThat a little girl was changed by grand sights on a screen.She asked her mom for a pet spider to hold.Placed a pumpkin on her head, orange and bold.If you had been wondering when her spookiness began,It was this life-changing film, for this Nightmarish fan. *Cue music* When BrickNerd asked if I wanted to receive...

Have you ever wondered what the LEGO community was like in the 2000s? Today’s guest writer and veteran builder Nannan Zhang shares his thoughts on building and sharing MOCs online for the past 20 years. Humble Beginnings in a Humble Community Space 2004—In that year, Flickr was launched, MOCpages celebrated its first birthday, BrickLink turned three, and Brickshelf was the big brother of the budding community at five years old. It was on a slow day during my high school summer break that I typed the word “lego” into my search browser. What happened after that changed my life. I discovered the online LEGO community by stumbling upon Brickshelf and MOCpages. For the first time, I saw giant spaceships, massive castles, large LEGO dioramas, and more. Enthralled by awesome creations from AFOLs, I embarked on an adventure to achieve a high level of skill and technique in MOC building so that...