I love things. And by things, I don’t just mean any old things. I mean weird things. Portals. Monoliths. Strange structures that contain a sense of magic and mystery. Otherworldly objects that tread the fine line between majestic awe and horrifying madness. The kinds of things that you wouldn’t necessarily want to stumble upon while taking a walk in the woods, but that would make for a great start to a sci-fi or fantasy novel. The kinds of things that are hard to put into words. Things. In today’s article, I’ve decided to subject you all to my obsession with these… uh, things. (I wasn’t kidding when I said that it’s hard to put them into words). Anyways, it seems I’m not alone in my obsession; there are tons of other LEGO artists out there who have built MOCs depicting the sorts of things upon which this article is focused. In...

The Up-Scaled LEGO Minifigure (40649) (aka Maxifig) has started popping up all over LEGO channels. And I can say it is definitely an awesome set worth all the attention. But, rather than a standard set review, if you are like me, there is a compelling force to modify this big-little guy. So, I wanted to give you my efforts as an example as well as several things I learned through the process. Hopefully, reading this will encourage you to grab your own set and help you transform it towards your vision! Up-Scaled Merchandise “For the ever-loving scale?!” LEGO has produced many larger-than-standard minifigures, parts, pieces, wall decor, shampoo bottles, etc. It can be a fun rabbit hole to get lost in, just finding the oddly satisfying oversized items you never knew existed. That said, the scales are always changing… Even in this picture of LEGO trinkets and bobbles I have built...

Introduction The current LEGO colour palette contains just 44 solid colours, making the release of a new colour a pretty big deal. With the introduction of three new colours in 2022, The LEGO Group has clearly demonstrated its commitment to investing in new colours where it improves the product, and the build experience. We’ve also seen the issues caused by having too many colours, with the need to rationalise the palette in 2004. But today, we are going to throw all those real-world constraints out of the window, and have some hypothetical fun looking at gaps in the current palette, and speculate which of those could be filled by colour number 45. 44 Solid LEGO Colours of 2023 Colour Resources This article is a follow-up to the LEGO colour palette deep dive we performed earlier in the year. We covered a lot of colour theory, obtained close to accurate RGB codes...

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published June 2, 2022. I’ll come clean: I love LEGO! No surprise there, I guess. But luckily, my partner—now wife—also likes LEGO enough to think it was a good idea to sprinkle a little bit of LEGO magic over our long-overdue, post-COVID wedding celebration. Here’s what we did! Custom wedding cake! Oh, and a very happy bride and groom. Photo by Olan Malde Those of you who are regular BrickNerd readers will know that my posts tend to be of the personal kind. For the most part, I write stories about things that have happened to me since I got back into LEGO about ten years ago. But this one is inevitably going to get even more personal than usual, because it’s about my wedding. And in order to get to that, I’ll have to tell you about my wife, Karen. The Significant Other Except...

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published June 7, 2022. Welcome everyone, time for another technique spotlight! This time I thought we would have a look at one of the more prominent pieces of architecture when building houses—namely the roof. Why roofs? Well, I’m glad you asked—because roofs are awesome, that’s why! Seriously though, roofs can actually be pretty awesome and it’s definitely something that can elevate a build from “that looks nice“ to “holy crap, that is spectacular!“ So to help you guys out a bit, and hopefully fill you with inspiration for your next build, join me as we take a little dive into some of the different ways you can do this. So let’s get nerdy about LEGO roofs! There are a LOT of different ways to go about building a roof using lots of different kinds of LEGO elements. Below you’ll find quite a few techniques that...