September 2006 – Bill Ward's Brickpile

Dresdner Frauenkirche by Holger Matthes

Holger “HoMa” Matthes raises the bar yet again.

This is a model of the Dresdner Frauenkirche (or “Church of Our Lady in Dresden” as you might say it in English), a Lutheran church in Dresden which was bombed out during World War II. It was left in ruins for decades and recently rebuilt to match the original. The parts modeled in dark grey represent the ruins that were incorporated into the new building; the tan parts are the new parts that were added to restore the church. The model is 1.45m or 4’9″ tall!

He posted about this on LUGNET two weeks ago so it isn’t exactly news but I’ve been meaning to blog about it for a while and am only now getting around to it.

Apparently, LEGO’s master builders had made a model of the church before, which was on display in a department store as part of a fundraiser to pay for the reconstruction. The one from LEGO was about twice as tall, but I think HoMa’s is at least as good. For pics of that model and more info see this sub-thread from LUGNET.

I have a personal connection here: I visited HoMa and a few of his friends during my trip to Germany in 2001. I was impressed with his talent then, but he’s really excelled in the years since! The detail work on this model is just exquisite.

So if you’ve seen this already, click the pic and take a closer look. It’s impressive enough to deserve a second glance. And if you haven’t, you’re in for a treat.

No NWBrickCon for Me

It’s official, I’m not going to Northwest BrickCon. Having just gone to BrickFest a month ago I really can’t justify another trip right now, and besides BayLUG is having a meeting that weekend.

I was really hoping to go to NWBC to meet some of the folks who weren’t able to come to BF. I met a lot of west coast LEGO folks at BricksWest 2003, but haven’t seen any of them since, except for a few who made it to BF this year. Hopefully next year, NWBC and BF won’t be so close together!

I am still hoping to make it to BrickSouth next spring in Atlanta. I met a few of the Georgia classic space guys at BF and am looking forward to that event. Hopefully I can build some kind of impressive spacecraft to show there.

Brothers Brick: “Have the Internet and Blogging Improved LEGO Creativity?”

Via The Brothers Brick:

“Alan Lopuszynski over at Burbanked linked to Linus’ recent post about robbed’s Terminator head and asks an interesting question I’d like to put in front of TBB readers:

Impressive? Absolutely. Yet it begs the question: were people this creative before the Internet offered an outlet with which to showcase their efforts? Because in our youth, we were lucky to construct a rocket car out of Legos that actually looked like it was capable of rolling down the upstairs hallway. We have to wonder, had we the benefit of the self-affirming effects of a blog and complimentary comments from people all over the world, whether things might have turned out quite differently in life.

So, dear readers, what do you think?”

My response:

I awoke from my last (in the sense of most recent, and hopefully in the sense of ultimate) Dark Age when my brother in law pointed me to Eric Harshbarger’s site, when it was featured on Slashdot for the Lego Desk. I looked at his works and thought “I could do that” and went out and bought a bunch of 3033 tubs (RIP) and built my Pokemon sculptures. I then found LUGNET and my local LUG and haven’t looked back since.

The thing that’s kept me from having another Dark Age is the interaction with other AFOL’s. Whether it be a LUG meeting, train show, or just posting pictures online, the fact that I’m not all on my own has made it possible to maintain momentum. And that wouldn’t happen without the Internet.

As for blogs though, I think the jury’s still out. I don’t think there’s enough of us blogging to really have an effect yet. I think that LUGNET (though not nearly as much as in the past), classic-space.com, classic-castle.com sites, etc. have more impact than blogs at the moment.

So the question I would add is, will LEGO blogs take over from bulletin boards as the venue for the LEGO discussion? I think they already have in a few small areas, such as vignettes, but overall it remains to be seen. What do you think?

BayLTC @ Great Train Expo, San Jose

This past weekend, Bay Area LEGO Train Club (BayLTC) took part in the Great Train Expo in San Jose, CA.

We set up the layout Friday afternoon/evening. I had to teach a Perl class Saturday, but Sunday I was there all day to help man the layout. It’s always a treat to see the looks on kids (of all ages) as they look over the layout. We also met a few people who might become members of the club, which is another plus. At any rate, I handed out more than a few membership application forms and suggested to a number of people that they might want to come to the meeting on October 8 in Palo Alto.

My contributions to this layout were mostly in the downtown area: the Blackburn Hotel, Luigi’s Italian restaurant, an office building, and a few houses. I also supplied a few trucks which could be seen in the downtown area and my RoadRailer Trailers which were parked in the train yard.

View all the pictures on Flickr (slideshow) or on Brickshelf.[tags]lego,bayltc,baylug,trainshow,sanjose,greattrainexpo[/tags]

Damaged in Transit

As you may recall, while we were back east for BrickFest I bought a bunch of LEGO and built two new models, the Scarlet Mayhem spaceship and Garden Gnome sculpture.Well it turns out I bought a lot of LEGO. Way too much in fact. So much that I had to buy a 5-piece luggage set (3 suitcases, a handbag, and a toiletries bag) and all 3 suitcases were basically packed full of LEGO.

The current air travel rules allow each person to have up to four bags: two pieces of checked luggage, a carryon, and a “personal item.” With the new bags full of LEGO, Holly and I were right at that limit. And all the bags were packed quite full.

As a result there really wasn’t any way to give my MOC’s adequate padding to keep them from being destroyed. I was able to put them in plastic bags so that the damaged bits would at least stay together. The photos you see here are the result. Although it looks really bad (and in fact, the gnome was even worse – I snapped the picture about halfway through putting him back together), it actually wasn’t very hard to rebuild them by consulting the photos I had taken, so I was able to rebuild both models in fairly short order. I plan to bring them both to the next BayLUG meeting (assuming I don’t go to Northwest BrickCon instead, which is still a possibility).[tags]lego[/tags]

BayLUG “Downtown” display at LEGO store

On Wednesday night, I got together with a few other membes of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) to set up a new display at the LEGO store in Valley Fair Mall, Santa Clara, CA. My contributions included the buildings (blue office building and Quik-E-Mart), the cars on the street, and the traffic signals. Charles and Adrienne built the subway and sewer module specifically for this exhibit. Bruce brought a helicopter (based on one from the Batman sets) and a trolley based on a design by James Mathis. Russell provided the street details such as streetlights, mailboxes, fire hydrant, etc. Detailed photos are available on Flickr, or check out the slide show.

You can see more similar models at our exhibit at the Great Train Expo this weekend in San Jose (at the fairgrounds).
[tags]lego,city,downtown[/tags]

Dragostea din Tei in LEGO??

The song “Dragostea din Tei” by the Moldovan band O-Zone, more widely known as “the Numa Numa song,” is probably the most widely recognized song in the Romanian language ever written. And now it has finally been done in LEGO! Do you remember Gary Brolsma’s famous “Numa Numa Dance” video? This LEGO animation is a remake of that dance using a LEGO minifig. The minifig’s mouth has been animated and the arms move in ways that LEGO just can’t do, unless you rip them off at the shoulders!! Muahahahahaha!!!! (sorry, lost control there for a moment). Anyway, here’s the video (Update 12/23/2008: The original video has been removed from YouTube, but I found another copy and have replaced the embedded video here):

The original Gary Brolsma version, to refresh your memory (or if you’ve been living under a rock somewhere and never saw it):

For more about the song, check out the Wikipedia entries for “Dragostea din Tei” and “Numa Numa.” And for more about Gary Brolsma, check out his fan site or his latest work, NewNuma.

Via The Brothers Brick.

Garden Gnome Sculpture

My first sculpture in over two years is the Garden Gnome. This enigmatic figure watches over your garden and makes sure everything is in order. Along with Scarlet Mayhem, this was built from my “east coast collection” during my trip for BrickFest. Detailed photos are available on Flickr, or check out the slide show.

I built the gnome using parts from 3 sets of the LEGO Special Edition tub 6092 which I bought at BrickFest. I bought those sets largely for the red tubs, which use the same lids and are exactly 2/3 the height of the blue tubs from the set that got me into LEGO sculpture, 3033, from a few years ago. Ah, I miss that set…

For more of my sculpture work, check the section of this site and the Sculpture collection on Flickr.

This sculpture, like all the ones I did before (except Maneki Neko) is done entirely with regular LEGO bricks. No SNOT, no unusual shapes, not even any plates. (Maneki Neko has plates in the Japanese coin and SNOT in the claws.) Should I go for more detail by using such parts or stick with basic bricks? Let me know (by posting a comment) what you think.

Update: Photos are now also on Brickshelf, and I posted about this on lugnet.build.sculpture.
[tags]lego,sculpture,garden,gnome,gardengnome[/tags]

Best of BrickFest 2006

I’ve finally had a chance to go over all the photos I previously posted from BrickFest, and selected what I feel are the best. Some are great photos, while others are photos of great things. Still others are just photos of things that are quintsentially BrickFest. Click the picture to the right to view the 79 pictures I selected, or go straight to a slide show.

I also added tags and titles to all the photos I had uploaded, and deleted a few that were redundant or out of focus. If you would like to see all the pictures, click these links:

[tags]lego, brickfest, brickfest2006[/tags]

Scarlet Mayhem

Studless, smooth, and sleek, this racer, known as “Scarlet Mayhem,” was the winner of the first annual Earth to Mars race, which tests a ship’s performance in atmosphere, interplanetary, and reentry situations. The two-man crew take turns flying the craft, similar to the Le Mans car race. Detailed photos are available on Flickr.

The scoops on the tops of the wings provide air for the engines when running inside the atmosphere in scramjet mode. It has a lot of SNOT details – the bottom of the fuselage is mounted studs-down, and covered in tiles and slopes so that no studs or undersides of bricks are showing. The wings are studs-out, made of bricks, and the only conventional part of the ship is the wingtips which do show their undersides. Because of the studs-down bottom, there are no studs inside on the floor for the minifigs to sit on (to add a studs-up floor would require the roof to be higher, ruining the lines, or removing too much interior space for the minifigs). As a result, the minifigs are sitting on 2×4 plate “sleds” which slide into the ship and sit loosely. The cockpit canopy is hinged on the sides.

This model was built mainly using parts from the Enzo Ferrari 1:17 set, borrowing parts from Prehistoric Power and Speedboat sets. Why such a limited source of parts? I’m on vacation in the east coast away from my LEGO collection, but I bought the above sets at the LEGO store during BrickFest 2006.

It’s a little strange to be building LEGO away from home, and with an unfamiliar and reduced palette. Still, I got a lot of great new parts which I look forward to combining with my collection at home when I return.

Update: I have also posted pictures of this model on Brickshelf.
Update: I also posted about this on Lugnet and Classic-Space.com.[tags]lego,space,snot[/tags]