Bill Ward’s Brickpile

In Ted Ward’s pictures from Northwest BrickCon 2006 I came across a picture a while ago of a garden gnome, created by Bill Volbrecht, former LEGO Master Builder.

As far as I know, Ted Ward is no relation to me, and neither is Bill Volbrecht.

As to why this is interesting, I built my own garden gnome in 2006 as well – while I was in Fairfax VA for the Brickfest convention (it wasn’t at the convention; I built it from parts I bought there, in my hotel room afterward). I posted it here shortly after I built it in September 2006. Here’s mine for comparison:

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As for comparing the two, well I think that he did a better job on the mouth and eyes, but then I was limiting myself (as I’ve done for almost all of my sculptures) to only basic bricks, not plates or slopes or round parts. However if I may be so bold, I like my hat better: it is asymmetrical. I also think the details on the belt are better on mine. But the clincher is that his is functional: I believe that the hands are designed to hold business cards. Mine are hidden behind his back because hands are too hard to model :)

LEGO has been doing these “Yoda build events” all around the country as promotions for their retail stores. We finally got a chance to participate in one!

Members of BayLUG spent most of the weekend of July 20 and 21 helping out with this project. A Master Builder from LEGO, Stephen Gerling, was on hand to construct the giant LEGO sculpture of Yoda from Star Wars. It was based on a smaller model built almost entirely out of 2×4 bricks in brown, tan, and sand green colors.

To build the giant sculpture, kids were invited to come and construct giant LEGO bricks. Each brick was 8x16x4, or exactly 4x in each dimension the size of a standard 2×4 brick. Lots of 2×4 and 2×8 bricks in each of the three colors were on hand, and laminated instruction cards were set out for the kids to follow. We ended up with many many bins full of the giant bricks, which were used to construct the Yoda sculpture. In fact we had plenty of bricks left over, so at the end we took the instructions away and just let the kids build whatever they wanted.

The event was a lot of fun. We didn’t get paid, but we got some very special deals on bricks from the store to compensate for our time :-)

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.

This is another repost, from the days when I was thinking about making a business out of LEGO Sculpture, like Eric Harshbarger. I later decided that would take too much fun out of it.

This is my first non-Pokémon sculpture. I have decided to switch to more original designs to avoid possible copyright/trademark infringement, and to make it possible to sell copies of my sculpture. If you are interested in buying a copy of the Teddy Bear (in your choice of colors) or commissioning an original work, please send me e-mail. I brought this model to the BricksWest 2002 international LEGO conference at LEGOLAND in Carlsbad, CA in February 2002. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Another repost from 2001.

Models built for display in my front window for Halloween. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.

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…

You can see the sculpture work I’ve done in the past on my other blog. (Sooner or later I’m going to transfer the old LEGO content from that blog to here, but I haven’t figured out the best way to do that yet.)

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.

Technorati Tags: lego, sculpture, garden, gnome, gardengnome

These two fish were built as part of a display that my LEGO club, the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group, maintains at the Stoneridge Mall LEGO store in Pleasanton, CA. On February 20, 2006 we installed an “aquarium” theme there, which lasted for about a month. Read more about the installation and see more pics.

More pictures of the model can be found on Flickr.

My wife and I visited her family in Williamsport, PA last September. There is a very small airport there which just has one gate, served by US Airways Express turboprop planes. So imagine my surprise when I saw LEGO on display there! They had a glass display case with LEGO sculptures of Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam characters, along with some of the Kellogg’s product boxes.

I don’t know why these were there, or if any other airports were included in this program, but I was very impressed with the models and very surprised to see them in such an unexpected location. As far as I know, neither LEGO nor Kellogg’s have any particular connection to Williamsport.