2059 Cadillac El Dorado

Last night I was surfing around the Legoverse trying to find some inspiration to build something space-related, and I came across the Building The Future That Never Was Contest on classic-space.com. I got to thinking about the whole retro-future thing, and thought of doing a Jetsons-style aircar, which of course means using the clear dome, and then I thought of capturing the Cadillac fins of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. After much experimentation, this is what I came up with:

2059 Cadillac El Dorado

I’m especially happy with the studlessness of it… the only studs showing are the headlamps (which don’t count, in my opinion) and a few studs half-visible on the rear part of the hood. The underside is also smooth, using SNOT (Studs Not On Top) construction to mount parts upside-down.

See the rest of the pics in my photoset: 2059 Cadillac El Dorado, or view a slideshow.

Another 2006 Garden Gnome by another Bill posted by another Ward

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.

Bill Volbrecht's Garden Gnome

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:

Bill Ward's Garden Gnome.

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 :)

Blackburn Hotel at Valley Fair Mall

From May 31 to July 5, my Blackburn Hotel (Version 2) was on display at the LEGO Store at Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, CA in the BayLUG window.

Front View

This is a redesigned, bigger model of the mythical Blackburn Hotel that I originally built for the Bay Area LEGO Train Club layout. I haven’t done a proper photo-shoot of the hotel itself, but you can see pictures of it in a Flickr set I created to collect all the images of it, including the ones from this store display.

For the store display, however, I had to customize it a bit. I left off the rooftop sign, and modified the baseplates. The version that was used in BayLTC train shows used regular road plates for the street, rather than the tiled half-road (16-stud-wide baseplates) seen in the store display. Also, because the left side of the hotel was located on a street corner, the model didn’t include the road there, while on the right side there was an 8-stud half-alley. When we installed the hotel at the store, that caused the sign to be pressed against the background side wall, and the right side to have a strange gap. So, we ripped the baseplates off the bottom of the hotel and moved everything over by eight studs, putting in a partial road on the left side. Thanks to Russell and Bruce for their help reconfiguring the baseplates.

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

Modular 16×32 Buildings

These two buildings, both built on 16×32 stud baseplates, have been featured in many BayLTC displays over the past couple of years. They were built in a modular fashion so that floors can be mixed and matched if desired, and taken apart for more compact storage and transport.

Red BuildingBlue Building

The blue building has a removable module for the two upper floors, and another one for the roof. The red building has one removable module, consisting of the upper floor plus roof. The Blackburn Hotel was built according to the same standards.

The trouble with this modular design though is that the architectural style of the different buildings clashes too much; they would never be combined in real life.

These buildings have now been disassembled, largely because I feel that 16×32 is just too small of a footprint for a realistic building. I am now working on new buildings using a 32×32 or larger size footprint. I brought the works-in-progress for this project to the October BayLUG meeting.

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

Blackburn Hotel

The Blackburn Hotel is a building that I have displayed may times as a part of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club layouts at train shows and meetings, but never blogged about.

Blackburn Hotel

It is one of several 16×32 footprint downtown buildings which I created for the layout one time a few years ago when I heard that several of the members who usually bring buildings to train shows weren’t going to be participating in one of the shows, and we desperately needed downtown buildings.

The building is five stories tall, built mostly using black bricks with tan trim and red windows. The unique feature of the hotel is the signs: a rooftop “BLACKBURN HOTEL” sign and a vertical sign that says “HOTEL” which is intended to be placed at a street corner, but can be rotated 45 degrees to be used for a mid-block placement.

The name was suggested by my wife. Partly it is due to the color, and partly due to the fact that I was watching an English Premier League football (soccer) match on TV as I was building it featuring Blackburn Rovers (I support any team that has American players, and Blackburn have an American goalkeeper, Brad Friedl, as well as the New Zealander Ryan Nelson who used to play in Major League Soccer).

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

February 24, 2002: Teddy Bear

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.

February 24, 2002: Teddy Bear

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.

Hug me!siderearfacenecktiehead-sidehalfdone-anglehalfdone-inside

February 24, 2002: Passenger Transport

February 24, 2002: Passenger Transport

This hybrid rocket/jet aircraft takes off and lands like a plane, and the engines switch to rocket mode to reach orbit, where it docks with a space station or the Lunar Tour Vehicle for their next destination.

This uses the Docking System I devised for spacecraft.

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.

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