The Magazine for LEGO® Enthusiasts of All Ages! Issue 17 • January 2012
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SPACE WAR
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Starfighters, Space Marines and ALIEN CONQUEST!
Also,
Super Star Destroyer Review Commando Clowns AND MORE! TM
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74470 23979
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Just Announced! Make Plans Now! May 17-20, 2012 at the Hilton North Raleigh, NC
Raleigh
2012
Featuring the best AFOL Goodie Bag on Earth! (Just ask anyone who was there in 2010 or 2011)
Register now at www.brickmagic.org Limited Edition
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Limited Edition BrickMagic event set designed by BrickJournal editor Joe Meno. Contains 113 LEGO® pieces, plus full instructions.
!
CHOKING HAZARD! Contains small parts. Not intended for children under 3.
This is not a LEGO® Product. These are re-used LEGO elements that have been repackaged or altered from their original form. LEGO is a trademark of the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this product. The LEGO Group is not liable for any loss, injury or damage arising from the use or misuse of this product.
Logo Patch $2 This embroidered patch (measures 2.5” square) is the perfect complement to any jacket, vest, bookbag, or other fashion item. If you’re ordering several items or live outside the US, order online and save on shipping costs!
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Issue 17 • January 2012
Contents
From the Editor.........................................................................................2
News
LEGOLAND ® Florida Opens!..........................................................3 IMAGINE Windows to Another World.....................................6
People
John Ho: Mecha Builder and More............................................8 Building Starcraft® in LEGO Bricks: A New Game...................................................13 Outside the Oblong: The Animation Secrets of Chris Salt.....................................16
Building
Set Review: The Executor (Super Star Destroyer).....................................................20 Building Alien Conquest..................................................27 Here Come the Space Marines!..............................35 Master Chief Masterpiece..........................................44 Starfighter Engineering: A Primer.......................46 You Can Build It: MINI Vic Viper.............................52 Minifigure Customization 101: Designing in a Theme...........................................56
Community
Adding More“Green”to the Palette.............62 LEGO Art: Building a Medium........................66 The LEGO Shape System: Wedging a Brick.......................................................71 The LEGO Group: An Unusual Partnership.....................................74 Part Index by Mike Doyle.......................................77 Community Ads..........................................................78 Last Word...........................................................................79 AFOLs........................................................................................80 Right: Luis Castañada’s Starcraft Space Marine. Photo by Mark Stafford.
From the Editor: Been busy over here! In the past couple of months, I have been at one end of the country to go to a convention, then to the other for the opening of a new park! Between that, I helped out on a local LEGO event and have been sending notes far and wide for the magazine.
January 2012 Issue 17 Editor in Chief Joe Meno Publisher John Morrow Photography Editor Geoff Gray Proofreader Rob Smentek European and LEGO Group Bureau Editor Megan Rothrock Japanese Bureau Editor Nathan Bryan West Coast Editors Todd Kubo Ashley Glennon
Contributors:
Jared Burks, Ben Caulkins, Christopher Deck, Matt DeLanoy, Mike Doyle, Nicholas Foo, Geoff Gray, Kristian Hauge, Matthew Hocker, Henk Holsheimer, Ty Keltner, Peter Morris. Peter Reid, Megan Rothrock, Hadley Scrowston, Mark Stafford, and Greg Hyland. Many thanks to the websites who have served as mirrors for BrickJournal: www.LUGNET.com, www.Brickshelf.com, www.peeron.com, www.brickmodder.net www.rustyclank.com
About the Cover: Space Marines! Built by Mark Stafford and Luis Castañeda. Photo by Mark Stafford
It gets hectic, especially toward deadline. And sometimes it gets a little tiring. What reenergizes me is the feedback I get when I travel. People know me and recognize me, and while that is nice, what is really nice is that they more often than not are happy with BrickJournal and what it covers, which is a credit to the writers and photographers who make this magazine happen. This issue is a little more “spacey-wacey” than usual. There’s space building, but not the normal stuff you would expect to see. Have fun reading and exploring! Also, look for the new book The Cult of LEGO by No Starch Press. I helped out on it, and it’s a good book for those new to the community! Joe Meno Editor P.S. Have ideas or comments? Drop me a line at admin@brickjournal.com. I’m open to suggestions and comments and will do my best to reply. P.P.S... Yes, BrickJournal has a website — www.brickjournal.com! Twitter? Yep, there too — http://twitter.com/brickjournal. Facebook? Yup — http://www.facebook. com/group.php?gid=58728699914&ref=mf. Or you can scan the bottom codes with a QR reader! P.P.P.S. If you want info on a subscription, you can go to: http://twomorrows.com/ index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=78&products_id=616 or scan below! Website
Glossary
AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) NLSO (Non-LEGO Significant Other) MOC (My Own Creation) TLG (The LEGO Group) BURP (Big Ugly Rock Piece) LURP (Little Ugly Rock Piece)
Subscriptions
POOP (Pieces—that can be or should be made—Of Other Pieces) SNOT (Studs Not on Top) LUG (LEGO Users Group) LTC (LEGO Train Club)
LEGO®, TECHNIC, MINDSTORMS, Belville, Scala, BIONICLE, ExoForce, Mars Mission, World City, and other LEGO theme lines are trademarks of the LEGO Group of companies. All articles, photos, and art are copyright BrickJournal Media, LLC 2011, TwoMorrows Publishing and the respective writers, photographers, and artists. All rights reserved. All trademarked items are the property of their respective owners and licensees. Subscriptions are $57USD Media Mail, $75 Canada, $86 International Surface, $128 International Airmail and can be purchased at www.twomorrows.com or payment sent to: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. The editorial/advertising office address for BrickJournal is: BrickJournal Editor, 5610 Briar Oak Lane #510, Raleigh, NC 27612 USA or admin@brickjournal.com. First Printing. Printed in Canada. ISSN 1941-2347. BrickJournal and its staff would like to thank the LDraw community for the software it makes available to the community, which we use for making all of the instructions and renderings in this magazine. We would especially like to thank Kevin Clague for his continued upgrades of the LPub tool that is a part of the LDraw suite. For more information, please visit http://www.ldraw.org.
News
“I’m going to need all the help of you guys to do the countdown and I hope and pray that this works...” So spoke LEGOLAND Florida General Manager Adrian Jones (above) to a crowd of thousands as he put his hands on a lever to open the park on October 15, 2011. The countdown started at 5 seconds with the crowd joining in a deafening crescendo as the numbers quickly dwindled... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1... and at zero, the lever was pulled by Adrian, and confetti cannons fired to celebrate the opening of the gates to the public. Apparently it worked. Thousands of people came that day to this new park, the first to open in Central Florida in a decade. What they saw was a park that was once another park, Cypress Gardens, but had been transformed to a theme park that appeals to a different crowd than the other theme parks an hour away. The media got a peek at the park a day before Grand Opening with a ceremony that placed the last brick, the Golden Brick, on the last model. Present for the occasion were local officials and representatives of the LEGO Group and Merlin Entertainments Group, the company behind the LEGOLAND parks. Speaking for the park was Adrian Jones, and speaking for Merlin Entertainments was Nick Varney, Chief Executive Officer of the company. Both thanked local officials and staff, and looked to the future with the park. Adrian stated, “Some people think that this is the end of the Cypress Gardens era,
LEGOLAND® Florida Opens!!! Article by Joe Meno Photography by Joe Meno and Chip Litherland
but I would prefer to think of this as a new beginning, the opening of LEGOLAND Florida, which inherited all the beauty, the character, the personality and soul of what Cypress Gardens had and made special... This is only the beginning though. LEGOLAND Florida coming to the old site of Cypress Gardens is not the change... It’s actually the catalyst of a broader change that the whole community has to play a part as we move forward.” Nick echoed these remarks: “Something very special is happening here today and what I think is remarkable is normally a project of this magnitude would take seven to eight years from original conception to opening. And yet, we only acquired Cypress Gardens in January of last year and only set foot on the site a little over three years ago. And what’s been done was thanks to a lot of people’s 3 extraordinary support and effort.”
Community Up until recently, I have been living and working in Mainland China. When I found out that Bricks Adventure, a LEGO exhibition in Hong Kong, would be held in January, 2011 I knew I had to check it out. While there, I had the opportunity to meet John Ho, a Hong Kong AFOL and the “curator” of the exhibition. John had some excellent MOCs onhand, many of which fell under the theme of Mecha. I knew I had to interview John about his work.
John with his Transformers 2 diorama, “Help!... Save me Brother!”
John Ho: Mecha Builder and More! Article by Matthew Hocker Photography by John Ho
Matt Hocker: How long have you been building with LEGO bricks? John Ho: For the record, I never stopped playing with LEGO bricks. Back in time, before I completely focused on building with LEGO bricks, I used them as supplementary parts for my toy collection. In late 2007, I discovered on the Internet that there were many people creating different kinds of MOCs, and I started to spend hours looking at MOCs on websites like The Brothers Brick. They amazed me so much that I started to focus on building my own LEGO creations. It’s been four years since then, and I’m still building. MH: What is your favorite LEGO set, and why is it your favorite? JH: I don’t really build the LEGO sets I get before I sort the pieces and put them in my MOCs parts shelf. Yet, I would say that I love the 10191 and 10192 sets (Star Justice was originally a MOC theme, so it’s kind of cheating, right? LOL). Sets 10191 and 10192 are my favorites because I love the color scheme and overall design, and I am personally a sci-fi fan. MH: Describe your building philosophy. JH: I have always believed that a toy is not only a toy. It all depends on how you treat it. (You could probably guess that I was an art student back in University.) For me, LEGO is a raw material for art, and I believe there are no differences between a good illustration and a good MOC because it is still a kind of a design. LEGO is a form of expression for our creativity, and that is how we should treat it.
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The City University of Hong Kong logo, made by John as a college art assignment.
Yet, I usually build MOCs according to scale. I try to build models in minifig scale all the time, so scale is a part of my building philosophy too, I guess.
MH: What do you like to build? JH: Mecha is my focus area of building, and this genre has been my favorite since I was a kid. I guess I was influenced by Japanese animation as a kid, such as Gundam. I am also interested in building other themes. For example, I had also tried to build the City University of Hong Kong logo as a university art assignment. (It’s kind of fun to include a personal interest in your studies and get an A out of it, LOL). In the meantime, I am developing a few plans for building an army similar in style to Warhammer 40K (a tabletop war game), so, I would say that sci-fi related stuff is what I like to build too. MH: Where do you draw inspiration from when building your MOCs?/Where do you find inspiration for your models? (Could you give examples, citing specific MOCs that reflect each inspiration?) JH: My inspiration mainly comes from two sources that are directly related to my building theme. For themes like The Matrix, Transformers (the movie), Japanese animation or logo of the University, I usually spend two to three days studying pictures of the subject I want to build, trying to get the overall feeling of it. As you might notice, my renditions of the Transformers are not actual replicas. They are more like a different design of the same character from the movie. Therefore, I would say the inspiration for these creations comes from my first impression of them. What I do is recreate that first impression so everyone can recognize what I am building right away. In other words, it is a likeness. The second part of my inspiration comes from my interest in looking at concept art. I have over five gigabytes of concept art on my iPod Touch, and I will quickly page though the pictures. It’s kind of like how a writer reads a lot of books before he starts to write his own stuff. I guess I spend one hour per day studying these random images I collect from the Internet. MH: Out of all of the MOCs you have made, which has been your favorite one? Why? JH: This is a difficult one, but I will try my best. Although the Twins from Transformers gave me a lot of attention from MOC builders around the world, I think that I am not yet satisfied with the design. (In fact, I am still modifying the design.) My personal favorite is the Matrix APU I built this year. I had built another version of the APU in 2008, and rebuilding the same MOC after a few years actually gave me a clear sense of improvement in terms of the use of parts and building techniques.
Above: Two of John’s color robots.
Skids, one of the Twins from Transformers 2, doing what he does best...making trouble.
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Community
Outside the Oblong: The Animation Secrets of Chris Salt Article by Peter Reid Photography by Chris Salt
Chris Salt has been making animated LEGO films for nearly a decade, and is a master of his craft. He is the man behind Oblong Pictures, and has spawned a legacy which has been viewed by millions. To find him on YouTube, search for ‘0ldscratch’ (with a zero, not an O). Chris took time out of his hectic schedule to chat with BrickJournal about his methods, his dreams, and moving things just a tiny amount.
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The Golden Age Of Steam — This was a quick mock-up. To get everyone in focus, I had to take six separate shots of the carriage with different focus settings and then merge them all into one.
Peter Reid: Hi Chris, it is great to speak with you. I have always wanted to ask, do you have any formal background in animation? Chris Salt: I don’t have any background at all in any kind of filmmaking. I’ve always enjoyed watching animated films but, growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it never seemed like something you could really do as a hobby without spending an awful lot of money. It was only some time around 2001, when a work colleague brought a cheap digital camera into the office, that I realized how much things had moved on. The camera came with some basic stop-motion animation software and he spent a lunch break filming paperclips and toys moving around on his desk. I went out a few days later and bought a cheap camera, then stopped by my parents’ house to collect the old LEGO collection that had been gathering dust for 20 years. That was it — I’d got the bug. PR: Your earliest footage (viewable on the YouTube account “Hurtinator”) seems very basic. You took a huge leap forward with your first proper film (Out Of Time). What made you suddenly start taking it seriously? CS: Those grainy old clips on YouTube were my very first attempts at figuring out the animation process and learning what you can and can’t do with minifigs. I spent a few afternoons playing around with different things so I could get an idea whether it was something I could do, and whether it was worth buying a better camera and expanding my meager childhood LEGO collection. PR: Out Of Time was a story about a couple of regular guys who meet up with some time travelers and find
themselves inheriting a time machine... CS: Ha ha, yes. Early on, I was planning to make an epic pirate story — a real swashbuckler. The jump from tensecond test clips to a sweeping tale of love and vengeance on the high seas seemed a bit too big though, so I thought I’d try something a bit simpler first. I came up with the idea for Out Of Time to see how easy it would be to make a film that had a bit of a story. It was supposed to be just two guys in a room talking to each other but it kind of grew as I got more confident. PR: You’ve said in the past that Out Of Time, which was filmed in 2003, was planned as a trilogy. Will we ever see the other two parts? CS: If I’m completely honest, it wasn’t planned as a trilogy right from the start. However, by the time I finished work on the first film, I had a rough idea where to take the story in parts 2 and 3. I made the mistake of telling people this, and they started asking when it was going to happen. Right now, I’ve written some scripts and I’m thinking of setting some time aside this year to finally make them. PR: Your more recent films feature talking minifigs with full lip-synching, which looks amazing. Will you be using this approach in the Out Of Time sequels? Or will you stick to the same methods that you used in the first film? CS: I’ve been making these films for a few years now and my building skills have come a long way in that time. As you know, I’m also calling on the services of some expert builders for some of the props, so I think the sequels are going to look significantly different to the original.
In the Office - Setting up the first shot on a new film, with placeholder Post-its and computer screen.
On Stage - The lights and animated backdrop were added digitally after shooting the stop-motion.
If I can find the time to do a good job, I’d quite like to remake it so that the three films look like they belong together. PR: Speaking of your skills, you have the ability to coax the most wonderful performances out of minifigs, even though they only have seven points of articulation. Are you comfortable working with such a limited range of movement? CS: In a lot of ways, the limitations make things easier. Sometimes it would be nice to have a minifig scratch his chin or hold a rifle properly but, for the most part, I’m happy with what you can achieve. The limitations speed things up too. Because there’s only seven points of articulation to worry about, in a fairly straightforward scene, I can shoot between four and ten seconds of footage an hour. When Nick Park was shooting Chicken Run at Aardman, an animator would typically only manage a couple of seconds of footage per day. PR: Several of your films reference the LEGO Space theme. Are you a big fan of LEGO Space Themes? CS: I’ve always been a science-fiction fan and the Classic Space theme appeared at just the right time for me as a kid, so I’ve always had a soft spot for that era. If I can work a spaceman or a robot into a film, I will. PR: Which of your films are you most proud of? CS: That’s a difficult question to answer because I’m never one hundred percent happy with any of my films. There are always shots where I know that I had to cut corners to get something done.
Shooting Day for Night - Switch off one light, cover the other with a blue gel, and presto! It’s night time.
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Set Review
The Super Star Destroyer Darth Vader’s command ship comes alive in this exclusive LEGO UCS set. Article by Geoff Gray
Designed by Kurt Kristiansen, this new LEGO Star Wars set measures almost 50 inches long and is the latest in a long running series of sets called the “Ultimate Collector Series.” This model will easily make its mark alongside the other sets in this series.
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Building
Starfighter Engineering: A Primer Article and Art by Peter Morris
A Starfighter Defined
In the simplest terms, it’s the spacey equivalent of our atmospheric fighters. But what does that mean? What do they do? Earthbound fighters have a variety of roles, from bombing, to close air support, to interception, to patrol. Naturally starfighters would have the same roles, but they are not simply limited to those few roles. Since we are talking about things that have not yet been invented, and we’re building them out of LEGO, the only real limit to the possibilities is our own imaginations. To boil one down to its simplest components, a starfighter needs three things:
1. A cockpit for the pilot or if it’s a drone, some place for the “brain.” 2. A method of propulsion. 3. Weapons.
The configuration of these components, and the style with which they are joined together, is what makes building them so much fun! There are literally endless variations and possibilities out there. But all that possibility can be a little intimidating. Fortunately, it’s not that hard to put together some basic shapes that can provide a solid foundation on which to build and experiment You can then add and subtract components until you get a form that looks “just right” to you.
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Where to Begin Sometimes the hardest thing about building a MOC is the beginning. Some folks like to start with a certain piece or types of pieces and build their designs from there. Others like to build more organically, putting parts together until something interesting emerges. Still others plan very carefully and build to a set of specifications. There is no “right” way or “wrong” way. The point is to find what works for you. Most of the time I start with a simple sketch, usually starting with the cockpit and adding on
features from there. Sometimes I deliberately try to sketch in the shapes of various LEGO pieces that I want to use, and I’ll even make notes about the color. Sometimes I’ll draw different versions, placing the cockpit, weapons, or engines in different spots, just to see what it’ll look like. Once I’m ready to start building, I’ll get out the main parts I want and arrange them to make sure they’re going to fit what I drew. Or if they don’t, I just find another way to make the shape I want out of the brick. Sometimes I can’t quite match the sketch, and that’s OK. What counts is that it looks good to you.
I find that sketching a MOC before starting to work can help in the building process.
In this case, I was fortunate enough to have the finished product come out remarkably like the sketches.
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Building
Minifig Customization 101:
Designing in a Theme
Cpl. Honky: CC Quartermaster
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Pvt. Jumbo: Engineered Clown
by Jared K. Burks Guest Contributors: Michael Anthony Steele & Scott McFadden
Col. Clown: Commander of the CC
Lt. Bubbles: Stealth expert of the CC
Sgt. Blammo: Explosives expert of the CC
In this article, we will discuss how to create a theme, design characters for that theme, and how to personalize those characters into a cohesive group and not create repetitive figures. With the information presented, one could construct an army, pack, clique, unit, or whatever, personalizing each to make them unique, yet allowing for some similarities so they fit into that unit, army, world, or universe. I have the great privilege to have two very talented co-contributors for this article who are experts in creating a theme: Michael Anthony Steele and Scott McFadden. Anthony and Scott, of Big Red Boot Entertainment, are the creators of the digital comic book called Clown Commandos, where they have expertly demonstrated these skills. For this article, I have used the world they created in the Clown Commandos comic to create the comic book’s main characters in LEGO form, merging their comic’s theme with the LEGOverse (so technically the figures presented are designed in two themes). To do this well, one has to stay true to both the comic and to LEGO style, this way the characters are recognizable and yet don’t readily stick out in either world (comic or LEGOverse). To find out more about the Clown Commandos comic book, you can read the sidebar at the right. Before merging of the Clown Commando world with the LEGO to create the figures in LEGO form, I asked Scott McFadden (the CC’s art lead) to give us some insights on how the Clown Commandos were artistically created. By examining themes in this way, a better understanding of unit/group character design can be developed and used to create more interesting/ cohesive groups. This gives the figures more life, more backstory, and more reasons to have that blue hair, seltzer water pistol, or red floppy boots. Scott’s insights can be found on the next page. When designing in a theme, there are critical elements that need to be repeated to make the characters similar to support the theme. Yet, the characters need to be different enough to make them individuals. These critical elements can be reused from figure to figure so long as some twist on the element is utilized to make it new and unique on each character. Without individuals, the depth of the unit is lacking, so each figure needs to have that personalized stamp or they merely look mass-produced. The point of customizing your world is to make that unique character. If sheer numbers is your game and exact copies are fine, think stormtroopers when they line up in the movie shots in phalanxes (100 soldiers in 10 x 10 rows and columns). However, if you are creating that small fighting unit or even that garage full of mechanics, having them all in the exact same outfits gets tedious. Think about the Ghostbusters films: did all 4 main characters wear the exact same jump suit the same way? No, of course they didn’t, they all added their “personalized flair.” Maybe not 27 pieces, but I digress. Think about adding “flair” to each character, make them unique, and utilize design elements in unique ways.
The first comic book app with REAL SOUND FX! The premise of Clown Commandos begins in an alternate universe where a single occurrence during World War II launched a chain of events that caused clowns to evolve into an elite fighting force. Now, in present day, a squad of these Clown Commandos becomes trapped in our reality where clowns are known as bumbling buffoons, a reality where the rubber nose is NOT a badge of honor. Part G.I. Joe, part Ninja Turtles, and part Batman, these juxtaposed heroes fight crime while searching for a way home. But look out, they take themselves very seriously while doing it. To them, there’s nothing funny about being a clown. And therein lies the heart of the series’ humor. No matter what kind of life or death struggle, no matter how evil the villain, Clown Commandos think nothing of taking down the bad guys with a well-aimed rubber chicken or a pie to the face. Big Red Boot Entertainment invites you to download their independent comic book app, Clown Commandos, at the Apple iTunes store for free! http://tiny.cc/ so46q. Clown Commandos is written and produced specifically for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. By creating the comic specifically for these devices there is a comfortable frame to frame flow that adds to the experience of reading the book. The series’ other ground-breaking feature is the integration of interactive sound effects and dialog. For more information, please visit: clowncommandos. com and follow the Clowns on Twitter (@ clowncommandos), Facebook, and the official CC blog at: clownblog.com
Clown Commando Humvee: Adapted design from Dan Siskind of Brickmania
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The LEGO Graffiti Styles Convention was more of an idea which I was thinking about for a while: creating threedimensional calligraphy with LEGO bricks. The idea was to try and create three-dimensional graffiti one day. I discussed this idea with a freelancer who was working for us during a stay in Billund. He had already made a couple of graffiti sculptures and I was sure we could invite a few like-minded people to Munich for a weekend to toy around with the idea.
Community
Despite a very small budget from the LEGO Group, and the stipulation that this was to be planned only in my spare time, my passion to make something bigger from it was huge.
Henk Holsheimer.
LEGO Art:
Building a Medium
Back in Munich, I started planning the event, looking for cool locations, setting the date, looking into the logistics and finding artists which could be invited for the event. The main communications channels I used for the event were: • Word of mouth (authenticity) • Facebook (for announcing the event) • Flyers (for announcing the event) • Selected websites (for announcing and reporting about the event) • Individual people (as key communication and to generate new contacts) I spread the word, telling everybody of my idea having a building event for street and graffiti artists at a secret location. In fact, I didn’t have a location yet, nor had I never organized an event before. However, it seemed the idea was so strong that after a few weeks of research and visiting art fairs to make contacts, I had a list of 25 potential participants — 20 more than expected and even great names from the art scene, like Jan Vormann and SatOne…
Article by Henk Holsheimer Photography by Henk Holsheimer, Christian Boehm, and Matthias Lindner Henk Holsheimer is senior concept designer at LEGO Concept Lab Munich and has been working for more than ten years for the LEGO Group. Henk invented and designed the shape system, wedge bricks with different curves that were originally designed to give the Star Wars models more speedy shapes, but are now being used in most product lines. Henk designed many other LEGO products, e.g. the X-Pod, the Creator line for 2003, the DUPLO airplane and pirate ship and various Racers models. At Concept Lab Munich, he has done research for future product lines for preschool and girls. Currently, Henk is working on new concepts for 2014 and 2015 and is leading the LEGO Art project, stimulating artists around the world to use LEGO bricks as artistic medium. Here, he talks to BrickJournal about how he started the LEGO Art Project. The LEGO Graffiti Styles Convention 2009 was the start of a new project which now officially is called LEGO Art. With this project, the LEGO Group wants to explore the possibilities of using the LEGO brick as an artistic medium.
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One of Cole Blaq’s many models displayed, Inflammable a.k.a. The Overkill V1.2. This was one of the models in the Inside the Spraycan series.
It was a coincidence that a befriended couple wanted to start their own event business in a former architect’s house to be torn down soon. So it didn’t take long to sign the contract, I had my location— and the couple could start their business. Things were running at high speed, questions came up like: What about an exhibition with opening party? Printing flyers? Do we need a DJ? A bar? The press? A photographer? A catalogue? A “making-of”movie? Suddenly I had a so many things to coordinate and organize, and I also needed to go to Billund again to pick up bricks from the warehouse myself — it was the only way to get the right elements in short time. It was amazing how a buzz started around this event! So many people wanted to support and take part! It all happened and was four weeks of madness: coordinating artists, allocating rooms to work in, sorting thousands of bricks, renting light and DJ equipment, creating flyers, sorting out hotels and travel for the artists, and making everybody feel comfortable. It was amazing to watch adults
taking holidays from their daily jobs and families to imprison themselves in an old building with tons of bricks and spray cans to create a huge piece of art. The whole house was decorated from top to bottom with paint and bricks! In fact it had become my own private project, only funded by the LEGO Group… So I took the freedom of doing everything without asking. That meant that I got many comments in the beginning. Colleagues from other departments were very reserved, questioning many things, because I did them in an unconventional manner. If I would have followed all internal rules, the event would have never taken place… In this case the target group was young adults, not kids. My aim was to test how young adults use the brand, the bricks. How do they interpret LEGO and its values? How can we become an interesting brand for teenagers and adults? What would we need to offer to people that like arts and live an urban lifestyle? Diese Mädchen, made up of two art & multimedia students (Alice Strunkmann-Meister and Julia Von Ferber) at Munich University, made this interactive sculpture. The leaves were removed by visitors, revealing the tree branches and trunk, and other surprises.
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