The Magazine for LEGO® Enthusiasts of All Ages! Issue 56 • April 2019
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Building Life-Size LEGO ! ®
Helen Sham on Living Large
GI JOE® in Bricks! Eric Ong’s Military Models
Instructions AND MORE!
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THE MAGAZINE FOR LEGO ENTHUSIASTS OF ALL AGES! ®
BRICKJOURNAL magazine spotlights all aspects of the LEGO® Community! It showcases events, people, and models every issue, with contributions and how-to articles by top builders worldwide, new product intros, and more. Available in FULL-COLOR print and digital editions.
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Issue 56 • April 2019
Contents
From the Editor.............................................2
People Malin Kylinger’s World Inside of Me.......3 Helen Sham: Building Life-Size.............10 Builder Spotlight: Eric Ong....................18 Building is Half the Battle: Reimagining G.I. Joe Through LEGO.........................................23 You Can Build It: Cobra C.L.A.W...........................................32
Building Ralf Langer: Building The Future is Bright..............36 Djorde Dobrosavljevic’ : Character Builder!...................................40 You Can Build It: The Miner..................................................44 You Can Build It: House Mouse...........................................51 You Can Build It: Krennic’s Personal Shuttle...................56 BrickNerd’s DIY: Neuralizer..................................................60 Minifigure Customization 101: It is Good to Have Friends!..................64
Community An Abridged History of Little Guys... in Space!..............................69 Community Ads.........................................78 Last Word......................................................79 AFOLs.............................................................80
From the Editor: Making this magazine is a challenge I face every two months. Finding content is sometimes tough (the beginning of the year is a time where I am not going to any events so I usually get the notes I have written or look online to see what is out there in terms of building). If I am lucky, someone e-mails me an idea or article outline.
April 2019 Issue 56
Publisher John Morrow
Editor in Chief Joe Meno
Photography Editor Geoff Gray Proofreader John Morrow
Japanese Bureau Editor Nathan Bryan West Coast Editors Ashley Glennon
LEGO Ideas Correspondent Glen Wadleigh
After that, it’s a matter of finding the people to interview or information to research. Sometimes, when I see a particularly neat technique, I will go on Bricksmith and make a digital model and figure out how to diagram the technique. You’ll see that here with Ralf Langer’s curving modules and Malin Kylinger’s eye model. Interviewing can be easy (e-mail) or hard (phone or live—transcribing is tough). Writing an article is not as hard, but all of these have to offer something to you, the reader. While the photos may be inspiring, they can be intimidating. The writing should pull things down to earth—the most impressive builder has had tough builds and may have the same favorite theme as you do! And if they can build, so can you! And if you do, I’ll be watching for you at events or online! Hope to see you there! Joe Meno, Editor
Contributors:
Jared Burks, Christopher Deck, Djorde Dobrosavljević, Felix Jaensch, Malin Kylinger, Ralf Langer, Magnus Lauglo, Eric Ong, David Pagano, Helen Sham, Tommy Williamson, and Greg Hyland.
Many thanks to the websites who have served as mirrors for BrickJournal:
P.S. Have ideas or comments? Drop me a line at brickjournal@gmail.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! Website
Subscriptions
www.LUGNET.com, www.Brickshelf.com, www.peeron.com, www.brickmodder.net www.rustyclank.com
About the Cover: Some of the models and creations made by Helen Sham. Photo by Helen Sham. About the Contents: Ever see a Technic trebuchet? Here’s one on the left that is aimed at the tower...will it hit? Go to YouTube to find out! Photo provided by Malin Kylinger
Glossary AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) AFFOL (Adult Female Fan of LEGO) TFFOL (Teen Female 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) 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) MECHA (a large armored robot on legs, typically controlled by a pilot seated inside) MECH (a large piloted combat robot) DARK AGES (usually teen years, when you drift away from building) STUDS OUT (building where the studs on bricks face the viewer)
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 $62 Economy US, $74 Expedited US, $96 International, or $24 Digital Only 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, 9001 Barb Anne Court, Springfield, VA 22152, USA or admin@brickjournal.com. First Printing. Printed in China. 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.
Malin Kylinger’s creation, World Inside of Me, is a great example of LEGO building becoming art. There’s many levels to the model, from the sculptural aspects of the face to the landscaping of the foreground and background. It’s both beautiful and dark, wondrous and ominous. With all of these visual elements mixed to make a complex visual setting, Malin’s inspiration was actually pretty simple. She bought the two collectible minifigures (Genie and Ghost) at the same time in April 2018 and wanted to do something with them because they have similar “leg”parts and can be seen as opposites. Malin wanted them to stand on the shoulders of a person as the classic devil and angel. Having had both physical and mental problems for the last twenty years, she wanted to build something to represent some of the duality she felt. Her LEGO hobby saved her these last couple of years, and the community has made her see that she was not alone in feeling that there can be a duality in one’s personality. Malin has one side that is very social and energetic, but also has a more introverted personality where she loves to sort and build LEGO. But it’s not just that simple; she wanted to build something that other people could connect to and interpret in a way that is meaningful for them. When publishing the photos of this build, she saw that the different landscapes could represent the imagination: the sea of creative force that can be both light and dark. So when reading this, one can understand that in her view the landscape and the symbolic value of the build is worth the most; the face is only the setting for her message. But that doesn’t mean that one can’t just appreciate the build for the face.
People
Malin Kylinger’s
World Inside of Me
Article and Photography by Malin Kylinger
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People
Helen Sham:
Building Life-Size! 10
Article and Art by Helen Sham
First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Joe Meno, editor of BrickJournal, who invited me back for a third interview. This is an honor that my work will be used on the cover of this edition of the magazine.
Some of Helen’s models.
I started building things at an early age (around five or six years old), when I received a big box of LEGO from an uncle as a present. I would spend hours and hours working on it. I can’t remember exactly what kind of vehicle it was anymore. Soon after I completed it, I disassembled it and used all those LEGO pieces to build my own toys, which included airplanes, houses, race cars, etc... As I grew up, I left my LEGO pieces behind... until a couple years ago. Initially, like many others, I purchased and assembled different LEGO sets that were available in the market. This all changed when I walked by a store which sold LEGO individual pieces... It was incredible! I didn’t realize that I could purchase parts to build my own creations! That was the very first time I heard of “My Own Creation” (MOC), although I have been producing my own creations for such a long time! With all those LEGO parts I could purchase, my building possibilities were endless. I officially stepped on my MOC path. One afternoon, I was watching television and a Ghostbusters movie trailer came on, which stimulated my creative juices. I spent two days designing the iconic “Stay Puft Marshmallow Man” from Ghostbusters with LEGO bricks and the outcome was surprisingly good. One of my good friends is a collector of LEGO minifigures, such as those wearing rabbit, piggy, and monkey costumes. These minifigures made me wonder, “How cute would it be if I could enlarge them?” I began to design my first 25 cm tall LEGO figure, which was a LEGO figure in a bumblebee costume.
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People
Builder Spotlight:
Eric Ong
Article and Photography by Eric Ong Some views of Eric’s F-117A.
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For Eric Ong, it’s only been four years since he returned to LEGO building. He grew up building with his father’s LEGO CITY Police and Fireman sets but gradually got lost in the world of video games, cartoons and toys in the ’80s and ’90s. Now a 45-year-old Engineering Supervisor in the Semiconductor industry, he uses LEGO as a source of inspiration and as a creative outlet. His favorite LEGO themes are Superheroes, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. The Ultimate Collector Series Batman Tumbler is his favorite set. He has combined his building hobby with another hobby—building military hobby kits to create amazing models of military hardware. Eric took out some time to show and talk about some of his best creations.
F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter This is the world’s first operational stealth aircraft, and Eric has always dreamed of recreating the iconic warbird into a LEGO model. It took three months to plan, research, source brick elements, and countless iterations to finish the project. The distinctive ‘flying wing” design was quite a challenge for Eric. He ended up using numerous slope plates for the wings, and as a result, the model became a large 1/32 scale creation. Highlights on the craft include the swept wing with detailed underpanels and payload, the sharp geometric air frame supported by a Technic frame, and the angular pilot canopy.
A look at the canopy.
Canopy up.
Landing gear down.
Landing gear up.
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M4A1 Sherman Tank
Eric’s Sherman tank is based on an actual tank, “Axis Poison” in the Siege of Bastogne, Belgium 1944. His interest in the tank is inspired by the movie Fury, which features the late version M4A3 “Easy-Eight+ Sherman.” This was a short twoweek project, where he pulled out all the stops to complete it. It was a very satisfying experience to build the tank, as Eric wanted a realistic model, especially on the hull shaping, welded front armor plates and axles. He spent some time modelling and remodelling them. The details on this model tell a story—from the spare wheel hub, bent antenna, maintenance tools, ammo box, backpacks, cooking pan, washing pail, and torn-out tank markings, and highlight Eric’s skill.
Two views of the Sherman tank.
Front of tank.
Eric’s advice for builders is: Develop your ideas. Do online and book research on your subject. Check out fellow builders’ works, be inspired (which he did), and enjoy the building process. Take a short break to recharge or search for parts when you need to, as there should be no tight deadline to work on your creation. It’ll be gratifying when you look at your finished creation.
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Building
The G.I. Joe® brand first emerged in the early ’60s as a 1:6 scale 12-inch military themed “action figure”—socalled due to the assumption that boys would not play with dolls—and marketed by Hasbro. In 1982 the G.I. Joe toy brand was revived and reinvented—this time in the form of much smaller action figures, due to a natural oil shortage. The size chosen was 3.75 inch—the same 1:18 scale used by Star Wars figures, but with far more sophisticated joint articulation. In this format, G.I. Joe became the code name of a fictional U.S. military special forces team, made up of the best of the best in the U.S. armed forces, and equipped with an array of modern and state-of-the-art (but largely fictional) military hardware. Their enemy was Cobra—a ruthless “international terrorist organization” (a description which during the Cold War sounded more fantastical and less alarmingly real world than it might today), full of colorful villains that would not be out of place in a James Bond movie. Cobra had a large arsenal of fictional vehicles that were typically even more futuristic-looking than their Joe counterparts. Unlike the Star Wars toys competing for shelf space in toy store aisles, G.I. Joe toys did not depend on a large-budget movie for their story. Supported by a popular cartoon and a longrunning comic, G.I. Joe would go on for a dozen years into the early ’90s. At its peak around the mid ’80s, it was one of the most successful toys in the United States. This is the G.I. Joe that I grew up on, and the one I have been reimagining in LEGO.
Building is Half the Battle!
Reimagining G.I. Joe through LEGO Article by Magnus Lauglo
Magnus Lauglo has been active in the AFOL community since the early 2000s, back in the Lugnet days. He has built largely in the Castle and military themes, and even has his own modular landscape. For the past eight years, he has been busy breathing new life into the G.I. Joe universe in brick form. You can run into him on flickr at Magnus-L https://www.flickr.com/ photos/78224984@N00/ or in person at BrickFair VA. G.I. Joe and all related characters TM & © Hasbro.
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Building
Ralf Langer:
Building The Future is Bright Article and Photography by Ralf Langer
Ralf Langer is an Information Technology specialist (software developer, software architect) who works and lives in Cologne, Germany. He began LEGO building recently in 2017, starting when a colleague showed him an online photo of the VW transporter. This resulted in Ralf buying the Technic Truck Crane (42009), then a used UCS Imperial Shuttle, and then the Parisian Restaurant. For Ralf, the restaurant was by far the most interesting and pleasing build, so he bought other modular buildings (of which some are still waiting to be built). Eventually, he bought a 22 pound lot of used bricks. He spent almost two years only buying collections, building up his stock and selling the parts he (supposedly) would not need. In retrospect, this was a waste of time, as after some time Ralf had a very large collection of elements without anything built. He had absolutely no idea where and how to start. To develop his style on his own, Ralf tried to refrain from seeing other builders’ builds or tutorials in general. Ralf’s favorite themes are medieval and historic because of the dirt and imperfections that are in such builds, but he has also built city, science-fiction, and art themes as well. In general, he has a preference for landscapes, buildings, and architecture. All of these interests led him to building an amazing landscape of a space station interior he named The Future is Bright, where cities and land are built inside a immense cylinder that spins to create artificial gravity. Ralf thought about this—as a child, he read many science -fiction books and remembered having 36 seen some illustrations showing similar concepts
“The future is bright,” as seen by a nanoscale resident.
in non-fiction books. A more recent influence was probably the video game Mass Effect. For him, the idea of a cylindric world featured many things that he liked, and it seemed like a really good blend of architecture and nature presented in a spectacular way. Ralf occasionally does research, sketches, and thinks about textures and techniques for his creations. However, for this model there was in fact very little planning. In the beginning, though, there were some major questions Ralf had to answer to start building: Which form would the model be: Tube or ring? How would the model be lit? Building a closed tube would make the interior dark. Lighting The Future is Bright was something Ralf spent some time thinking about before building. How would he
get light into a tube? What would a real station like this look like? It would also need light. Were there some lights in the middle of the circle? He doubted it. He guessed that there had to be some kind of sky. This led him to two options: Building a half circle or leaving open spaces. Outside of this, there was hardly any planning, just a lot of trial and error. As a result, he built a lot of buildings and towers only to find out that they looked weird, and he had to choose another scale for them. One of the difficulties with the model was the extreme perspective of the main photo. Because of the perspective, Ralf could not see an overall picture of the layout until all the curved landscape parts were put together. He hardly knew what he was doing at this point, so he just hoped
that it would turn out okay. When rebuilding the model for an exhibition, he had much more control, since he could actually see his building results. Changes were still very hard to make due to the construction of the model. One thing Ralf knew beforehand was that the structure of the surfaces wouldn’t be that hard, but building a decent landscape would require a set of unusual techniques that felt very different. Whatever technique he would use would have to rely on 1x2 bricks. He wanted to include bright green and medium green as well as green and dark green. Medium green is a very rare color with almost no available parts, except for the 1x2 bricks, which Ralf had already gathered in quantity and wanted to use.
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Building
The Spinebeast.
Djordje Dobrosavljević:
Character Builder!
Article by Joe Meno Photography by Djordje Dobrosavljević
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Djordje Dobrosavljević builds characters. If you look on his Flickr gallery, you’ll see creatures and beings of all sorts, from whimsical aliens to terrifying beasts. They all look like they were photographed during a live photo session, showing their personality with their stance, and sometimes their smile. Very few of them look like something that could be made from LEGO elements, except for perhaps the LEGO theme that was made up of crazy-looking creatures; the Mixels. The 24-year-old builder has been building these since 2001, when the Bionicle line was released. Djordje did have a Dark Age where he stopped building, which started in 2007. For him, when Bionicle was released, it was a really new sort of toy—a constructible action figure, or construction figure. He never had any actual LEGO sets until that point, but those weird colorful robot things really grabbed his attention. Their designs and the intricate storyline LEGO made up for the characters really inspired him. He returned to building four years later. What got him back into building from his Dark Age was the Hero Factory line, which was the successor to Bionicle. This time, his building was more driven by wanting to explore character design in general, which is another of Djordje’s long-time interests.
Different views of the Spinebeast.
With a high interest in animation and character design, Djordje used to have sketchbooks filled with, as he says, “not very well-drawn” character ideas and doodles. His LEGO building became an extension of his interests. For him, the constraction sets with a dash of System parts really lent themselves to the character creation. As a result, Bionicle and Hero Factory hold a special place for him, but he also was a fan of the Mixel theme when it came out, and all the strange and fun characters (and useful parts) it provided. When building, he really enjoys building figures Debumoto.
Djordje’s Spinebeast.
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Building
Minifigure Customization 101:
It is Good to Have Friends!
Article and Photography by Chris Campbell and Jared K. Burks Spider-Man and all related characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
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I had an article written. I had a strategy in mind. Life happened late on Boxing Day (for my fellow Americans, that is December 26th) though; the power company’s transformer blew up near my house while I was on holiday with my family. I returned on the 27th to initially discover the AC was not working (I live in Texas and it is hot all the time), which was not fun. To date we have discovered that it fried the transformer on the AC, the doorbell, a breaker, several outlets, a coffee maker, and my decal printer and computer. My computer and printer were plugged into a surge protector and while other items plugged in survived, but my printer didn’t. My printer survived Hurricane Harvey, the associated flooding, and the massive drywall induced dust storm of the Harvey tear-out, yet it did not survive a transformer blowing up and sending a power spike (even though it was powered off)! ARGH! I, of course, discovered that the printer was broken the night before this article was due to Joe Meno for page layouts, therefore it became a last-minute scramble. This left me very discouraged, with a very expensive repair bill, and without a way to complete this article. I started scrambling and the article present is due to Chris Campbell and his willingness to not sleep, and pay overnight shipping fees to send me parts. Thank you Chris! Chris will be helping to open Brick Print Studios in the near future (brickprintstudios.com), if not by the time this article is in print. Sometimes the simplest strategies are generally the hardest to create, but result in the best designs. Examine Apple products. They make it look easy, but it is not. Look at other designs out there; how many points of failure exist, and why everyone chases Apple. I hope in this article to demonstrate how to keep things simple and fun, even with a last-minute scramble. For the purpose of this article, we need an inspiration. I recently took my daughter to see the film Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, and given the dynamic range that Marvel has created in the multi-universe of Spider-people/ characters, this gives us a bit to work with. I am going to do my best to stick
to the film and create one or two of them for the article, as clearly we all need friends to help bail us out of trouble and broken printer situations from time to time. This article was originally going to create Spider-Ham and Spider-Noir from Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, but things changed last minute and I now have most of the cast; some created by me, some by modifying LEGO or aftermarket parts, and some from the companies in Asia selling versions. This is the scramble. I will leave certain descriptive details about what I was going to do for Spider-Ham and hopefully create a better option for the next article, using Fusion 360 with a more detailed approach. For this article I will be showcasing the following:
Inspiration art for Miles Morales.
• Miles Morales Spider-Man (My custom design and custom direct-printed by Chris, thank you) • Peter B. Parker – Alternate Universe out-of-shape Spider-Man (Mix and Match Official LEGO Parts + Custom Cloth by Mark Parker – MMCB Capes, again it is good to have friends) • Spider-Noir (My custom design, custom direct printed by Chris, thank you, + Custom Cloth by Mark Parker – MMCB Capes, again it is good to have friends)
Inspiration art for Miles Morales with hood.
• Jefferson Davis (Miles Father – Mix and Match Official LEGO Parts, will tweak later) • Stand-in Spider-Ham (Mix and Match Parts + Crazy Bricks [crazybricks.com] Pig head) • Stand-in Spider-Gwen (from Asian supplier, will make my own later) • Peter Parker Spider-Man of Miles’ Universe (Official LEGO Spider-Man)
Miles Morales
Miles was a last-minute addition to this article. In all honesty, the plan was for Spider-Ham and Spider-Noir, but hey, things go wonky and someone isn’t sleeping, so more gets piled on to make up. So Miles was designed. He was a quick modification to the Spider-Man design, primarily adding his version of the Spider to the front and back of the outfit. As his is a black suit, it is keeping the webbing low-key; I had designed it in white, but Chris determined it was too bold and converted it to dark bluey-grey. We completed the figure using a similar eye design to Spider-Noir; just wait for the details below. I am toying playing with this one and using the new Harry Potter movable stubbie legs, adding a black jacket and a red hood for his “transition” look from the film. If I had my printer working I would mod and add my Nike design from a Shaun of the Dead Ed figure I made, but it’s not possible here (future work!). Hope you like Miles!
Miles Morales with and without hood.
Inspiration art for Peter B. Parker, Spider-Gwen, and Miles Morales.
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