Issue 76 • November 2022
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Looking at the Brick Animal Kingdom! Inside: Miro Dudas’ Savannah Critters
Ken Ito’s Sea Creatures
Filbrick’s Animals
INSTRUCTIONS and MORE!
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Issue 76 • November 2022
Contents From the Editor....................................................2
People Sean Kenney: Connecting Animals with Bricks..................3 Fraser Ratzlaff’s Archelon Castle................................................8 Builder Spotlight: Loïc Brun..........................................................16
Building Ken Ito’s Beasts and Birds.............................20 Miro Dudas: From Star Wars to Animals..........................22 BrickNerd Instructions: Miro Duda’s Brickpals Lion...................................................................23 Giraffe..............................................................27 Rhino................................................................30 Chris Perron: Designing the XL-15 Spaceship Set.....34 Chris Giddens: Building the XL-01.......................................42 Jonathan Baxter’s LEGOLand Space Fleet...............................44 Minifigure Customization 101: I Love the ‘80s.................................................50 You Can Build It: Tauntaun and AT-AT....................................54
Community Bantha Bricks: Eloi Parizeau’s The Vigil Cargo Frigate ..............................60 Inside LEGO Campus: An Exclusive Tour of LEGO’s New Billund Headquarters.......................66 Last Word.............................................................79 Classic AFOLs.....................................................80
From the Editor: This was an issue of surprises—initially bad, then good! The bad surprises were that everything went slow for some reason, so the schedule for magazine production went slower than hoped.
November 2022 Issue 76 Publisher John Morrow
Editor in Chief Joe Meno BrickNerd and Assistant Editor Dave Schefcik Photography Editor Geoff Gray Proofreader John Morrow
Japanese Bureau Editor Nathan Bryan West Coast Editors Ashley Glennon
Bantha Bricks Correspondent Steven Smyth Contributors: Jonathan Baxter, Loïc Brun, Jared Burks, Christopher Deck, Miro Dudas, Chris Giddens, Are M. Heiseldal , Ken Ito, Sean Kenney, Eloi Parizeau, Chris Perron, Fraser Ratzlaff, and Greg Hyland.
But that led to some different opportunities—we got an article from LEGO Set Designer Chris Perron on the set he designed for the movie Lightyear—the XL-15 Spaceship! Then we got instructions for some cute animals from cover builder Miro Dudas and BrickNerd! And finally, we got an article from brick artist Sean Kenney about his animal builds! And look at the new LEGO offices? We have that too! So I hope you are as pleasantly surprised as I was finishing up this issue! Have fun! Joe Meno, editor 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!
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About the Cover: Seagulls wal on the pier in a photo by Miro Dudas. About the Contents: Sean Kenney’s ladybug is busy with aphids. Photo provided by Sean Kenney.
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)
BrickJournalTM issue 76, November 2022 (ISSN 1941-2347) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage paid at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to BrickJournal, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Joe Meno, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. BrickJournal Editorial Offices: 6701 Coachman Drive, Springfield, VA 22152, USA. E-mail: admin@brickjournal.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Six-issue subscriptions: $68 US, $103 Elsewhere, $29 Digital Only, and can be purchased at www.twomorrows.com. 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 © BrickJournal Media, LLC 2021, TwoMorrows Publishing and the respective writers, photographers, and artists. All rights reserved. All trademarked items are the property of their respective owners and licensees. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.
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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.
People
Sean Kenney at the Denver Zoo with some friends.
Sean Kenney:
Connecting Animals with Bricks
I’ve been creating nature-themed art with LEGO bricks for about ten years. In that time, I’ve created hundreds of sculptures, collectively built with over three million LEGO bricks, which have been put on exhibition and have visited nearly 100 botanical gardens, arboretums, zoos, science centers, and museums across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. I enjoy exploring the interconnections found in the natural world. LEGO bricks are a nice metaphor for this: just as LEGO pieces interconnect, everything in nature is interconnected in a delicate balance. Insects and plants have important relationships; different species of animals have symbiotic, mutualistic, or predatory relationships with each other; and animals have connections with their families just like we do. All of this is important because we humans have a connection with nature, too. Even in our urban and modern lives, we occupy land, we’re part of the food chain, we feed plants every time we exhale; we are a part of nature and nature is a part of us.
Panda bears having fun!
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When I create sculptures of animals with LEGO bricks, I want them to have a spark of life; to feel alive, like they have some magic to them. I’m never content to just “make a thing”; it has to be special somehow. If someone says “make a penguin,” I ask myself first: okay, why? What is the penguin doing? What do penguins do, actually? How do they interact? What do they interact with? I look at photos and videos online, and start to think about how I, myself, can relate to that creature, or how I can try to capture some part of that creature’s life and show it to my audience.
Penguins in progress.
Sean working on a penguin chick at his studio.
And more than anything else, I need to have some kind of personal connection to the subject matter. That can often be challenging; how can I relate to a leopard? But in doing my research about each sculpture, I find something that I can sync with, and then use that as the focus of the piece. For example, my sculpture “Mother Polar Bear and Cubs” is a life-size sculpture of a mother with three cubs climbing on and cuddling around her. Watching videos of polar bears with their cubs, I was taken by how almost-human they seemed, and as a parent of young children, I saw myself and my kids reflected back at me... I wanted to try to capture this aspect of their lives. In doing this, I put my imprint onto the sculpture, and hopefully it then becomes more than just a stack of bricks pushed together the right way. It has an energy to it. By humanizing the bear a little, it can feel a little more relatable and familiar to audiences. And by doing this, maybe viewers can relate to them a bit more. Polar bear cubs.
Mother Polar Bear and Family.
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Every sculpture always starts out as a drawing or set of drawings. Once I have an illustration that I like, I model the sculpture in 3D on my computer. There’s no magic computer button that designs the sculptures for me, but by spending weeks designing on the computer (as opposed to with my bricks on the table the old fashioned way), I have all the power of undo, copy-paste, and save-as. I can experiment, explore, and play with the model design without any fear of messing things up. Once I have a brick model design that I am happy with, I use those designs as a blueprint to build the sculpture for real. As I build brick-by-brick, I glue each piece into place with industrial solvents, often around a metal armature. Because these will be put on public display and will travel around the world for many years, the sculptures need to be durable and permanent. They need to withstand adverse weather, wind, fallen branches, scorching sun, heat expansion — not to mention overly-curious fingers and the rigors of truck transport and disinterested forklift drivers. Most of these giant sculptures take weeks of full-time work to physically construct, and some can take months. Altogether the sculptures in these exhibits took over 30,000 hours to design and build. After they’re built, the sculptures are coated with a special lacquer to protect the plastic from breaking down under the sun’s UV rays. They’re also bolted down to the ground to protect against weather and vandalism.
Sean works on a wolf’s snout, which is supported by a brick stand.
But this makes it challenging to try to capture the delicate wispiness of nature in something that needs to be so robustly constructed. I try to strike a balance, but I also hide The stand is later removed as the head is secured and glued in place.
Adjusting a peacock feather.
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People
After a two-year break from building because our daughter was born, I began to plan my next big build. I wanted to incorporate a lot of movement. I liked the idea of doing something big for BrickCon that moved on a turntable, and looked great from every angle. I also wanted to keep re-inventing the Castle theme. A lot of castle form and function is about defense, and I became captivated by this idea of a castle built on the back of a giant prehistoric sea turtle. What moat could be bigger than the ocean? What defense is better than obscurity? The castle is never in the same place twice. How can you attack if you don’t know it exists or can’t find it? Archelon is the name of the largest species of sea turtle ever discovered. In my story, this is the last one. It never dives below the surface, slowly roaming the ocean—letting the sun warm it, and eating mostly what swims into its mouth. The turtle isn’t even really aware there’s a castle on its back.
Fraser Ratzlaff’s
Archelon Castle Article and Photography by Fraser Ratzlaff 8
It was fun to develop the story. The build was so big and challenging, from the beginning I wasn’t even sure it would work. The hardest parts were creating a large organic shape, getting the fins to move, designing a turntable to handle the weight, and the sheer scale of the project. It was really hard, but so much fun, and it really pushed me to grow as a builder in many ways. Hope you like it!
Here’s the story: A very long time ago, a huge storm shipwrecked a giant ship. Only two souls survived, and were able to piece together a makeshift raft from the wreckage, before everything sank below the waves. After weeks floating aimlessly at sea with no sight of land or ship, and out of water and supplies, they thought they were doomed for sure. And then, all of a sudden, they spotted a tiny island on the horizon, and they were drifting towards it! As they got closer they realized it wasn’t an island at all, but actually the back of an enormous sea turtle. With their raft failing, they scrambled up on to the shell of the turtle, thinking they were saved for the moment, but as soon as the turtle dove below the surface, all hope would be lost. But the turtle never did.
After the two shipwreck survivors were living on the sea turtle for awhile, a few other people lost at sea found their way to the ‘floating island’, and a tiny community began to form—almost a little refugee camp on the ocean, everyone contributing in their own way to help the group.
Then one day the turtle swam into a big cove with a small entrance and stayed awhile. The people living on the turtle decided they liked life at sea and agreed to build a permanent home together. They used their small rafts and boats to ferry stone from a natural quarry over to the turtle to build a castle. After awhile, the turtle swam out of the cove and back into the open ocean. Archelon Castle is a community of 25 people who live and work together on the ‘floating island.’ They do meet other people occasionally, almost always from ships passing by who want to trade, need help, or are simply in disbelief at what they are seeing, but these interactions and meetings are actually fairly rare, simply due to how vast the ocean is. Even more rare is finding someone who is shipwrecked and in need of rescue, although it does happen. They join the community for awhile and are always free to leave when the next ship passes by, as is anyone. But the people who call Archelon home tend to stay, and any visitors tend to leave, no matter how fascinated they are, or how strong of a connection they make with the place or the people. And regardless of how deep their desire to go back, or how hard they look, they will never be able to find it again. Concept and story by Fraser Ratzlaff. Original drawings and watercolor by Andrea Krook.
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People Loïc Brun, known as filbrick or Les briquet de Loïc online, is a French product design student and LEGO builder. Since he was a child, he has been building, starting with secondhand bricks that his parents found at flea markets. Having the blue LEGO system 4153 box, he created small towns with a few figures. With a little imagination, he could bring his story to life. He received more sets on his birthday and at Christmas. Loïc ’s first Technic box seeded an interest in mechanics and technology in him. Loïc never stopped LEGO building, so he never had a Dark Age. He’s 22 and has been building for contests since he was 8. At the age of 14, he finished in fifth place (out of 75 participants) in a contest where his passion for building started. The following year’s contest theme was the Far West and he got first place with a chess scene between Jolly Jumper and Lucky Luke (from a famous comic book in Europe). Since that moment, he never stopped doing LEGO contests. He still does them now and joined a local LEGO users group: “Puissance Brick.”
Loïc with one of his builds.
Builder Spotlight:
Loïc Brun Article by Joe Meno Photos by Loïc Brun A western scene built by Loïc.
Childhood-related themes such as comics and cartoons are Loïc’s favorite themes. He also likes to convert these characters to 3D. With the LEGO themes, he really likes the Creator “3 in 1” sets which allow you to create several models. For him, this is the original spirit of the LEGO brand, to create various objects only with bricks and without figures. He finds that this is what allows his imagination to be conceptualized the best. The models may be simplistic, but with a few bricks one can build an airplane, a car, or a boat. This confirms how the bricks can be used universally. Loïc feels that this range is underestimated by the fans, which is sad since it is a great place to see the playability and creativity of building bricks.
Jumper and Lucky.
LEGO Masters France was an unforgettable experience for Loïc. Just the fact that he could build with so many bricks at his disposal was amazing. He and his partner Guillaume Roussel (known online as Disney Brique and the designer of the LEGO Ideas set The Globe [21332]) won third place in the show. The show allowed them to leave their comfort zone and have the opportunity to make creations that they would have never done elsewhere. Favorite events included launching a LEGO creation into a wall at 80 kilometers an hour (building a UFO) and rebuilding the missing half of an object (a garden gnome). It was a memorable human adventure with other LEGO fans. Loïc builds MOCs not only for competitions—after participating in many competitions and exhibitions, seeing the smiles and the eyes full of joy from visitors is a great motivation. Moreover, since his participation in the LEGO Masters France 2020 competition, he has gained an international visibility which motivates him even more. That said, the majority of his builds are created for contests, which is a real motivation. These allow him to discover more building universes, and force him out of his comfort zone. Other inspirations come directly from art. Loïc likes to create more and more creations with a style that hasn’t been explored or done yet, like his creations that are inspired by the art of cut paper, while still in the world of the LEGO brick.
A bouquet of characters. Another LEGO Masters France team creation: an amusement park.
From LEGO Masters France: the half-built gnome.
The UFO model built for the show.
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Building Miro Dudas:
From Star Wars to Animals!
Some examples of Miro Duda’s animals.
Miro Dudas was last in BrickJounal #59, showing his Star Wars figures. A builder since 2012, he has also done some animal and wildlife models. He tells us how he got started animal building: Miro: At the end of 2016, Eurobricks’ site was having a snow-themed building contest, and I happened to align two white slopes back-to-back which created the fox’s mouth and snout, and from there it just grew into a head with other pieces. By end of the day, I had built the Red Fox in a seated position with its head tilted down and a paw in an upright position. I like dynamic poses and expressions that tell as story, so I then built a snow base with a hole that the fox was peering down in, awaiting for its next meal to pop out of it. I named the build “Winter Fox Hunt.” The build instantly got a lot of attention on blog sites and I quickly realized that I had found my favorite theme—brick building animals and other characters. Shortly thereafter, I built a wolf, a bear cub, and a raccoon. Along with the fox, they made up the Woodland Creatures collection. I made instructions for them, which I have been selling through Rebrickable/Bricklink. I have built additional animals (deer buck, birds, bunnies). I had plans to build more, but just have not gotten around to building other animals. I have created a smaller version of some of my animals, which I call the BrickPals theme. They are much smaller, with oversized heads that can be posed. They are geared more towards younger builders, and I have designed three eco-system groups: the Woodland (fox, wolf, raccoon), the Forrest (bear, panda, koala), and the Savannah (lion, rhino, giraffe). In fact, you’ll be able to build the Savannah Brickpals!
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Lion Parts List
(Parts can be ordered through Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color)
Qty Part Color 1 6141.dat Black 2 98138pz1.dat Black 1 2 3 4 1 5 1
2420.dat 3021.dat 3023.dat 3024.dat 3176.dat 3623.dat 4032b.dat
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6091.dat
1 1
11090.dat 15068.dat
1
15573.dat
2 4
25269.dat 26604.dat
1 1
54200.dat 60474.dat
1
60478.dat
6 6 5 2 1 1 2
92946.dat 3023.dat 3024.dat 3623.dat 3710.dat 4070.dat 6091.dat
2 1
11477.dat 15068.dat
3
15070.dat
1
15573.dat
1
20482.dat
2 1 6 1
25269.dat 32028.dat 54200.dat 85861.dat
1
93273.dat
1 2 1
99207.dat 99780.dat 14704.dat
1
22484.dat
Description Plate 1 x 1 Round Tile 1 x 1 Round with Two White Squares Within Black Round Pattern Tan Plate 2 x 2 Corner Tan Plate 2 x 3 Tan Plate 1 x 2 Tan Plate 1 x 1 Tan Plate 3 x 2 with Hole Tan Plate 1 x 3 Tan Plate 2 x 2 Round with Axlehole Type 2 Tan Brick 2 x 1 x 1 & 1/3 with Curved Top Tan Bar Tube with Clip Tan Slope Brick Curved 2 x 2 x 0.667 Tan Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud Tan Tile 1 x 1 Corner Round Tan Brick 1 x 1 with Studs on Two Adjacent Sides Tan Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667 Tan Plate 4 x 4 Round with Hole and Snapstud Tan Plate 1 x 2 with Handle on End Tan Slope Plate 45.73 2 x 1 Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 2 Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 1 Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 3 Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 4 Reddish Brown Brick 1 x 1 with Headlight Reddish Brown Brick 2 x 1 x 1 & 1/3 with Curved Top Reddish Brown Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 Reddish Brown Slope Brick Curved 2 x 2 x 0.667 Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 1 with Tooth Perpendicular Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud Reddish Brown Tile 1 x 1 Round with Pin and Pin Hole Reddish Brown Tile 1 x 1 Corner Round Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 2 with Door Rail Reddish Brown Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667 Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 1 Round with Open Stud Reddish Brown Slope Brick Curved 4 x 1 Double Reddish Brown Bracket 1 x 2 - 2 x 2 Up Reddish Brown Bracket 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 Up Lt Bluish Grey Plate 1 x 2 with Socket Joint-8 with Friction Centre Dark Bluish Grey Bar 2L with Ball Joint-8
Design and Instructions by Miro Dudas (HumbleBricks.com) from BrickNerd Let’s go on a safari! In honor of the creatures featured in this issue, I designed three iconic animals from Africa: a lion, giraffe, and rhinoceros. I picked these three animals because I loved watching them at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, where I took my family for many years. I loved seeing them move so gracefully, yet still embody so much character. That’s why I made BrickPals. I wanted to capture these animals in a LEGO form so small, that even a child could hold them in their palm of their hand. I tried to imbue them with as much character as possible, so they could be a desk or nightstand buddy. They can be posed so they can tilt their heads or even look back at you, bringing them that much more to life. This was a fun collection to design—I hope you enjoy building them!
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Building
A preliminary sketch of the XL-15. Image courtesy of Pixar.
Chris Perron:
Designing the XL-15 Spaceship Set Photography provided by the LEGO Group Production art courtesy of Pixar
Beginnings
Design work started on the sets for Lightyear in 2021, with the arrival at the LEGO Group of preproduction art from Pixar. Renderings of the many vehicles were received, such as the art above, and with guidance from Pixar, models and their functions would be outlined.
One of the LEGO sets released for Lightyear was the XL-15 Spaceship (76832). Designed by Chris Perron, who has been featured in BrickJournal previously, this set was designed with the help of the director of Lightyear, Angus MacLane—himself a LEGO fan. Chris showed the design process that led to the creation of the set at BrickCan 2022, a LEGO Fan Event. Here, thanks to Chris and the LEGO Group, we are able to take an exclusive look behind the making of a set!
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Here you can see the first sketch model that Chris made. Sketch models are rough models used to figure out functions and dimensions. The colors for this model were set on Buzz Lightyear’s iconic colors, as initial illustrations of the spaceship were done in grayscale and Chris assumed that he would be using the colors from the Toy Story movies and the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command show. This turned out not to be the case, as the colors chosen by Pixar were blue, white, grey, and a yellow windscreen, which was requested by Angus MacLane.
Screening a Spaceship
Revisions were made by Chris, with the underside of the XL-15 changing from the lime green to blue, and a prototype windscreen added in transparent orange. It was seen in production art that their spaceship was on a launcher, so Chris started building a rough stand for the model. An initial idea was a four-legged stand. From the beginning there was no provision to have weapons on XL15. Form follows function, and the XL-15’s function is speed. Having large engines and a long body gave the spaceship a dynamic shape that evokes a racer, and is also very swooshable! At this point, the windscreen hadn’t been produced—it’s a new piece that first appears in this set (thanks Angus!). For that reason, the digital model doesn’t have a windscreen. Chris’ solution was to create a windscreen by combining some parts in the digital building software LEGO uses to develop sets that fit the implied footprint and dimensions of the piece. For creating sketches of the geometry of the new element, Chris likes to use Blender. You can see more refinements added to the spaceship as well as the mashed-up windscreen. The intakes have been changed and the fuselage was made longer. The leading edge of the wings were also changed to a tile instead of a built stripe pattern.
Further revisions are tried below with possible ways to blend in the windscreen to the body of the XL-15. The final set retains the wedges seen on these slides. An initial windscreen design is also seen here. The windscreen was planned to have a shallow angle and be usable for this and other sets.
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Building
The fleet on display.
Jonathan Baxter’s
LEGOLAND Space Fleet!
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I am an expat Brit currently living in the USA. My very first LEGO set was the 648 Service Station from 1971. I remember that there was a piece missing: one of the clear 1x2 plates. However upsetting that was, it did not deter me from actively collecting LEGO. I saved up my meager pocket money for the small sets—and I requested the bigger sets for Christmas and birthdays. My main era of collecting was the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, I had stopped regularly buying sets, only occasionally purchasing a few sets of interest (as I still do today). In preparation for my move to the USA, I donated some of my existing LEGO to friends, thinking that I had outgrown LEGO (silly me!). Today I relish the nostalgia of those old sets, and I have re-purchased a selection of those classic sets, especially the original range of LEGOLAND Space System (as it was then called). As a science-fiction fan, I often built spacecraft, so the 1979 range dedicated to space was a pure delight. In my opinion, that original range has never been bettered. Sets in those days had just enough specialized pieces to take away some of the squareness/blockiness of the models, but they were still unquestionably LEGO. Although I still love building modern-day sets, and marvel at the flexibility in building and working around the standard studs-on-top-method, the feeling is more akin to scale modelling rather than classic LEGO construction.
These are my old MOCs from 1979 to the mid-1980s. They were built in minifig scale to accompany LEGOLAND Space, and most featured in adventures I would imagine/ create back then. I had set them in a future history from about 2038–2063, which essentially followed the career of a space guy who started out as a freighter pilot (flying LL924) and was based on the Moon. He would thwart alien invasions, Earth-bound bad guys, and other natural threats (meteors, moonquakes, etc.) and would captain the Altares deep space mission. Later, he would go on the run when he was faced with a false accusation of drug smuggling, but would clear his name after some time. He eventually died in a spacecraft crash in a battle after saving the Earth once again.
Most craft incorporated hinged roofs for access to the cockpits (although the P7022 had removable roof sections). Colour schemes were of course determined by pooling the selection of sets I had acquired over the years. Additional control panels were hand-drawn sticky labels which were applied where required. The craft remain practically unchanged from when I built them all those years ago, apart from a few labels which have now been replaced (where the old ones were peeling off) and a few extra tile pieces incorporated to the rear section of P7022 to enable the roof to be removed more easily.
Some details about each of the craft.
ANDROMEDA The earliest of my surviving MOCS, this was built in 1979. The shape was loosely based on NASA’s Space Shuttle. The Space Logo on the front was cut out of a catalogue and stuck on with clear tape.
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Building Minifigure Customization 101:
Article and Photography by Jared Burks Matt Tracker in minifigure form.
Hello everyone. I have been stuck in a review of my childhood lately, and today’s article is not going to deviate too far from that thought, as the title indicates: “I Love the ’80s.” Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, there were quite a few cartoons, TV shows, and movies that have stuck with me throughout my adult years. Some of these have been remade or rebooted, and some merely continue to this day. While some only live in our memories, I have revisited multiple of them over the years in this article series, and made several figures. Most recently I made Rick Hunter from Robotech, featuring custom visor, design, and aftermarket watches. I have also made many GI Joe, He-Man, Flash Gordon, Inspector Gadget, countless Star Wars, and other characters from the late ’70s and ’80s. Honestly, listing them all and all the things that I customized or created for them would take more pages than editor Joe Meno would allow—but I digress.
Inspiration and reference for the minifigure.
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For today’s article, I am going to share Matt Trakker from the M.A.S.K. television series. The interesting bits about M.A.S.K. and Matt Trakker are that the cartoon character was very different from the toy, and the character went on to join GI Joe and Transformers, from what I can find online. I clearly do not recall this bit of the character’s development, but this is part of the fun that I became aware of when I created He-Man. I think I remember what he looked like in the cartoon; however, the toys were so prevalent that many of my memories have been biased by what I actually recall of the toy, and not merely the original reference TV show. This caused issues when I created He-Man, as he merely didn’t look correct when I created a figure straight from the original reference. It took little changes to hybridize the TV show version with the toy version. I believe the same is true for Matt Trakker.
The TV Show M.A.S.K. was created in 1985 by a French American company, and produced by DIC and ICC TV Productions. The show was based on Kenner Production toys, the same company that made the Star Wars action figures. M.A.S.K. is an acronym that stands for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, which was a special task force led by Matt Trakker that operated transforming armored vehicles in their ongoing battle with the criminal organization V.E.N.O.M. V.E.N.O.M. stood for Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem, which was led by Miles Mayhem, a former friend of Matt Trakker. The characters on the show work special super-powered helmets termed “masks.” Oddly enough, V.E.N.O.M.’s goal was to obtain money through robbery, extortion, counterfeiting, kidnapping, or theft of historical artifacts. In total, 75 episodes were made, and in reality, the show lasted just over one season. In the ’80s, a season was 65 episodes. So while the run in the ’80s was relatively short-lived, the characters and concept have lived on in comic books, and the characters have joined other series as previously mentioned. Keep this in mind: this show lasted just over one season. Matt Trakker was the founder and leader of M.A.S.K. and had originally helped his brother Andy Trakker and Miles Mayhem develop the M.A.S.K. technology. Mayhem killed Andy and stole the technology to form V.E.N.O.M. Matt formed M.A.S.K. in memory of his brother to fight V.E.N.O.M. and bring Mayhem to justice. During these 75 episodes, Matt Trakker wore eight different masks or helmets (Spectrum, Ultra Flash, Lava Shot, Shroud, New Spectrum, Arrow, Dolphin, and Lasertron) and drove or was a member of six different vehicles (Thunderhawk, Rhino, Volcano, Goliath 1, Skybolt, and Hornet). This further complicates the creation of a Matt Trakker figure, as he simply was everywhere and in many different outfits; but for today, we are going with the one from the DVD cover, which is his Thunderhawk get-up. Interestingly, there were eight different toy versions of Matt Trakker made, one for each of the eight different masks he wore. So this furthered the memory confusion of this character, but just like He-Man and others, the outfits on the action figures never really featured the same details, colors, or even designs that the shows did. It seemed that the artists for the action figures merely did whatever they felt like that day, paying little attention to the cartoon—or perhaps it was the cartoon that paid little attention to the action figure. I am not sure which came first where this show is concerned, and it wouldn’t be the first to have a toy first and a show second. For all of these toy details, please visit: https://www.maskforce.com/matt-trakker---mask.html
More references for Matt Tracker.
Like many ’80s cartoons, the outfits were very basic, as they would have to be animated, and the less detail on the outfit, the faster it could be drawn and the animation created. Matt Trakker is no exception to this rule. So his outfit features a vest, harness, gloves, and a helmet. Oddly enough, his harness didn’t connect to the vehicle, as he is commonly shown wearing an additional seat belt. I guess we were kids and didn’t notice his five-point harness wasn’t securing him in the vehicle. Anyway, this outfit was largely his helmet, but before we go there, let’s look at his outfit. I created a very basic vest with the five-point harness in the front, which was only a four-point in the back, so I have no idea where the strap between his legs disappears to; but that is, again, the way the character was created. He wore a jumpsuit-style underoutfit and had some kneepads, and what appears to be a flame retardant red undersuit—perhaps they took inspiration from race car drivers.
Minifigure printing design for the Matt Tracker minifigure. M.A.S.K. and all related characters and properties are TM & © DIC Enterprises, Inc/Kenner or successor in interest.
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You Can Build It MINI Build
2 Alternate Models from Creator Set 30188:
Tauntaun and AT-AT Design and Instructions by Christopher Deck
Hello everybody, and welcome to an exciting building session about animals! Brick-built animals already had been popular during the 1970s and 1980s. I am sure many of you can remember the lovely bricked horses in the Classic Castle sets, and the large variety of animals brickable with the universal building sets of these decades. With the release of the recent Designer and Creator series in the early 2000s, brick built creatures had a renaissance. We see small brick-built animals in Creator playsets as well as larger display sculptures these days. They remind us that creativity is unlimited and you can build anything with basic bricks. Today we are going to manage a real challenge together by having a closer look at Creator set 30188—Cute Kitten—of the year 2014. This is a very small set, only consisting of sixty pieces (six extra parts already included). It is not a common 3-in-1 Creator set, as there are just instructions for the cat, but we will take it beyond this single model now! Sixty pieces is not much, and that makes the real challenge: Building a proper model with very limited parts supply and variety. So let’s get started with a wellknown creature seen in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back! Tauntauns are used to cold weather, and thus were used to cross the ice desserts of Hoth. So if you’ve got a polybag of set 30188 somewhere—you get a Tauntaun! But there is even more potential in this set. Although no longer produced, you will still find this set in large numbers on internet marketplaces. So if you happen to have two of those polybags and combine them, you can build another “creature” from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Admittedly, it’s more an artificial metal creature with four legs: The AT-AT! I hope you will enjoy building these. Have fun, and I’ll see you next time!
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Parts List (Parts can be ordered from Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color)
Tauntaun
Qty Color Part 3 Light-Bluish-Gray 87087.dat 1 Dark-Bluish-Gray 3004.dat 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 11211.dat 3 1 1
Light-Bluish-Gray 3024.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3023.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 11476.dat
2
Light-Bluish-Gray 15573.dat
1 2 2 1 1 1 5 2 3 1
Light-Bluish-Gray 60478.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3710.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 2420.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3021.dat White 3021.dat White 3020.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 54200.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3048b.dat White 3040b.dat White 3040a.dat
1 4 3 2 1
Light-Bluish-Gray 93606.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 6541.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3700.dat Black 2780.dat White 3069b.dat
Description Brick 1 x 1 with Stud on 1 Side Brick 1 x 2 Brick 1 x 2 with Two Studs on One Side Plate 1 x 1 Plate 1 x 2 Plate 1 x 2 with Clip Horizontal on Side (Thick C-Clip) Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud Plate 1 x 2 with Handle on End Plate 1 x 4 Plate 2 x 2 Corner Plate 2 x 3 Plate 2 x 3 Plate 2 x 4 Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667 Slope Brick 45 1 x 2 Triple Slope Brick 45 2 x 1 Slope Brick 45 2 x 1 without Centre Stud Slope Brick Curved 4 x 2 Technic Brick 1 x 1 with Hole Technic Brick 1 x 2 with Hole Technic Pin with Friction and Slots Tile 1 x 2 with Groove
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The Vigil cargo frigate
Eloi Parizeau’s
The Vigil Cargo Frigate
Article by Steven Smyth, Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars Photography by Eloi Parizeau Galactic greetings! I’m Steven Smyth from Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars. Since the community’s founding in 2016, on an almost daily basis, I have witnessed amazing and creative Star Wars builds in the best Star Wars themed building brick group on Facebook. Eloi Parizeau is one such creative builder and recently shared this custom build of The Vigil, a Kuat Drive Yards built Vakbeor-class Cargo Frigate from Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. You may remember Eloi from a previous BrickJournal issue, #67, in May 2021. His wellhoned ability to transfer a Star Wars ship to LEGO medium is a topic we wanted to come back to.
Steven Smyth: How’s it going Eloi? I’ve known you for years now through the Facebook group, first as a member and then as a moderator of the all-volunteer Admin Team that helps monitor the group content to maintain a family friendly atmosphere. Everyone in Bantha Bricks has been wowed by your many awesome Star Wars brick builds, but for the uninitiated, please introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do. Eloi Parizeau: Hi Steven, I am doing well, and always happy to talk about LEGO and Star Wars! First, for fans who do not know me, I am an architectural technician, so in real life, I do inter-professional coordination and I lead a team of technicians to bring great projects to reality. For those who think I build LEGO models because of my work, it is actually the total opposite. I have built LEGO since my childhood, when I was four years old! My favorite LEGO themes growing up were Castle and Space, particularly Blacktron. I would love to see the Castle theme back on shelves. We got the privilege to get the Blacksmith Shop and some Creator sets lately, but a complete wave could be amazing.
Star Wars and all related characters and properties are TM & © Lucasfilm.
Data File: The Vigil The Vigil was a Vakbeor-class cargo frigate captured by Resistance commandos from pirates during a battle off the Chasidron Shoals. It became part of the Resistance fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Jotis during their war with the First Order. Source: Star Wars Wookieepedia
The drive units of the Vigil.
If you would be so kind, please refresh us on why you love Star Wars so much, and why you choose the LEGO brick as your medium to express yourself? Yeah, back to the main topic, Star Wars. I remember seeing The Return of the Jedi in 1983, and it is an amazing memory. My older brother was a Star Wars fan, playing with Kenner toys and creating role playing game backstories. He is probably the main reason why I jumped into the Star Wars world. As far as I can remember, I have played with LEGO for at least 40 years, so in 1999, when I first saw the X-Wing set 7140 on the shelf at Walmart, it automatically just fell in my buggy, I could not resist. I have many years in collecting the Star Wars sets; then I had a kind of Dark Age when my finances were really bad in 2006. It remained like this until my present fiancée bought me the Millennium Falcon microfighter for Christmas in 2014. I am now at over 300 sets in my collection. With time, building all these sets, I learned a lot of techniques and started to try building “out of the box.” Some friends from a LUG (LEGO User Group) in my country convinced me to attend events to show my builds, and that is how I realized people love my creations. This fueled my desire to get into building even more. The Vigil is my largest project to date.
I personally find the subject of this build a very interesting choice. First, because it is in the movie Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, which, if we are being honest, is not every Star Wars fan’s cup of tea. Secondly it is an obscure ship design, being a Kuat Drive Yards cargo frigate that was targeted by the First Order after the evacuation of Resistance on D’Qar, and was the first to be destroyed in the ensuing chase. What inspired you to build this particular ship? First of all, choosing a model to build has to inspire me; the challenge, the shape—and has the model ever been built with LEGO before? I usually search for inspiration on Google, for pictures of ships or unknown vehicles. When I first saw the Vigil, I really loved the shape; then I asked myself if it was possible to do this kind of shelled shaped ship hull with LEGO, but I wanted to build this much larger than my previous builds. My mindset was to build a three-to-four foot long ship, so it was a good fit. I just needed to find the right techniques to build it, as it had never been done before with LEGO at that scale.
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Community
The LEGO Campus, from LEGO’s press release. Photo by Adam Mørk.
Inside LEGO Campus:
An Exclusive Tour of LEGO’s New Billund Headquarters Article by Are M. Heiseldal Photography by Are M. Heiseldal and Adam Mørk
Join us as we tell the story of a super-exclusive tour of LEGO’s new Campus in Billund—two months ahead of its official opening! Although technically, it’s not entirely correct to say that LEGO’s new headquarters opened in early April. The business part of the building, with offices for people working in company management, has been operational for a while, but the part of the building that recently opened its doors for the first time was the so-called People House, which will undoubtedly have an incredible impact on the everyday life of all LEGO employees in Billund. You will understand why later when I explain what this building is all about.
LEGO Set #4000038 LEGO Campus, only for LEGO employees. Photo courtesy of Brickset.com
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But for the official opening, collectors all over the world were amazed to see a new Architecture-style set depicting the building, only to be handed out to the employees who are lucky enough to work in the actual HQ itself—which is only around 2,000 people. I haven’t been able to get my hands on one of those sets, (Edit: That’s still technically correct, but I now know I will in September!) but I got pretty lucky, too, way back in January: Along with a select few other Scandinavian AFOLs, I was allowed to see the inside of the building before the vast majority of the actual employees had a chance to do the same!
An Inconspicuous Request In late November last year, the former chairman of our Norwegian LUG, Brikkelauget, posted a message on our forum saying that they’d had a request from LEGO for some MOCs to be displayed at the new headquarters, LEGO Campus, in Billund. The models would be put in special glass cases of various sizes like the ones in LEGO House, and the deadline for applying was very short, only a couple of weeks. That meant attempting to build something specifically for this was not a good solution, so they were mainly looking for AFOLs who had something already built that they could lend to LEGO for a few months. This suited me perfectly, as I don’t like building under pressure—am I a weird Ken Block, headed for LEGO Campus! AFOL for not doing that? It also means I’d never consider being on LEGO Masters and don’t really do contests. I just don’t enjoy them! I also haven’t built much in the past few years because my LEGO time has simply been eaten up by other things such as BrickNerd, events and… marriage (not a bad thing). So I basically volunteered up a lot of MOCs I had sitting around—my version of the Hoonicorn (YouTube phenomenon Ken Block’s car), my LEGO LEGO store (see what I did there?), and quite a few models from my everlasting Updated Classics project (see BrickJournal #22). In mid-December I got the email I had been hoping to get: I had been selected as one of the builders for the Campus Display! We were told that we’d have to get to Billund by ourselves, with all our MOCs, and in my case that meant travelling from Bergen, Norway to Copenhagen, Denmark by plane, renting a car and driving the not-quite three hours to LEGO Campus. LEGO would cover our stay in Billund, but not our travel—although for those of us who had the furthest to go, they would offer “compensation in the form of LEGO sets”— which is always a very nice sentence to hear as an AFOL. The MOCs were selected and assigned to the various glass cases, and the only things left to do were to make sure I had time off from work and to pack everything as safely as possible for the flight—the clue is to avoid as much air as possible and pack compact so that anything potentially fragile has nowhere to go—and then head to The Promised Land! Which is how, with a negative COVID-19 test in place and the mandatory online LEGO Health & Safety course completed, I found myself outside Hotel Svanen in Billund on a lovely morning in late January, in the rather exclusive company of the seven other selected builders. Initial Impressions
LEGO LEGO Store, headed for LEGO Campus!
Lars Barstad and myself, representing Norway and Brikkelauget on this beautiful Billund morning.
LEGO had reached out to the three Scandinavian LUGs (Brikkelauget in Norway, Byggepladen in Denmark and Swebrick in Sweden), so the builders in question were myself, my fellow countryman Lars Barstad (Lego Fjotten), Swedes Anders Horvath (Anders67), Oscar Cederwall (oOger) and LEGO Masters Sweden finalist Peter Ilmrud (Zilmrud), and Anne Mette Vestergård (Anne Mette V) and the father/son duo (LEGO Masters Denmark celebrities) Kim Petersen and Rune Lander Petersen (The Dragon Builder) from Denmark. We met up with Jan Beyer from LEGO outside the hotel—he was going to help us get into the building, which would otherwise be pretty much impossible. Security, as we would later discover, was super tight, especially in the People House. With Jan, we were able to unload our cars and get everything inside easily, after having been equipped with some super cool looking LEGO ID badges (which we sadly had to hand in at the end of the day).
As you might be able to tell from the picture, it was an early start. White is the color code for which areas at LEGO Campus we were allowed to visit.
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