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The Magazine for LEGO® Enthusiasts! Issue 7, Volume 2 • Sept./October

8.95

in the US

LEGO Architecture

Behind the scenes with Adam Reed Tucker and LEGO New Business Group

Spencer Rezkalla’s Microscale Creations Reviews Instructions AND MORE! 93

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Issue 7, Volume 2 • Sept./Oct. 2008

Contents

From the Editor...................................................................................2

News and Events Double Brick Fest - Russia’s First Event...............................3 TOMARLEGO: Portugal’s LEGO Event................................4

People

Adult Female Fans of LEGO (AFFOLs) Heather Braaten...............................................................................8 Spencer Rezkalla: Skylines in Micro..................................10

Building

Fallingwater........................................................................................14 Fallingwater: A Builder’s View................................................21 Power Miners: Mining a New Theme.............................22 Horsing Around: Designing the Grand Carousel...26 Battle of the Leviathans.............................................................29 Project Yamato.................................................................................32 Fighting for Life................................................................................36 Project Alpha: Dutch Moonbase........................................41 You Can Build It Jedi Temple.......................................................................................46 Miniland Building: The Skater Girl....................................48 Making a 9-volt to Power Functions Adapter.........50 Minifigure Customization 101: Advanced LEGO Element Modification......................52 LEGO Millyard Spruceup..........................................................56 Building the Afro-American Cultural Center.............60 Bits‘n Pieces........................................................................................63

Community

Mastering FIRST LEGO League............................................67 Building the Duplo Brand, pt2.............................................72 Not Quite LEGO: Stickfas®.................................................................................................75 Last Word.............................................................................................79 AFOLs.....................................................................................................80 Right: Adam Reed Tucker’s skyscrapers on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Photo by Joe Meno.

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From the Editor: September/October 2009 Volume 2, Issue 7 Editor in Chief Joe Meno Photography Editor Geoff Gray Business Manager and Proofreader Carin Proctor Copy Editor Allan Bedford Proofreader Eric Nolen-Weathington European Bureau Editor Megan Rothrock Japanese Bureau Editor Nathan Bryan West Coast Editors Todd Kubo Ashley Glennon Layout Artists Didier Enjary, Tommy Williamson

Contributors:

Inge Aaen, Mariann Asanuma, Heather Braaten, Christopher Deck, Olivia Donohue, Didier Enjary, Rob Hendrix, Alexander Horoshilov, Randy Miller, Adam Reed Tucker, Spencer Rezkalla, Mike Ripley, Ryan Rubino, Pedro Silva, Mark Stafford, Willy Tschager, 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: Fallingwater is the newest model from LEGO Architecture. Art provided by the LEGO Group, used with permission.

It’s been busy. During this issue, I went to Brickworld and the San Diego Comic-Con on the behalf of the magazine. On the behalf of the LEGO Users Group I am in, I also helped out with not one, but two store openings! As a result, the group and I built sets and display models for the stores, which meant that the club built about 40 models over a month! And somewhere in there, the group did an event in a local bookstore, hosting a building contest and display. It’s been really busy and in spite of this, another issue of BrickJournal rolled out. This time the focus is on LEGO Architecture, with an article about Adam Reed Tucker’s growing collection of landmark sets. With the architectural slant of this issue, we got a look at builder Spencer Rezkalla and also a model from Christopher Deck that is both Star Wars and architecture! There’s also some more exclusive LEGO articles in this issue, as well as a look at how to get into FIRST LEGO League. And of course, much more! So sit back and have a look.... Joe Meno Editor, BrickJournal P.S. Have ideas or comments? Drop me a line at admin@brickjournal.com. Or go to www.lugnet.com and leave a comment on their forums! 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! You can check out the news there or look at the event calendar and see what is happening near you! There’s photos of upcoming sets there now!

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)

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 2008, 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 $38USD Media Mail, $55 Canada, or $78 International 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, 5600 Oak Meadow Lane #1108, Raleigh, NC 27612 USA or admin@brickjournal.com. First Printing. Printed in USA. 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.

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Our first AFOL event, DoubleBrick Fest, took place on the last two days of spring 2009. This was our first experience with a public event, as the AFOL community was founded in Russia just a few years ago. While it was small and modest in comparison with other annual worldwide known events and exhibitions, we’re very proud that we made this first step with fan events. While we were planning, we had discussions on whether the event should be closed for invited LEGO fans invited only, or whether general public would be allowed to go to the event as well. We selected the second choice. Our local community is still pretty small, so some of our major goals were to popularize our hobby and grow as much as possible for next year’s event. For this reason, we decided to promote our event as a family-oriented event with free admission (participation was free also). Our exhibition occupied about 200 sq. meters (2100 sq. feet) in total. The display area included two community-built layouts: City and Western. Members of the community built modules according to fixed standards and connected them one to another. The Western layout was a huge surprise for us. We didn’t expect the response , as it was suggested only about 2 months before the event and became very popular in that short time. Also, we had several large-scale projects. Our local LEGO division, LEGO Russia, provided us with large amount of 2x4 bricks for the duration of the event. Two members of our community used them to build a large landscape. It became the largest MOC built and shown in Moscow (it used about 120,000 of 2x4 bricks and was 300 kg in weight).

Events

DoubleBrick Fest Russia’s First AFOL Event Article by Alexander Horoshilov Photography Courtesy of DoubleBrick

Since it was our first experience with fan events, we learned a lot of lessons. Even with a number of various issues, we thought it was very successful. We had about 50 participants and for the two full days, there were about 800 visitors. It’s why right after the end of the event, we quickly decided to make it annual. We are going to make our next event better and to develop it and expand every year. With Moscow alone having a population of more than 10 million and about 150 million in Russia, we can definitely attract much more people. Many thanks for the following for supporting our event: LEGO Russia, LEGO Community Development, “Premium Networks” company (who runs several LEGO stores in Russia) and the online shop “LegoSalon”.

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Building

Skylines in Micro Article by Joe Meno Photography by Spencer Rezkalla

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Left: Rockefeller Center in microscale. Above: Spencer’s skyline of New York skyscrapers.

Spencer Rezkalla has been an AFOL for almost a decade and has displayed in various displays. In the past couple of years, he has presented microscale skyscrapers of amazing detail. Spencer displayed at Brickworld this year, and BrickJournal was able to talk briefly to him about his models. BrickJournal: What you do (exactly) in real life? Spencer Rezkalla: I am a product development engineer in the automotive industry. I help design and engineer automotive chassis systems. Surprisingly I have never bothered to build a working LEGO suspension model. How did you get into the hobby? I grew up in the LEGO “classic space” era of the late 70’s and early 80’s. I had a keen interest in spaceflight and I built many LEGO versions of the space shuttle. However, I never had enough pieces or the right colors to build it at minifig scale. I later went through a 14 year “dark” period until late 2000. That fall, I found a few bulk tubs on sale at a local store and I decided for fun that I would try to complete my childhood orbiter dream. At the time I didn’t have strong intentions on pursuing LEGO as a hobby, I merely wanted to create

something I had been unable to do as a child. Why you moved from the space shuttle and planes to microscale buildings? I’ve never felt that I have moved away from my interest in building aerospace vehicles - I just find that other genres such as trains or minifig scale cars are always in competition for my building free time. The first microscale skyscraper I constructed was the World Trade Center. Having been born and raised near New York City in the early 70’s, I’ve always held a special fascination with the towers. In their physical absence, building a LEGO model seemed to be a proper way to preserve the memory of what once was. Upon completing the WTC model, I discovered I had accidentally settled on a natural scale that would allow me to model other famous buildings at roughly that same scale. The primary focus of my skyscraper collection is about the size relationships between these huge landmarks.

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Fallingwater An interview with the creators of a new line of sets that is re-architecting the way people will view their world

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LEGO Behind the Scenes

Horsing Around:

Designing the Grand Carousel Article by Megan Rothrock Photography Courtesy of the LEGO Group and Steen Sig Andersen BrickJournal recently had a chance to meet with LEGO Designer Steen Sig Andersen and talk with him about the development of LEGO set # 10196, LEGO Shop-at-Home’s newest premier LEGO set! BrickJournal: How was the decision to develop a LEGO Carousel for the Shop-at-Home range reached? Steen Sig Anderson: Eva Henriksen, Marketing Assistant, LEGO Designer Jamie Berard and Steven Turco, Merchandising Director from LEGO USA all had a meeting to discuss the next project, They wanted to do something different from the past; we had already done buildings, cars, the Town Plan and such. It was actually Jamie that suggested we do an amusement park ride, and he pointed out that Americans were crazy about such things. I was not present during this process, as Jamie was busy developing the Green Grocer so I was invited to join in later — it sounded exciting and I said YES! What was it like to develop a LEGO set based on such nostalgic subject matter? It was a bit harder then other models I’d designed in the past. For example, a LEGO set like The Eiffel Tower was easier to do since all you had to do was build a copy of it with LEGO bricks. The mechanism of the model is very complex, with rotating horses moving up and down and playing music. How challenging was it to design? There was definitely a challenge to get the main movement of the Carousel sorted. First, there needed to be a way to drive it, and second to have the horses to up and down. I tried several different ways to drive the Carousel, one had the motor inside and a gear with a ‘tooth plate’ element to drive it. Everything was built around one axle in the center, and it had a lot of weight on it. If you stopped it with your finger, the axle twisted. This was not a good thing at all, and after a lot more experimenting, I arrived at the design with the wheel on the outside. Then there was the matter

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to find a tire with the right friction to smoothly drive the Carousel. We experimented with many different sizes and types, before we found that the ‘low rider’ harder tire worked best. I chose to use a shock (spring) rather then rubber bands, to help keep the pressure of the wheel against the Carousel. We found that the shock works better and doesn’t need to be replaced over time like rubber bands would. I also explored several ways of moving the horses up and down, with one of them having curves on the inside ring that the wheels would roll on, but this wasn’t a smooth movement and the horses didn’t move up and down very much, so I looked at how real ones worked, and found a solution by building in cams. Then there was the matter of the top of the Carousel - how to create that nice swoop that is on the top of it. Several brick-built canopies were built, but it took a lot of LEGO bricks to build it smoothly, and it added a lot of extra weight. So we decided that a textile element would be best.

Early Development: a prototype experimenting with a motor in the center of the carousel.

The Carousel set has some very nice details. Did you carry out a lot of research on real carousels to achieve them? Yes, there was a lot of research done before I started to build it. We looked at many different types of carousels (images from the internet) from all over the world. We found that they had some basic things in common, like horses and sleighs, and a center This prototype was built to create a different shape and scale for the carousel, and also use a roof built pier. It was challenging to find a from plates. way to include a lot of decorations and details that a real Carousel has with LEGO bricks, and also keeping it an interesting build for the AFOLs. The first prototype I built was actually with only horses, but we found that to be a bit too boring. I wasn’t the only one working on this project, so Jamie gave some input for how to build the details at the top, and he also chose to use the tan beard as a nice detail. Chris Johansen from our Graphics Lab worked with us to help give a unique style and details for the labels. We are no longer allowed to place a label over the brick’s edges so Chris had to cut the design in half to get it to fit. Flemming Sørensen wrote the music, and did the electronics for the sound brick. The sound brick has a new chip in it, as he figured out a way to extend the sounds’ playing time, and composed the music too-it’s really great! A lot of work was done to choose the final color scheme. Some real carousels are white with the details painted on panels. It was a bit tricky to get the right mix of color and detail in to the model. We also designed it so the sound brick could be turned off easily so you could display it at LEGO events.

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One ticket please! This ticket booth didn’t quite make into the final set.

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Building

Project Yamato: by Junpei Mitsui Article and Photography by Nathan Bryan, BrickZen.com Walking into the room there was the battleship in all of its glory. This 1/40 scale model of the battleship Yamato was started in 2003, and built over the next six years and four months using over 200,000 bricks. The completed length is 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) long and over a meter (3 feet) at its widest point. The original Yamato was built from 1937 to 1940 and launched late in 1941. It displaced more than 72,800 tons and was armed with the largest caliber naval artillery ever fitted to a battleship, nine 18.1-inch 40 cm/45 Type 94 naval guns. Although it was sunk in April 1945, the ship still generates a great deal of interest in Japan. Numerous books that have been published, several museums have been built, and in 2005, there was even a film produced to tell the Yamato’s story. The builder of the LEGO Battleship Yamato is Junpei Mitsui (Brickshelf account: Junlego) A student at Tokyo University studying to become a materials engineer, he has been building since childhood. In high school, he started a LEGO education class. At Tokyo University he also started a LEGO club. Because of his building skill, he was a semi-finalist and went to Denmark on the Japanese TV show “TV Champion.” Besides building with LEGO bricks, he enjoys working with computers and shooting short animations (with minifigs of course!). Junpei has built many large scale MOCs including many famous Japanese architectural landmarks and a life-size Doraemon (a famous Japanese Anime character.)

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Junpei and the Yamato

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First Inspiration When Junpei was in elementary school he saw a picture of the Yamato in an encyclopedia and knew immediately that someday he was going to create a MOC of it with LEGO bricks. He started off by creating one of the smaller gun batteries, a 12.7cm, 40 caliber gun turret. His thinking was that if he could create an accurate replica of one of the gun batteries, then he would be able to build the whole ship.

Todaiji created for the “TV Champion” show.

Next he started a long series of trial and error builds to find the best way to create realistic lines for the bow and sides using SNOT (Studs Not On Top) techniques and plate elements. Getting realistic ship lines was one of the most difficult and challenging aspects of the project. He then collected books, plastic models, ship plans, visited museums and gathered as much information as he could so that he could create a MOC that was true to the original ship. One of the problems that he encountered was that many models and even drawings in books often had what that particular artist thought were correct aspects of the ship, or had small details left out. In watching the movie about the Yamato, Junpei even came to notice how they created or changed certain parts of the ship for visual effects or to make the story run smoother. The MOC was built in Junpei’s “LEGO Studio”, an apartment in Akashi city where his parents are. He would take one color with him at a time up to Tokyo to work on sections, and then bring the finished pieces back and add them to the MOC.

Junpei’s Doraemon.

The gun battery that started it all.

The gun battery and port holes.

To determine what the finished size of the battleship needed to be, he calculated by using the size of a minifig a “standard” Japanese person size in 1940 and then calculated the length, breadth, height and other aspects of the vessel based on this standard. The MOC uses mainly normal bricks for the interior structure and plates for the exterior areas. There are various special parts that he has used for the details. The meticulous attention to detail is incredible, from the Japanese flag made with 1x2 plates and 1x1 round plates to the biplanes on the back. He even created the two smaller vessels that the

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One of the main gun turrets.

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Building

“Fighting for Life”: Building an Award-Winning Model Interview by Joe Meno Photography by Chris Edwards

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In 2008, this model won the “You Control the Action” contest. BrickJournal was able to talk to the builder and get a glimpse behind the scenes of this model! BrickJournal: Let’s start with getting to know you. What do you do ‘in the real world’? My name is Chris Edwards. I’m 29, I live just outside Philly, and I do internal tech support for Yellow Book (the phone book). When did you start LEGO building? What do you like to build the most? My earliest LEGO memory is from age 3. My pre-school class was temporarily held in a room normally used by older kids, and I got to play with some Fabuland stuff. I think I had played with DUPLO before that, but the LEGO pieces grabbed my attention in ways the DUPLO hadn’t. I had some of my own before long, and I never looked back. I had a brief dark age in college, but mostly because I was separated from my collection. Two things changed that: I

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fell in love all over again when Star Wars was introduced, and around the same time I discovered Brickshelf and saw what was possible with a large LEGO collection. These days, I mostly build in two themes: castle and space (or other futuristic things). I like a lot of other themes too, but whenever I let my imagination set the course, it invariably leads to one of those two. Can you explain the story behind your model? The You Control the Action Contest was started by Keith Goldman in 2007. I was a huge admirer of Keith’s work, with “2 Pits and a Pad” in particular having inspired me more than any other MOC, so there was no question that I would enter the contest. I started working on my entry (“Finding Hope”) right away. My final entry was scaled way back from the original concept due to time constraints (I had planned to build a utopian city scene above the whole thing) and I had to rush with some of the details. Nevertheless, I was very surprised and honored to be chosen as the King of the Action! Feeling almost unworthy of that title, I immediately decided that I would have to step up to the plate and prove myself if the contest repeated the next year. Then I sort of forgot about the whole thing until late 2008. I was in Madrid for an extended business trip when Keith announced the second iteration of the contest. I started to run through some ideas for settings that I had left over from the year before. One of those ideas involved a gunfight in a zero-G environment--a large, round room in the center of a

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Above: Some highlights of Chris’ model.

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Minifig Customization 101

Advanced LEGO Element Modification Article and Photography by Jared Burks

Previously this series has covered LEGO element modification techniques, where the tips presented were simple cut and paste techniques to get people to think outside the box and look at LEGO parts in new ways. Please review those articles for the basic techniques. Just to reassure those that believe it is sacrilegious to cut LEGO elements let’s examine the meaning of the word LEGO in Latin, which means “I assemble.” So let’s assemble a new element by cutting, gluing, and adding to a LEGO element to create something new. Use your imagination, pull out some LEGO elements, and get to hacking them apart! In this lesson we will be handling hobby knifes, razor blades, and rotary tools; all of which are sharp. If you are a younger reader please seek your parents’ assistance in handling these items. If you are an older reader, please use care and caution; your fingers are not replaceable. Kevlar gloves are available to protect your fingers and I recommend these to all. They can be found in most woodworking/carving stores or online from hobby sites. I also recommend a non-slip cutting mat as well as good safety technique. The best lesson I have learned, after many trips to the ER for stitches, is to use sandpaper when possible as many items can be created by sanding, which is safer for your fingers.

Proper Cutting Technique 1.

Always use adequate lighting.

Never cut towards your fingers, always cut away to avoid blade slips (Where the blade slips and can accidentally cut you).

Avoid holding parts in your hand while cutting. If you must hand hold a part to cut it, always wear a Kevlar glove.

If the part is thicker than 1/8 of an inch (Minifig handle thickness) use a hobby saw or Dremel Tool. These are much safer when cutting through thicker materials.

Use a hobby cutting mat and a desk or table, never cut parts in your lap or on odd or uneven surfaces.

Only use sharp tools, dull tools can hang and cause slips and accidents more frequently than sharp tools.

For this article will demonstrate the advanced modification techniques through the creation of a head piece for a Hawkgirl minifig inspired by the DC character. The creation of this part is going to demonstrate several techniques. Briefly, we will start with a LEGO hair piece, add a stud to attach her wings, cut down the top of the hair, add styrene supports for her mask, and sculpt the mask out of clay (We are adding the stud since the back bracket will not fit with the hair piece chosen for the project). After the initial part is created it could be molded and cast using the information in the previous articles to create a more durable plastic version.

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When creating a new element like this it is important to think out the steps required in its creation. For example, if you started with the sculpting the clay mask it could be damaged by the rotary tool when attaching the stud for the wings. For this part

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we are going to follow the steps below:

Creation Steps: 1.

Rotary cut a circular flat spot on the back of the hair element.

Trim down a 1x1 round plate to the stud.

Fit the stud to the flat spot in the back of the hair.

Glue the stud in place with plastic weld glue.

Map out mask region on top of the hair piece.

Sand down the region to allow the clay some space.

Cut out styrene supports for wing portions of the helmet.

Glue supports to the head.

Cover in clay and shape the mask part.

10. Use hairdryer or hot water to cure clay. 11. Paint (or mold, cast, paint). There are several types of glue available. When attaching the stud to the back we will need a very strong bond. To get the best bond use a plastic welding glue (Plastruct Plastic Weld). These types of glues surface melt the plastic of the two parts and bond them together. It is CRITICAL to be careful when applying these glues to not damage the rest of the part. If you spill or misplace any plastic welding glue on other regions of the part, set it aside until the glue completely evaporates and then give it a few more minutes for the plastic to stabilize before continuing. Superglue could be used, but the strength will not be the same as that achieved when using plastic welding glue.

Figure 1: This figure displays the starting element, the trimming of the 1x1 stud, the rotary tool bit used to create the flat spot on the back of the hair, the region the bit was used, the glue used, and the stud glued into place.

Now that we have the needed back stud to attach the wings (their creation will not be covered here) we need to modify the top of the head to make space for the mask. To start the area will be masked out with a marker to guide while the sanding. Using the rotary tool, with a sanding attachment, remove as much material as possible without damaging the interior structure of the hair piece from the masked region. This is needed to keep the mask from having an oversized appearance. This could be done with a hobby knife, but please exercise extreme caution. The rotary tool will make short work of the region and is much safer with the sanding attachment. Now that we have the part prepped for the addition of the mask we need to find some styrene. Sheet styrene in various thicknesses is typically sold in hobby stores for model builders. We will use the styrene to cut out the basic shape of the mask wing and act as a support for the addition of the clay. As the front part of the mask will be too thin to hold styrene we are only adding it to the back of the mask. Styrene is an interesting item to work with; it doesn’t need to be completely cut through. You can score the design and then bend the styrene and it will “pop” out.

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8/9/09 4:49:46 PM

BrickJournal #7