Issue 88 • Winter 2025
10.95
$
Making Microscale!
in the US
Builder Spotlights:
Sébastien Houyoux Marco Lucafò ABrickDreamer A Talk with a LEGO Designer
INSTRUCTIONS AND MORE!
Don’t miss an issue—subscribe now!
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.
#87 is now shipping!
NEXT ISSUE: THE FINE ART OF BRICK ARTISTS! SUBSCRIBE NOW!
#89 ships Spring 2025!
S
GET THE NEXT FOUR PRINT ISSUES PLUS FREE DIGITAL EDITIONS!
ATE
5R
202
SUBSCRIBE TO BRICKJOURNAL
o $53 Economy US Postpaid (backing board, poly bag) o $70 Premium US (rigid mailer, faster delivery) o $82 International o $19 Digital Editions Only Name: Address: City/Province: State: Country (if not USA): E-mail address:
Zip Code:
(for free digital editions)
DON’T MISS AN ISSUE • ORDER TODAY! TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA
TwoMorrows Publishing
10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com • Order at twomorrows.com LEGO® and the Brick and Knob configurations are trademarks of the LEGO Group of Companies. BrickJournal is not associated with The LEGO Group.
For faster service, order online at:
www.twomorrows.com or by phone: 919-449-0344
Issue 88 • Winter 2025
Contents From the Editor....................................................2
People Geneva Durand: From Pirates to Computers.........................3
Building
Gary Fleischer: Building Berlin..................................................9 Sébastien Houyoux: Micro Architect..............................................14 Marco Lucafò: Micro Madness!.............................................18 Gilles de Crombrugghe: Building Art and Architecture.................23 Isaac Snyder: LEGO Designer and Builder.....................28
Gentle Gidman: Building Airships and Space Settlements.....................................................34 ABrickDreamer: Building Micros and Movies....................38 Rexson David Magno: Making Mechs and Microships..............43 You Can Build It: MINI Bucket Truck.........................................48 Minifigure Customization 101: Why Does Nothing Ever Turn Out Like It Should?................................................52 BrickNerd Instructions: Microscope......................................................58 You Can Build It: MINI Breon Dayvan......................................63
Community Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars Jürgen Wittner:
Life in Pieces....................................................66 Community Ads...............................................78 Last Word.............................................................79 Next Issue............................................................80
BrickJournal is no longer sold in Barnes & Noble stores. But it’s still available in independent bookstores, comic book shops, and by mail order and subscription!
From the Editor: First, some bad news: the article from Mark Stafford, LEGO designer and former BrickJournal writer, has been delayed. Why? With LEGO being busy, so is Mark—he’s mentoring and designing for the company, so finding time to write and gather materials has been tough. But he’s working on it, so when he’s done, we’ll make room for it!
Winter 2025 Issue 88 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 David Strenzler
Contributors: Jared Burks, Gilles de Crombrugghe, Christopher Deck, Geneva Durand, Gary Fleischer, Gentle Gidman, Sébastien Houyoux, Marco Lucafò, Rexson David Magno, Ryan Bone, Davide Sacramati, Isaac Snyder, Jürgen Wittner and Greg Hyland.
Also, with this issue, BrickJournal is going to a quarterly (four times per year) publication schedule. I’m being treated for cancer, and the medication I’m taking, while working toward getting my illness into remission, has also resulted in my energy level being much lower than before. This makes it harder for me to work on new issues, so the magazine is slowing down until I get back up to speed. To tide you over between new issues, we’re offering a special 2-for-1 trade deal: Exchange one of your remaining print subscription issues for any two back issues (and we pay the postage)! E-mail store@twomorrows.com and tell ’em which issues you want (limit of 8), and we’ll adjust your account. 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!
Website
Subscriptions
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: Sebastîen Houyoux’s Vatican City. Art by Sebastîen Houyoux. About the Contents: Nanoscale Berlin. Photo by Gary Fleischer.
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 88, Winter 2025 (ISSN 1941-2347) is published quarterly 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. Four-issue subscriptions: $53 US, $82 Elsewhere, $19 Digital Only, and can be purchased at 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. Star Wars, The Mandalorian TM & © Lucasfilm. All articles, photos, and art © BrickJournal Media, LLC, 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.
2
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
Geneva Durand with her rendition of The Vault.
Geneva Durand is a freelance writer and self-publisher. Now 27, she has been building for thirteen years. Before that, she enjoyed playing with LEGO bricks with her siblings, but it was then just a toy for her. The Ninjago theme got her into the online LEGO community, and from there she started entering competitions and building nearly everything she could think of. Her building style has grown as she has, and while she has considerably less time to build than she did as a kid, it’s still her biggest hobby. Her love of LEGO started with Ninjago, but her favorite themes are now the Botanical line, with Speed Champions close behind. Online LEGO community competitions gave Geneva the prompting she needed to start building and kept her going through the years. Even today, about half of what she builds is for competitions. Geneva has amassed a continually growing concept box of ideas and things that she eventually wants to build. Often, she will find a contest that inspires her to build something that adapts well to a contest prompt. An example would be her entry for the 2023 edition of the Wandering Skies Competition that prompted an “Off the Beaten Path” fantasy/steampunk era build. She had been wanting to do a floating island for some time, so building a pirate island for the contest came to mind.
Geneva Durand:
From Pirates to Computers
Article and Photography by Geneva Durand
3
Building
Sébastien Houyoux:
Micro Architect Article and Photography by Sébastien Houyoux
Sébastien’s rendition of Vatican City.
14
Sébastien Houyoux got back into LEGO building during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. While sorting through his old toys, he reopened an old box where all his bricks were mixed together. Deciding to take on the challenge of sorting the parts out and rebuilding his own sets, Sébastien quickly returned to the hobby. Going to college, Sébastien is a fourth-year student, studying to become a civil engineering inspector specializing in structures. It shouldn’t be surprising that his favorite theme is the Architecture series, or more generally any sets representing monuments from around the world. His apartment is filled with LEGO monuments from all over the globe! Discovering the builds by Rocco Buttliere in early 2021 inspired Sébastien to start building his own creations. Rocco’s creations were greatly admired by Sébastien, who thought, “Why can’t I build these?” He gave it a shot and hasn’t stopped designing since. Sébastien’s inspirations for his creations come from two directions. The first and most common is when he takes an interest in a monument like a bridge or skyscraper, for example, and he asks himself how he can recreate it in LEGO, what techniques to use, what dimensions to give the creation, and other factors. The second way is more spontaneous: he spend a lot of time on Google Earth and he virtually explores cities he’s not familiar with. Sometimes he discovers remarkable monuments or buildings, which become new subjects to build.
All of Sébastien’s creations are first designed in the Stud.io software. This app gives him access to a much wider range of pieces and colors than he physically owns, allowing him to experiment with new techniques and color combinations. During the design process, he often uses 3-D models as well as construction plans to achieve a result that’s as realistic as possible. However, the downside of designing everything on the computer is that some techniques that he develops need to be tested in real life to check their strength and viability. On rare occasions, he also builds with the bricks he has on hand to test these techniques. Once he gets the funds, he builds them for real! Completing a creation can take varying amounts of time, depending on several factors. The first is the size of the building Sébastien is designing. All of his models are at a 1/625 – 1/650 scale, so the dimensions can quickly become large, requiring more work, not just on the building itself, but also on the environment where he’ll place it. Second is the complexity of the building: his goal is always to
Different views of Vatican City.
15
Building
Isaac Snyder is a professional LEGO set designer that started out as a LEGO builder. In the time that he has been with the LEGO Group, he has designed over a dozen sets, including ones for the Minecraft theme and LEGO Ideas, including the Viking Village (21343) and Horizon Forbidden West: Tallneck (76989). Here, he talks with BrickJournal about the projects he builds outside of work, just for fun! BrickJournal: How long have you been building? Since I was a young kid. My older siblings had some LEGO sets, so I grew up around bricks. I’m from a big family and we couldn’t afford lots of new sets, so we had two big plastic tubs we kept all our parts in, and from that spent countless hours building houses, cars, trucks, castles, etc. Often these were inspired by new product lines we thought looked amazing. I distinctly remember building our own array of mechs influenced by Exo-Force, and trying mechanical functions in a bunch of mining vehicles after seeing the Power Miners line. What got you into building as an adult? I found the online LEGO community very young. As a young teen, medieval times and castles especially caught my interest, so I was looking them up on the internet when I came across the classic-castle forum. Seeing the incredible models others were building instantly inspired me, and I started trying to emulate that level of MOCing and joined a few different forums. That was in 2011, and I have stayed very engaged with the community ever since. What’s your favorite theme? Castle, as it’s what drew me into building as a serious hobby. In recent years I have been building more and more space, but still always enjoy a good medieval model. What inspired you to start building MOCs? As mentioned above, it was the classic-castle forum and seeing others’ work that really hooked me. I built lots of custom creations as a kid, and enjoyed it, but had never dreamed how complex and detailed LEGO models could be. So I spent a lot of time studying other MOCs, learning techniques, and trying to incorporate those learnings into my own models—as well as building a bigger parts collection via the discovery of Bricklink!
Isaac Snyder:
LEGO Designer and Builder Article and Photography by Isaac Snyder 28
The starship Azarel.
Everdell Chapel.
What are the inspirations behind your builds?
Everdell Chapel’s steeple.
Everdell Chapel: Board games are another big hobby of mine, and one of the most beautiful board games I have played is Everdell. My brother John and I both loved the charming world of woodland creatures and have now made a few models based off specific card art from the game. This one was the chapel, which features a quaint church perched atop some craggy rocks. Everdell Chapel’s entrance.
29
Building
Gentle’s Food on the Fly.
Gentle Gidman:
Building Airships and Space Settlements Article and Photography by Gentle Gidman
34
Gentle Gidman (GentleSpring on Flickr) is a younger builder and a childcare worker. At the age of 18, she has been building for twelve years and is a new AFOL. She is so new, in fact, that the biggest event that got her building as an adult was just cleaning her desk off so she could start on her next project! She got the first LEGO Friends set, which became her favorite theme. Her brothers, also members of the LEGO building community, were the ones who inspired her to use parts from her old sets to build MOCs. Food on the Fly was built for the “Wandering Skies” contest. The category she entered had to be a business and she hadn’t tried her hand at an airship yet, so she went for it! The time it takes Gentle to build a MOC depends on what she wants to build. For her, it can be as simple as an easyto-build open air market or more complex, like a solar settlement. To start a build, Geneva spends most of her time finding a criteria that inspires her. With Food on the Fly, the criteria was that it had to be a floating business. That gave her the idea of a traveling market. As with many of her MOCs, she likes to add an element of whimsy or humor. The idea of such a modern convenience as the supermarket was funny in a steampunk setting. Once she had the idea and inspiration, it was just a matter of choosing her key elements and building around them.
Gentle’s hardest project to date was the Genesis Solar Settlement, which was a four-part color-coded solar settlement. It took a while for her to build, but it was a blast! Her favorite part on a build would be on Food on the Fly, where she used the balloon pieces and other pieces from the Heartlake Hot Air Balloon (set 41097). LEGO building is fun for Gentle because she loves taking wacky and unique ideas to 3-D. It’s not often that one can world-build on a physical level as quickly and easily as with LEGO elements. Gentle offers this advice to builders: “Don’t compare yourself to others. If we all had to build just one way or be the ‘best’ to enjoy LEGO, then what’s the use? Build what is good and beautiful and inspires you. Fill the world with light and hope with the things you create.”
More views of Food on the Fly.
35
Building
Davide Sacramati’s media-inspired habitats!
ABrickDreamer:
Building Micros and Movies Article and Photography by Davide Sacramati 38
The LEGO fan community is a diverse bunch. Builder Davide Sacramati (abrickdreamer on Flickr) is a good example, being an Italian AFOL who happens to be a youth football coach living in Singapore. While he has been building since he was a kid, he started MOC building around 2017. A combination of things got him into adult building. One thing was seeing a very interesting LEGO documentary where he first found out about AFOLs and LEGO Ideas (the LEGO crowdfunding platform). Another thing was visiting a beautiful exhibition in Singapore: Piece of Peace, a selection of World Heritage sites recreated with LEGO. Finally, Davide’s wife gifted him a LEGO set: the Venice skyline Architecture set. That set got him completely hooked. Davide has no favorite theme in particular—he would gladly build any set. If he had to pick themes, they would probably be LEGO Icons and LEGO Ideas. When Davide got back into LEGO building, he didn’t have the space or budget for sets, especially the big expensive ones for adults. As a result, he decided to fill the lack of LEGO in his life by building his own MOCs. Initially he didn’t have a part inventory, so he started digitally building with LEGO Digital Designer and then Stud.io.
A microscale habitat themed to Back to the Future.
Super Mario double habitat!
A Jurassic Park habitat.
“I am your father...”.
The Nightmare Before Christmas.
For Davide, inspiration can come from many places. His first MOCs were mostly based on IPs (intellectual properties), real buildings, or specific designs for LEGO Ideas. Now, he has a different approach. He loves participating in all kinds of LEGO contests, as they give builders a prompt, which is an easy starting point. Davide recommends any and every builder to participate in these contests. Davide’s also a big fan of building small, either in terms of piece count or scale. These factors make the inspiration phase easier. Sometimes he starts from a minifigure and builds a habitat around it. Since he loves the habitat concept, he explored it in microscale. He made a stack of microscale landscape habitats and another stack of iconic scenes in microscale habitats. He also likes to create mini versions of official sets, which is another popular thing to do for microscale fans. The time needed to make a model varies; it can be just a few hours, if Davide has a clear idea of what he wants to build. If there is a lot of trial and error, it will take longer, but generally he doesn’t have a build on his table for longer than a week. Every now and then Davide has a bigger project, but usually he likes to build many MOCs on the smaller side. When he starts to build something, he has this urge to finish it; if he builds too big, he gets impatient. LEGO always comes after family and work, so he advocates building small and fast. Davide always starts with a kind of clear idea of what to build; of course, while building there might be variations and the build could take a bit of a different direction. Generally he completes a MOC, takes photos, makes a YouTube
A habitat for a harpy.
39
You Can Build It MINI Build
MINI Bucket Truck by Ryan Bone
Ryan Bone is a builder that has been at various events showing his microscale cities. A recent layout showed a great example of a vehicle in this scale. While his city will be spotlighted in the next issue of BrickJournal, here is a teaser for his work! But first some words from Ryan: “I’m 35 and I live in Michigan. I work in a plastic factory— not LEGO because I would put them out of business! I always loved architecture and built many cities as a kid, but sold my collection to buy a PlayStation! I started building my microscale LEGO city in 2012 after a LEGO gag gift from my dad inspired me to splurge on LEGO. I love to build in microscale because I have lots of ideas and not enough space. “Building on this scale allows me to go 10, 20, maybe 25 floors with a building using about as many pieces as a modular LEGO set. I have currently 120 buildings ranging from small houses built with less than a hundred pieces, to a 50-story skyscraper using well over 20,000 parts! “I’ll never know exactly how many pieces my city contains but it’s certainly in the range of 150,000. In fact, the 70+ vehicles that bring the city to life account for nearly 2,500! These micromachines take minutes to build with an assortment of spare parts that you may have in your collection!”
48
Parts List (Parts can be ordered from Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color)
Qty Color Part 3 Lt Bluish Grey 35480.dat 1 2 3 1 1 2 2 1
Lt Bluish Grey Lt Bluish Grey Lt Bluish Grey Lt Bluish Grey Lt Bluish Grey White White White
1
White
1 1 2 1 2
White White White White White
2
White
1 1
White White
1 1 1 1 2 1
White White White White White White
3 1
White White
2 2 1 1 4 1
Trans Orange Trans Black Trans Yellow Black Black Black
Description Plate 1 x 2 with Round Ends and 2 Open Studs 99780.dat Bracket 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 Up 4070.dat Brick 1 x 1 with Headlight 2412b.dat Tile 1 x 2 Grille with Groove 44728.dat Bracket 1 x 2 - 2 x 2 Down 3023b.dat Plate 1 x 2 30374.dat Bar 4L Lightsaber Blade 99781.dat Bracket 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 Down 33909.dat Plate 2 x 2 with 2 Studs on One Edge 3680c02.dat Turntable 2 x 2 Plate with Light Bluish Grey Top 1748.dat Tile 1 x 2 Half Round 24246.dat Tile 1 x 1 with Rounded End 4070.dat Brick 1 x 1 with Headlight 11090.dat Bar Tube with Clip 15573.dat Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud 11211.dat Brick 1 x 2 with Two Studs on One Side 3795.dat Plate 2 x 6 26047.dat Plate 1 x 1 Round with Horizontal Handle on Side 3020.dat Plate 2 x 4 15712.dat Tile 1 x 1 with Clip (Thick C-Clip) 3022.dat Plate 2 x 2 99207.dat Bracket 1 x 2 - 2 x 2 Up 87079.dat Tile 2 x 4 with Groove 18674.dat Plate 2 x 2 Round with 1 Centre Stud 23443.dat Bar Tube with Handle 93609.dat Arm Skeleton with Horizontal Clip Bent 56.31 6141.dat Plate 1 x 1 Round 54200.dat Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667 98138.dat Tile 1 x 1 Round with Groove 99780.dat Bracket 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 Up 6141.dat Plate 1 x 1 Round 3023b.dat Plate 1 x 2
Don’t STEAL our Digital Editions! C’mon citizen, DO THE RIGHT THING! A Mom & Pop publisher like us needs every sale just to survive! DON’T DOWNLOAD OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE! Buy affordable, legal downloads only at
www.twomorrows.com or through our Digital Storefront at
www.comicshistory.org & DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep producing great publications like this one!
49
Building Minifigure Customization 101:
I started with the quote above, because: “I am too blunt and saucy.” —Cymbeline, Act 5, Scene 5 We just got one of the most iconic Tim Burton-themed LEGO sets: “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” featuring some of the best figure variants I have yet seen in any LEGO set ever created, which you would think would make me happy. Good on you, LEGO; the Mayor, Zero, and rest of the characters, Jack and Sally especially, are just phenomenal. That said, bad form, LEGO, for not creating the villains! Well luckily...
Dr. Finkelstein and Sally.
Why Does Nothing Ever Turn Out Like it Should?
The fact that we do not have the Oogie Boogie, Dr. Finkelstein, or the mask accessories for Lock, Barrel, and Shock is just a travesty. So let us put those talents to good use!
Article and Photography by Jared K. Burks
So LEGO left us hanging, but set out with a form that says whatever I create has to be as good or better, and with all the same creativity that LEGO has demonstrated. Where to start?
Lock, Barrel, and Shock.
But alas, no one is going to hold my hand here, so let’s get to creating.
So let’s get to creating and step outside of the same old thing!
The Oogie Boogie Man.
[Tim Burton’s the nightmare before Christmas TM & © Touchstone Pictures.]
Lock, Shock, & Barrel The masks are the easiest to create for Lock, Shock, and Barrel. These are basic shaped masks that could easily be created in Fusion 360, but many other people have already created them and made them readily available on Thangs or Thingiverse. Let’s go take a look. I found these on Thangs; that took me to Printables, as this is how Thangs works—it catalogs all the other sites, making it an easy place to start. https://www.printables.com/model/473860-lock-shock-andbarrel-nightmare-before-christmas
Once we have these masks downloaded, we have to make them function with a LEGO figure—to add them to Lock, Shock, and Barrel official LEGO figures. This starts with sizing the masks and modifying them for the LEGO scale, which proportionally is a bit odd, as we all know well. To do this, I loaded the masks into Autodesk’s Meshmixer. Meshmixer is program that is no longer supported by Autodesk, but is an easy to use program that allows for edit and re-sculpt stl parts. I added a LEGO Minifigure torso and head to allow for the scaling of these masks to make them Minifigure compatible. Check your sizes; you don’t want to scale to the wrong base size—this is easy with a pair of calipers. Barrel, being a round shape, was the easiest. It merely had to be scaled uniformly to fit the LEGO form. Lock was a bit more complicated, as was Shock. Lock had to be scaled in a non-uniform capacity, as the LEGO head is a bit wide. As I scaled the mask, I also had to add thickness to the mask to allow it to be strong enough for it withstand attachment and removal. So height and width were scaled independently, and then the thickness or z direction was augmented. These were simple transformations, which is merely an “edit and then transform” and an adjustment. Shock was the final mask for the trio; she is the most complicated of all of them to create. She has a massive nose and the smallest eyes of any of the masks, and the goal is to have it to align to the character’s eyes on the head that LEGO created. This left me with a series of scaling using the same alterations described for Lock. While these masks are small, the nose on Shock is a bit heavy compared to the others. While I have these masks created and will temporarily attach them today, long term I will add a neck attachment to hold the masks on the figures. But because I was awaiting my LEGO set to arrive, I didn’t have time to fine tune this for these masks.
Designing masks for (left to right) Lock, Shock and Barrel.
Testing masks for Lock, Shock and Barrel.
Painting masks.
Finished masks.
Well, we now have an appropriate Lock, Shock, and Barrel! Now we get to dive into Dr. Finkelstein, the mad scientist who created Sally, and who was not the best father figure.
53
Jurgen Wittner Life in Pieces 66
Jürgen Wittner:
Life in Pieces
Article by David Strenzler, Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars Photography by Jürgen Wittner
Galactic greetings! We are Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars. As administrators of one of the best LEGO Star Wars themed groups on Facebook, David Strenzler, Frank Averstegge and Eloi Parizeau witness amazingly creative builds by Star Wars fans worldwide on a nearly daily basis. Jürgen Wittner is a very active member of our Bantha Bricks community, as well as an extraordinarily talented MOC builder. Some of you might recall BrickJournal #74’s Star Wars special featured an interview with Jürgen that was focused on his DN-25 Treadable as seen in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. It was our pleasure to speak with Jürgen once more to learn about some of his incredibly detailed 1:16 scale models of iconic Star Wars ships that he designed over the last few years.
David Strenzler: Hello Jürgen. Welcome to the Bantha Bricks Files! The LEGO Star Wars community has been familiar with your undoubtedly skilled Star Wars-inspired designs for some time. Could you please introduce yourself and what you do? Jürgen Wittner: Hi, I’m Jürgen Wittner, 47 years old, from Berlin, Germany. I’m an architect who works for an office that mainly plans and builds public buildings such as universities, schools, and lecture halls. My main project is a depot with restoration workshops for seven different museums in Berlin. About four-and-a-half years ago, I started designing LEGO Star Wars MOCs, making instructions for them, and going to LEGO exhibitions in my spare time. Does Star Wars remain your favorite theme, or have others recently surfaced? Yes, Star Wars is still my favorite theme. This simply has to do with the fact that I’m an absolute sci-fi fan and Star
Jürgen’s Y-Wing.
Wars is one of the works that has had the biggest impact on the sci-fi genre, in my opinion. I also consider the designs of the vehicles and spaceships from the original trilogy to be simply timeless. This year I ventured into the DC Universe for the first time and recreated the Batcycle from The Flash movie. And of course, I’m not ruling out the possibility that other excursions will follow. Why have you chosen the LEGO brick as your medium of self-expression? What makes LEGO so special to you? I’ve always been a “LEGO kid”. In the early ’80s, when I was three or four years old, I got my first LEGO Duplo bricks from my two older brothers, and shortly afterwards I inherited the rest of their LEGO. From then on, I was fascinated by the possibilities offered by the LEGO system. At the same time, there was the difficulty of having to abstract things if you wanted to build them.
The Y-Wing can be taken apart for travel.