BrickJournal LEGO Fan Magazine - #70

Issue 70 • November 2021

Visiting Dale Harris’ Edwards Island

Building like a LEGO Master!

INSTRUCTIONS AND MORE!

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Issue 70 • November 2021

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

People Rickard Stensby: Building like a LEGO Master.......................3 Being a LEGO Master..................................10 Aiden Rexrod: Building Beasts!.............................................12

Building Dale Harris: Reinventing Fabuland!...............................18 Mothra... ..............................................................28

Anders Horvath: Pod Building!..................................................32 Rui Miguel: Building Micro to Star Wars......................36 BrickNerd Instructions: Mini Michael Mouse’s New Car..............43 You Can Build It: Mini Profundity...............................................48 Minifigure Customization 101: Thinking Like Leonard Snart...................55

Community Pegasus Racing Team Takes Building Teamwork to a New Level!..........................60 Bantha Bricks Files: Steve Marsh’s Corvus......................................68 Community Ads...............................................78 Last Word.............................................................79 Classic AFOLs.....................................................80

People

What do Davy Jones, Michael Jackson, and Merlin have in common? All of them were built in LEGO form by Rickard Stensby, a builder from Sweden. His specialty is building figures and characters in a larger scale than minifigure, allowing him to sculpt details that are usually restricted by a minifigure’s size. His creations also have a cartoony style about them—a series of hunter’s trophies he built have a Dr. Seuss feel. Another sculpture hilariously brings into mind John Cleese’s posture for the Ministry of Silly Walks (a Monty Python skit).

Rickard Stensby:

Rickard is happy to describe himself in the same manner.

When interviewed online, he described his age as, “Most of me just turned 40, my back is around 57 and my knees just retired.” Asked about how he has been building, his answer was, “I’ve built LEGO as a grown-up since 2014, starting off with my ’80s LEGO from the attic.”

One of the many dancer models Rickard builds.

Building like a LEGO Master!

Article and Photography by Rickard Stensby

His return to building happened by chance. Rickard had his sister’s kids over for some playtime and he brought out his old LEGO boxes from the attic. The kids went home, but the boxes never went back up the attic. The boxes now reside in one of the largest rooms in his house, while his attic is full of crates from the LEGO Masters win… (LEGO Masters Sweden—this will be touched on in a bit).

In terms of favorite theme he states: “I’m probably not very interested in any of the official themes or sets. I enjoy building anything with character, really. Caricature portraits with a cartoonish look is probably a decent description of my style and theme.”

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Merlin from The Sword in the Stone, a Disney film.

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He never really builds sets, and he personally feels that he wouldn’t get much out of doing so. His everyday inspirations are the different people he sees, or scenes that would be fun for him to build. He’s inspired almost every day to build something he has encountered that day. Since time is limited, he has to choose what projects become reality.

He most often chooses the build that he himself would love to have in his home and makes him happy. He tries to keep his builds funny and light and preferably something nostalgic. Most of the models that Rickard builds are from movies or series he grew up with, with many of them connecting to people of the same generation. He also gets lots of requests to build the more poplar themes, like Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Avengers and others, but there are enough good builders doing those and those sagas are simply not “him.” His latest completed build, Merlin from The Sword in the Stone, is from a Disney movie that he has probably watched 100 times as a child, until his VHS tape broke. It’s such an important nostalgia for him, that he was nervous to try and recreate a scene from it. He tried building Merlin a few times before and always started with

Building

Aiden Rexrod:

Building Beasts!

Article and Photography

by Aiden Rexrod

The adult builders are getting younger and younger. Aiden Rexrod is a great example. At the ripe old age of 18, transitioning from high school into the workforce, he has made himself known online for his builds, which are organic in nature.

When he started LEGO building as a three-year-old, he had a large tub of bricks with one headless minifigure. His collection quickly grew, however, as all he asked for as birthday and Christmas presents was LEGO sets.

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Throughout his childhood, Aiden would see amazing builds online and wanted to build at the skill level he saw. He wasn’t able to build as well as they could, but he tried his best anyway. He always thought he needed millions of pieces

to really be a good builder and even then, Aiden had no idea where he would even start. Over time he accumulated more sets, which usually didn’t stay together long because he wanted more parts to build with.

One summer, Aiden began sorting the now massive collection he and his brother has amassed. It was a long and tedious task that took longer than one summer, but he eventually had most of it sorted. Even after that, he didn’t think he had enough parts to build with as well as the System builders did. He later figured out this was not true, because it really doesn’t matter how many parts a builder has—they can still build very well with only a small amount of pieces.

Tytherer, a dragon.

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Building

Dale Harris:

Reinventing Fabuland!

Article and Photography by Dale Harris 18

As the director and graphic designer at Studio Ink, a design studio in Australia, Dale Harris spends his days designing logos, printed materials, websites and social media campaigns.

Out of the office, though, he designs his own LEGO creations.

One of his biggest models is actually a Fabuland-themed layout: Edward’s Island. Here, Dale talks about his building and about updating the Fabuland theme to Neo-Fabuland and LEGO building.

BrickJournal: When did you start building and what are you favorite themes?

Dale Harris: I have been building since he early ’80s, however I had a significant Dark Age from around 1995 to 2015. The three original classic themes will always speak to me the strongest: Space, Castle, and Train.

What got you back into building as an adult?

My wife Kara was the spark of inspiration. She joined the local LUG and invited me along to a meeting… the rest is history.

What inspired you to start building beyond sets?

As a kid, my brother Allen, my sister Sarah and I always built our own creations, sprawled out on the lounge room carpet with a pile of LEGO between us, so LEGO has always been about the creative experience for me. Don’t get me wrong—I love seeing all the new sets; I just don’t really buy many of them. Almost all of my LEGO purchasing A more distant look at the pier.

One of the residents fishes at the pier.

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LEGO Muji hole punch was key in being able to create exact hole for the studs to connect the paper printed elements with LEGO.

Builder Profile

Todd Y. Kubo

Below: First test of the wing balance with no additional support. Only suspended by fishing mono-filament between wing supports through the top of the forewing.

A long-time LEGO contributor, builder and fan.

Todd is one of the first original LEGO Ambassadors, a contributor with the LEGO Group’s efforts with the LEGO Factory Project, and a beta software tester for LEGO Digital Designer. He was one of the 24 finalists in the first LEGO Master Model Builder search in 2004. He’s a frequent attendee and contributor to BrickCon in Seattle. Recently, he stepped down as one of the West Coast editors of BrickJournal.

I have been a fan of the Kaiju movies since my childhood.

I spent many a lazy late Saturday morning, watching the “creature features” on the local channel growing up in Denver, CO. Perhaps it was a connection to the plastic model building I was really into for a while that caught my interest. Watching the actors in the suitmations tear through the city, or battle all the rockets, bombs, and lasers thrown at them was pure B-grade entertainment. It did make me wonder how many hours were spent on building

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Building

Anders Horvath:

Pod Building!

What can I do with a few Vidiyo Pods?

Anders Horvath contemplated this question and created a building. He wanted to incorporate the rounded corners on the pod glasses on the structure as well.

Black stripes were added in his second iteration of the build to give it more of a black and white look

John Randall’s train display.

Article and Photography by Anders Horvath 32

Building

Rui Miguel’s Chamber of Secrets, as seen in the Harry Potter film.

Rui Miguel:

Building Micro to Star Wars!

Article and Photography

by Rui Miguel

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Rui Miguel, a Portuguese builder, has been on the scene making creations for a few years and has been featured online recently with some outstanding builds.

At the age of 27, he has completed a Master’s degree in Design and Multimedia from the University of Coimbra and is preparing to enter the job market.

While he is developing his resume and design portfolio, his LEGO portfolio has already gotten him recognition online.

Rui has been building since childhood, having strong memories of building classic pirates and castle sets at the age of four. His mother recalls him building even earlier, with him creating towers and strange houses at only eight months old. He never stopped building since, as for him, “No other product that would emerge could offer me what LEGO does then and now. Imagination has no limits and LEGO has always allowed me to physically bring anything from the realm of my imagination into existence.”

Growing up with all the recent LEGO themes, Rui doesn’t have a single favorite theme. Instead he has a group of themes he likes: Adventurers with Johnny Thunder, Star Wars, Classic Pirates, Castle, and Space. His inspiration to build beyond sets came from the activity of building itself: he wanted to expand the experience of creating his own stories and universes.

Inspiration behind a specific build can come from a variety of factors for Rui. If it’s a creation with creative freedom such as no piece count, inspiration could be from a music track, an action scene in a movie, a simple phrase from a book, or a fellow LEGO fan. Sometimes he can look randomly at a LEGO piece and be

Building small...

Rui’s building skills run across all scales, from miniland scale for figures to, as seen here, microscale. This microscale street model is a group of modular builds lined up to make a city block.

The train station.

Buildings include a Chinese restaurant, a train station, a police station, an apartment building, a luxury hotel, and a LEGO store. There’s also a train that is displayed behind the train station.

The police station.

The Chinese restaurant.

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BrickNerd is a LEGO fan website that was started by Tommy Williamson. Relaunched in 2021 by Dave Schefcik and some of the best LEGO builders in the world, the site continues the mission started by Tommy: to show the best of the LEGO fan community online with builds, interviews and articles. BrickJournal is proud to continue its partnership with BrickNerd.

Parts List

(Parts can be ordered through Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color)

Mini Michael Mouse‘s New Car Design and Instructions

by Are M. Heiseldal from BrickNerd

When I grew up in the ’80s, I ended up collecting what we now know as Classic Town. My younger brother, however, had quite a lot of Fabuland sets, and even though I loved Town (and still do), I was also slightly envious. Fabuland was so cool! Especially the cars; I really liked that aesthetic.

Set number 328, Michael Mouse’s New Car (we called him Mass Mus in Norway, but the set goes by “Moe Mouse’s Roadster” on BrickLink and was released as set 121 in the US, simply called “Roadster”) was a bit different from most of the other cars. It was released in 1979, the first year of Fabuland, and apart from the then-new chassis, doors and windscreen, it was all made from regular bricks and plates.

I still loved it, though.

This miniature version features some classic mudguards that have been out of production since 2004, but they’re super cheap on BrickLink if you want to stick with my design. If not, there are more recent mudguard parts that will work almost as well.

Michael’s head is what BrickLink calls Dark Orange, a new colour for 1979. Any shade of brown will work, but the minifig head was actually just produced in Dark Orange as of this year—there are three of them in the Ideas Pooh set!

If you decide to build your own miniature roadster, maybe it will bring back good memories of an old theme—or give you a little taste of something young kids played with way before you were born. Either way, I hope you enjoy it!

Qty Part 1 2431.dat 2 3022.dat 4 3023.dat 1 3821.dat 1 3822.dat 2 4081b.dat 3 15573.dat 2 4600.dat 4 4624.dat 4 3139.dat 1 47905.dat 2 60897.dat 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 1

2432.dat 3004.dat 3005.dat 3023.dat 3024.dat 3070b.dat 87079.dat 3626c.dat

1 2 4 2

2540.dat 3020.dat 3021.dat 3787.dat

1 11476.dat 4 54200.dat 2 63864.dat 1 87580.dat

Color Blue Blue Blue Blue Blue Blue

Description Tile 1 x 4 with Groove Plate 2 x 2 Plate 1 x 2 Door 1 x 3 x 1 Right Door 1 x 3 x 1 Left Plate 1 x 1 with Clip Light Type 2 Blue Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud Lt Bluish Grey Plate 2 x 2 with 2 Wheel Pins Lt Bluish Grey Wheel Rim 6.4 x 8 Black Tyre 4/ 80 x 8 Single Smooth Type 1 Black Brick 1 x 1 with Studs on Two Opposite Sides Black Plate 1 x 1 with Clip Vertical (Thick C-Clip) Yellow Tile 1 x 2 with Handle Yellow Brick 1 x 2 Yellow Brick 1 x 1 Yellow Plate 1 x 2 Yellow Plate 1 x 1 Yellow Tile 1 x 1 with Groove Yellow Tile 2 x 4 with Groove Dark Orange Minifig Head with Closed Hollow Stud Red Plate 1 x 2 with Handle Red Plate 2 x 4 Red Plate 2 x 3 Red Car Mudguard 2 x 4 without Studs Red Plate 1 x 2 with Clip Horizontal on Side (Thick C-Clip) Red Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667 Red Tile 1 x 3 Red Plate 2 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud You can go to the BrickNerd website by typing: https://bricknerd.com/ on your browser or by scanning this QR code!

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You Can Build It MINI Build

Mini Profundity (Admiral Raddus’ MC75 Flagship) Design and Instructions

by Christopher Deck Hello everybody, and welcome to our next building session in order to complete the vehicles and vessels from the first Star Wars spin-off movie: Rogue One. Our vehicle of choice today is Admiral Raddus’ flagship, the Profundity, a Mon Calamari MC75 star cruiser. The ship design already looks similar to the well-known MC80 ships from the Classic Trilogy, except for the belt with fin that looks like an exo-skeleton in which the cruiser is docked.

The tricky part with this simple-looking ship is that it has a sleek hull, narrowing to the ends. The smaller you want to build this ship, the more difficult it becomes. With a nice upside-down attachment of the large 4x16 wedge piece (stud inversion technique is inside) and a 4x9 wing plate on top which features the same angles as the wedge piece, we obtain the desired shape.

The other difficult part is to create the illusion that the slim ship slides into the ring of the exo-skeleton, while in fact both ends of the ship are attached separately around a SNOT-core, of course. I hope you will enjoy building this.

See you next time!

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Parts List (Parts can be ordered from Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color)

Qty Color Part 2 Dark-Bluish-Gray 3005.dat 4 Dark-Bluish-Gray 4070.dat 2 Dark-Bluish-Gray 30162.dat 3 1 2 2

Dark-Bluish-Gray 3024.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3023.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3023.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3794b.dat

6 Dark-Bluish-Gray 3794b.dat 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1

Light-Bluish-Gray 34103.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3022.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3021.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3021.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3020.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3795.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 3034.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 85984.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 4460a.dat

2 4 1 2 1 1 3 1 1

Dark-Bluish-Gray 15068.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 92946.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 6632.dat Black 4263.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3069b.dat Dark-Bluish-Gray 3068b.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 87079.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 45301.dat Light-Bluish-Gray 43713.dat

1 Light-Bluish-Gray 41770.dat 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 41769.dat 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 2413.dat

Description Brick 1 x 1 Brick 1 x 1 with Headlight Minifig Binoculars with Round Eyepiece Plate 1 x 1 Plate 1 x 2 Plate 1 x 2 Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud Plate 1 x 3 with 2 Studs Offset Plate 2 x 2 Plate 2 x 3 Plate 2 x 3 Plate 2 x 4 Plate 2 x 6 Plate 2 x 8 Slope Brick 31 1 x 2 x 0.667 Slope Brick 75 2 x 1 x 3 with Open Stud Slope Brick Curved 2 x 2 x 0.667 Slope Plate 45 2 x 1 Technic Beam 3 x 0.5 Liftarm Technic Plate 1 x 4 with Holes Tile 1 x 2 with Groove Tile 2 x 2 with Groove Tile 2 x 4 with Groove Wedge 4 x 16 Triple Curved Wedge 6 x 4 Triple Curved Inverted Wing 2 x 4 Left Wing 2 x 4 Right Wing 4 x 9

Building

Maxifigs ready for paint.

For those fans of the TV show The Flash, I am going to sum up this article in a character’s name: Leonard Snart. I believe you will all completely understand my experience with this article. For those that do not know the character of Leonard Snart, I will explain with one of his more famous snippets of dialog.

Leonard Snart: “Doesn’t matter. There are only four rules you need to remember: make the plan, execute the plan, expect the plan to go off the rails, throw away the plan.

Follow my lead and you’ll be fine.”

Foreword

My plan for this article failed me. I then went rogue. This article was also massively late due to the plan going so far off the rails and having some urgent and pressing work tasks that just kept me far too busy. These complications and my overconfidence in my original and back-up plans were nearly my undoing.

So what happened? Well, I was going to decorate one of the 6.7x BigFigs I have been creating, which I walked through how to make in the last article.

The first attempt to frisket.

Minifig Customization 101:

Thinking like Leonard Snart Article by Jared Burks

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The plan was simple; I was going to use a material called Frisket to create a stencil. Frisket is an adhesive material that is commonly used in the AirBrush world to make stencils. I have featured it some years ago in an article. I was going to cut the stencil using my GlowForge laser cutter (referral link: https:// glowforge.us/r/XxUXj7). Once the series of stencils was created, I would either airbrush or spraypaint the design onto the figure. Simple, easy. Well my Frisket I have now, is very different. The GlowForge did an excellent job cutting the stencil (150 speed 4 power), but the material was far thinner, and much more adhesive than what I had used in the past. This was going to make aligning the stencil as I added colors nearly impossible. The other issue is I made larger sheets of stencils, thinking they would also help mask out the edges so when I spraypainted, I wouldn’t have any overspray. This, coupled with the enhanced tack, made it impossible to apply to the torso.

Stencil Film

Therefore, I was forced to circle back to the Frisket, trying some of the tricks that were used for the Cricut cut vinyl stencils, and substantially reducing the stencil size to make it easier to apply. After way too many hours and being up long enough to see the sunrise, I have a resulting BigFig that looks pretty good. Let’s go through the process, so I can share what I learned.

I have long been a fan of Usagi Yojimbo, a comic book character created by Stan Sakai about Miyamoto Usagi. Usagi is a rabbit samurai who has lost his master, thus he is a wandering ronin. Many people were introduced to this character when he appeared in

Stencil bleed.

Usagi Yojimbo TM & © Stan Sakai.

Plan two? Use a different material called StretchMask. Much lower tack, which was great, but the GlowForge seemed to melt it more than cut it, even at the low power of 4. I am sure with much more testing I could dial in the settings, but alas, time was against me as previously mentioned. So on to material three, GRAFIX Stencil Film. This issue here is it isn’t adhesive at all and paint bleed could be a real issue, even using the spray adhesive that I had. Guess what? The paint bleed was terrible. This lead me down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos and asking a friend to try and cut a vinyl stencil on a Cricut/Silhouette. This seemed promising, but also flamed out. Long term I believe the vinyl stencil is likely the best option, but due to time and not owning that machine, I was unable to test it further. Please know vinyl is not a laser safe material, which is why I didn’t simply put it in the GlowForge.

several Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle TV shows and comic books.

Well, I 3-D printed the needed head with his ears affixed into an appropriate topknot, 3-D printed special legs, torso, arms, etc., all at 6.7x scale.

3-D printed parts.

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Community

SkyRacer.

Pegasus Racing Team Takes Building Teamwork to a New Level!

Article by BrickNerd’s Ted Andes Photography by Team Pegasus

What defines a good team? To answer that question using a single sentence, it would be when a group of people come together and achieve something greater than the sum of their individual contributions. The annual Space Jam sci-fi building competition wrapped up a few weeks ago, and the entrants delivered some great examples of this good teamwork.

For those not familiar with Space Jam (the non-movie), it is a large-scale LEGO sci-fi building contest with six diverse building categories that change each year; space ships, creatures, vignettes, etc. One of those categories has always been some kind of team collaboration category. The challenge is for two to four builders to create models that not only express their individual creativity and skill, but also display strong team coherence at the same time. This can be done in various ways; through color schemes, logos, a common part usage, sharing an aesthetic style, etc.

This year’s entrants were asked to create a Space Rally Racing team, with each person tasked with creating a different type of racing vehicle. One team that really impressed me with their teamwork was Pegasus Racing.

They were neck-and-neck for the lead in the Space Jam rally, but in the end, they were edged out from taking a victory lap by “The Super Six.” Although it doesn’t make for much of a consolation prize, I thought I would feature their team here (well, at least it’s a better prize than getting “Boggle” as a bar mitzvah gift…).

Here is a quick look at their four racers, and some of the things that caught my eye in each of the designs:

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More views of Monorail Speed Racer.

Sailing Hydrofoil If you aren’t following F@bz on Flickr already, now would be the perfect time to start. Known for creating curvaceous builds, this Sailing Hydrofoil delivers curves as well with those forward telescoping arms. Flexible, tentacle-like metallic arms are certainly a classic sci-fi standard; think of alien tripods roaming the planet, the appendages of Spider-Man’s nemesis Doc Ock, or even the ’80s cartoon favorite Inspector Gadget and his go-go-gadget arms. I don’t recall too many other MOCs embracing them to this degree, and the greebling where they connect to the ship’s hull is spot-on. This racing hydrofoil is certainly going out on a limb to take yacht rock to the next level.

Side view.

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Steve Marsh’s

Corvus

raider II class corvette

Article by Steven Smyth, Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars Photography by Steve Marsh

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. Steve Marsh took on the challenge of building the Corvus, a Raider II-class corvette, from the videogame Star Wars: Battlefront II and the build looks sleek and stunning.

I thought it would be great to learn more about this talented builder and his custom LEGO build.

Steven Smyth: I know you have quite a following in the Bantha Bricks community since you started posting your jaw-dropping builds. The group members have been drooling over your latest Corvus construction, among the others you have shared—but for the uninitiated, please introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do.

Steve Marsh: It is going good, and thanks loads for inviting me to be part of this. I am just an ordinary AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) from the United Kingdom who works as a graphic designer by day and a MOC (My Own Creation) designer by night. I am also a dad of two very destructive and noisy young boys who I have to keep my LEGO collection firmly locked away from!

The back of the droid.

Rs’s front, showing some “brick bending.”

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!

Would you say Star Wars is your favorite theme? Or do you have a shocker for us?

Yes! I am absolutely obsessed with LEGO Friends! Nah, just kidding. I guess Star Wars is my favorite theme, though I also adore the color schemes in the Classic Space and Blacktron series. In 2020 I created an entire fleet of Classic Space-themed attack craft. That was something which did not sit right with some members of the community who insisted the spacemen were a peaceful bunch, who would only ever use their spaceships for exploring. I even pushed my exploration of the theme further by creating a mash-up MOC of Classic Space and Blacktron podracers, racing each other across the surface of the moon. Recently though, yeah, it has been Star Wars all the way.

Why do you choose the LEGO brick as your medium to express yourself?

For me, it feels like drawing in 3-D. I have always been creative, plus I have a very creative day job. I do not watch TV because I cannot just sit there doing nothing. I have to create things, and LEGO is one of the most tactile, versatile and satisfying mediums to do this with. When you are making your own stuff, it is like one giant problem-solving exercise, and I love this about it. The fact is, with LEGO, there is almost always a way past every wall you come up against; you just have to find it. I once heard it said that there is nothing in the world

BRICKJOURNAL #70

LEGO® brick-built Edwards Island by DALE HARRIS of HarrisBricks! The hot rods of PAUL SLUITERS! Rocket to outer space with SCOTT BOWMAN and JOE CHAMBERS’ Space Shuttle Discovery set! Plus, Star Wars builds with STEVEN SMYTH of Bantha Bricks, BrickNerd, step-by-step building instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_78&products_id=1631

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