Attila Gallik: Building a Future

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Attila Gallik, a freelance 3-D artist and illustrator, has only been building for five years, after having his interest rekindled by The LEGO Movie. After watching the movie, he did some research on LEGO but thought that he was too old to go back to building, as he did ten-plus years before. By the start of 2016, he saw that there were a lot of adult builders and/or LEGO fans who were his age and older, so he said, “Why not? I should build too; at least assemble my childhood sets.” From that point, he created some incredible builds, including spaceships and futuristic cars.

Attila Gallik: Building a Future!

Article and Photography by Attila Gallik

Attila’s Blacktron fighter.

Attila’s Space Utility Truck.

Since he’s a big sci-fi nerd, his favorite theme is Classic Space, and he started his collection with space sets. He began by modifying them, wanting them to be one-of-a-kind, something special, a bit more modern, and streamlined. Attila also wanted to explore building techniques and the design and construction changes in the decades since those Classic Space sets were first released. He’s also expanded into Speed Champions, especially the new 8-stud-wide cars, designing his own vehicles.

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Bill’s mosaic of the LEGO early mascot.

Bill Vollbrecht: Building Models and More!

Article and Photography by Bill Vollbrecht

When asked about what he does, Bill Vollbrecht mentions a few occupations: “Freelance artist, illustrator and LEGO builder.” With 30+ years in LEGO building, he has done more than just build—he has built at the LEGOLand parks! Getting back into building as an adult when he stumbled upon a Black Seas Barracuda set at a Toys ‘R’ Us in 1990, he was blown away by how LEGO had evolved since he was a kid. Back then, he was inspired by the old Bricks Kicks LEGO club magazine. There he would find builds by the model shop team based at the USA LEGO office, located in Enfield, Connecticut. He was also inspired by the large sculptures they made, which led him to LEGOLand.

Bill started as a Model Builder at LEGOLand California and was eventually given the job of Art Director for the park, where he designed the Land of Adventure and the first-ever LEGOLand Water Park. From there, he got promoted to being the Art Director/Creative Lead to design the new LEGOLand parks— and headed up designing LEGOLand Florida, Malaysia, Dubai, and Japan theme parks.

Built topiaries.

Some views of Bill’s model of a Rose Parade float.

Bill also finds inspiration by being, first and foremost, an artist. His love of old architecture, weird pop culture, and campy off-the-wall retro stuff gets mashed up in his head until he’s able to extract it into something he wants to build. He builds what interests him and always had an affinity for the design that goes on behind the scenes at the LEGOLand parks and the Rose Parade. He explains, “There has always been a saying for writers: ‘Write what you know,’ and I suppose I’ve adopted that motto as ‘build what you know!’” With his projects, Bill considers himself a fairly fast builder. Once he’s gotten an idea and pre-visualized it, the actual build goes pretty quickly in a few marathon, hyper-focused days. He sometimes uses paper to visualize a mosaic, but everything else he builds freehand with only the vision in his head. He’s not one for pre-planning, but he keeps his ideas written down in a book. After doing a little research, if the idea is strong enough to pull him in, he just jumps in and starts building!

Building

Jordan’s microscale Deep Freeze Defender.

Jordan Maucotel: Micro Master!

Article and Photography by Jordan Maucotel

Another microscale creation. Jordan Maucotel, known online as Elemental_Lego, is a patent attorney with a background in applied physics. He works with inventors and engineers to help them get patent protection for their inventions. He also builds LEGO microscope and space models. He started building when he was about six, with his first set being the Blacktron Meteor Marauder (#1875). He asked for LEGO for every birthday and Christmas growing up, and absolutely loved the old space themes. Coming out of his Dark Age, he was inspired by modern microscope builds. He started building a little micropolis and quickly transitioned to microscope and space and Star Wars builds, which is what he mostly does now. Jordan’s favorite theme is probably Ice Planet. The Deep Freeze Defender (#6973) is his favorite set of all time, so of course, he had to do a microscope version of the set, including some scenery to represent the original box art. When he began building again, Jordan wanted to build small scenes that were much more detailed than official LEGO sets. Shadow boxes always interested him, with the idea of fitting a whole scene or environment in a tiny space, and many of his builds attempt to capture that feeling. Inspiration for him comes from many different sources, which results in a very sporadic set of builds. He embraces this variety, though, and looks for good building tangents whenever he can! Some examples of things that have inspired his builds include: • Natural landscapes, such as Mt. St. Helens, an active volcano in his home state of Washington, that erupted in 1908, blowing off a third of the entire mountain and causing massive destruction that is still visible today. • Modern Artwork, such as Dom Riccobene’s woodcuts.

These inspired his Rainbow Volcano build, a 3-D topological model of Mt. Rainier, with different colors showing different elevations.