BrickJournal #76 Preview

Issue 76 • November 2022 1 8 2 6 5 8 0 0 4 8 3 5INSTRUCTIONS andLookingMORE! at the Brick Animal Kingdom! $10.95 Filbrick’sSavannahMiroInside:Dudas’CrittersAnimals Ken Ito’s Sea Creatures

Issue 76 • November 2022 From the Editor................................................... 2 People Sean ConnectingKenney:Animals with Bricks 3 FraserArchelonRatzlaff’sCastle 8 Builder Spotlight: Loïc Brun 16 Building Ken Ito’s Beasts and Birds ............................ 20 Miro FromDudas:StarWars to Animals ......................... 22 BrickNerd Instructions: Miro Duda’s Brickpals Lion .................................................................. 23 Giraffe ............................................................. 27 Rhino ............................................................... 30 ChrisDesigningPerron:the XL-15 Spaceship Set 34 ChrisBuildingGiddens:theXL-01 42 JonathanLEGOLandBaxter’sSpace Fleet 44 Minifigure Customization 101: I Love the ‘80s 50 You Can Build It: Tauntaun and AT-AT 54 Community Bantha Bricks: Eloi Parizeau’s The Vigil Cargo Frigate ............................. 60 Inside LEGO Campus: An Exclusive Tour of LEGO’s New Billund Headquarters...................... 66 Last Word............................................................ 79 Classic AFOLs .................................................... 80 Contents

Panda bears having fun!

I enjoy exploring the interconnections found in the natural world. LEGO bricks are a nice metaphor for this: just as LEGO pieces interconnect, everything in nature is interconnected in a delicate balance. Insects and plants have important relationships; different species of animals have symbiotic, mutualistic, or predatory relationships with each other; and animals have connections with their families just like we do. All of this is important because we humans have a connection with nature, too. Even in our urban and modern lives, we occupy land, we’re part of the food chain, we feed plants every time we exhale; we are a part of nature and nature is a part of us.

People

Sean Kenney at the Denver Zoo with some friends. I’ve been creating nature-themed art with LEGO bricks for about ten years. In that time, I’ve created hundreds of sculptures, collectively built with over three million LEGO bricks, which have been put on exhibition and have visited nearly 100 botanical gardens, arboretums, zoos, science centers, and museums across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.

Sean BricksAnimalsConnectingKenney:with

When I create sculptures of animals with LEGO bricks, I want them to have a spark of life; to feel alive, like they have some magic to them. I’m never content to just “make a thing”; it has to be special somehow. If someone says “make a penguin,” I ask myself first: okay, why? What is the pen guin doing? What do penguins do, actually? How do they interact? What do they interact with? I look at photos and videos online, and start to think about how I, myself, can relate to that creature, or how I can try to capture some part of that creature’s life and show it to my audience.

And more than anything else, I need to have some kind of personal connection to the subject matter. That can often be challenging; how can I relate to a leopard? But in doing my research about each sculpture, I find something that I can sync with, and then use that as the focus of the piece. For example, my sculpture “Mother Polar Bear and Cubs” is a life-size sculpture of a mother with three cubs climbing on and cuddling around her. Watching videos of polar bears with their cubs, I was taken by how almost-human they seemed, and as a parent of young children, I saw myself and my kids reflected back at me... I wanted to try to cap ture this aspect of their lives. In doing this, I put my imprint onto the sculpture, and hopefully it then becomes more than just a stack of bricks pushed together the right way. It has an energy to it. By humanizing the bear a little, it can feel a little more relatable and familiar to audiences. And by doing this, maybe viewers can relate to them a bit more.

Sean working on a penguin chick at his studio.Penguins in progress.

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Polar bear cubs. Mother Polar Bear and Family.

8 Article and Photography by Fraser Ratzlaff Fraser ArchelonRatzlaff’sCastlePeople

After a two-year break from building because our daughter was born, I began to plan my next big build.

I wanted to incorporate a lot of movement. I liked the idea of doing some thing big for BrickCon that moved on a turntable, and looked great from every angle. I also wanted to keep re-inventing the Castle theme.

A lot of castle form and function is about defense, and I became captivated by this idea of a castle built on the back of a giant prehistoric sea turtle. What moat could be bigger than the ocean? What defense is better than obscurity? The castle is never in the same place twice. How can you attack if you don’t know it exists or can’t find it?

Archelon is the name of the largest species of sea turtle ever discovered. In my story, this is the last one. It never dives below the surface, slowly roaming the ocean—letting the sun warm it, and eating mostly what swims into its mouth. The turtle isn’t even really aware there’s a castle on its back.

It was fun to develop the story. The build was so big and challenging, from the beginning I wasn’t even sure it would work. The hardest parts were creating a large or ganic shape, getting the fins to move, designing a turntable to handle the weight, and the sheer scale of the project. It was really hard, but so much fun, and it really pushed me to grow as a builder in many ways. Hope you like it!

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Archelon Castle is a community of 25 people who live and work together on the ‘floating island.’ They do meet other people occasionally, almost always from ships passing by who want to trade, need help, or are simply in disbelief at what they are seeing, but these interactions and meetings are actually fairly rare, simply due to how vast the ocean is. Even more rare is finding someone who is shipwrecked and in need of rescue, although it does happen. They join the community for awhile and are always free to leave when the next ship passes by, as is anyone. But the people who call Archelon home tend to stay, and any visitors tend to leave, no matter how fascinated they are, or how strong of a connection they make with the place or the people. And regardless of how deep their desire to go back, or how hard they look, they will never be able to find it again.

Concept and story by Fraser Ratzlaff. Original drawings and watercolor by Andrea Krook.

After the two shipwreck survivors were living on the sea turtle for awhile, a few other people lost at sea found their way to the ‘floating island’, and a tiny community began to form—almost a little refugee camp on the ocean, every one contributing in their own way to help the group. Then one day the turtle swam into a big cove with a small entrance and stayed awhile. The people living on the turtle decided they liked life at sea and agreed to build a perma nent home together. They used their small rafts and boats to ferry stone from a natural quarry over to the turtle to build a castle. After awhile, the turtle swam out of the cove and back into the open ocean.

Here’s the story: A very long time ago, a huge storm shipwrecked a giant ship. Only two souls survived, and were able to piece together a makeshift raft from the wreckage, before every thing sank below the waves. After weeks floating aimlessly at sea with no sight of land or ship, and out of water and supplies, they thought they were doomed for sure. And then, all of a sudden, they spotted a tiny island on the horizon, and they were drifting towards it! As they got closer they realized it wasn’t an island at all, but actually the back of an enormous sea turtle. With their raft failing, they scrambled up on to the shell of the turtle, thinking they were saved for the moment, but as soon as the turtle dove below the surface, all hope would be lost. But the turtle never did.

Loïc with one of his builds. Jumper and Lucky. A western scene built by Loïc.

Photos by Loïc Brun

Builder LoïcSpotlight:BrunPeople

Loïc Brun, known as filbrick or Les briquet de Loïc online, is a French product design student and LEGO builder. Since he was a child, he has been building, starting with secondhand bricks that his parents found at flea markets. Having the blue LEGO system 4153 box, he created small towns with a few figures. With a little imagination, he could bring his story to life. He received more sets on his birthday and at Christmas. Loïc ’s first Technic box seeded an interest in mechanics and technology in him.

Article by Joe Meno

Loïc never stopped LEGO building, so he never had a Dark Age. He’s 22 and has been building for contests since he was 8. At the age of 14, he finished in fifth place (out of 75 participants) in a contest where his passion for building started. The following year’s contest theme was the Far West and he got first place with a chess scene between Jolly Jumper and Lucky Luke (from a famous comic book in Europe). Since that moment, he never stopped doing LEGO contests. He still does them now and joined a local LEGO users group: “Puissance Brick.”

Childhood-related themes such as comics and cartoons are Loïc’s favorite themes. He also likes to convert these characters to 3D. With the LEGO themes, he really likes the Creator “3 in 1” sets which allow you to create several mod els. For him, this is the original spirit of the LEGO brand, to create various objects only with bricks and without figures. He finds that this is what allows his imagination to be conceptualized the best. The models may be simplistic, but with a few bricks one can build an airplane, a car, or a boat. This confirms how the bricks can be used universally. Loïc feels that this range is underestimated by the fans, which is sad since it is a great place to see the playability and creativ ity of building bricks.

Ken’s Tyrannosaurus Rex. Ken Ito is a civil servant, father of three, and LEGO build er. He started building at the young age of four, eventually fell into a Dark Age, but returned when he found out his wife had the LEGO Idea book #6000. After looking through the book, he started building again. He builds dinosaurs, creatures and classic space! A Creator set, Prehistoric Creatures (4507) inspired him to build his own creations. When he built the models with his son, he wasn’t satisfied with the set models. He wanted to make a more realistic Tyrannosaurus Rex for his son. From there, Ken began to build other animals and creatures.

For inspiration, Ken uses illustrations, sculptures, and movies that feature dinosaurs, monsters and whales. Some particular sources of inspiration are the monsters and crea tures in movies by Ray Harryhausen, famed stop-motion animator and moviemaker. orca.

An

Ken andBeastsIto’sBirds!Building

23 Lion Parts List (Parts can be ordered through Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color) Qty Part Color Description 1 6141.dat Black Plate 1 x 1 Round 2 98138pz1.dat Black Tile 1 x 1 Round with Two White Squares Within Black 1 2420.dat Tan 2 3021.dat Tan 3 3023.dat Tan 4 3024.dat Tan 1 3176.dat Tan 5 3623.dat Tan 1 4032b.dat Tan 11 6091.dat Tan 1 11090.dat Tan 1 15068.dat Tan 1 15573.dat Tan 2 25269.dat Tan 4 26604.dat Tan 1 54200.dat Tan 1 60474.dat Tan 1 60478.dat Tan 6 92946.dat Tan 6 3023.dat Reddish Brown 5 3024.dat Reddish Brown 2 3623.dat Reddish Brown 1 3710.dat Reddish Brown 1 4070.dat Reddish Brown 2 6091.dat Reddish Brown 2 11477.dat Reddish Brown 1 15068.dat Reddish Brown 3 15070.dat Reddish Brown 1 15573.dat Reddish Brown with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud 1 20482.dat Reddish Brown Tile 1 x 1 Round with Pin and Pin Hole 2 25269.dat Reddish Brown Tile 1 x 1 Corner Round 1 32028.dat Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 2 with Door Rail 6 54200.dat Reddish Brown Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667 1 85861.dat Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 1 Round with Open Stud 1 93273.dat Reddish Brown Slope Brick Curved 4 x 1 Double 1 99207.dat Reddish Brown Bracket 1 x 2 - 2 x 2 Up 2 99780.dat Reddish Brown Bracket 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 Up 1 14704.dat Lt Bluish Grey Plate 1 x 2 with Socket Joint-8 with Friction Centre 1 22484.dat Dark Bluish Grey Bar 2L with Ball Joint-8

That’s why I made BrickPals. I wanted to capture these animals in a LEGO form so small, that even a child could hold them in their palm of their hand. I tried to imbue them with as much character as possible, so they could be a desk or nightstand buddy.

They can be posed so they can tilt their heads or even look back at you, bringing them that much more to life. This was a fun collection to design—I hope you enjoy building them!

Let’s go on a safari! In honor of the creatures featured in this issue, I designed three iconic animals from Africa: a lion, giraffe, and rhinoceros.

I picked these three animals because I loved watching them at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, where I took my family for many years. I loved seeing them move so gracefully, yet still embody so much character.

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Photography provided by the LEGO Group Production art courtesy of Pixar Chris DesigningPerron: the XL-15 Spaceship Set

Beginnings Design work started on the sets for Lightyear in 2021, with the arrival at the LEGO Group of preproduction art from Pixar. Renderings of the many vehicles were received, such as the art above, and with guidance from Pixar, models and their functions would be outlined.

Building One of the LEGO sets released for Lightyear was the XL-15 Spaceship (76832). Designed by Chris Perron, who has been featured in Brick Journal previously, this set was designed with the help of the director of Lightyear, Angus MacLane—himself a LEGO fan. Chris showed the design process that led to the creation of the set at BrickCan 2022, a LEGO Fan Event. Here, thanks to Chris and the LEGO Group, we are able to take an exclusive look behind the making of a set! A preliminary sketch of the XL-15. Image courtesy of Pixar.

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Here you can see the first sketch model that Chris made. Sketch models are rough models used to figure out functions and dimensions. The colors for this model were set on Buzz Lightyear’s iconic colors, as initial illustrations of the spaceship were done in grayscale and Chris assumed that he would be using the colors from the Toy Story movies and the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command show. This turned out not to be the case, as the colors chosen by Pixar were blue, white, grey, and a yellow windscreen, which was requested by Angus MacLane.

35 Screening a Spaceship Revisions were made by Chris, with the underside of the XL-15 changing from the lime green to blue, and a prototype windscreen added in trans parent orange. It was seen in produc tion art that their spaceship was on a launcher, so Chris started building a rough stand for the model. An initial idea was a four-legged stand. From the beginning there was no provision to have weapons on XL15. Form follows function, and the XL-15’s function is speed. Having large engines and a long body gave the spaceship a dynamic shape that evokes a racer, and is also very swooshable! At this point, the windscreen hadn’t been produced—it’s a new piece that first appears in this set (thanks Angus!). For that reason, the digital model doesn’t have a windscreen. Chris’ solution was to create a wind screen by combining some parts in the digital building software LEGO uses to develop sets that fit the implied footprint and dimensions of the piece. For creating sketches of the geometry of the new element, Chris likes to use Blender. You can see more refinements added to the spaceship as well as the mashed-up windscreen. The intakes have been changed and the fuselage was made longer. The leading edge of the wings were also changed to a tile instead of a built stripe pattern. Further revisions are tried below with possible ways to blend in the windscreen to the body of the XL-15. The final set retains the wedges seen on these slides. An initial windscreen design is also seen here. The wind screen was planned to have a shallow angle and be usable for this and other sets.

Chris theBuildingGiddens:XL-01!Building

Chris: I remember the day. I sealed the package and looked a third time at the email and the address. It had cool words like Emeryville and Pixar and... Angus. Who is this guy who worked at Pixar who wanted to buy a little home built set that I made? In those days the internet wasn’t dominated by social media platforms, but LEGO fans could connect through fan message groups, personal websites, and Flickr—and apparently a guy at Pixar was a LEGO nerd just like us. It was fun swapping messages and nerd jokes back and forth with the guy.

Article and Photography by Chris Giddens

The XL-1, built by Chris Giddens. The rear of the ship, showing the exhausts.

Chris Giddens is one of the first AFOLs that appeared online. In the decades that he has been building, he created a new fan theme (Pre-Classic Space), helped in creating a building standard for creating LEGO moonbases, and brought countless other builders into the hobby with his models online and at conventions. He also sold custom sets, and that’s where he starts his story and started a friendship...

Years later, that guy is deep in our world again, throwing down what looks to be a super spacey adventurous backstory to a classic character known as Lightyear. (Buzz to his friends.) When the teaser trailer hit and a spaceship was on the screen, I honestly felt like I was little Andy watching that movie that changed his life—and Angus will show us yet again he’s a nerd like us. When you watch that trailer, they feature a spaceship. Actually, it’s two. The one we know tangibly from a LEGO set is the XL-15. It’s an amazing set and an amazing build with an amazing classic space colored canopy. “He knows—a nerd like us.” But the other—actually the first one in the trailer—is the XL-01. It’s bigger, it’s chunkier, and logically you can deduce that there’s some sort of technology development at work—bigger chunkier tech

I am an expat Brit currently living in the USA. My very first LEGO set was the 648 Service Station from 1971. I remember that there was a piece missing: one of the clear 1x2 plates. However upsetting that was, it did not deter me from actively collecting LEGO. I saved up my meager pocket money for the small sets—and I requested the bigger sets for Christmas and birthdays. My main era of collecting was the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, I had stopped regularly buying sets, only occasionally purchasing a few sets of interest (as I still do today). In preparation for my move to the USA, I donated some of my existing LEGO to friends, thinking that I had outgrown LEGO (silly me!). Today I rel ish the nostalgia of those old sets, and I have re-purchased a selection of those classic sets, especially the original range of LEGOLAND Space System (as it was then called).

As a science-fiction fan, I often built spacecraft, so the 1979 range dedicated to space was a pure delight. In my opinion, that original range has never been bettered. Sets in those days had just enough specialized pieces to take away some of the squareness/blockiness of the models, but they were still unquestionably LEGO. Although I still love building modern-day sets, and marvel at the flexibility in building and working around the standard studs-on-top-method, the feeling is more akin to scale modelling rather than classic LEGO construction. The fleet on display.

Jonathan44 SpaceLEGOLANDBaxter’sFleet!Building

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These are my old MOCs from 1979 to the mid-1980s. They were built in minifig scale to accompany LEGOLAND Space, and most featured in adventures I would imagine/ create back then. I had set them in a future history from about 2038–2063, which essentially followed the career of a space guy who started out as a freighter pilot (flying LL924) and was based on the Moon. He would thwart alien invasions, Earth-bound bad guys, and other natural threats (meteors, moonquakes, etc.) and would captain the Altares deep space mission. Later, he would go on the run when he was faced with a false accusation of drug smuggling, but would clear his name after some time. He eventually died in a spacecraft crash in a battle after saving the Earth once again.

Most craft incorporated hinged roofs for access to the cockpits (although the P7022 had removable roof sections). Colour schemes were of course determined by pooling the selection of sets I had acquired over the years. Additional control panels were hand-drawn sticky labels which were applied where required. The craft remain practically un changed from when I built them all those years ago, apart from a few labels which have now been replaced (where the old ones were peeling off) and a few extra tile pieces incor porated to the rear section of P7022 to enable the roof to be removed more easily.

ANDROMEDA

Some details about each of the craft.

The earliest of my surviving MOCS, this was built in 1979. The shape was loosely based on NASA’s Space Shuttle. The Space Logo on the front was cut out of a catalogue and stuck on with clear tape.

Love the ’80s.” Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, there were quite a few cartoons, TV shows, and movies that have stuck with me throughout my adult years. Some of these have been remade or rebooted, and some merely continue to this day. While some only live in our memories, I have revisited multiple of them over the years in this article series, and made several figures.

For today’s article, I am going to share Matt Trakker from the M.A.S.K. television series. The interesting bits about M.A.S.K. and Matt Trakker are that the cartoon character was very different from the toy, and the character went on to join GI Joe and Transformers, from what I can find online. I clearly do not recall this bit of the character’s development, but this is part of the fun that I became aware of when I created He-Man. I think I remember what he looked like in the cartoon; however, the toys were so prevalent that many of my memories have been biased by what I actually recall of the toy, and not merely the original reference TV show. This caused issues when I created He-Man, as he merely didn’t look correct when I created a figure straight from the original reference. It took little changes to hybridize the TV show version with the toy version. I believe the same is true for Matt Trakker.

Most recently I made Rick Hunter from Robotech, featuring custom visor, design, and aftermarket watches. I have also made many GI Joe, He-Man, Flash Gordon, Inspector Gadget, countless Star Wars, and other characters from the late ’70s and ’80s. Honestly, listing them all and all the things that I customized or created for them would take more pages than editor Joe Meno would allow—but I digress.

Article and Photography by Jared Burks Matt Tracker in minifigure form. Inspiration and reference for the minifigure.

CustomizationMinifigure 101:

Building50

Hello everyone. I have been stuck in a review of my childhood lately, and today’s article is not going to deviate too far from that thought, as the title indicates: “I

Matt Trakker was the founder and leader of M.A.S.K. and had originally helped his brother Andy Trakker and Miles Mayhem develop the M.A.S.K. technology. Mayhem killed Andy and stole the technology to form V.E.N.O.M. Matt formed M.A.S.K. in memory of his brother to fight V.E.N.O.M. and bring Mayhem to justice. During these 75 episodes, Matt Trakker wore eight different masks or helmets (Spectrum, Ultra Flash, Lava Shot, Shroud, New Spectrum, Arrow, Dolphin, and Lasertron) and drove or was a member of six different vehicles (Thunderhawk, Rhino, Volcano, Goliath 1, Skybolt, and Hornet). This further complicates the creation of a Matt Trakker figure, as he simply was everywhere and in many different outfits; but for today, we are going with the one from the DVD cover, which is his Thunderhawk get-up. Interestingly, there were eight different toy versions of Matt Trakker made, one for each of the eight different masks he wore. So this furthered the memory confusion of this character, but just like He-Man and others, the outfits on the action figures never really featured the same details, colors, or even designs that the shows did. It seemed that the artists for the action figures merely did whatever they felt like that day, paying little attention to the cartoon—or perhaps it was the cartoon that paid little attention to the action figure. I am not sure which came first where this show is concerned, and it wouldn’t be the first to have a toy first and a show second. For all of these toy details, please visit: https://www.maskforce.com/matt-trakker---mask.html

The TV Show M.A.S.K. was created in 1985 by a French American company, and produced by DIC and ICC TV Productions. The show was based on Kenner Production toys, the same company that made the Star Wars action figures.

Like many ’80s cartoons, the outfits were very basic, as they would have to be animated, and the less detail on the outfit, the faster it could be drawn and the animation created. Matt Trakker is no exception to this rule. So his outfit features a vest, harness, gloves, and a helmet. Oddly enough, his harness didn’t connect to the vehicle, as he is commonly shown wearing an additional seat belt. I guess we were kids and didn’t notice his five-point harness wasn’t securing him in the vehicle. Anyway, this outfit was largely his helmet, but before we go there, let’s look at his outfit. I created a very basic vest with the five-point harness in the front, which was only a four-point in the back, so I have no idea where the strap between his legs disappears to; but that is, again, the way the character was created. He wore a jumpsuit-style underoutfit and had some kneepads, and what appears to be a flame retardant red undersuit—perhaps they took inspiration from race car drivers.

More references for Matt Tracker. Minifigure printing design for the Matt Tracker minifigure.

M.A.S.K. and all related characters and properties are TM & © DIC Enterprises, Inc/Kenner or successor in interest.

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M.A.S.K. is an acronym that stands for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, which was a special task force led by Matt Trakker that operated transforming armored vehicles in their ongoing battle with the criminal organization V.E.N.O.M. V.E.N.O.M. stood for Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem, which was led by Miles Mayhem, a former friend of Matt Trakker. The characters on the show work special super-powered helmets termed “masks.” Oddly enough, V.E.N.O.M.’s goal was to obtain money through robbery, extortion, counterfeiting, kidnapping, or theft of historical artifacts. In total, 75 episodes were made, and in reality, the show lasted just over one season. In the ’80s, a season was 65 episodes. So while the run in the ’80s was relatively short-lived, the characters and concept have lived on in comic books, and the characters have joined other series as previously mentioned. Keep this in mind: this show lasted just over one season.

54 Hello everybody, and welcome to an exciting building session about animals! Brick-built animals already had been popular during the 1970s and 1980s. I am sure many of you can remember the lovely bricked horses in the Classic Castle sets, and the large variety of animals brickable with the universal building sets of these decades. With the release of the recent Designer and Creator series in the early 2000s, brick built creatures had a renaissance. We see small brick-built animals in Creator playsets as well as larger display sculptures these days. They remind us that creativity is unlimited and you can build anything with basic bricks. Today we are going to manage a real challenge together by having a closer look at Creator set 30188—Cute Kitten—of the year 2014. This is a very small set, only consisting of sixty pieces (six extra parts already included). It is not a common 3-in-1 Creator set, as there are just instructions for the cat, but we will take it beyond this single model now! Sixty pieces is not much, and that makes the real challenge: Building a proper model with very limited parts supply and variety. So let’s get started with a wellknown creature seen in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back! Tauntauns are used to cold weather, and thus were used to cross the ice desserts of Hoth. So if you’ve got a polybag of set 30188 somewhere—you get a Tauntaun! But there is even more potential in this set. Although no longer produced, you will still find this set in large numbers on internet marketplaces. So if you happen to have two of those polybags and combine them, you can build another “creature” from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Admittedly, it’s more an artificial metal creature with four legs: The AT-AT! I hope you will enjoy building these. Have fun, and I’ll see you next time! You Can Build It MINI Build 2 Alternate Models from Creator Set andTauntaun30188:AT-AT Design and Instructions by Christopher Deck Tauntaun Qty Color Part Description 3 Light-Bluish-Gray 87087.dat Brick 1 x 1 with Stud on 1 Side 1 Dark-Bluish-Gray 3004.dat Brick 1 x 2 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 11211.dat Brick 1 x 2 with Two Studs on One Side 3 Light-Bluish-Gray 3024.dat Plate 1 x 1 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 3023.dat Plate 1 x 2 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 11476.dat Plate 1 x 2 with Clip Horizontal on Side (Thick C-Clip) 2 Light-Bluish-Gray 15573.dat Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 60478.dat Plate 1 x 2 with Handle on End 2 Dark-Bluish-Gray 3710.dat Plate 1 x 4 2 Dark-Bluish-Gray 2420.dat Plate 2 x 2 Corner 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 3021.dat Plate 2 x 3 1 White 3021.dat Plate 2 x 3 1 White 3020.dat Plate 2 x 4 5 Light-Bluish-Gray 54200.dat Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667 2 Dark-Bluish-Gray 3048b.dat Slope Brick 45 1 x 2 Triple 3 White 3040b.dat Slope Brick 45 2 x 1 1 White 3040a.dat Slope Brick 45 2 x 1 without Centre Stud 1 Light-Bluish-Gray 93606.dat Slope Brick Curved 4 x 2 4 Dark-Bluish-Gray 6541.dat Technic Brick 1 x 1 with Hole 3 Light-Bluish-Gray 3700.dat Technic Brick 1 x 2 with Hole 2 Black 2780.dat Technic Pin with Friction and Slots 1 White 3069b.dat Tile 1 x 2 with Groove Parts List (Parts can be ordered from Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color)

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Eloi Parizeau: Hi Steven, I am doing well, and always happy to talk about LEGO and Star Wars! First, for fans who do not know me, I am an architectural technician, so in real life, I do inter-professional coordination and I lead a team of technicians to bring great projects to reality. For those who think I build LEGO models because of my work, it is actually the total opposite. I have built LEGO since my childhood, when I was four years old! My favorite LEGO themes growing up were Castle and Space, particularly Blacktron. I would love to see the Castle theme back on shelves. We got the privilege to get the Blacksmith Shop and some Creator sets lately, but a complete wave could be amazing.

Steven Smyth: How’s it going Eloi? I’ve known you for years now through the Facebook group, first as a member and then as a moderator of the all-volunteer Admin Team that helps monitor the group content to maintain a family friendly atmosphere. Everyone in Bantha Bricks has been wowed by your many awesome Star Wars brick builds, but for the uninitiated, please introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do.

CargoTheParizeau’sVigilFrigate

Article by Steven Smyth, Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars Photography by Eloi Parizeau Eloi

Star Wars and all related characters and properties are TM & © Lucasfilm.

Galactic greetings! I’m Steven Smyth from Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars. Since the community’s founding in 2016, on an almost daily basis, I have witnessed amazing and creative Star Wars builds in the best Star Wars themed building brick group on Facebook. Eloi Parizeau is one such creative builder and recently shared this custom build of The Vigil, a Kuat Drive Yards built Vakbeor-class Cargo Frigate from Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. You may remember Eloi from a previous BrickJournal issue, #67, in May 2021. His wellhoned ability to transfer a Star Wars ship to LEGO medium is a topic we wanted to come back to.

frigatecargoVigilThe

Yeah, back to the main topic, Star Wars. I remember seeing The Return of the Jedi in 1983, and it is an amazing memory.

My older brother was a Star Wars fan, playing with Kenner toys and creating role playing game backstories. He is probably the main reason why I jumped into the Star Wars world. As far as I can remember, I have played with LEGO for at least 40 years, so in 1999, when I first saw the X-Wing set 7140 on the shelf at Walmart, it automatically just fell in my buggy, I could not resist. I have many years in collecting the Star Wars sets; then I had a kind of Dark Age when my finances were really bad in 2006. It remained like this until my present fiancée bought me the Millennium Falcon microfighter for Christmas in 2014. I am now at over 300 sets in my collection. With time, building all these sets, I learned a lot of techniques and started to try building “out of the box.” Some friends from a LUG (LEGO User Group) in my country convinced me to attend events to show my builds, and that is how I realized people love my creations. This fueled my desire to get into building even more. The Vigil is my largest project to date. The drive units of the Vigil. I personally find the subject of this build a very interesting choice. First, because it is in the movie Star Wars Episode

The Vigil was a Vakbeor-class cargo frigate captured by Resistance commandos from pirates during a battle off the Chasidron Shoals. It became part of the Resistance fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Jotis during their war with the First Order.

VIII: The Last Jedi, which, if we are being honest, is not every Star Wars fan’s cup of tea. Secondly it is an obscure ship design, being a Kuat Drive Yards cargo frigate that was targeted by the First Order after the evacuation of Resistance on D’Qar, and was the first to be destroyed in the ensuing chase. What inspired you to build this particular ship? First of all, choosing a model to build has to inspire me; the challenge, the shape—and has the model ever been built with LEGO before? I usually search for inspiration on Google, for pictures of ships or unknown vehicles. When I first saw the Vigil, I really loved the shape; then I asked myself if it was possible to do this kind of shelled shaped ship hull with LEGO, but I wanted to build this much larger than my previous builds. My mindset was to build a three-to-four foot long ship, so it was a good fit. I just needed to find the right techniques to build it, as it had never been done before with LEGO at that scale. 61

Data File: The Vigil

Source: Star Wars Wookieepedia

If you would be so kind, please refresh us on why you love Star Wars so much, and why you choose the LEGO brick as your medium to express yourself?

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The business part of the building, with offices for people working in company management, has been operational for a while, but the part of the building that recently opened its doors for the first time was the so-called People House, which will undoubtedly have an incredible impact on the everyday life of all LEGO employees in Billund. You will understand why later when I explain what this building is all about.

LEGO Set #4000038 LEGO Campus, only for LEGO employees. Photo courtesy of Brickset.com But for the official opening, collectors all over the world were amazed to see a new Architecture-style set depicting the building, only to be handed out to the employees who are lucky enough to work in the actual HQ itself—which is only around 2,000 people. I haven’t been able to get my hands on one of those sets, (Edit: That’s still technically correct, but I now know I will in September!) but I got pretty lucky, too, way back in January: Along with a select few other Scandinavian AFOLs, I was allowed to see the inside of the building before the vast majority of the actual employees had a chance to do the same! YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!

Article by Are M. Heiseldal Photography by Are M. Heiseldal and Adam Mørk

The LEGO Campus, from LEGO’s press release. Photo by Adam Mørk. Join us as we tell the story of a super-exclusive tour of LEGO’s new Campus in Billund—two months ahead of its official opening! Although technically, it’s not entirely correct to say that LEGO’s new headquarters opened in early April.

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Inside LEGO Campus: An Exclusive Tour of LEGO’s New HeadquartersBillundCommunity

BRICKJOURNAL #76 Visit the Brick Animal Kingdom with with KEN ITO’s ocean creatures, woodland creatures by MIRO DUDAS, and animal creations of FILBRICK! Plus: Nerding Out with BRICKNERD, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_78&products_id=1684$4.99