BrickJournal #82 Preview

Displaying Disney!

Article by Joe Meno

Photography provided by Ryan McNaught

The LEGO Group and Disney partnered to create this display that was unveiled at Westfield Doncaster in Victoria, Australia on June 23, 2023 and remained until June 28.

Eight Disney characters (Mickey, Minnie, Elsa and Anna from Frozen, Moana, Woody from Toy Story, Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, Pinocchio, and Cinderella) are featured on the base. Cinderella Castle forms the centerpiece with a LEGO version of the Partners statue of Walt Disney and Mickey at the castle’s entrance.

The display is made of 765,911 elements and took over 3518 hours to make. LEGO Senior Designer Monika Pacikova led the project. This display moved to Westfield Chermside (Brisbane) July 4–9 and Westfield Bondi Junction (Sydney) July 13–16.

The LEGO Group

Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. The Partners statue at the Disney Parks is slightly different, with Walt’s right arm raised.

All Walt Disney World and Disneyland theme park icons, attractions, and associated characters shown in this issue are TM & © Walt Disney Studios.

Woody, Moana, and Cinderella are seen here. Behind Woody is Elsa, and behind Cinderella is Pinocchio.

Tiana, Minnie, Mickey, and Anna are seen here, with the Partners statue behind.

Martin Schaal:

The Old Man and the Brick

Article by Joe Meno

Photography by Martin Schaal

Martin Schaal is a builder in Germany who has built train-inspired models and layouts for the past eight years, since his retirement from the railway business. He hasn’t been far from the brick, as he has built since childhood. He’s 67 now, and has the nickname “der alte Mann und der Stein,”which translates from his native German to “The Old Man and the Brick.”

Martin’s favorite theme follows his career in trains—he loves to build railways, locomotives, stations, bridges, and town-themed items. He builds mostly in microscale, but doesn’t limit his creations exclusively to that scale. As for building style, he hasn’t changed that much from his childhood builds to present—it’s just that the bricks he used as a child required a bit more imagination. Painting is another one of his interests, and LEGO building is another way to ‘paint’ what he sees.

Martin strives to build realistic scale models in his building. During a recent exhibition, a viewer told him, “ That is not LEGO. That is a real model!” That’s the main motivation for building: Martin wants to transform reality into LEGO. If Martin creates a town, he wants his layout to be like a Google Maps picture. If someone tells him that a build “would be impossible in LEGO,” Martin will work to make that statement wrong. He builds mostly realistic scale models, but also can build more creative items, such as his Elvis/Charlie cliff model.

Martin’s model of the Bietigheim Viaduct.

Martin’s rendition of the Göltzschtal Bridge, which is also the largest brick bridge in the world.

When he builds a new locomotive, Martin always starts with online research. Afterwards, he gathers all the measurements he found on an Excel spreadsheet. From there, he can define the scales for his builds. Most of the time he starts with a very small model to get a general feel for what he is building, like a rough sketch. Next, he builds in a larger scale to add details. By this second model, he’s pretty familiar with the information he found online. The larger the model becomes, the more accurately he builds. He always uses this process of building from small to big. For him, it’s better to have a good rough build than a build that is detailed wrong.

For Martin, building a model is 40% planning, 30% building... and 30% sorting. The time to build can vary from a month to make a locomotive, to more than a year for the Knaresborough layout.

The bridge at the River Nidd, part of Martin’s layout of Knaresborough.

Thomas the Tank Engine and friends!

Various versions and scales of the Ludmilla (DR Class 130) diesel locomotive.

Paul Hetherington: Bricktacular

West Coast Modern Show

Article by Paul Hetherington

Photography by Blaine Campbell

Hello, I’m Paul Hetherington, a long-time LEGO fan who has been creating with LEGO for over thirty years. Many of my creations are well know within the LEGO community. I grew up in West Vancouver, B.C. and I currently live in North Vancouver.

My new exhibit, the Bricktacular West Coast Modern Show, is my first official art show and my first solo art show. The exhibit is hosted by the West Vancouver Art Museum and is in collaboration with the West Vancouver Memorial Library where it is on display. The show ran from May 5–July 31, 2023. The exhibit featured eight recreations of iconic West Coast Modern homes which were designed by well known architects. West Coast Modern is a design style that originated on the West Coast and was popular between 1941 and 1988. Some of the characteristics of West Coast Modern homes include: flat roofs, deep eaves with exposed post-and-beam structure, and emphasis on integrating the architecture into the landscape, with the intent of bringing the outdoors inside. Many of the homes feature large glass windows to transition the indoor living spaces to the outdoor spaces. West Coast Modern homes were conceived as modest family residences. The movement intended to make affordable family housing with an emphasis on blending into the natural landscape of the rugged West Coast.

Paul Hetherington, in the lower center of the photo, talks about his models at the Bricktacular show.

The genesis for the show began during the pandemic. I had created two fantasy pieces, Atomic Ranch and Googie, during this time. Atomic Ranch celebrates the optimism of the Atomic Age, a time in post-war America where the future was bright and architecture and design mirrored that optimism—where the dream of owning your own post-and-beamstyle rancher and a Detroit automobile where well within reach. Googie is my tribute to architecture that was inspired by car culture, and the space age. Googie architecture originated in Southern California and was popular among motels, gas stations, and restaurants. Features of Googie include upswept roofs, curvilinear geometric shapes, and a bold use of glass, steel and neon.

Back in early 2021, I showed these two pieces to my friend, international artist Douglas Coupland. He immediately saw their potential and he connected me with the West Vancouver Art Museum to set up a show. Hilary Letwin, the curator of the art museum, loved the idea of Mid-Century Modern designed LEGO models and suggested that models of local West Coast Modern home designs would be a perfect fit for the art museum’s programming. The show and playful medium could help to introduce these endangered homes to a new audience. We agreed to a show schedule opening in the summer of 2023. This would give me two years to create the models. That sounds like a lot of time, but with my busy schedule, it was down to the wire at the end to complete all the models within the allotted time.

The models that led to the display.

Guillaume Roussel’s Disneyland Paris

Building

Article by Joe Meno

Photography by Guillaume Roussel

Guillaume Roussel has been building and making a name for himself for some time. He has been featured in BrickJournal before for his Disney builds, and returns to show some new builds he has made. Since the last time he was featured, he had also designed a LEGO set through the LEGO Ideas platform (The Globe) and also competed in LEGO Masters France. Here we focus on his Disneyrelated builds.

BrickJournal: When did you start building Disney models? And what was your inspiration?

Guillaume Roussel: I started to build LEGO Disney models when I was a teenager. I always loved Disney; Disney classic movies were a part of my childhood just like LEGO, and after visiting Disneyland Paris with my parents in 2011, I fell in love with this park, not only because of the “Disney experience,” but also because I was fascinating by the realism of the rides and the park. Everything in this park is so detailed and has a logic to it. Well, I started to watch and read a lot of articles and documentaries about how the parks were made and what the history was of each ride. I immediately wanted to be in a part somehow of this adventure, and seeing myself as a Disney Imagineer by recreating the parks in LEGO. At the beginning, the goal was to reproduce the exact same attractions, but I finally chose to just take some inspirations and creating my dream version of Disneyland, which is way more fun and creative!

The rear of the castle.

Disneyland Paris on display in 2016.

Martin Harris: Disney

Building!

Article by Joe Meno

Photography by Martin Harris

Martin Harris is a builder who has been showing his work at Brickfair Alabama and Brickfair Virginia. He has also started displaying at other events with Sleeping Beauty Castle and his other Disney-inspired builds. I caught up with him to chat about his building and builds.

BrickJournal: What got you into LEGO building? When did you start building?

Martin Harris: As a child, I had the classic Castle sets, some space, some city. With four brothers, I rarely had a set made to display. Our LEGO was to play with, and the sets would be built by my older brothers, as they were too hard for me. We would then break them up and use all the pieces to build whatever we wanted. My memories of LEGO are not of set building, but free play, imagination, no constraints. My last set was when I was eleven.

My first adult build happened in 2014-2015. My son was seven and we visited Brickfair in Alabama, 2014. He was an avid Ninjago fan, and any LEGO bought was for him. My hobby was photography. After attending, he stated that he wanted to “be one of the people behind the table,” which meant to be an exhibitor, to show off his builds. Throughout the year he kept talking about it and I realized that this was something that had to happen. So he started to work on his display, a mash-up of Minecraft sets, and a creative build of capturing the crystals. Though he and I were proud of his builds, I knew that they would be lost on display in a big hall. So I went to the LEGO store and bought some AT AT walkers and decided to build a Battle of Hoth scene to ‘draw people in’. And that I did; it was

Martin’s Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Aurora and her spinning wheel.

seven feet long, crude in design, but I liked it—full of Star Wars vehicle sets, but the base and landscaping was mine (and my son’s). This was my first LEGO ‘MOC’ and actually I didn’t build the vehicles, my son and some Brickfair attendees did that. Two days before leaving for the show, my daughter wanted something also, so I built an Elsa castle from the movie Frozen in one evening. This was my first Disney build.

I am in sales for a career and I am all about being relevant. Here I had both, and one of the first Frozen builds made. The show was a hit, we had lines of people looking at Hoth, taking pics of the Frozen castle and subsequently, stopping to look at my son’s builds and ask him questions. Mission accomplished—although there was one other build included. My daughter had a list of fave Disney princesses, the top one being Sleeping Beauty (to her, she was ‘Sleeping Booty’ as she couldn’t pronounce it correctly yet). The Wednesday before heading to Brickfair, I built a small ‘Sleeping Booty’ scene on a 32x32 baseplate, with castle backgrounds, a stream, and Princess Aurora and the spinning wheel. On the Sunday of the show, 3:45pm, right before the public was to leave, a dad approached. He said ‘thank you’ to me. He had been by earlier when I was not there, and brought his daughter to look at the Princess Aurora build. She was with him when he came to say thank you and she was dressed in a Princess Aurora outfit. The dad told me she was crying and upset because there was nothing ‘for her’. But when she saw my creation, her eyes lit up.

All of this is to say, LEGO building and LEGO Disney building is how things really started for me. A fun fact: the spinning wheel from that first ever build is currently sitting in my Disneyland Castle creation.

An overhead view of the castle.

The rear of the castle.

Tinker Bell

Parts List

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

Qty Part Color Description

1 15712.dat Blue Tile 1 x 1 with Clip (Thick C-Clip)

1 2456.dat Black Brick 2 x 6

2 3003.dat Black Brick 2 x 2

1 3942c.dat Black Cone 2 x 2 x 2 with Hollow Stud Open

2 4733.dat Black Brick 1 x 1 with Studs on Four Sides

4 6003.dat Black Plate 6 x 6 with Round Corner

1 6177.dat Black Plate 8 x 8 Round with 2 x 2 Centre Studs

4 95188.dat Black Brick 6 x 6 Corner Round with Slope 33 Chamfer

2 3023.dat Med. Azure Plate 1 x 2

10 3024.dat Med. Azure Plate 1 x 1

6 3623.dat Med. Azure Plate 1 x 3

2 3665a.dat Med. Azure Slope Brick 45 2 x 1 Inverted without Inner Stopper Ring

7 3710.dat Med. Azure Plate 1 x 4

2 6091.dat Med. Azure Brick 2 x 1 x 1.333 with Curved Top

2 87079.dat Med. Azure Tile 2 x 4 with Groove

22 3023.dat Trans Lt Blue Plate 1 x 2

2 3024.dat Trans Lt Blue Plate 1 x 1

2 24201.dat Dark Green Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 Inverted

1 3021.dat Green Plate 2 x 3

4 3022.dat Green Plate 2 x 2

3 3023.dat Green Plate 1 x 2

5 3024.dat Green Plate 1 x 1

3 3070b.dat Green Tile 1 x 1 with Groove

2 3623.dat Green Plate 1 x 3

1 3710.dat Green Plate 1 x 4

2 15208.dat Green Plate 1 x 2 with 3 Teeth In-line

Design by Miro Dudas from BrickNerd

To celebrate the magical theme of this issue, we decided to create a life-size Tinker Bell. The core design repurposes my previous Surfing Girls creation from a few years ago. The arms and legs were already positioned perfectly, so adjusting them for Tink was a breeze. All I had to do was make her fly.

I gave her a pedestal and a clear support to anchor her in mid-air. (Building tip: use an older clear support rod since they are more rigid. The newer ones are made with a newer plastic that has a bit more bend and can’t quite support the fairy.) The model wobbles slightly when moved, so it almost looks like she is hovering all on her own.

The wings were a challenge, but I stuck to a simple and sturdy design to let the colors shine and sparkle. And finally, you can easily swap all the tan pieces for reddish brown to make any version of Tinker Bell you wish. So grab some pixie dust and start building on your way to Never Never Land!

7 15573.dat Green Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud

4 25269.dat Green Tile 1 x 1 Corner Round

2 26047.dat Green Plate 1 x 1 Round with Horizontal Handle on Side

2 48183.dat Green Wing 3 x 4 with 1 x 2 Cutout with Stud Notches

6 61678.dat Green Slope Brick Curved 4 x 1

3 85984.dat Green Slope Brick 31 1 x 2 x 0.667

2 99780.dat Green Bracket 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 Up

1 2654a.dat Yellow Dish 2 x 2 with Rim

1 3022.dat Yellow Plate 2 x 2

3 3023.dat Yellow Plate 1 x 2

2 3176.dat Yellow Plate 3 x 2 with Hole

1 3660a.dat Yellow Slope Brick 45 2 x 2 Inverted without Inner Stopper Ring

2 6091.dat Yellow Brick 2 x 1 x 1.333 with Curved Top

2 11477.dat Yellow Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1

1 15068.dat Yellow Slope Brick Curved 2 x 2 x 0.667

2 15573.dat Yellow Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud

2 29119.dat Yellow Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 with Cutout Right

2 29120.dat Yellow Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 with Cutout Left

1 30367c.dat Yellow Cylinder 2 x 2 with Dome Top with Axle Hole and Hollow Stud

Qty Part Color Description

1 48336.dat Yellow Plate 1 x 2 with Handle Type 2

1 2429.dat Tan Hinge Plate 1 x 4 Base

1 2430.dat Tan Hinge Plate 1 x 4 Top

2 2431.dat Tan Tile 1 x 4 with Groove

1 3022.dat Tan Plate 2 x 2

1 3023.dat Tan Plate 1 x 2

1 3069b.dat Tan Tile 1 x 2 with Groove

1 3070b.dat Tan Tile 1 x 1 with Groove

1 3623.dat Tan Plate 1 x 3

1 3710.dat Tan Plate 1 x 4

1 4032a.dat Tan Plate 2 x 2 Round with Axlehole

1 4740.dat Tan Dish 2 x 2 Inverted

2 11477.dat Tan Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1

2 15573.dat Tan Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud

2 25269.dat Tan Tile 1 x 1 Corner Round

2 26604.dat Tan Brick 1 x 1 with Studs on Two Adjacent Sides

1 32828.dat Tan Plate 1 x 1 Round with Bar

1 35480.dat Tan Plate 1 x 2 with Round Ends and 2 Open Studs

2 49668.dat Tan Plate 1 x 1 with Tooth In-line

4 60478.dat Tan Plate 1 x 2 with Handle on End

4 60897.dat Tan Plate 1 x 1 with Clip Vertical (Thick C-Clip)

2 61252.dat Tan Plate 1 x 1 with Clip Horizontal (Thick C-Clip)

2 61678.dat Tan Slope Brick Curved 4 x 1

2 63864.dat Tan Tile 1 x 3

1 87580.dat Tan Plate 2 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud

1 99207.dat Tan Bracket 1 x 2 - 2 x 2 Up

1 99784.dat Trans Clear Bar 12L with Plate 1 x 2 with Hollow Studs and Hollow Stud

2 3710.dat White Plate 1 x 4

2 3937.dat White Hinge 1 x 2 Base

2 3938.dat White Hinge 1 x 2 Top

2 6005.dat White Arch 1 x 3 x 2 with Curved Top

8 6091.dat White Brick 2 x 1 x 1.333 with Curved Top

4 24201.dat White Slope Brick Curved 2 x 1 Inverted

2 32474.dat White Technic Ball Joint White with Axlehole Blind

4 54200.dat White Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667

2 60478.dat White Plate 1 x 2 with Handle on End

2 63868.dat White Plate 1 x 2 with Clip Horizontal on End (Thick C-Clip)

4 85970.dat White Slope Brick Curved 1 x 8 with Plate 1 x 2

8 99781.dat White Bracket 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 Down

1 54657.dat Lt Bluish Grey Hinge Plate 1 x 2 Locking with Dual Finger on End Vertical, 7 Teeth

1 99206.dat Lt Bluish Grey Plate 2 x 2 x 0.667 with Two Studs On Side and Two Raised

1 44567b.dat Dk Bluish Grey Hinge Plate 1 x 2 Locking without Groove with Single Finger On Side Vertical

You can go to the BrickNerd website by typing: https://bricknerd.com/ in your browser or by scanning this QR code!

Minifigure Customization 101:

M.I.C.K.E.Y.

The Mickey Mouse Club was an American Television Show that has aired on and off from 1955 through 1996, and it also briefly returned on social media from 2017 to 2018. This show was created by Walt Disney and produced by Walt Disney Productions. The first run had four seasons from 1955 to 1959 on ABC-TV and has set most of the information about the show. This original run featured regular, but ever-evolving casts of mostly teenage performers. This show was immediately rerun weekday afternoons, and due to popularity, was revived three times after its initial run. This caused a bit of a name change to The New Mickey Mouse Club from 1977 to 1979 and then as The All-New Mickey Mouse Club from 1989 to 1996. This later show was only aired on the Disney Channel. Finally in 2017, Club Mickey Mouse aired exclusively on social media. Mickey Mouse appeared on every episode, not only in vintage cartoons originally produced for theatrical release, but in the opening, intermediate and closing segments specifically made for the show. In the original show Mickey was voiced by his creator, Walt Disney. The Mickey Mouse ears began their long history as a Disney favorite in the 1950s when the Mickey Mouse Club aired on television. The Mouseketeers would wear them throughout each show and the hats became something young children and adults dreamed of wearing. The original felt hat featured two large plastic ears, so you could look just like Mickey Mouse. This hat was created by Roy Williams, an adult Mouseketeer on the Mickey Mouse Club. He was inspired by a 1929 short, The Karnival Kid, featuring a scene where Mickey tipped his ears to Minnie.

In honor of the celebration of all things Disney, I have made a simple, yet quite critical element of the Mouse House legacy. I present Mouseketeer ears! I went a touch modern as I have left the red and white circle off the front, but perhaps one day I will add it back.

To create these ears, I started in Fusion 360 where I began with a simple sketch with only a few elements. I needed a curve which is easily revolved to create the dome of the hat. I also created disks which would be extruded for the ears. This gets a touch tricky as I needed a way to make them cupped on the inside and on the back. This required another smaller dome that was revolved and then subtracted from the front and added to the back to complete the ears. So three sketch elements is all that are needed to create this icon custom element! I added a small ring at the base of the hat to give it an edge, which makes it look more complete, but also will make things easier to paint—but more on that in a moment.

Setting up the elements for the ears.

Now we have a hat, but the LEGO head looks a touch odd with only this hat, as there should be quite a bit of hair escaping out from under the hat. Remember, it was originally worn by teenagers, and not old bald men. So now we return to a trick I have mentioned before, the use of LEOcad. LEOcad can pull the LEGO models that have a basic 3-D file and can export them into a Wavefront OBJ file that can be opened in Meshmixer. Yes, I’m still using that older program. In Meshmixer you can repair the mesh, make it solid, and then use Boolean logic parameters to add the Mouseketeer ears to LEGO hair pieces!

The ears can be added on top, or the hair can be cut flat, but most often I added them to the surface of the LEGO hair piece. This does require testing scale, and in some cases that can take several iterations. I did try a few cuts where I added pony tails out the back, but honestly, it just doesn’t look great. When I size the Mouseketeer ears a bit and add them to the top of the LEGO hair, I believe the best results were created. We don’t have to stop there; as the world has started customizing these, so can we. I also brought in a LEGO bow—by adding the LEGO bow, I have created Minnie Mouseketeer ears.

More work on the hat elements.

Placing the hat on the head.

Positioning the ears.

Completing the hat.

Finished!

Adding hair to the hat piece.

Magical Kingdoms:

Learning to Build From the Happiest Places on Earth

Article by John Rudy

Standing in the inky blackness of an early Florida morning a few months ago, I marveled at the second floor of the hotel lobby.

“That building is impossible,” I thought to myself. And it was. We were staying at Port Orleans: French Quarter at the Walt Disney World Resort outside of Orlando. From outward appearances, the buildings look like they’ve been ripped from Bourbon Street. Balconies hang over lazy sidewalks, fans swirl above tables, wrought iron is everywhere. And beyond those balconies is the second floor of the hotel’s lobby building where jazz musicians could be practicing or partiers cavorting. Your brain sees that second floor and fills it with any number of details.

Except the building only has one story.

Since Disneyland opened its gates in 1955, Walt Disney’s Imagineers have been crafting spaces and objects that intentionally trick the mind. These artists have been making impossible things for decades. And the techniques they use just might be useful to adult LEGO fans as we transform toys into something more.

Every Disney Park on the planet is doing exactly what we do when we build a MOC; Disney’s theme parks are scale models. The scale just so happens to be 1:1—or at least it appears like it is. Imagineers create vibrant landscapes which intentionally distort reality, lead your eye to details, and tell vibrant stories all by manipulating the built environment.

When building with LEGO, these same tricks aren’t just useful. They might be necessary.

John’s models of the Disney icons for (from left to right) Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Disneyland, Walt Disney World, California Adventure, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Minifigures don’t make sense from a perspective of scale. They are either too wide or too short, depending on how you measure it. If an average minifigure was six feet tall—a typical height assumption for scale modeling—then their hips would be about two feet wide. (Go ahead, grab a ruler and hold it up to your belly button. I’ll wait.)

Likewise, if a minifigure’s hips were a more realistic 16 inches, then a minifigure would be about 3 ¾ feet tall. In spite of that short stature, their sunglasses would still be a staggering foot wide.

And if the minifig is just under four feet tall, then the average height of a single story of a building would need to be 17 bricks and two plates high. (For comparison, the height of the first floor of the classic Cafe Corner is nine bricks high.) Any way you slice it, the minifigure is poorly scaled.

We can approach the problem of the minifigure from any number of perspectives, but let’s think like an Imagineer. Imagineers adapt the landscapes they create to their versions of the minifigure: guests in their theme parks.

Examples of this abound, from the earliest days of Imagineering to today. When Disneyland opened initially in 1955, Walt made a famous mandate that trash cans be placed every 30 feet because it was as far as a visitor would walk to toss an empty popcorn box before littering. In late 2019, the queue of the new E-ticket attraction Flight of Passage was modified significantly—a space was carved out for a mid-queue restroom to help relieve the strain of the long waits for the headlining experience.

Imagineers adapt the things they build to suit their human inhabitants. If we think like Imagineers and we realize the minifigure doesn’t make sense, how should we solve the visual problem?

The answer is quite simple: use the oldest tricks in the book and trick the eye to forget what’s really there.

Scale comparisons of minifigure to Partners, first with height.

“It’s a world of hopes…”

Scale comparisons of minifigure to Partners, now with waist matched.

The Guitar Project (Ukelele)

Article by Leslie Araujo

There is no better way of preserving culture than by sharing it with others. The Philippines is a country rich in history, culture, and tradition. From the colorful regional festivals to the mouth-watering cuisine, there are so many ways that we preserve and celebrate various aspects of our culture. One way is by creating DIY projects that incorporate Filipino designs and motifs into our musical instruments. As an AFOL, we are proud to showcase our “Guitar Project” with various Filipino elements and accents—a project that is fun, and an easy way to imbue accessories with Filipino culture. Aside from having a unique piece of art using LEGO® DOTS, we are keeping Filipino culture alive and thriving.

Traditional Filipino music speaks of how we perceive time. In creatively building LEGO DOTS, there were no seconds that made up a minute, no minutes that made up an hour, and no hours that made up a day. We don’t think of time as something that should be divided into small components, but assume it as something whole and fluid. Our musical heritage is rich, colorful, and vibrant, just like LEGO DOTS and the people who create it.

Photography by Tim Angeles

Pinoy LUG’s

1OO ROOMZ of Disney!

Article and Photography

by Leslie Araujo

Vignettes are small LEGO MOC scenes that usually depict a single, frozen moment in time. It is considered a good exercise for creative building and storytelling. Every LEGO User Group had encountered and built something similar that varies in shape and size. It’s been called by many names, but in PinoyLUG, we call ours ROOMZ!

We pioneered ours in 2017; we have made over 100 ROOMZ for our annual celebration display, and then a fun contest online during the pandemic. This year, it’s back and is super special—because we are aiming for another 100, the Disney 100 Years of Wonder anniversary via PinoyLUG ROOMZ!

For 100 years, Disney’s passion has been storytelling. From one generation to the next, the greatest stories live forever. And celebrating that passion is a dream come true for everyone—building those memorable scenes from unforgettable stories that made a huge impact on our lives.

PinoyLUG is proud to share a few, and all of us are thrilled to be part of the celebration in our own little way.

Coco reminds us to never stop following our dreams, but we should never betray the people we love or our ideals to get us there. The journey is more valuable than the destination.

Dhorie Macatangay

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MOC by Dhorie Macatangay

Frank Averstegge’s Jabba’s Palace

Article by Steven Smyth, Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars®

Photography by David Strenzler

The palace, with a couple of visitors at the front door.

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

Data File: Jabba’s Palace

Hutt Castle, often simply called Jabba the Hutt’s Palace after its owner, was a large sandrock and durasteel complex located at the fringes of the Northern Dune Sea on the planet of Tatooine. Originally erected as a monastery of the B’omarr Order, the buildings eventually fell into the hands of two major crimelords: first an outcast and gang leader called Alkhara and later Jabba the Hutt, a notorious crime lord from Nal Hutta.

Composed of a central rotunda and a taller spire adjacent to it, the ridge-side retreat also boasted an underground hangar and maintenance bay. Deep in the monastery’s subterranean chambers, Jabba the Hutt made a throne room which sat on top of a pit that housed a pet rancor. The Hutt used the beast for a dual purpose: protection and entertainment. At the flick of a switch, a concealed door in the floor of the chamber could deposit a threatening guest into an inescapable pit while onlookers could watch as the rancor made short work of its meal.

Source: Star Wars Wookieepedia

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 builds in the best Star Wars-themed building brick group on Facebook. Frank Averstegge, who is also one of our chief Admin Team members, built an amazing modular Jabba’s Palace. I thought it would be great to learn more about this fantastic friend of the Bantha Bricks community, extremely talented builder, and his custom LEGO modular palace build.

Steven Smyth: How’s it going, Frank? I know you have quite a following with the members of the Bantha Bricks group and I know people in the community and beyond in other online discussions have been awestruck by your Jabba’s Palace. You have truly built some amazing MOCs and dioramas, but for the uninitiated, please introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do.

BRICKJOURNAL #82

Celebrating Disney’s 100th anniversary in LEGO! Disney Castles with MARTIN HARRIS and DISNEYBRICK, magical builds by JOHN RUDY and editor JOE MENO, instructions to build characters, plus: Nerding Out with BRICKNERD, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_78&products_id=1758

Frank Averstegge: Thank you very much, Steven! Well, where to start? I am 43, based in Germany. I came back into building LEGO about five years ago as a kind of meditation, building sets to free my mind, as it was not the best time in my life, you know? It was quite awesome to find like-minded people, and I am very thankful so many people liked my Jabba’s Palace—an amazing feeling! It is a MOC I started two or maybe three years ago and I always had new ideas, so it was never done. It also was part of my huge Tatooine scene which was about six by one meters big. I showed it at a few conventions here in Germany with great success, and people loved it.

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

I do not think it is a shocker, but after building Tatooine, with so much tan, I had to build something with colors. So, I started a few modular sets and MOCs and my city Brick Beer, which you can find on Facebook. Also, I like Ninjago even knowing nothing about the story, but there are awesome builds and building skills in this theme.

One of the side views with a couple of Tusken Raiders on watch.