Hi, I’m Jesse Gros. As a Life Coach, I guide transformative spiritual adventure retreats in Peru and Nepal. I also lead the “Wild Hearted Writers’ Circle” and am the proud author of four books, including My Life Coach Wears a Tutu and Your Wild Precious Life. I built LEGO until I was 12 years old, but then I discovered girls and entered a dark age for LEGO. Six years ago, I became an AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO). My journey back into the world of LEGO started when my wife bought a Moana set for our four-year-old daughter. As I helped her build it, something magical happened—it felt like a creative light had been switched back on. That same night, I went
Article and Photography
by Jesse Gros
Jesse Gros: Building Airships! People
Jesse Gros with one of his airships.
to Target and came home with the Ninjago Lighthouse Siege set. I couldn’t believe how much LEGO had evolved during my hiatus. The next day, I returned for another Ninjago set, and just like that, my enlightenment period with LEGO began.
That week, I stumbled upon the LEGO community on YouTube and went down the rabbit hole for a month. I discovered Brickvault’s “Top 10 MOCs of the Week” and instantly knew I’d be creating my own builds. When someone mentioned that LEGO had its own stores, I was amazed.
At the LEGO store I discovered a thing of beauty called the “Pick-a-Brick” wall. After six years of PAB hunting at the five stores in LA County, I pretty much have my own PAB wall at home. Interestingly, I own very few sets; 95% of my adult LEGO purchases have been bulk pieces.
My favorite LEGO themes are Elves, Pirates, and Castle, but that’s only because LEGO has yet to come to their senses and launch a steampunk-themed line. (I’ll keep dreaming.) I mostly build in genres I call “Pirate-Punk” and “Fantasy-Punk,” which combine steampunk, pirate, and fantasy elements. I’m also deeply inspired by the aesthetic of the animated series Arcane, a beautiful blend of steampunk and Art Deco.
Currently, I’m obsessed with airships. There’s something magical and mysterious about seeing balloons floating in the sky—different from airplanes. Fun fact: I used to own a hot air balloon until my friend and I crash-landed on a private estate and were given 20 minutes by the groundskeeper to vacate the property. I sold my balloon that week, but my love for silent flight continues, in a much safer way—through the brick.
The Capital Airship draws inspiration from Gayle Spiller’s MOC “The Winged Ship,” showcased in the LEGO House Masterpiece Gallery. Spiller’s creation, based on Vladimir Kush’s painting of the same name, features a vintage ship with butterfly wings for sails. Inspired by this concept, I used Midjourney to develop different iterations of an “airship with butterfly wings.” I kept the front window design from one rendering and ditched the butterfly wings for a more industrial aesthetic, incorporating large engines and dark organic shapes reminiscent of H.R. Giger’s style in the lower front and sides of the MOC.
Jesse Gros’ Capital Airship.
The front of the Capital Airship.
Eris Landreneau’s Luminous Imperator and Shoddy Mariah Building
Article by Eric Landreneau
Photography by Cody Anderson
Eric Landreneau’s airships have been seen online and are a great example of imaginative building. BrickJournal chatted to him and got to show off two of his ships!
What do you do for a living, and how long you have been LEGO building?
I was an optician for about a decade. A couple of years ago I ditched that for a job as a Manufacturing Tech at Intel. Our machines grind thin wafers down to very, very thin wafers, before they’re cut into individual chips. Sounds kinda high-tech, and it sometimes is, but the machines do all the fancy work. I maintain the machines, which mostly involves wrenches and grease. I’ve also written some short stories which have been published in several now-defunct
magazines, and I have self-published a couple of novels. I haven’t written lately, though—been having too much fun building.
I also build, hang out with my wife, cook tasty food, seek and enjoy great music, think about building, spend time outside, play with the cat, play board games, read, study, and did I say build yet? I love sci-fi and fantasy books and movies, but I don’t watch shows much; don’t have that kinda time. Gotta build. I don’t play video games nearly as much as I used to. Reaction time is dwindling and really, with the grim reaper drawing nearer, I can’t spend too long on a video game before I think, “What am I doing? I should be creating!” I have a Wii U, if that indicates how much of a gamer I’m not.
Okay, that’s out of the way. Time to talk about LEGOs. That’s what matters, innit? I have been building for as long as I can remember. I remember getting sets when I was five-ish, but LEGO was already in my life. I knew what to do with them. I’m the youngest of four, born in 1983. The classic yellow castle and some classic space and town sets were part of the household before
I was. I would pick a spot on the floor in the living room, dump out my tub of bricks, and I’d be good for hours, putting things together, making up stories. I was probably six when I figured out the clean-up hack (we didn’t call them hacks then); got an old sheet from Mom, dumped the LEGOs on the sheet, then when I was done I just pucked the whole sheet up and bundled it into the bin. Easy-peasy.
I didn’t have a proper Dark Age. Just got kinda dim in college. Didn’t have them with me, but I would often return to them when I was home. So I never really lost interest. I did hit a dark spot after college where I thought two things:
1. I shouldn’t be doing this anymore. 2. I need money.
So I did something I deeply regret: I rebuilt my sets and sold them on Ebay. The whole Ice Planet line; The whole Exploriens line; The M:Tron Mega Core Magnetizer; Unitron, Aquanauts, Blacktron 1 and 2 and Space Police 1 and 2, UFO, Spyrius, various town and Technic and castle sets... when I was done I had raked in about one paycheck. What a fricken’ bonehead. All those parts I really wish I still had. Wasn’t worth it.
But even then I didn’t sell it all off. Still had odds and ends and a few more recent sets. I kept playing with my truncated collection, building mechs and stuff, making up stories. So even as I was selling off my childhood collection, part of me knew “I like this. This is part of me forever.” So I’ve always been building, mainly as a solo activity. Sometime in the ’00s I started taking photos and posting on MocPages, interacting with the online community, which only encouraged and inspired me more. I eventually migrated to Flickr. A couple of years ago my wife cajoled me to start going to our local LUG meetings (PortLug represent!).
“These are your people,” she said. So plainly, like, “No duh,” I should have figured out that for myself. So I hooked into the local community, started showing at Bricks Cascade, and that again has amplified my interest, my energy, my drive to create, and now collaborate and challenge myself.
But my first and greatest love is for vehicles. Swooshable things. Toys that move, that are fun to play with. I really like building in mechanisms, functional play features. I’m not great at that yet, but I’m getting better. There’s something so fascinating and satisfying about little mechanisms. Takes a lot of experimental building, tweak this, tweak that, test and fail and tinker and test again. But when you get the pieces arranged just right to transfer the energy and create the motion you want, it’s priceless.
The build-story for the Luminous Imperator and the Shoddy Mariah started with the acquisition of a bunch of translight-blue quarter-domes. A game I like to play is to check out a part and ask myself, “What else can this be, other than what it obviously is?” So, how could I use these parts in a way that wasn’t windows? Then I held one at such an angle that the curve reminded me of a billowing sail, and the build took me from there, out of space and into a more steampunk/magitek vein. Definitely some Treasure Planet inspiration, with ships that fly by catching sunlight in gleaming sails. I wanted to build a pirate ship, but the sails didn’t let me. Their color was too pristine, and drew me to make something clean, proper, bright—white and gold and fast lines. So I made an Imperial ship, a pirate-hunter commissioned by a nation of the air with deep pockets. There was a steampunk anime I saw years ago where massive airships fought broadside battles not with cannons, but with soldiers on deck ranked up like Napoleonic firing formations with steam-powered rifles. That kinda fed into the deck gun designs. I wanted a main forward cannon on the thing, and it was just natural to hide it inside a
It’s always been mechs, spaceships, and ground vehicles for me. Something about the possibilities of futuristic vehicles has always hooked into me.
Markus Ronge’s Full Steam 2 Building
Article and Photography
by Markus Ronge
From the moment I picked up my first LEGO brick as an adult, my building interest has been in traditional scale model ships and everything steampunk. Anything with a funnel and some elaborate ornaments will spark my creative drive.
The scale modeling part mostly centers around real life classic yachts or tug boats, whereas my steampunk adventures are much more varied. They encompass all types of building sub-genres: vehicles, architecture, landscape, micro-scale, and vignettes — and Airships, of course. Always, Airships.
As a nod to the Airship, I created a story in the style of a classic graphic novel called Full Steam. It provides me with fresh new ideas for models yet to be built, as they have to serve certain story arcs or scenes. Sometimes the story inspires a MOC, sometimes it’s the other way around.
The “fullsteamchronicles” moniker comes from a fictional newspaper which monitors events happening in the city of Brickston. The pivotal event of the story is the crash of the Skytanic with a skyberg, which leads to a princess going overboard, a manhunt on sky pirates, a murder trial for all kinds of suspected conspirators, and a subsequent ‘mission impossible’ style prison break from Aircatraz.
Follow me on instagram to catch up with everything that’s happened so far!
One of my main world-building goals is to stay true to classic LEGO themes and color schemes, while giving everything else a personal and modern twist. I approach a theme as if it were a full-blown line of sets available for purchase, meaning there’s usually one big ship, several smaller but different sized support vehicles, and the occasional building or landscape scene. With a monumental story like this, there are also lots of minifigures involved—and even here I try to make room for the occasional cameo of existing LEGO characters like the Ninjago Sky Pirates.
The action in Full Steam 1 was centered around the Brickston fire department coming to the rescue of the Skytanic’s passengers (chief among them Queen
The setting of Full Steam 2, Aircatraz.
The Dreadnaught
Police dreadnaught zeppelins are used to secure the airspace over the Brickston empire’s vast dominion. Built for long range duty, they are not the fastest aircraft out there, but what they lack in speed they make up for in firepower. Out of their bellies, a fleet of high-speed fighter biplanes can be employed to chase down faster aircraft. In Full Steam 2 the fleet is sent out to hunt down Nadakhan’s Sky Pirates en route to their safe haven in the Lepin jungle. While I would have loved to build such a zeppelin in minifig-size, this literally would have been an airSHIP. Therefore I went three different routes: midi, micro, and a minifig-sized MOC only of the bridge. This gave me the flexibility for varied, yet detailed cinematic shots for my storyline.
The Dreadnaught in flight with patrolling biplanes. The bridge of the vessel in minifigure scale.
Under construction.
Kendall and Kelsey Swafford: Building
Article by Kendall Swafford
Photography by Kelsey Swofford
Ever have one of those ideas? An idea that was too crazy to even attempt!? An idea too big to fail!? This is the story of just such an idea...
I never dreamt of building 9’ tall LEGO murals as a child; I was never a LEGO kid growing up. If I had any LEGO sets as a child, those memories are lost to the ravages of time. A comic book cover built entirely out of LEGO was never one of my life goals. Until it was.
My co-builder in crime, the Robin to my Batman if you will, is my eldest daughter Kelsey. As a child, she would build the occasional set that I would bring her, and she still has her Scala set (3290) The Big Family House and (3569) Grand Soccer Stadium. The LEGO bug really bit us both with the release of the inaugural Batman sets in 2006, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention fellow LEGO fan Mike Schmidt. Mike was (and is) a customer of ours at Up Up & Away!, a small chain of comic shops in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mike was enthusiastic about LEGO, to say the least, and it’s fair to say Mike contributed greatly to our current LEGO obsession!
Flash forward to 2012, and the release of the DC Universe sets inspired us to build large-scale 2D recreations of classic comic book covers. It never occurred to us that it couldn’t be done, so we began planning our first build that fall, with construction of the first mural commencing on July 4th, 2013! I was determined to make them impressive in scale, so the initial mural rose to an amazing nine feet tall. As these are built in one of our stores so customers can see our progress, we had to stop at the ceiling!
Kendall and Kelsey Swafford.
Kelsey Swafford.
Choosing the subject of our first mural wasn’t all that hard. We’re both big Batman fans, and I’m a big fan of comic book artist David Mazzucchelli, so we chose the cover to Batman #405, the second chapter in the classic Batman: Year One saga. Full disclosure: we picked this issue for our very first mural because there was no background and the figure was mostly cape. Since we had no idea what we were doing, this seemed like the safest bet! The entire mural took about eight weeks, and was completed in one of our stores so we could work on it daily. Fun fact; the lavender background on this mural was originally LEGO blue. At the time of the initial build, we could not source lavender 1x2 plate in sufficient quantities (and at a reasonable price), and since some copies of this comic appeared more blue than purple, we went with blue. Just two weeks before the mural was to make its debut at Cincinnati ComiCon, I received a call from TLG telling me 1x2 lavender plate was now available to purchase. “I need 20,000 of em, STAT!” So we replaced the entire background at the very last minute. Whew!
Completion.
Miles Bellmore: Plane Crazy! Building
Article and Photography by
Miles Bellmore
His name is Miles Bellmore, but you probably know him on Flickr as PickleGambino. As a college student, he has been building since he was three. He took a break in middle school but returned to building when the pandemic started. He started building military models and realized that he could apply his interest in movies as well.
World War II and other historically-themed vehicles on Flickr inspired and encouraged him to attempt MOCs when he was eight. His favorite theme is Indiana Jones.
Building inspiration came from WWII and other historicalthemed vehicles on Flickr. These caught his interest.
Miles finds inspiration for his models in his love for movies and 20th Century military history. These interests often intersected with what he makes and encouraged him to attempt MOCs when he was about eight. Regarding how he builds, Miles was inspired by LEGO’s old Town line, with its smaller vehicles, to use the smaller 1:48 scale that is a little more proportionate to a minifigure’s height than larger scales like 1:35, which is better proportioned for a figure’s width.
Planning starts by researching what he wants to replicate; understanding the historical context surrounding the subject and compiling reference photos are integral steps in his building process. Miles always learn more about the subject as he builds it, so the research process doesn’t end until he places the final piece.
After some preliminary research, Miles starts by finding the build’s dimensions. This is usually simple; if he can find a vehicle’s real-life dimensions, he plugs the numbers into one of the many online LEGO unit/scale converters to receive stud dimensions. He also utilizes any schematics that he can find online. These were particularly useful
Miles Bellmore’s model of the Ford Tri-Motor from the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
A preliminary build sketch of the top of the plane.
while modeling the Lao Che Ford Tri-Motor from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was important to get the Tri-Motor’s simple, iconic silhouette right, especially in places like the wings and fuselage. Regardless of the subject, he always prioritizes scale and proportion over details.
The fictitious Horten Ho38 flying wing from Raiders of the Lost Ark was the most difficult and ambitious build Miles has tackled. It took effort to shape it faithfully, especially in the middle. He likes that he used 2x2 wedge plates to cover gaps as the middle of the plane slopes down. Miles plans to update the model in the future because he used colors that only exist digitally in the parts he used. He has also improved in making better-scaled brick-built propellers.
The front view of the preliminary build.
The plane picking up Indiana Jones.
Another view of the plane in flight.
Going Back to Ice Planet... One Figure at a Time!
Article by Chris Perron and Tore M. Harmark-Alexandersen
Art provided by The LEGO Group, Chris Perron, and Tore M. Harmark-Alexandersen
Growing up, Ice Planet was one of Chris Perron’s favorite themes (likely due to the heavy snowfall of Canadian winters) and he has a very distinct memory of opening up the 6983 Ice Station Odyssey for Christmas one year. At university, Chris studied Industrial Design while being a passionate AFOL building his own MOCs and sharing them online and at fan conventions. Now that he has moved to Denmark to work as a model designer at The LEGO Group, he still enjoys building in his free time and sharing his love for the brick!
Tore M. Harmark-Alexandersen’s father worked at LEGO before Tore was born and until he was four years old. His father was a model/concept designer, but also did final products. One of the sets Tore’s father remembers designing was 7822 Railway Station. So of course, he had a lot of LEGO bricks in his household, and of course it made Tore a mad LEGO fan from birth.
What happens when these two designers team up to make an updated Ice Planet minifigure? BrickJournal let the designers tell the story themselves!
But first, an introduction...
New and old Ice Planet figures.
Airship Island
Design by the BrickNerd Team
When it comes to flying vehicles, nothing captures the imagination quite like airships soaring in the sky. They instantly transport you to a realm of wonder and possibility where craggy mountains peek above the clouds and waterfalls careen to the world below.
For our airship island, we wanted to create something that felt airy with lots of negative space—an island that looks like it is balancing delicately in the sky. To achieve this, we used a strong base made from mudguards that are locked into place with SNOT bricks.
To make the build more playful, we used bright colors to be fun and eye catching. Lime green 4x4 domes are used for mounds of grass, medium azure for the water, and Minecraft Axolotl faces for some cute houses!
Lastly, we wanted to show two different kinds of flying transportation in microscale—hence a traditional airship (using minifigure shoulder pads) and a hot air balloon (using a minifigure neck ruffle and a few Ninjago masks to create the spherical shape), all held up by the new clear curved bars for a little extra magic.
So weigh anchor and start building your own airship island to take to the skies!
Parts List
(Parts can be ordered through Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color)
Qty Part Color Description
1 50955.dat Dark Bluish Grey Wedge 10 x 3 x 1 Double Rounded Left
2 41747.dat Dark Bluish Grey Wedge 2 x 6 Double Right
4 54200.dat Dark Bluish Grey Slope Brick 31 1 x 1 x 0.667
1 11211.dat Dark Bluish Grey Brick 1 x 2 with Two Studs on One Side
1 60477.dat Dark Bluish Grey Slope Brick 18 4 x 1
1 78443.dat Dark Bluish Grey Wing 2 x 6 Left
1 93273.dat Dark Bluish Grey Slope Brick Curved 4 x 1 Double
8 3024.dat Dark Bluish Grey Plate 1 x 1
2 62361.dat Dark Bluish Grey Car Mudguard 6 x 1.5 x 1 with Arch
1 26604.dat Dark Bluish Grey Brick 1 x 1 with Studs on Two Adjacent Sides
3 3666.dat Dark Bluish Grey Plate 1 x 6
3 43710.dat Dark Bluish Grey Wedge 4 x 2 Double Left
5 86996.dat Dark Bluish Grey Plate 1 x 1 x 0.667
1 73230.dat Dark Bluish Grey Technic Brick 1 x 1 with Axlehole
3 35480.dat Dark Bluish Grey Plate 1 x 2 with Round Ends and 2 Open Studs
3 79491.dat Dark Bluish Grey Plate 2 x 2 Corner Round
4 6231.dat Dark Bluish Grey Panel 1 x 1 x 1 Corner with Rounded Corners
8 4733.dat Dark Bluish Grey Brick 1 x 1 with Studs on Four Sides
2 43711.dat Dark Bluish Grey Wedge 4 x 2 Double Right
1 99251.dat White Minifig Neck Ruff
2 85861.dat White Plate 1 x 1 Round with Open Stud
1 35787.dat White Tile 2 x 2 Triangular
1 87994.dat White Bar 3L
1 85861.dat Trans Clear Plate 1 x 1 Round with Open Stud
1 4042.dat Trans Clear Bar Curved with Axle End and 2 Opposite Studs
1 30374.dat Trans Clear Bar 4L Lightsaber Blade
3 22388.dat Red Slope Brick 50 1 x 1 x 0.667 Quadruple
1 85861.dat Reddish Brown Plate 1 x 1 Round with Open Stud
1 92690.dat Reddish Brown Bar 1L with Top Stud and Two Side Studs
1 88295.dat Reddish Brown Minifig Armour Shoulder Pads with Top Spikes
3 3024px0.dat Bright Lt Orange Plate 1 x 1 with 2 Black Squares and Dark Orange Rectangle Pattern
1 15573.dat Lime Plate 1 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud, without Understud
2 65138.dat Lime Brick 4 x 4 x 0.667 with Rounded Top and Four Top Studs
2 26601.dat Lime Plate 2 x 2 without Corner
4 59900.dat Green Cone 1 x 1 with Stop
1 4162.dat Medium Azure Tile 1 x 8
1 3460.dat Medium Azure Plate 1 x 8
1 6091.dat Medium Azure Brick 2 x 1 x 1.333 with Curved Top
1 3070b.dat Medium Azure Tile 1 x 1 with Groove
2 24504.dat Blue Minifig Face Scarf with Notch in Back
You Can Build It
MINI Build
Le Nuage de Pourpre en miniature
de Christopher Deck
Bienvenue à une nouvelle session de construction dans le nouveau brickjournal!
After this short introduction in the French language, let’s switch back to English and let me welcome you to another mini model building session in BrickJournal! This issue is all about airships, and thus it is my pleasure to share a special airship from the popular three-episode miniseries Around the World in 80 Days from the year 1989. In this television adaption of Jules Verne’s famous adventure novel, the heroes cross the alps in an airship called “Le Nuage de Pourpre” which translates to “The Purple Cloud”. When you have seen the miniseries, you will instantly recognize the following model. Besides, it’s fun to build, and brings back old memories. It is also a possibility to use some of your dark purple bricks whose number steadily increases since 2003. So, have fun building, and see you next time!
Parts List (Parts can be ordered from Bricklink.com by searching by part number and color)
Airship Balloon
Qty Color Part Description
2 Dark-Purple 3005.dat Brick 1 x 1
1 Dark-Purple 49307.dat Brick 1 x 1 x 0.667 with Curved Top
1 Dark-Purple 86876.dat Brick 1 x 2 with Centred Stud on Long Side
10 Dark-Purple 11211.dat Brick 1 x 2 with Two Studs on One Side
3 Dark-Purple 3003.dat Brick 2 x 2
2 Dark-Purple 3002.dat Brick 2 x 3
2 Red 3710.dat Plate 1 x 4
2 Dark-Purple 3021.dat Plate 2 x 3
4 Dark-Purple 3020.dat Plate 2 x 4
1 Red 3020.dat Plate 2 x 4
1 Dark-Purple 3795.dat Plate 2 x 6
6 Dark-Purple 4287a.dat Slope Brick 33 3 x 1 Inverted with Notch and Thick Front
2 Dark-Purple 3039.dat Slope Brick 45 2 x 2
1 Red 22889.dat Slope Brick 45 6 x 2 Double Inverted with Open Centre
4 Dark-Purple 61678.dat Slope Brick Curved 4 x 1
1 Dark-Purple 87079.dat Tile 2 x 4 with Groove
Cloud Side Panels
Qty Color Part Description
2 Dark-Purple 3710.dat Plate 1 x 4
1 Dark-Purple 3022.dat Plate 2 x 2
1 Dark-Purple 3021.dat Plate 2 x 3
2 White 35470.dat Plate 3 x 5 Cloud Shape with 3 Studs
2 Dark-Purple 41770.dat Wing 2 x 4 Left
2 Dark-Purple 41769.dat Wing 2 x 4 Right
Airship Cabin
Qty Color Part Description
1 Reddish-Brown 48723.dat Bar 1L Quadruple with Axlehole Hub
1 Yellow 2458.dat Brick 1 x 2 with Pin
2 Trans-Orange 4589.dat Cone 1 x 1
1 Dk-Bluish-Gray 34103.dat Plate 1 x 3 with 2 Studs Offset
2 Yellow 87580.dat Plate 2 x 2 with Groove with 1 Centre Stud
1 Black 3020.dat Plate 2 x 4
6 Yellow 3087cc01.dat Window 1 x 1 x 1 Classic with Short Sill (Complete)
This series of BrickJournal articles has been written to address the deficit in the LEGO-verse where Alice in Wonderland, a.k.a. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” are concerned. LEGO has seen fit to create the following characters in Minifigure form: Alice, the Cheshire Cat, and the Queen of Hearts. This deficit is no longer tolerable; several of the most beloved characters in the book and animated Disney Classic and just absent. This will stand no more. It is the intension of this author to rectify this issue in a series of articles for BrickJournal to create and share “how to create” the key missing characters, including, the Hatter, the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the brothers Tweedle, the King of Hearts, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. I encourage all readers to watch the animated Disney Classic “Alice in Wonderland,” which is available on Disney+. As with all literary works, I am behind schedule, so without further ado, let’s begin this journey.
Tiger-lily: In most gardens they make the beds too soft—so that the flowers are always asleep.
I believe the chapter title will proclaim the figures we are constructing today; however, for those unfamiliar with the work, please revisit the animated classic. I am using the 1951 animated film as inspiration for these additional figures as it is from this source that LEGO has released the three characters it has sought to create (Alice, Cheshire Cat, and the Queen of Hearts). I had great ambitions for today’s article and life has gotten in the way, so I have restructured a bit to create a part of the Wonderland Universe that I had intended to eventually make. Today’s figures are a dalliance, and I will continue to refine these for some time as they are much more complex than I recalled. Today, we are going to make the flower garden.
Alice encounters many sentient flowers throughout her excursions through Wonderland, including the White and Red Rose, Chrysanthemums, Blue Bonnets, Calla Lily, Daisy, Daffodil, Sweet Peas, Tulips, Iris, Dandelions, and Pansies. The flowers are sentient beings who live near the White Rabbit’s House and love to sing. When Alice first meets them, they mistake her for a type of flower that can move. For example, when Alice says it’s nonsense for flowers to talk, the rose replies, “We can talk”. The pansies then tell Alice that they sing too, and the flowers argue about who they should sing about.
As mentioned, today’s activities are going to be a first generation creation, as I have never made a flower person before and I wanted the garden to look like a garden. I started by looking at all the LEGO flowers. I then realized that LEGO intended most of their flowers to have the flower bud facing up, not out as if it was looking at someone—this created an issue. This is because most of the flowers LEGO has created are in the Clicks or Friends lines as accessories to figures and not in the plants section of Bricklink, meaning they don’t easily interface with the stem parts. Thus, I would have to change the direction and
Minifigure Customization 101:
Article
and
Photography by Jared K. Burks
Alice meets the flowers of Wonderland.
also the way the flowers attach to stems—and honestly, the stems themselves, as all of the stems come off in low angle directions as if the flowers are falling over, and I need vertical flowers if one examines the inspirational art. Most of these flowers are hair accessories only featuring a pin connector. So a bit of modification is required to get them where they need to be.
Alice: Oh, but that’s nonsense. Flowers can’t talk.
Rose: But of course we can talk, my dear.
Orchid: If there’s anyone worth talking to.
Daisy: Or about.
When wanting to make something for a LEGO figure, you can design it from the ground up, modify a LEGO part, or find something on Thangs, Thingiverse, or Google to see what all is available. For this option I am going to start with a LEGO part, as I want these flowers to feel at home in the Alice LEGOverse. So I headed over to LEOCad to find the 3-D files for the flowers that LEGO has created. For this article I have used Meshmixer to cut off the back of the flower, create a flower stem that attaches to the new flower stem, and add a LEGO baby head (resized) to give the flower a face. I use Meshmixer for these alterations, as I can cut and add things, including resizing the head, to make it fit a touch better.
As I started to modify the flowers, I found that the front and back were both visually appealing of certain flowers, so I made multiples of some flower elements by flipping it over. I added stem acceptors to the bottom of each flower and I made three different types of stems: tall with offshoots, short with offshoots, and simply straight with single stem. This was easier as I used a separate shells command, which pulled the stems into their component parts, and it was an easy matter of changing the angles. I debated making some new foliage elements, but ran out of time for now.
Next I added the LEGO baby head to the center of the flowers, resizing the head as appropriate for each flower size. I found that the stud, not vertically sitting half into and half out of the flower was distracting, so I removed this from the baby head, leaving just the head shape. As each flower was visibly different in thickness, I recessed the head a different amount as well. The rose was of particular challenge as it was very thick, and adding the head made it more complex. On the whole I believe the daisy looks the best, but again this was a learning curve and I will be continuing to play with these designs.
Below: LEGO flower elements.
Below: Digital elements ready for modification.
Jared Oswald: Life in Pieces
Article by David Strenzler, Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars
Photography by Jared Oswald
Galactic greetings! We are Bantha Bricks: Fans of LEGO Star Wars. As administrators of one of the best LEGO Star Wars themed groups on Facebook, David Strenzler, Frank Averstegge and Eloi Parizeau witness amazingly creative builds by Star Wars fans worldwide on a nearly daily basis.
This time, we would like to introduce you to another very talented MOC builder and Bantha Bricks community member: Jared Oswald (Life in Pieces).
David Strenzler: Hello Jared. Welcome to the Bantha Bricks Files! The LEGO Star Wars community has been familiar with your skilled Star Wars-inspired designs for some time. Could you please introduce yourself and what you do?
Jared Oswald: Thanks for the kind words, David. I’m Jared Oswald, owner of Life In Pieces Brick Shop and Design Studio. Through Life In Pieces, I work as a professional LEGO artist, designing custom models for corporations and other organizations. I also run our Bricklink/Brick Owl store, which has roughly one million parts in stock. I’ve been designing and running the business full-time since 2021.
Would you say that Star Wars is your favorite theme, or are there others that we might not expect?
I would say Star Wars is my favorite active theme. I loved Mars Mission and Space Police when they were out. Each had a unique space aesthetic that set them apart. I was also a huge fan of Bionicle before it retired.
Why have you chosen the LEGO brick as your medium of self-expression? What makes LEGO so special to you?
I’ve worked with LEGO since I was a kid. It just makes sense to me. Working in traditional mediums (paint, drawing, clay sculpting, etc.) you can create the exact detail that you want for any given project. I think the largest appeal to working with LEGO is the challenge of working in a medium that has limited options. Not every part is available in every color or in unlimited quantities. It forces you to adapt and find creative solutions.
Duel on Jabiim.
Your latest model, Duel on Jabiim, perfectly captures the epic fight between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader as seen in episode 6 of Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi. What inspired you to build this particular scene?
The scene is iconic. It’s one of the best choreographed, live-action duels in recent Star Wars media. I hadn’t seen many LEGO MOCs depicting it when I started the design, so there was some room to work without being influenced by the work of others.
Can you tell us a bit about the construction of your build? Did you use any special techniques?
The rock features are a collection of wedge plates and curved slopes around a SNOT brick core. I created three different sized rocks, then used Stud.io’s mirror function to create flipped versions of each of them. That made each rock feature very easy to design and build, since I only had to create one design for each rock size. Both the initial and mirrored features are oriented in different directions on the base, which makes it more difficult to notice that each size is practically the same design. I went through several drafts for each rock size to make sure they were accurate to the show.
The base is decorated haphazardly with slopes, ingots, plates, and tiles to demonstrate the broken, rocky ground in the show. Utilizing exposed studs was important here. They provide an extra depth and help trick the eye into seeing a craggy surface.
