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LEGO will make its presence known at Comic-Con 2008 this year (July 23-27 in San Diego, California) with a mysterious, exclusive set:
The picture doesn’t say a lot, but here are a couple key facts:
I love anything green. I also love anything by nnenn. Green nnenn is even better.
nnenn’s torpedo frigate The Suyampsis looks like it could plow straight through just about any planet’s picket fleet:
Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray tells of a man who stays young forever while a painting of him ages instead.
Alex Eylar gives Dorian Gray the LEGO treatment in this eerie creation:
A new creation by Mike Psiaki (Brickshelf) is nice to see, but when that new creation is a Savoia S-21 seaplane inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso, well, it’s that much more awesome.
Previously on The Brothers Brick:
This is the fourth post in a series of six where we’re looking at LEGO models through a communicational point of view. Feel free to read the introduction, first, second and third post to get you up to par before diving into this one – it’ll help. Also, I’m sorry for skipping the promised case study yesterday. I caught the flue and didn’t have much energy to write. But I wouldn’t miss this post for the world – this is the good stuff!
After looking at design and build last Monday, it’s time to present your creation to your target audience. Ideally, you should adjust your presentation to further strengthen your build (or adjust your build to strengthen your presentation, depending on what you’re out to do). We’re going to exemplify how presentation affects your message by looking at how it’s done online, but a lot of it is applicable to live presentation as well.
When you present your model, you can do three things:
Obviously, you want do number two. Different groups have different guidelines, so as we said before: make sure you say what you intend to in a way your audience accept.
I’m mainly a space builder. When I took my first stumbling steps online, LUGNET had just started to break down, and it wasn’t long before Classic-Space was founded. The site has been around for a few years now, and is starting to get a set of informal rules on how a model should be presented there.
Let’s have a look at those who dwell there and the informal guidelines on that site as a case study.
So, to dehance your model on Classic-Space, you would write a five-page long back story with lots of details on the fictional technical construction of your small generic space fighter. It probably belongs to some obscure faction you made up (that you’re trying to get everyone to build in), and uses pre-molded guns on a studs up construction. Your pictures would be taken with a cellphone or a webcam, have a lot of clutter in the background, be poorly lit and out of focus. Oh, and it’d be your first time posting there too, and you would be acting like you’re the end-all answer to LEGO building because your mother said you were sooo good.
If you want to enhance your model on Classic-Space, do the opposite. That doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed success, but it places your message in a much better position to make an impact on the crowd there.
Do a separate analysis on your target audience.
Taking pictures of your models has almost become an art in itself in the LEGO community. It’s pretty obvious how to dehance a model – said blurry, out of focus and poorly lit shots are sadly too common. Here’s a random picture from MOCpages that tells us nothing:
This model seems like a start. A more skilled builder could’ve at least offered advice on how to improve it - but when we see nothing, we can do nothing.
Neutral pictures would be those that show your model well, on a non-distracting background. Have a look at Don Wilson’s (ThePaleMan’s) Thundertank:
Great photos help convey the feeling of your model. Mark Kelso’s recent piece Apocalypsis: A journey inward takes model presentation to a whole new level:
Here the actual build, though stunning on its own, is nigh secondary to the presentation. I only wish that he had created a custom website for it rather han putting it up on MOCpages. Too much distracting clutter there.
To see more cases where presentation influence the build, comparing the Brick Testament to “ordinary” castle customs (these by Aaron Andrews, aka DarkSpawn) will yield interesting things. Note how construction suddenly become a lot less important and carefully planned scenes matter more.
If you’re going to present your model live, you have basically the same things to think about as when presenting online: How do I best convey my built message to my audience? Except now you can consider another factor: interactivity. Should your audience be allowed to touch your model or not? That might help you connect with the audience, and lets them see play factors. No playing can create a distance. Think how you best support your model’s purpose: if you consider it a toy and built it for your kids, then maybe it’s a good idea to somehow enable people to play with it. If you want it to be considered art or a sculpture you should probably put it behind a fence.
And that concludes the bulk of this series. Next Monday we will look at a few other factors that can affect how your build is perceived by your audience before summing up what we’ve learnt.
Thomas Wunz is rapidly making a name for himself in the Castle community. His newest creation is does nothing to tarnish that reputation. Built on a beautifully-crafted crag, overlooking the sea (access via some nifty stairs) , the Hold of Wyhrt Quoip is a very imposing fortress.
By the way, Thomas tells me that the proper pronounciation is “Wee-ert Qu-oip”. In case you were wondering. I certainly was…
Mark Stafford (Nabii) shows us once again his skills for innovative use of parts that others would have considered “useless”, such as the red airplane tail fins used as the wings and the various Bionicle parts throughout.
It would seem today is mecha catch-up day. ;-) Our final mecha of the morning is by Brickshelfer Grenouille, whose RG-400 construction mecha towers over the urban landscape:
Here it is in action:
More on Brickshelf. (Via Young Spacers.)
Remember Kwi Chang’s bipedal mecha featured earlier this month?
Izzo was inspired to create a tribute version of Kwi Chang’s original:
While Kwi Chang’s version has a definite military feel to it, Izzo goes for more of a law enforcement look.
(More on Brickshelf.)
Kevin Guoh (Flickr) has posted a beefed-up version of his Hume mecha. There’s nary a smooth shape in sight on this thing:
Check out the contrast with the original version — what an improvement!
Castle builder Piotr Lewandowski has recreated several iconic scenes from the Star Wars universe as Castle vignettes.
Here’s “Duel of Mates” (inspired by “Duel of the Fates” between Qui-Gon Gin and Darth Maul in Episode I):
And another duel, on “BestPin,” between Luke Groundwalker and Darth Father (heh heh):
(Via VignetteBricks.)
Yul Burman Karel (Flickr) gives I am Legend the LEGO twist with his I am LEGO poster. I love the tagline, “The last minifigure on Earth is not alone.”
The latest creation by Tom Snellen is bursting with charm. According to the builder, this is his first foray into serious landscaping, as well as his first attempt at a tower with more than 4 sides. It was obviously a success!
Brickshelf user wobnam’s prison tower creation features an interesting architectural design of having a heavier top section of the tower resting on a narrower neck. The whole concept of solitary isolation on a high-rising cell above the water is pretty chilling. I’d hate to be the guy spending the rest of his life in this place.
How Many Studs to LEGOLAND has the first photo of the upcoming LEGO agents set 8636 Deep Sea Quest:
The three lines of text in Japanese say:
Incidentally, Brickset has the full list of upcoming LEGO Agents sets, including high-res box art I hadn’t seen before.
How do people who live in a steampunk world picture their future? Jeremy (aka Smod) has the answer:
More in Jeremy’s Brickshelf gallery.
LEGO Certified Professional Sean Kenney recently sculpted the Empire State Building, which was commissioned to be the centerpiece at the new gift shop in the real Empire State Building. Sean points out the fun fact that since the model will be located at the observation deck, it will become the highest LEGO sculpture in the world. Click on the photo below to read more.
The submission deadline for LEGO Ambassadors was 4:00 PM PDT today. Thanks to everybody who suggested nominees, voted, and contributed testimonials, we had everything in place and I hit Send on the e-mail to LEGO with over 15 minutes to spare! :-D
538 people voted, and here are the results:
Although Adrian had the votes to be the third nominee, we didn’t get enough testimonials for him. That means the next person with the necessary number of testimonials (three) became the third nominee. The final list of nominees is:
With the votes and testimonials in place, we put together the submission package earlier today and I sent it off to LEGO.
We’ve learned a lot from this process, and if LEGO uses the same process next year, we’ll probably do things a bit differently — like not waiting until the last day to put together the submission! If you have any feedback on how we went about this, please feel free to post a comment here or use the Contact page to send us a private message.
Speaking personally now that the nomination process is over, I’m humbled by all the votes cast in my favor, and touched by all the kind words readers posted as testimonials. If selected by LEGO as an Ambassador for the 2008-2009 cycle, I’ll do my very best to represent all of you out there.
Wish us luck! :-)
(For those of you who are also on Flickr, I submitted those nominations as well. Read more in the discussion thread there.)