The Brothers Brick

We continue our series of Admin interviews by talking to Ben Ellermann of Classic Castle.

TBB: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? What are you known for other than an Admin at CC?

Ben: My name is Ben Ellermann and I am a huge LEGO Castle fan! On Classic-Castle.com I work on contests, interviews, various articles, and the sets archives. Offline I am involved with my local lug in the Saint Louis area, GatewayLug. I also have been a theme coordinator and/or presented at North American Lego fan festivals (BrickFest, BrickWorld, and BrickFair). From 2006 to 2008, I served as a Lego Ambassador giving fan feedback to TLG. Other than designing castle mocs, I also enjoy building in the Western, Pirate, and sculpture themes. Occasionally I dabble in Town and Space as well. This year I also teamed up with several fans to found a new Pirate fan site: www.forbiddencove.com

TBB: How long has Classic Castle been in existence? Can you give a brief history?

Ben: Classic-Castle.com has been a part of the online fan community since September 2003. A small group of like-minded Castle fans felt that www.lugnet.com was not meeting all of the castle communities needs. The active early administrators were Troy Cefaratti, Anthony Sava, Lenny Hoffman, Kevin Blocksidge, and myself.

TBB: What is purpose of CC?

Ben: Our mission is to meet the needs of LEGO Castle fans. We try to do this by providing castle articles, set reviews, building tips, preview pictures of new sets, contests, highlighted mocs, designer interviews, a chatroom, and a friendly organized forum.

TBB The site is called Classic Castle. What does that mean? Do you exclude things that aren’t “classic”?

Ben: When Classic-Castle was founded in 2003, the retail Lego Castle theme was not in production. Castle fans were looking for a well-designed Classic-Castle line of products similar to lines of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

We accept all castle fans, including those who love Knights Kingdom 2. Many fans have a favorite castle sub-theme from when they were children. We have a General Lego forum for discussion of other Lego themes in which are fans are interested, such as Space, Pirates, and Steampunk just to name a few.

TBB What is your vision for the future of CC?

Ben: My vision is that Classic-Castle will remain relevant by continuing to meet the needs of our community. Fan sites must be able to adapt and grow over time in order to survive. To do this we must always listen to the fans and incorporate their suggestions into the site.

TBB What issues are you dealing with as CC grows?

Ben: Real life is an issue that most Lego fan sites have to deal with. Members, moderators, and administrators often move on from our community due to real life circumstances. Fortunately we are always gaining new members, excellent moderators, and talented admins. Classic-Castle has always been a team effort. This prevents our site from ceasing to exist if one person tires of running it.

TBB Why should someone join CC?

Ben: If you are a Lego fan who loves castle, please check out our site and forum. We are the source for all your Lego Castle needs.

Classic-Castle also recently completed a forum upgrade and it’s looking good. Go join now to immerse yourself in all things medieval!

Ryan Wood proposed via this giant LEGO ring. Pretty cool idea, if you ask me. This happened back in 2006, but Ryan just posted new and improved pics.

His lovely wife, Katie, built this cool mosaic of their wedding.

She displayed it at BrickCon 2007, but I don’t think we ever blogged it.

…as Nelson Yrizarry shows us, in this historically accurate recreation. No wonder this one needed a little extra “courage”. I’ve always felt sorry for bus drivers. It’s nice to see that kids haven’t changed.

Billy McGill just built a giant version of the LEGO monkey for his niece. I’ve always liked this monkey…now why didn’t I ever think of doing this?

Seems appropriate to feature these two creations in the same post, since they capture very different sides of the same coin, but I found them within 24 hours of each other.

The first is a great detail-rich street scene by SlyOwl capturing a scene inspired by the film “Die Welle.” It’s apparently based on the American book “The Third Wave” by Ron Jones, and after-school special “The Wave” about a teacher trying to illustrate to his students how autocracy can take root anywhere and doing a bit too good a job of it. Definitely worth checking out the other angles and detailed deeplinks that SlyOwl has included.

This second creation, by Igor Makarov (Zeek), called Precinct 56 is a great take on the traditional LEGO police station sets, which have always struck me as too small. This is more fitting of a big city police headquarters and sure looks lite it’ll fit more than one cubicle, parking space and holding cell.

Portuguese LEGO fan group 0937 hosted the 2nd TomarLEGO between June 11 and 14 in Tomar.

One of the centerpieces of the event was an enormous, custom-built tank full of water, plied by a fleet of LEGO Pirates.

See lots more photos from this event in Rupi’s Brickshelf gallery.

UPDATE: Biczzz has a full roundup of all the photo galleries from attendees, along with a few videos like this one below.

Dirk displays his prowess with sculpture yet again. His Luigi is adorable!

This Steampunk time machine by Erik Smit is a thing of beauty and a joy in every dimension. The use of floating boat hulls is truly inspired.

Retinence has concocted a very nicely streamlined Mech. He calls it Project Lilium. I call it Pretty Darn Cool.

My apologies for slacking off on the last two days of our 2009 BrickWorld coverage (unless you’d rather read what I write at past 3 a.m. for both nights). Now that the event is over and I’m back with a nightmare of bricks to sort, I’ll wrap things up with a few concluding words. This year’s BrickWorld set records in every way. With over 550 attendees, 25,000 square feet of LEGO, special guests from LEGO execs and more, we’re left to wonder how this year’s even can ever be topped.

Planning for BrickWorld 2010 has already begun, and this time the coordinators have booked the entire Westin hotel just for us LEGO fanatics.

See more pictures of BrickWorld on Flickr.

It’s hard to imagine the Neo-Classic Space LEGO creations by Peter Reid (legoloverman) scaled down with just as much detail, but Pete himself has accomplished this with a series of lovely little microscale vehicles.

LEGO creations by nnenn certainly don’t lack for color. His rainbow of security robots are simultaneously adorable and formidable.

Ciamoslaw Ciamek gets a head start on commemorations for the 70th anniversary of the September Campaign (the invasion of Poland by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) with a Polish PZL P.11c fighter.

The PZL P.11.c has the distinction of being the first Allied plane to shoot down Axis aircraft during World War II. Unfortunately, the Polish air force’s outdated P.11s were quickly overwhelmed by the Luftwaffe. Only one PZL P.11 survives today.

Jordan Schwartz steps up to the plate with this retro-bot. There’s just something about it that makes me want one. Maybe it’s the cute look. Maybe it’s the mandibles of destruction. Maybe it’s the fact that Jordan says it will do housework. Anyway, you need one too.

Stefan has recreated the iconic Sydney Opera House with a quite ingenious use of parts. Well done!