LEGO System Black Monarch’s Castle – 1988

This was an extremely simple set-up — it was just the castle set depicted on the box transferred to a studio, just LEGO trees, a cardboard hill and a cardboard background. We made the background the same colour as the box to create the playful effect when the box appears. Notice the name of the play-theme 00:15 “LEGOLAND”, back then it was a LEGO category and now as you know its a world wide theme park.

LEGO SYSTEM Intergrator 1996

Still the most expensive commercial we’ve made at Advance, this was a huge project. The ad was inspired by LEGO Time Cruisers. We travel through the boxes into three different LEGO worlds but time stops in the ‘real’ world. When we return to the store, the cleaner hasn’t moved. Actually the cleaner also played the pirate in the striped top you see at 00:14. The casting for the pirates was hilarious, we had ten different guys show up with amazing costumes. We built the LEGO city in the desert at night and shot the next day, I slept in the truck that you see. The set almost blew away in a desert storm during that night.

LEGO SYSTEM Adventure 1998

Set in Egypt and heavily inspired by Indiana Jones. What looks like a huge set was built entirely in LEGO filmed with extreme close-up lenses. And the boy was shot on bluescreen. What’s interesting here is that in the boy’s room 00:26 we see lots of toys that aren’t LEGO – LEGO is almost taking a back seat and that would not happen today.

LEGO ZNAP Virus 1998

LEGO went right up against K’nex with the new Znap system featuring bricks
that could come together in all directions. LEGO were a bit worried and were
trying to redefine the brand as a cooler and up-to-date toy.

LEGO Pirates – The Islanders 1994

We shot all of this on a built set — there’s no blue-screen or compositing. The island set was pretty big and constructed out of polystyrene and joint filler. And the water was a giant glass plate. The shot at 0.14 when the pirate lands in the small rowboat had to be shot quite a few times before he landed right!

LEGO DUPLO – Noah’s Ark 1995

We shot this in the States in 1995. The house was completely built up from scratch. To me it has a very ‘ 80´s advertising’ feel — it’s got a kind of Southern warmth about it.

Art Director, Christian Faber tells us:

This was one of the first times we used 3D – the parking lot was built entirely in 3D and the man was shot on green screen. I think the spot has something of a voodoo feel – the boy is controlling the cars remotely. This spot is a bit different because the intro had nothing to do with toys.

Faber says:

The idea for this spot was inspired by Back to the Future – we actually built a Delorean for the set. The 2D/3D character animation was done by PDI and we shot in a plane interior in a Hollywood studio. Naked Gun was filmed in the same plane. It was a pretty chaotic set!

Faber says:

The shark here is a 2D animation shot on a 3D background – the models in the shark’s mouth are real though. This was a very simple line of sets and we felt we needed to spice up the communication, hence the real-looking sharks. We called it ‘borrowed interest’ back then. In retrospect, I think it’s a shame because I think we took attention away from the actual product.

I am a big fan of vintage LEGO ads and commercials, so I’m pretty excited about this project. Come take a trip down memory lane with Advance and The Brothers Brick!

Blast from the Past Trailer video:

Spyrius (1994):

Art director Christian Faber says:

“We shot this in London or LA, I can’t actually remember! It was one of the first motion control spots we did. At 0:15 We used a kind of ‘magic building’ technique where the bricks are held on the end of metal rods and then pulled apart. And if you look closely at 0:00 you can actually see the edge of the studio in the top
left corner.

“The set filled a whole studio and we used a lot of analogue techniques — the planet is just painted cardboard and the backdrop is just a screen with
little holes in it and a big light behind it. The hands you can see moving the sets at 0:05 and 0:21 secs are actually wax hands. I had quite a lot of
explaining to do when customs asked why I had a bag full of fake arms!”

Technic Racers (1997):

Faber says:

“We shot it in a specially built 10-metre tunnel that was hand-painted and filled with smoke. While it may look straight, if you look closely at 00:15
you can see the yellow lines bending slightly — that’s because at this point we filmed the car in a carousel to make it look like it was speeding
forward! The animatronic hand was cast on a girl’s hand so it was a perfect fit and gave her the control she needed in the more complicated movements.”

Wild West (1996)

Faber says:

“We juxtaposed stills of the LEGO sets being ‘magic built’ with lots of scenes from classic American Westerns. The last few shots featuring the fight scene
were filmed and then graded to fit in with the rest of the background scenes. The magic building techniques shown here are actually illegal now –
the law today requires that toy sets that need to be constructed have to be shown being built by hand.

To me, this is as big a shock and as happy a day as the first time I heard about rumored LEGO Star Wars sets back in the 90′s. While my passion for Star Wars has rather waned in the intervening dozen years, my love of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth — and Peter Jackson’s movie incarnation of it — has never been stronger. Some of you may bemoan the increasing number of licensed themes LEGO is releasing, and I personally don’t care too much about DC Super Heroes, but LEGO Lord of the Rings is a Pretty Big Deal. I think it’s awesome.

In honor of the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring, here are nine of my favorite fan-made LEGO models inspired by The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (both books and movies) that we’ve featured here over the years. I can only imagine what LEGO fans will be inspired to build with official sets and minifigs.

1. OneLug’s 7-foot LEGO Tower of Orthanc & Last March of the Ents

2. Amon Hen & Beorn’s House by Blake Baer

(Technically, this is two, for a total of 10, I know.)

3. Kevin Walter’s 5′ 9″ Tower of Barad-dûr

4. Dave Sterling’s Minas Morgul

5. Karyn’s Modulex Doors of Durin mosaic

6. Helm’s Deep by Bryan Hanonymous

7. Jens’ Oliphaunt battle

8. Astuanax’s Minas Tirith

9. The Hobbit Hole by CAI

Finally, check out all the wonderful things LEGO fans have been building in the Tolkien LEGO group on Flickr.

It’s no secret I love pre-WWI cars so Peter Blackert (lego911) was always going to please me with this one. But his pleasing went beyond what it could have been due to his excellent modelling. A fabulous demonstration of what can be done at this larger than minifig scale.

Will this be the first in a long string of creations? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I recently contacted Mike Psiaki about redoing my favourite childhood set 6357 in a modern and detailed form. He agreed and after much conversation, sharing of photos and work this is the result. The helicopter was mostly made by Mike and the truck by me but both were discussed at length to get them looking as good as we could manage. The trailer was a true combined effort with each of us contributing many ideas.

Although Mike has been more busy building than me.

Griffon brings an excellent rendition of 6080 LEGOLand Castle, originally released in 1984:

It even opens up, just like the original! Check out the rest of the photos on Brickshelf.

You can see the original gallery here.

Worth checking out the other photos of The Meeting for more detailed pictures of this creation as well as several others.

Although he actually completed it last year, Bryan recently announced the completion of a project that he had been working on for quite some time, namely his Classic Crusader Giant Fig and Horse. I thought this would be a good opportunity to pick his brain and share with our readers some of the “behind-the-scenes” information on this creation.

TBB: How long have you been working on your knight and horse?

Bryan: I probably started on the knight and horse back in June of 2006, completing the knight a month later in July. I really dragged out the construction of the horse and finished it in March of 2008 just before the birth of my son. If you add up all the time I actually worked on them, it probably comes out to 3 weeks worth of evenings, for roughly 40 hours?

TBB: People always ask how many bricks are in a MOC like this. Do you have any idea and do you care?

Bryan: I have no idea. Maybe 5000 bricks for the horse and 3500 for the knight? It doesn’t concern me much since there aren’t very many extremely rare pieces in this MOC apart from all that old dark grey.

TBB: Why did you choose to build a Crusader?

Bryan: Although my first castle set was the yellow castle, my favorite castle set was 6080. I went into my dark ages right before the Crusaders sets came out, and after I rediscovered LEGO back in 1997, I realized that the armor piece was so cool. So I’d say Lion Knights and the Crusaders are now my all-time favorite faction.

TBB: I’ve seen other figs in the this scale but I can’t remember ever seeing the armor before. Are you the first to do that?

Bryan: Yes, I think I’m the first person to have such a large rendition of the breastplate armor with leg protection in ABS plastic.

TBB: What was the most difficult aspect of this MOC?

Bryan: The most difficult part of this MOC was the grill on his helmet. The helmet itself is based heavily on the green hat from the official 3723 LEGO mini-figure set, but I had to design the grill by trial and error. What made it especially challenging is the fact that the helmet is 16 studs wide, but the grill is 17, so I had to use a combination of 1×1 tiles and 1×2 plates with 1 stud to make it work. I remember first building flimsy mockups of the grill, and after I had a design I was satisfied with, I had to make a copy of it with structurally sound building techniques (i.e. “overlap technique”). Finally, I built the helmet around the grill.

TBB: Who or what inspired you as you worked on this?

Bryan: Bruce N H from Classic-Castle first brought my attention to a giant Black Falcon minifig on a horse back in January of 2006. Seeing a giant castle-themed fig was cool, but seeing one on horseback really put it over the top: I had to have one of my own.

TBB: I saw that you have acknowledged or thanked several people in your post. Can you elaborate on how they helped you out?

Bryan: Of course there’s Tobias Reichling, who inspired me to build this. He took numerous pictures of his horse for me and they were extremely useful when building the head section. I also got a lot of help from Peer Kreuger, who came up with a method of creating blueprints for mosaics in Photoshop. He provided me with the building plans for the shield, and I would have never been able to pull off the “rampant lion” if it weren’t for Peer. Finally, I also need to thank Jojo for getting me in touch with Tobias.

TBB: If you were to start over, what would you do differently?

Bryan: Now that I think about it, I should have built a helmet with pointed visor instead. I just realized that there exists no minifig with this color helmet and armor combo…

TBB: What do people say when they see this in your house?

Bryan: Not many people have actually seen this – those that have are generally impressed with it, especially the shield. My parents commented “You still have time for LEGO?” and I had to remind them that this was before I became a dad.

TBB: Are you going to keep it together?

Bryan: I’m a huge fan of LEGO sculptures, so I’m definitely going to keep this together.

TBB: What’s next on the horizon for you, Lego-wise?

Bryan: I’ve built “large” castles as a kid/teenager, but now as an adult, with a much larger collection, I’d like to build a large, detailed castle of course. However, with a 15-month old son running around, that’s not going to happen any time soon, so I’ll settle for something much simpler. I’ll try and find some time to put together my copy of 10193 Medieval Market Village, and hopefully learn some new building techniques in the process.

Thank you for taking the time to talk with us, Bryan!

So I was absolutely ecstatic to see that Robert VH (flickr and MOCpages) had built The Spearhead, a spaceship that appeared in the 1986 LEGO comic story “Jim Spaceborn.”

During my “dark ages,” I did a pretty good job of preserving most of my bricks and instructions, but I regrettably let the catalogs and idea books go. Luckily, I have friends who have plenty of extras. Reliving those memories and garnering inspiration from those classic documents can be a refreshing addition to building.

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.