Photo of Sean from Sean’s website

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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!

Chris Piccirillo, Jeremy Scott, and Dave Shaddix are members of CactusBrick, a LUG in the Phoenix, Arizona area. They’ve recently begun formally organizing (they explain why) as a sub-group of AZLUG, which covers all of Arizona. Gary McIntire is currently a Master Model Builder at LEGOLAND California, but started off as a member of SEALUG in Seattle, then moved to Utah, where he helped revive ULUG, then moved to San Diego and helped revive SandLUG as well. Gary is generally acknowledged to be awesome.

I’ll let them speak for themselves first, but at the end I’ll add a couple editorial comments about what I noticed from the interchange and what I’ve gathered from my exhaustive and authoritative research (cough – BS! – cough).

The Brothers Brick: How did you go about organizing or reviving your LUG?
Chris Piccirillo: You need people and a place to meet. If you make it too complicated, everyone will run away screaming. Plan some fun things to do, research how other LUGs have fun, and hold that meeting. I gave a lot of my personal time to get that first meeting held. After that, it was easy. It was like watering a plant.
Jeremy Scott: Yeah, save the details for later. We didn’t want leaders, we wanted to have fun. Now that most of us are deeply into it one year later, do we find ourselves with the need for the details.
Dave Shaddix: We have a few things that we try to accomplish for every meeting, a speed build and parts draft, but its pretty chaotic and just down right entertaining most of the time. Fun is still our foremost concern, but we are realizing that we’ll need some structure if we are to become an active, viable member of the community.
Gary McIntire: Personal contact is key! When I restarted ULUG I first started scouring the internet for other LEGO fans out there. I sent out numerous emails and finally made contact with two guys who were doing the LEGO thing. Reviving SandLUG was much easier, since I was coming in contact with so many local LEGO fans at LEGOLAND. The main thing is to be outgoing and make friends with local people who are into LEGO and just start hanging out and talking LEGO.

TBB: Where did you find other members so it wasn’t just you talking to yourself in a mirror?
GM: The internet is awesome! Check out Facebook, Flickr, and of course LUGNET. Even a Google search can deliver surprising results sometimes.
JS: Some LEGO fans in Arizona had tried to organize a few times in the years before. A few of us were part of those failed attempts. We never got further because there weren’t enough people. I saved some names and email addresses of these people I found on LUGNET, etc, and hoped to try again one day.
CP: When I decided it was time for our LUG to finally form, Jeremy and other’s efforts had been long before my time. I told him about my plan, and he shared his mostly out-of-date contact list with me and said ‘good luck’. On my side was our upcoming LEGO brand store opening soon; local fans were in a buzz. I threw a few announcements out onto Craigslist and asked everyone who contacted me to pass around the news and soon we had a list of 20 or so people. From that list, six people showed up. From those six, 5 haven’t missed out since.
DS: Chris’s mom actually told me about group…

TBB: What was the key to the group starting to coalesce?
CP: For us, it was the opening of the LEGO store (photo, right). Not only did the upcoming opening have people excited, but LEGO needed its adult fans to help with it. Steve Witt [LEGO community relations representative] was very enthusiastic, calling me an answer to his prayers, and got me in contact with an ambassador to help me turn our spark into a fire. Having the group of us staff the master build and grand opening was awesome fun for us, and helped us new co-club members become instant friends.
GM: Pick a day that the club will always meet and stick to it! Try to find a day that works for the few people that are involved initially, say the first Saturday of every month, or every third Thursday night. Make it the same day every month and always meet on that day, roughly around the same time. That way everyone knows that every month on that day, rain or shine, there will be a meeting. sometimes not everyone will be able to make it, but have it anyway, even if it’s just two guys having a good time!

TBB: How is your LUG organized, if at all? Why is that?
GM (photo, left): I think that too much organization creates unnecessary politics. Every meeting the only points of business that are necessary to be addressed are where the next meeting is going to be and what, if anything, are we going to plan on doing there. Every LUG I have been part of has rotated meetings around to different peoples’ houses every month and most of the meetings feature a set draft or a dirty brickster of some kind, and sometimes have additional activities like games/competitions or parts trading.
CP: At first we all unanimously decided that we wanted nothing in the way of organization. No leader, no officers, no money, no rules, no nothing.
JS: However, we learned the hard way: we need it. Right now, we are writing the by-laws and such that will officially organize us. We have decided to pursue organizing as a US-charity (or 501(c)3) so we can be tax-exempt and also use our club as a community youth-outreach platform as well as a social hang-out for us dirty-mouthed adults.
DS: Yeah, we are pushing for some loose leadership right now, without some structure we will ultimately regress to trading our Garbage Pail Kids cards and random LEGO-centric conversations. There are a bunch of great guys (and even some females!) in the group, with a little direction we will be able to get some really cool stuff going in the future. And there is a real part of me that would like to somehow be involved in the direction of a bunch of dirty-mouthed adults …oh and LEGO stuff!

TBB: What were some of the challenges of starting the LUG?
CP: Getting people to come to the meeting. LEGO collecting is an easy-to-hide geek hobby. We aren’t known for our social geekiness, like the [Dungeons and Dragons] geeks and Pokemon collectors. So, getting the adults who aren’t afraid to admit their habits to come out of the closet is hard. What they learn when they join a LUG is that LEGO is more fun in public. Our hobby doesn’t have a Comic-Con yet, but we’re getting there.
GM: Finding the first few people and getting a day for the first meeting nailed down.
JS: Honestly, I feel the hardest part of getting the club together was finding people. With the large realignment of the online LEGO community away from the LUGNET-centralized community we had a few years ago, you have to go to every corner of the net to find people. It would be nice to have a general announcement board again. (*ahem*, LEGOfan.org)

TBB: What would happen to the LUG if you were suddenly raptured?
JS: They would breathe a sigh of relief.
CP: They would lose their best man.
JS: Seriously though, we have enough excited people in the LUG that it couldn’t possibly go away. We are more in danger of death by disagreement than by death through the loss of one of our members.
GM: Well, I kind of was, from ULUG. I was raptured away to LEGOLAND, and now the LUG is more than twice the size it was when I left. A fact of which I am very proud. If a club is centered around one or two pivotal members it can easily fall apart. That’s why I am happy to take credit for helping to organize a club and get it off the ground, but I don’t want to be the “leader”.

TBB: How does the group make decisions? How do you deal with drama/conflict if it arises?
JS: The drama so far has been minimal. What we have encountered so far led to our desire to formally organize. We determined that the things that bugged us couldn’t be addressed because no such rules were in place. So first we are going to write the rules. As for decision making, we haven’t had many to make. A yes-no vote on the next month’s draft has been the most heated debate yet. When we organize we plan to use online voting for all minor decisions, and in-person elections once a year.
GM: You’d be surprised how easily a group of like-minded people can make decisions. Majority rule and general consensus have always worked for me.

TBB: What’s your vision for where you want the LUG to be in a few years?
CP: We want to be one of those LUGs that people name by name when they discuss the “great” LUGs. We have the organizational manpower to do it, and we have a push to see it done.
JS: We want achieve this with a secondary focus, beyond our primary focus of club socialization, on outreach, both within our greater LEGO fan community, and within our local community. We chose to become a charity so we can benefit our local community in educational and youth support programs. Though not all of our members want to participate in that aspect, those who do will have wonderful personal reward from it. We also plan to begin the process of hosting a southwestern states convention for LEGO fans and the public, and intend to forge partnerships with other southwestern LUGs to have this convention travel around the southwest annually, with each lug taking a turn hosting every few years.
CP: Obviously some of this is in our longer-term agenda.
GM: I would love to see SandLUG big enough to host a LEGO convention in the next few years. I think it’s well on its way.

TBB: Thanks guys!

I sure learned a lot doing research for this series, and I hope it helped some of you out there. A few themes in the interview deserve bullet points and others didn’t show up in their comments, but could be pretty helpful so I’ll pass them along:

• Find people. It’s hard, but kind of the whole point.
• Wait to decide on the structure/organization until you have people. Come to some sort of consensus that gets buy-in from the core members. There are no formal requirements for the rules or structure. It’s up to the members.
• If a dead LUG already used the name you want, you may be able to find the original members of that LUG and just ask nicely if you can resurrect it. You may even get additional members that way.
• Keep a routine.
• Don’t over-complicate things. Having a website or other infrastructure can be great, but sometimes free tools like Google groups or Yahoo Groups can be easier to use and meet all the communication needs of the LUG, especially early on.
• If your LUG gets too big, covers too large an area or otherwise just isn’t doing it for everybody, don’t be afraid to reorganize or support and encourage members to start a new nearby LUG.
• Be welcoming, try to avoid drama, and most importantly: PLAY WELL!

A lot of people have helped me in this project, especially members of SandLUG (Above: Comic-Con Barbecue at Monsterbrick’s house) as well as luggers from around the world who participated in my lugging discussion and group on flickr. They have have passed on a wealth of information to me that I’ve tried incorporated in the series, but can’t possibly do full justice. Thank you all!

Brett Gilbert has landed an interview with Cephas Howard, the lead designer for LEGO’s new line of board games.

“First you build your game,” says Cephas. “This creates a bond and a greater sense of ownership, immersion and understanding of the game for the kids. It also gives them the confidence to change it later on.”

“Next you play. The games all have good, solid game experiences that can be played over and over, and allow kids to have fun with their friends and family while doing so.” Cephas points out that truly social play is something that LEGO has not always offered, but that these games allow parents to be genuinely involved in LEGO play with their children.

“Then you change. Now if gets interesting!” Cephas explains that each game provides new ideas for gameplay, including not just advanced rules but also the challenge to children to get creative, albeit with the wise suggestion to try out one idea at a time so that they can see what works and hopefully learn why.

“The dice we designed sums all of this up in itself,” says Cephas. “You build it, play with it, and can change it. And it creates the element of chance in all our games which means that any player has a chance of winning a strategic game.”

Check out the full text of the interview here. Brett also has done a roundup of all the Lego Board Games. The games are currently available in the UK, but may be coming to North America in the near future.

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!

The article also includes our first look at high-resolution shots of the box art and minifigs.

In fact, Jens tells StarWars.com that “all the mini-figures except the A-wing pilot are brand new!”

Read the full interview on StarWars.com. For those of you wondering what a “Toys R Us Exclusive” means, it just means that TRU is the only store other than the LEGO Shop online and local LEGO Stores that will carry the set.

TBB: Tell us about yourself, how long have you been building?

Donut: I believe I was a kid when I got my first LEGO set, it had those cool minifigs in red, blue, and yellow that wore round hats and flew around in planes of all kinds of shapes. I feel like it’s been thirty years. I’ve been building since then until the LEGO sets themselves told me that I was too old. I was no longer 6-12 years old and that meant I can’t have no more bricks anymore. I was so overwhelmed with sadness when I gave away all my LEGO to my thirty-year old neighbor who said he had a son who loves LEGO, though I’ve never seen him. I felt so alone in the world without my bricks.

TBB: How did you get back into building?

Donut: I couldn’t bear to live a life without LEGO, so I rummaged the house and scavenged a handful of leftover bricks in all nooks and crannies. I secretly built in the closet in the basement every moment I can spare. I thought that if I’d been caught, it’d be worse than having cheated on my girlfriend. Eventually, I engineered a secret compartment in my house to store my bricks.

TBB: When did you decide to publicaly reveal your hobby and what inspired you to do so?

Donut: Well, not to sound gay or anything, but I came out of the closet just recently. I have to admit that the story was pretty embarrasing now that I think about it. I had been at work one day and was experiencing the most boring day of my life. Since the economy went bad, we were getting less and less customers to invest in our Margaritaville-brand magarita mixer. I was sitting in front of my computer thinking nothing but LEGO. All the while I wanted to search for LEGO on the internet. I thought that if I’d been caught, it’d be worse than having downloaded pr0n. In the end I caved in temptation, so I googled for LEGO. Lo and behold, there were all sorts of websites with adults and LEGO, it was like everyone was doing it back in the Sixties!

TBB: How did you feel afterwards?

Donut: Man, that was the best day of my life! When I came home I took out all my bricks and built for more than 48 hours non-stop. I wanted to share my creations with the world and see what everyone else is building. It was a shame I never took photos of my creations. I can say with certainty that there had been thousands of MOCs in my years of behind the scenes building. Although I’ve only built less than a dozen new creations this week, they’re all uploaded onto my new Flickr account.

TBB: In our last question to wrap up the interview, what have you concluded from your unusual experience with LEGO?

Donut: If Yu-Gi-Oh was a minifig, he’d be saying “never stop believing in the heart of the bricks!” Phrases like that catch on when you have kids who watch cartoons. But in addition to that, I also want to say to never believe the age markings on the LEGO boxes, because you can never be too old to build. That’s what I love about these bricks, man: I get older, they stay the same shape. I love the smell of bricks in the morning. It smells like victory. Recently someone saw my LEGO room and told me that this is madness, but I screamed to his face “this is LEGOland!” and kicked him into the nearest uncovered manhole on the streets. From above I told him my momma always said “life is like a tub of LEGO bricks. You never know what you’re gonna get”. So until then, hasta la vista, baby.

Next up in our series of Admin interviews is a conversation we had with Dan Rubin, one of the Admins at Classic Space Forums.

TBB: How long has Classic Space been in existence?

Dan: The forums on classic-space.com (CSF) were publicly announced on December 19, 2004, so we’re just a couple of months from our Fourth anniversary. The site was founded by Chris Giddens, with help from some other members of the space community. A year or so ago, family and work pressures convinced Chris that he needed to step down, and he handed over CSF to me.

TBB: What is purpose of CSF?

Dan: Simply put, the purpose is the discussion of space and LEGO. It’s a place to hang out, and to discuss MOCs, and get criticism (constructive I hope) from other builders who build in these themes.

TBB: What does classic space include? More specifically, does it exclude Star Wars?

Dan: Classic-space really includes any sort of science fiction. This is not limited to purely space born creations, we also embrace steampunk, mecha, apocalego, and pretty much any other sci-fi genres you can think of. That means that we definitely don’t exclude Star Wars. However, Star Wars can be a bit of a sticky subject, as while it is welcome, it’s not our specialization. Many of the members of CSF have gotten tired of seeing new X-wing mocs, and can be a bit snippy about that, if they don’t see anything special or new about the latest post.

TBB: What is your vision for the future of CS?

Dan: My vision is for CSF to continue to grow and evolve as a place for discussion of scif-fi and sci-fi MOCs. I’m a huge believer in free speech, and I like to think that encourages frank and open exchange of ideas on the forum. Sometimes it also means that people can get carried away, but I like to think that we’re all enriched. The style of MOC critique on CSF is sometimes harsh, and while some people don’t like it when the kid gloves are off, others appreciate hearing a response other than “OMG! That’s awesome!”

TBB: How would you describe your members?

Dan: Our membership is constantly changing. Many of our members have been a part of the online LEGO community for five years or more, but we’re constantly growing. I think that, generally, our members are LEGO fans (be they AHOL or THOL) who are into sci-fi.

TBB: What issues are you dealing with as CS grows?

Dan: We’ve had various growing pains. We’ve had our fair share of flame wars and maturity issues among some of the members. I think this is common for pretty much any online forum, though. We’ve also had bandwidth issues. Steve Runnels hosts the forums and website on his own server, and foots the bill to keep the site online himself. Recently, I moved our concept art gallery – which is used to inspire sci-fi creations, even by LEGO designers – over to flickr.com in order to save some bandwidth.

TBB: What is the biggest reason that people should join CS?

Dan: If you want to see and discuss some great sci-fi MOCs, CSF is the place for you. We also have a lot of user-generated articles to help teach techniques for building sci-fi. It’s a great place to help hone your own space skills.

Thank you, Dan!

(see our interview with Eurobricks admin, Mark Larson, as well)

If you missed it the first time around in English, check it out:

• From LEGO fan to LEGO set designer
• Working as a LEGO Designer
• LEGO fan vs. LEGO Designer

The Brothers Brick releases all of our original content under a CreativeCommons license, and we’re happy to work with other LEGO fan sites and organizations to deliver our content in a variety of ways (like the mecha news feed on Mecha Hub). If you’re interested in using any of the content here on The Brothers Brick, just let us know.

And please let me know if I got the French in the headline wrong! ;-)

In this video, the lead designer introduces each of the designers for this new theme (click through the screen shot below to watch).

Yup, that’s Mark Stafford (Nabii) and Adam Grabowski (MisterZumbi), along with the rest of the talented designers for this theme. Don’t miss our recent interview with Mark, Adam’s take on what the Power Miners might have looked like had it been designed for adults, and check out more videos of LEGO Designers on LEGO.com.