About Ralph

Ralph Savelsberg, also known as Mad physicist, is an actual physicist, but he's not all that mad. He has been building with LEGO ever since he could first put two bricks together. He primarily builds scale models of cars and aircraft. You can find most of Ralph's stuff on his flickr pages.

Posts by Ralph

He is out there... Blue Thunder

Our resident Lemur recently got asked how contributors to this blog are selected. Of course, much of the process is top-secret, but I’m pretty sure a contributor should add something new and distinctive to the team, even if that something new and distinctive is a cute bushy tail and a willingness to take care of the paperwork. However, most of us share that we got into this because we like building our own models. Fan-built models are the bread and butter of this blog and knowing a thing or two about building definitely helps.

In the last two years, I have been working on a large collection of movie and TV vehicles. I have close to fifty of them now, but there are still plenty of cool and interesting examples left that I haven’t built yet. I already had a jet, but I did not yet have a helicopter, for instance. With Blue Thunder, that has now been rectified.

Blue Thunder was a fictional high-tech police helicopter that starred in the eponymous 1983 movie. Its pilot was played by Roy Scheider, who is probably better known for his role as the police-chief in Jaws. The movie lead to a short-lived TV series, which I used to watch religiously as a child. Although the plots of the episodes and the dialogue were undoubtedly cheesy, the helicopter was one of the coolest things ever. It didn’t talk or have a red light scanner bar, but it had a tail-mounted fan instead of a conventional tail rotor and a Gatling gun that was slaved to the pilot’s helmet. Two flyable helicopters were used in the filming: Aerospatiale Gazelles, painted in a largely dark blue colour scheme and modified with a nose-mounted pod housing sensors and the Gatling gun, an ‘armoured’ cockpit canopy consisting of flat panels and a few other gadgets.

The cockpit canopy was the trickiest bit of the build. Building a rectangular structure is fairly easy. Building something that is rounded is also doable, by stepping plates or by using combinations of slopes. Building a faceted structure, however, is just plain awkward and getting it more-or-less right took a lot of trail-and-error.

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Cruising in style with the Auburn Speedster

By his own admission, in terms of LEGO builds Vibor Cavor didn’t have a very productive 2014, building just one model. As far as I am concerned, however, quality trumps quantity and his new year is off to a good start. His latest model, the 1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, has quality in spades.

The Boattail Speedster is a prime example of thirties American luxury cars, with sleek Art Deco styling and high performance to match. I is also rare, with only a few hundred built before Auburn went bust in the Great Depression. Arguably, the original car looks even sleeker and more curvaceous than the model does, but to me it is not at all obvious how one could actually achieve that. With its beautifully sculpted mudguards, angled panels and working steering, this is one stylish build.

Two generations of Dutch DAF trucks

Apart from a few manufacturers of exotic sports cars and an assembly plant for Minis, the Netherlands don’t have much of a car-building industry. Things are different when it comes to trucks, however, with the Eindhoven-based truck builder DAF being market leader in several European countries. Dutchman Nanko Klein Paste has built several DAFs in the last few years. His latest is a classic T 2400 DO, which represents an early attempt by DAF at building a truck for the international market.

Versions of this truck were in production until 1975 and when I was a child they were still a fairly common sight on Dutch roads. The characteristic sloped front of the cab is particularly well captured. This classic model is flanked by a modern XF105, in the livery of the heavy lifting company Mammoet (Mammoth), which makes for a particularly nice comparison between the two generations.

Top 10 LEGO reviews of 2014 from The Brothers Brick

At the Brothers Brick, we regularly review the latest and most interesting LEGO sets and, this year, a movie too! With the new year already having started in some parts of the world, it is time for me to present the Top Ten LEGO reviews of 2014.

Lego 21116 Minecraft Crafting Box 8-in-1 [Review]

Our very own Chris was involved in the design of the first Minecraft set, which made him the obvious choice for reviewing the first new minifig scale Minecraft set. He wasn’t overly impressed, but that has not stopped the review from being our most popular of the year. The world loves Minecraft.
Lego Ideas Exo Suit out today [Review & Giveaway]
LEGO Ideas sets are featured pretty heavily in our Top Ten and the Exo Suit is one of the more original ideas to come out of it and one very much anticipated by adult fans of LEGO (as opposed to mere fans of pop culture). Peter Reid’s design looked a bit too flimsy to work as a set, but somehow the set designers pulled it off, whilst maintaining the overall greebly look. As an added bonus, we had a copy of the set to give away to one of our readers.
The Tumbler LEGO Set Review (76023)
What can I say? Batman gets the coolest gadgets!
LEGO Ideas Ghostbusters Ecto-1 Review
The pleasure of reviewing this was all mine. It’s another Ideas set, based on one of the funniest movies from the eighties. The end result is a cool car with some very useful parts.
Lego Simpsons House 71006 [Review]
Opinions on this set are divided among fans (does LEGO really want to be associated with this dysfunctional family?), but Nannan liked it; lots of neat details, parts and play features at a decent price per part.
70816 Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! [Review]
Most of us at the Brothers Brick are old enough to have fond memories of Classic Space sets. Benny’s spaceship, from the LEGO Movie, ticked all the right boxes for Dan.
Full of sly humor, the LEGO movie is a must-watch for all Lego fans -especially adults [Review]
I know that many of us were apprehensive about a movie about LEGO, expecting it to be a bit rubbish. However, Andrew liked it and I have yet to meet a LEGO fan who didn’t.
Lego Star Wars 75060 Slave-I [Review]
Depending on your view, the Slave I is either one of the coolest or one of the weirdest spaceships from the Star Wars franchise. Previous LEGO sets of this ship were relatively small, but even though the new version is also intended for minifigs, it is much bigger and far more detailed.
Lego Ideas 21110 research institute [Review]
LEGO sets have been criticised for enforcing gender stereotypes. I’m not sure whether the Research Institute is a successful LEGO Ideas set because of this, but Caylin certainly enjoyed seeing female minifigs in “real” life jobs that are fascinating, engaging, and fun.
10242: Mini Cooper [Review]
Last, but certainly not least in my book, is the Mini Cooper. In the last few years, car fans have been spoiled with excellent sets of classic cars and the Mini Cooper is no exception. It’s also full of very useful (dark green) parts

All in all, I think these are pretty neat sets. Of course, we do tend to pick those that we think you’ll like. In fact, we are already poring over lists and images of sets that will be released next year, so that we can keep the reviews coming. Happy New Year, everyone.

Lego Ideas announces two new sets: Birds and The Big Bang Theory

Although I do like the Ecto-1 set and am happy for fellow Brickish member Peter Reid, whose exo-suit got turned into a set, I never cared much about Lego Ideas. However, today LEGO announced the next two ideas that are to be turned into sets and I like both of them.

The first idea is the brainchild of Thomas Poulsom, who by coincidence is also a Brickish member. It is the fantastic Lego birds project.

The set will undoubtedly be a bit different from the submission, but I’m sure the birds will be cute and I can imagine a lot of people finding inspiration in the set to build their own birds. What is not to love?

The second is The Big Bang Theory, by Alatariel and GlenBricker.

As some of you may know, I have a PhD in physics and when this show first aired the then-girlfriend/ current wife of one of my friends remarked how much Sheldon, Leonard, Rajesh and Howard reminded her of her boyfriend and his circle of friends, including yours truly. We never had the same superhero fetish as the characters in the show and, of course, she is far smarter than Penny, but I cannot deny the similarities. Somewhat worryingly, though, in The Big Bang theory it’s Sheldon who builds with LEGO, referring to his Lego Death Star in a number of episodes. In any case, the submitted model has all the characters and lots of details of Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment and I’d be surprised if the final set won’t include all of the characters as minifigs. Somehow I picture Sheldon’s as wearing a green T-shirt with a classic space logo.

Postcards from the Great Western Brick Show

Four weeks ago, while most of my fellow Brothers were at BrickCon in Seattle, I made my annual journey to Steam, the Museum of the Great Western Railway in Swindon (UK), for The Great Western Brick Show. I was going to write a report on this shortly after returning home, but have had some health issues lately. Luckily fellow Dutchman Red Spacecat also attended the show and has made my job a lot easier by making two very nice postcard views with his highlights of the show.

Although a few non-British builders travelled to Swindon, most exhibitors are members of The Brickish Association, which is the main Lego Users Group for the UK, and, as I wrote in my announcement several weeks ago, the show is practically a who-is-who of British builders. Andrew already highlighted the fantastic display of Victorian London, but the quality of almost all of the displays was very high, as you can see in the walk-through video shot by Silent Mode and the detail pictures of the displays made by BrickMick.

Unlike US conventions such as BrickCon, the show was centred on a two-day long public display. There were some activities for the exhibitors, though. We had a very nice dinner in the museum on the Saturday evening, followed by a hilarious auction (and a long night drinking pints in the hotel bar for some of us). The atmosphere during public hours was also sufficiently relaxed to allow plenty of opportunity to talk to other builders and to look at their models. It was a great weekend.

Exclusive Hobbit Game launch brick is being auctioned for charity

Whenever TT Games releases a new computer game, people who made significant contributions to the game in question are presented with launch bricks. We had two of these to give away several years ago, but they are normally not available to people outside the company. However, through the help of TT games designer Carl Greatrix, a launch brick from the latest Hobbit Game, with a Bard The Bowman minifigure, has been given to Fairy Bricks, which is a UK charity that donates LEGO sets to hospitals and hospices.

Fairy Bricks is now auctioning this brick via eBay; an extremely rare opportunity to get your hands on this exclusive item. I’m sometimes shocked by the amounts of money that are being paid for LEGO collectables, but with the proceeds going to a good cause in this case, I’ll say start your bidding!

Less than a week to Steam

My American brothers are understandably excited about BrickCon, which takes place less than a week from now. Among British AFOLs and for myself, however, excitement is mounting for another event, the Great Western Brick Show, colloquially known as Steam. It is held in the coming weekend at STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway, in Swindon in the UK.

I myself will be there displaying my film and TV cars, but the show is practically a who’s who of British builders. For example:

Carl Greatrix will be displaying trains, his recent cars and his F-4 Phantoms,
Peter Reid, designer of the exo-suit, will be in attendance talking to fans and showing off his space models,
the guys from Bright Bricks are preparing something huge (it is still a surprise, but as far as I know it is bigger than Intrepid),
Warren Elsmore, the writer of Brick City and Brick Wonders will be displaying his new airport layout,
Brick to the past, which is the collective of builders who brought us Tigelfah castle last year, will be displaying a large layout of Victorian-era London.

If you’re in the UK and don’t come to this show, you are missing out on what promises to be a great show. However, you can check out TV coverage of the event via Swindonweb TV. They will be broadcasting on Saturday, and include footage live from the show and interviews with some of the builders. Of course, you can also expect me to write an event report after I get back.

Seventy years since Market Garden

This weekend, in the Netherlands celebrations are being held to commemorate the 70st anniversary of Operation Market Garden. This was a bold attempt by the Allies to capture bridges over a number of important rivers in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and build a bridgehead across the river Rhine. This would bring their forces to the doorstep of Germany’s industrial heartland and, in the words of Field-Marshall Montgomery, would end the war in Europe before Christmas 1944. Airborne Troops were dropped far behind enemy lines to capture the bridges, while ground troops fought their way from Belgium through the Southern Netherlands to relieve them.

It was one of the largest airborne operations of the war, which inevitably involved large numbers of C-47 Skytrain transports, such as the one built by Kenneth Vaessen, still marked with the black-and-white stripes that were applied to aircraft that participated in the D-day landing a few months earlier. (Kenneth actually posted it a few weeks ago, but I decided to wait for this opportunity to write about it.)

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned. The relief columns were held up and German resistance, in particular in Arnhem, was much stronger than anticipated. The allied advance was halted, thousands of Allied troops were killed, as well as thousands of German troops and numerous Dutch civilians. The war lasted eight more months, but much of the Southern Netherlands was liberated during the operation by soldiers from Canada, the UK, US and Poland.

I built a car. It turned out to be an alien robot.

Lugnuts, the online club for LEGO car enthusiasts, is currently running its 83rd build challenge, called Only in America. It’s all about cars from the USA. I decided I was going to build a typical American muscle car as my entry: a Chevrolet Camaro.

Some of you may think that there is nothing particularly special about it. It looks pretty much like all of the other cars I build: it has studs on top, brick-built windows that are pretty much opaque and, while some bits of it are built sideways, the construction does not look particularly complicated. I suppose that superficially it’s a bit old-school really.

If you are a fan of Transformers you may have realised that it is in fact the Transformer Bumblebee, from one of the Michael Bay live-action films, in car mode. It serves as the latest addition to my ever-growing collection of vehicles from films and TV series. However, you may not realise that there is more to it than meets the eye.
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The Phabulous Phantom

We have featured a fair few trains built by Carl Greatrix (bricktrix) in the past. More recently he turned his attention to cars. Apparently there isn’t much that he cannot do, as he has now built an F-4B Phantom II jet fighter and it is gorgeous. I have been following his work-in-progress pictures for weeks, eagerly looking forward to the finished model.

In the sixties and early seventies, the Phantom was the premier fighter aircraft in the US armed forces, serving with the Navy, Marine Corps and the Air Force. Carl’s model wears flamboyant markings typical for US Navy Phantoms. The markings of VF-161 Chargers, which was home-based in Japan as part of the Air wing assigned to USS Midway, were some of the most attractive ever to grace a Phantom and I applaud Carl for choosing this squadron. The model isn’t just good-looking, but has a lot of functionality too. It has opening cockpits, for instance, as well as a retractable undercarriage and moveable control surfaces. Although I actually like studs on a model and prefer my own aircraft models to be somewhat less reliant on stickers, it’s interesting to see Carl apply his typical style to this subject. The result is phabulous.

Do YOU want to be a professional LEGO builder?

This may be your chance. Carl Greatrix, who has been working for Tt Games since 2009 (after responding to an advert on this blog) has been in touch. Tt Games, who produce computer games for LEGO, are looking for a new Model Designer to strengthen their team.

LEGO Model Designer
Location: Knutsford (UK)
Advertisement publish date: 10/09/14
Start date: ASAP
Salary: £Competitive + benefits
Duration: Permanent

We are looking for a LEGO Model Designer with a keen interest in Tt Games LEGO Console Games. This is a rare opportunity to become part of the team responsible for bespoke LEGO Models as seen throughout our multi award winning published titles.

You will join the LEGO Models team and work together with designers and technical artists to provide quality LEGO Designs such as creatures and vehicles for in-game use, as well as props of all sizes as used by the Cinematic and wider LEGO Construction teams.

As LEGO Model Designer, you will be responsible for:

Designing vehicles, creatures, props, decorations and stickers for models, from idea to final in-game workable asset.
Ensuring that the LEGO Group’s visual identity is maintained within the LEGO Model Designs.

You’ll work with a variety of departments and with many different stakeholders throughout the development process. These include creative leaders and model designers as well as level directors, level designers and construction artists.
As part of the Tt Games Group, you will join a family orientated team where collaboration and creativity are cornerstones. By combining your experience and imagination, we trust you to help us find the best solutions for our products and help further develop our catalogue of LEGO Console Games.

You should be passionate about designing for our target family demographic. Your areas of interest in LEGO models should include the following: In-organic models such as vehicles and buildings as well as organic models such as creatures and plants.

To succeed in this position, you:

Are an experienced LEGO Model Designer and are able to master several different building styles.
Have an in depth knowledge of current and previous LEGO themes such as City, Creator, Superheroes, Technics, etc.
Are a team player, but are also able to work independently, structure your working day and manage your time to meet the many deadlines you’ll be set throughout the development process.
Thrive in an informal, innovative environment, where you’ll receive a wide variety tasks requiring both a creative and technical mind-set.

Apply to jobs@t-tales.com with LEGO Model Designer as the subject.

People who have a keen interest in LEGO games and an experienced LEGO model designer? Surely some of our readers will fit this profile.

About Ralph

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