Jeramy Spurgeon and the team have just released a double issue edition of RAILBRICKS magazine covering all things LEGO trains. It has in-depth articles on a few models we’ve featured here on TBB.
This 100 page issue was a long time coming, but features an interview with UK
builder Carl Greatrix, more Steam tips & Tricks, the Indiana Jones Circus
Train MOC by Brian Williams, Billund’s Miniland Trains, and much more!
Check out the website to download or read the magazine.
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!
With my latest model I went public with what I usually keep private: my building stages. Since the photos and comments were up I thought it might be interesting to share this process with TBB as an example of how I (and I imagine many other people) build something.
I then made an LDraw rough draught of the building to try to get the basic layout and proportions as well as the most prominent details. I also wanted to get an idea of how many dark orange bricks I would need to build it to see if I had to order any.
Following comments from ‘the commitee’ I proceeded to make a slightly more refined model with some of the details included. You can see that the roof has been vastly improved and the entire model has become one brick taller.
For my final work-in-progress (WIP) stage I substantially altered many of the details and added still more. It should be noted that at all stages so far the model doesn’t have a back. At this stage I also learnt that the model was a) not a model of what I thought it was and b) not at all valid in its current form. I then conspired (away from the commitee) to remedy this for the final, secret, version.
Finally I spent many hours of back-ache transferring the CAD to brick and adding on all the final details (as well as a back). I changed the design from a coal drop to a small railside warehouse as I’ve always wanted to build one and it made more sense. I also altered bits of the design to allow various components to pop out for added playability.
And thus a model was born. I hope I satisfied the commitee as well as everyone else. Have fun spotting what has remained throughout the design process.
Yes, I know this picture, by Jason Railton is rather old, but I just found it. It has the best wave technique I’ve ever seen, bar none. Incredible!
If you’re a builder, you most likely have run into situations when you got one of these Technic pins stuck. Luckily, barman has a solution that may save you a broken fingernail or two. In this simple little device, the exposed end of the pin is inserted into a Technic brick and held in place by the increased friction from an bar that’s then inserted into the pin. You can build the device yourself from the instructions and see if it’s worth the effort!
I don’t think I’ve ever blogged a technique before but since this one is fast becoming one of my most ‘favorite’d pictures on flickr I thought I might share it more broadly. I came up with the idea after seeing Peter Norman (swoofty) post these incredible (and complicated) stripes. As I am lazy I wanted to simplify them.
Many of you will be familiar with studs-not-on-top (SNOT) techniques and many of those will actually know what it means (for the rest it means building with the studs not pointing vertically, not building a smooth model). Commonly this is achieved using certain popular bricks such as headlight bricks, bricks with studs on two or four sides and brackets as well as plenty of others.
What many of us forget (myself included) is that bars and clips provide an alternative way to change stud directions which is sometimes more compact and simpler than using bricks. It can be easy to get caught up in trickery [1] and neglect the simple answer. I would guess that set designers more often use these techniques than AFOLs and I suspect that part of this is that they are working to harsher constraints than we are. Their models must be simple.
Anyway, the point of this rambling is that LEGO so often provides many different ways to achieve the same result and that sometimes looking outside your usual tricks can be a good way to find them. You never know, it may save you an hour of work.
[1] On the topic of overcomplicating things I can remember one memorable occassion where I spent about an hour trying out various SNOT techniques for a train windscreen. One of my friends then pointed out that a windscreen piece would do the job perfectly. It did.
Ben Ellermann brought some fire to the Pirate layout at BrickWorld this year. This light-up volcano is one of my favorite recent LEGO creations. I may have to figure out a way to incorporate this technique myself. After all imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?
Flickr newcomer mad_a0 recently exploded onto the scene with this awesomely detailed minifig-scale tank.
Very cool, certainly, but what sets this tank apart is that mad_a0 has built a fully detailed interior. Most LEGO tanks are lucky to fit a minifig driver, much less components like a removable engine.
The exploded view itself is a study in excellent presentation. See more photos on Flickr.
