Category Archives: People

LEGO fandom is a worldwide phenomenon, a vast community. Whether you consider yourself an AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO), ALE (Adult LEGO Enthusiast), some other crazy acronym, a parent of a young builder, or even just a casual fan who appreciates all the amazing models LEGO builders create, there’s more to LEGO than just the models themselves. Here at The Brothers Brick, we bring you the stories behind the models, with interviews, builder profiles, and more.

Mission to Mars: An Interview with MSL Curiosity Rover builder Stephen Pakbaz

UPDATE (June 14, 2013): Stephen’s LEGO Curiosity Rover will be the next LEGO CUUSOO set!

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The Brothers Brick has featured the Mars Rover Curiosity CUUSOO project before as one of the more original and stand out projects on LEGO CUUSOO right now. But here is a surprising factoid, the creator of this model, Stephen Pakbaz, aka Perijove, was an actual engineer for Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and worked on designing the very same Mars Rover in real life! The Brothers Brick decided to interview Stephen.

TBB: Tell us about your background?

Perijove: I received my Bachelors Degree at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana, majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Aerospace and a minor in Electrical Engineering, and then a Masters Degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego in California.

TBB: What was your position at Jet Propulsion Laboratory?

Perijove: My position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was a Mechanical Engineer in the Structures and Configurations Group. I also sometimes took on the responsibilities of a Cognizant Engineer.

TBB: Can you tell us about your work on the Curiosity Rover?

Perijove: The Curiosity rover was the first spacecraft I ever worked on after I finished with school in 2007. Even back then, the rover development was well underway, but there was still a lot of design, assembly, and testing left to do. I took part in all of these activities. I designed parts like brackets and covers and was responsible for their development all the way through delivering them to the technicians that would put them on the rover. Other tasks included writing procedures, assembling, and testing things like telecommunications systems and antennas. Types of testing included vibration, shock, and thermal-vacuum to simulate the different environments that would be experienced by the rover. One particularly fun test was bolting an engineering model of Curiosity to a 50 foot diameter centrifuge and spinning it up to over 20 g’s in order to simulate the forces the rover would experience during entry into the Martian atmosphere.

TBB: How long have you been a Lego enthusiast?

Perijove: I have been a LEGO enthusiast since at least elementary school. My own collection, at the time, was mostly pieces like simple bricks and wheels, but I would often play with friends and their collections too.

TBB: What experience did you have with Lego as a kid?

Perijove: My collection began to include more complex pieces just before middle school. I mostly built minifigure-sized robots and spaceships. Play scenarios often including using all my pieces to build a massive spaceship to move my entire minifigure population to another habitable planet before their current one was destroyed by a huge asteroid or a rogue robot. (Wow, that just brought on some powerful nostalgia!)

TBB: Did LEGO play a role in your chosen career path?

Perijove: LEGO absolutely had an impact on my career path. In high school, I spent much of my free time designing things like manned missions to the moons of Jupiter in graph paper notebooks. I often drew the designs with LEGO pieces so I could eventually create real models. This was also a great way to learn everything I could about space travel from interesting destinations and past missions to new forms of propulsion and radiation protection. LEGO has also been a great tool for quickly making quick prototypes of various mechanisms and other ideas to see how they worked.

TBB: What were your favorite sets/ themes as a child?

Perijove: Most of the space themes, of course, were my favorite, like M-Tron, Ice-Planet 2002, Exploriens, Roboforce, etc. Technic and Trains were great too, but those kinds of sets were often too expensive for me. I would have to say one of my favorite sets was 6338 Shuttle Launch Pad.

TBB: Did you ever experience a dark age?

Perijove: I never experienced a total dark age, but more like a dim age, while I was at school in Indiana. I couldn’t bring my entire collection with me form California, but I did manage to keep a few choice models and pieces with me. During this time, I also satisfied my LEGO habit as a volunteer and mentor for kids in the First LEGO League, a popular nationwide LEGO robotics competition. I had a lot of fun teaching kids about the mechanical possibilities of LEGO and seeing their robots compete and cooperate with eachother.

TBB: Did having first hand experience on the real Curiosity help with the design of the Lego version?

Perijove: I learn best by seeing and touching, which perhaps explains my affinity for mechanical engineering and LEGO. The rocker-bogie suspension system on the rover was just so cool, that I needed to make a LEGO version that I could play with. Being so close to the real rover all the time, designing a few small parts for it, and working with larger assemblies certainly helped me to understand its features, what they did, and how they worked. I’m hoping the LEGO Curiosity rover does the same for others.

TBB: Did you follow the progress of the rover’s trip to Mars?

Perijove: I kept up on every piece of information about the rover that was available to me. This was the first project where I was finally able to put my years of engineering education to use, so I really wanted it to be successful. I saw the landing live and ate plenty of peanuts beforehand for good luck, a tradition at JPL before critical mission events.

TBB: How did you feel about the landing?

Perijove: The landing itself was a conflicting conflagration of emotion. In my mind, I was confident of the success of the landing. My heart and other organs were filled with excitement, fear, nervousness, anticipation and, of course, curiosity. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep afterwards and spent that time calming down, talking to family and friends, and watching all the events that happened shortly afterwards.

TBB: Any thoughts about the historical significance of this achievement?

Perijove: The landing itself was quite historic. The ability to land such a large payload so precisely will be extremely important to future efforts. Though it’s still too early to be sure of the historical significance of the scientific returns of the mission, I’m sure it will be something wonderful. As for the significance of my own involvement, I think it’s kind of cool to think that long after the Great Pyramids on Earth have perished over time, it is possible that the rover I worked on will still be preserved on Mars (unless, of course, it becomes a victim of space looters).

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Truck Geniuses Hanging Out

Three of the best truck builders out there (Ingmar Spijkhoven, Dennis Bosman and Bricksonwheels) decided to meet. Here is how some of their models look brought together. You might have seen some of those before, but I guess never in this awesome combos.

Guy H. Getting All Decked Out With Steampunk Playing Cards

That fantastic gentleman of steampunkery, Guy H., aka V&A Steamworks, has concocted a plan wherewith he shall mix up our plastic toys with our card playing and brass goggling.

His latest endeavor is a Kickstarter project to fund the creation of a terrifically designed full deck of Steampunk Lego playing cards. He’s packed it out with lots of fictional Victorian interest, like Jack the Ripper, a nunchuck-wielding Abraham Lincoln, and my favourite: an amusing choice between Edison and Tesla for the King of Clubs. Impressively, he’s even getting these printed by Bicycle. Evidently, however, the only way you’ll be able to purchase one is by supporting the project, so, gentlemen and ladies, prepare your pocketbooks.

Brickworld 2012 Chicago Wrap Up

This past Sunday concluded this year’s Chicago Brickworld, and I’ve finally recovered and rested up a bit from the trip (and subsequent cold). This was only my second Lego convention, and I think it’s safe to say I’m hooked. The convention space at the Westin hotel was enormous. I’m sure many of you will have already seen the video walk-through that Nannan and I did of the three display rooms, which runs over 45 minutes and still isn’t comprehensive. Evidently they’re looking at moving to an even larger space next year that can accommodate all of the displays in a single room, which would be quite something. Unlike Brickcon, the other convention I’ve attended, the majority of the displays are arranged by builder, and not theme. I think there’s a lot of merit to both ways–while it’s awesome seeing huge tables full of sci-fi MOCs, it’s also quite fun to see all the different sorts of things a single person builds.

It was great fun getting to meet the people behind the avatars of so many great builders, such as fellow TBB’er Nannan and his counterpart in perpetrating unusually large dioramas Tyler Clites, LDM, and Si-MOCs, among many, many others. One of the highlights for me was a Saturday night unscheduled M-Tron building competition (generously organized and judged by a great guy whose name escapes me currently). After looking at so many terrific MOCs for three days straight, I was itching to build, and with 90 minutes and a large and hilariously haphazard collection of pieces, about a dozen of us sat down and pounded some mean MOCs out.

There were too many fantastic MOCs (including the one featured in the previous post) to possibly highlight them all, so I’ll just conclude by saying that you should definitely check out the Brickworld flickr pool, and even better, attend next year and meet lots of other great LEGO fans and see the stuff in person.

Hello from Canada...eh!

Hello fellow LEGO maniacs!!!! To say that I am excited to be a part of The Brothers Brick is an understatement. TBB has been my daily dose of LEGO news and models for years now, so I am absolutely pumped to now be a part of it.

To introduce myself, the name is TR Brownridge, but you can call me Tromas…or TR…whichever you would prefer really. I stem from the Great White North that is Canada. When it comes to LEGO, for me it is all about playing and most importantly FUN!!! Those of you who know me from flickr will know that I am just as happy building something for either of my two sons as I am for myself, and even when I do build it ‘for them’…they have to fight me to play with it.

I tend to build primarily in the space/sci-fi theme…

but have been known to dabble in other genres as well…

So long story short, I am so unbelievably happy to be here, and so very, very excited for things to come!!!

New Guy on the Blog

Greetings to all our fellow readers! I’m new here, and will be entertaining you with awesome creations from our huge LEGO fan community from now on. But, as is customary and considered polite, I should first introduce myself.

My name is Matija Grguric, and I come from Croatia. I am active on both MOCpages and Flickr, and you might’ve seen my work there. My daily job is also LEGO – not building, but second best – selling. That is the reason I have lots of time and bricks on my hands, so I am a pretty active builder. I’m currently working on two projects – Mediterranean Town and Civilization series. The first one is still new, but here is a sneak peak – corner house. I am hoping to make a few streets of those.

Civilization Series, or the Wonders of the Ancient world (still trying to figure out a title) is something I’ve been working on on and off for a year now. Recently I am trying to make it a set using CUUSOO — so here’s another try — Support those if you like them! Most recent addition to the series is the lost city of Inca – Machu Picchu.

That’s all from me now. Enjoy LEGO.

Video tour of the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum

Josh from A Look at Lego takes us on a visit with Dan Brown of the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum in Bellaire, Ohio. You may have heard of this unofficial Lego museum in LEGO: A Love Story and wondered what the place actually looks like. This video shows a glimpse of the largest private Lego collection in the world.

Mihai’s Inferno: The 9 circles of Hell made in Lego

Mihai Mihu completed a series of creations depicting the 9 circles of Hell. While staying true to the theme of poetic justice served to the sinners, Mihai portrays the punishments through his own interpretations. The recurring architectural elements and portrayal of the sinners tie the scenes together in a way that’s easy for the viewer to transition through. In this short interview, the builder talks about his project and the individual circles of Hell.

TBB: Tell us about your 9 circles of Hell project.

Mihai Mihu: It all started last year with a contest on MOCpages (The 2011 MOC Olympics) where I was challenged to build a MOC in just two colors. I decided to approach an architecture theme for the entry as it was in my comfort zone. While building and the things progressed, the lack of colors made the MOC look lifeless. It was then when I had the idea to transform it into an underworld scene and I named it Limbo.

After the many positive comments that I received, I thought and then decided that it would be great to continue this MOC as an artistic series and I saw a great opportunity to display my skills and my love for design and architecture.

The whole project took me 7 months to complete, with about 2 to 3 weeks for the development of the ideas, design and building of each circle.

TBB: What is your approach to depicting each circle?

MM: The concept of the 9 circles is the work of maybe the first true master of fiction Dante Alighieri. It’s such an interesting idea, and I’ve been meaning to make a re-imagining of the hell depicted by him.

I didn’t read the Divine Comedy, only the small descriptions of the circles I found on Wikipedia and on other websites. I didn’t want to be much influenced by the original descriptions because I wanted to give a whole new fresh approach for each circle. I thought more about the significance of titles and from then on it was only my imagination.

TBB: Tell us about each of the creations.

MM: I. LIMBO

A place of monotony, here the souls are punished to wander in restless existence while they moan helplessly in echoes between the ruins of a temple.

II. LUST

Surrounded by erotic representations, those overcome by lust are forced to watch and experience disgusting things, ultimately being condemned to drown in the menstrual river.

III. GLUTTONY

The circle itself is a living abomination, a hellish digestive system revealing horrific faces with mouths ready to devour the gluttons over and over for eternity.

IV. GREED

This pompous place is reserved for the punishment of the greedy ones. The hands of the damned are popping out of the walls and are trying to grab the riches around them or to drag the new arrivals in and feed on their lust for wealth.

V. ANGER

In this depressing place the souls are trapped in the swamp, they can’t move and they cannot manifest their frustration which is making them even more angry. Here I wanted to approach a theme more about feelings and emotions. The weeping statue represents those who turned their sadness into anger.

VI. HERESY

The giant demon watches closely over his fire pit, dwarfing the damned that are dragging the new arrivals in the boiling lava. Those who committed the greatest sins against God are getting a special treatment inside the temple where they are doomed to burn for eternity in the scorching flames.

VII. VIOLENCE

A place of intense torture where the horrific screams of the damned are eternally accompanied by the hellish beats of drums. There are lots of elements here to convey violence like the suicide statues on top of the ruined citadel, the hanged souls or the river of blood.

VIII. FRAUD

In Fraud the Demons enjoy altering the shape of souls, this is how they feed. In this process, the soul manifests its true fraudulent nature and reveals the cheats and tricks that it has committed in life. This is also the place of the cries and lament of a chained Titan who betrayed Zeus.

IX. TREACHERY

Lucifer lies here chained by the Angelic Seal which keeps him captive in the frozen environment. All the souls who are cast in Treachery are first processed by the flying demons at the temple where the Judas coins are.

TBB: Which build is your favorite and which circle would you least want to be in?

MM: My favorite build is Greed, because it has a really special feel to it. I like its majestic look and the powerful emotional contrast it expresses. It’s beautiful but sinister at the same time.

Gluttony is the circle I would least want to be in. It’s always freaked me out, it’s disgusting, chaotic and vital, definitely not a place to get stuck.

Check out these Studs!

Brandon Griffith, who you may remember from his role in the awesome Tower of Orthanc diorama, has a cool new project up on Kickstarter. It’s a set of trading cards, but the subjects aren’t athletes, they’re LEGO builders and their creations. The mock-up photos look pretty awesome to me, and I’m also honored to say that I’ve been asked to be an artist in the series.

A Look at Lego podcast interviews Bruce Lowell and Legohaulic

A Look at Lego podcast recently posted interviews with two builders we feature quite often on the blog: Bruce Lowell and Legohaulic. This is a great opportunity for you to get to know both builders and their backgrounds beyond pictures of their works. Click on the banner below to access the podcasts.

Attack of the Show – Rad Jobs With LEGO

G4’s Attack of the Show featured a segment called “Rad Jobs With LEGO” featuring Erik Varszegi.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9otQKelWZSY

LAML Radio interviews Andy Hung and Schneider Cheung

Whether you are familiar with Lego podcasts, they provide unique knowledge about the hobby. LAML Radio and A Look At Lego Podcast are two sources I’m aware of that regularly post new episodes and interviews.

I want to highlight the most recent show from LAML Radio containing interviews with Andy Hung and Schneider Cheung, two of the most well known AFOLs in Hong Kong whose works are also familiar to many of our readers. Even though our interactions with the active and talented Hong Kong AFOL community are limited by the language barrier, we seldom cease to appreciate their works in the instances they were featured on the blog.

Click on the image below to download the episode of the podcast.