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.

Masoko Tanga interviews Lukas

Brenden Wilson of Masoko Tanga recently interviewed talented young builder Lukas Winklerprins.

Lukas talks about the difference between the hardcore adult fan community of a few years ago, discovering that world, and the much more diverse LEGO fan community today:

The starting group in toy chat rooms, LUGnet, and ultimately Classic-Space was started by men pretty much over the age of 30…. We weren’t aware of this more intense way of building until we were old enough to get on the internet and realize we could participate too….I realized how much people really cared and how much work other people put into the hobby

And on building microscale:

Once you toss the minifig out the window [*shock* -AB] really anything can be made…. it lets extraneous parts get unique uses and doesn’t destroy my collection. It also allows for a myriad of unique shapes unrestricted by gravity or that pesky thing known as “common sense.”

Read the full interview on Masoko Tanga.

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Pictures are finally leaking out of BrickFair!

If you’ve been wondering where all the Lego fans have gone, they’re at Brickfair! Here are a few galleries of pics, to satisfy your Lego craving. If, like me, you didn’t get to go….

There is also a Flickr Brickfair pool, if you need more…

Celebrating GO MINIMAN GO – “30 Years: The Story of the Minifigure”

David Pagano, Nate Burr and myself were all recently asked by the LEGO Company to make a brickfilm to celebrate the LEGO minifigure’s 30th birthday. This is my contribution, 30 Years: The Story of the Minifigure. How many historical figures/events can you name?

Don’t forget to check out GOMINIMANGO.com for more videos and a contest (details coming soon to a blog near you!)

Interior decorating by minifig

I had the pleasure of hanging out with Thom (aka minifig) on my recent trip to London. Over non-alcoholic drinks at a lovely neighborhood pub far from the tourist crowds, the conversation inevitably turned to LEGO.

Thom apparently decorates his home with great little LEGO scenes. On arrival back in the States, I was pleased to see that he’d uploaded several of the scenes we talked about, including this intrepid streaker:

And these Technic figures with their AT-AT pet:

I was going to close with a sarcastic comment about the obscurity of the British people that Thom’s been honoring in ABS lately, but it turns out that Townes Van Zandt was an American, and I’m just ignorant. :-P

LAML Radio August interviews (Part 3)

If you’ve been keeping up with LAML Radio, you know that James the host is presenting a podcast interview with a talented builder each day in August. Here’s yet another update of the featured builders in the past few days.

Lee Magpili
Matt Hamann
Eric Harshbarger
Lukas Winklerprins
Mike Psiaki
Chris Doyle
Ralph Savelsberg
Chris Giddens

Happy 30th birthday to the LEGO minifig!

The LEGO minifigure turns 30 today. The very first minifig I got was in 1978, when I was 3 years old. Mr. Policeman had a stickered torso (right).

Today, minifigs are of course my favorite aspect of playing with LEGO, mainly because minifigs represent infinite possibilities.

Former LEGOLAND Master Model Designer Mariann Asanuma puts it best: “Minifigs, in all their countless varieties, are one of the best things that LEGO ever invented.” Indeed.

Naturally, the Internet is abuzz with congratulatory messages for our little plastic friends.

Here at The Brothers Brick, we’re hosting the GO MINIMAN GO Photo Contest, and Gizmodo is hosting a GO MINIMAN GO Video Competition.

If you’re interested in reading all about how the minifig was invented, you can read Minifig History on Minifig.co.uk.

It may just be another day at the office for Justin Vaughn:

But Michael Jasper, the Leonardo da Vinci of minifig builders, conveniently updates his “Things” folder with a pair of tricycles:

There’s a surprising turn of events in this birthday scene by J.R. Schwartz:

So, a very happy birthday to the LEGO minifig! I hope I’m still playing with minifigs when I’m 63, and then again when I’m 93.

LAML Radio August interviews (Part 2)

If you’ve been keeping up with LAML Radio, you know that James the host is presenting a podcast interview with a talented builder each day in August. Here’s an update of the featured builders in the past few days.

Patrick Biggs
Rocko (take two!)
Ed Diment
Mister oo7
Andrew Lee
Arthur Gugick
Peter Morris
Legohaulic

Geekdad wants you! [News]

We have recently been contacted by John Baichtal of the Geekdad blog, on Wired. He is writing a book on our extremely addictive hobby and he wants you in it! Why you? Because you are charming, pretty, and you collect Lego.

He wants to profile as many adult builders as possible. While not everyone will make it into the book, he is planning on including a bunch of you crazy people. The more interesting the better, he said. And I know you folks are interesting. I’ve hung out with you at Cons, in chat rooms, and in forums. “Interesting” may be putting it mildly.

Anyway, are you in? If so, send the following info to John (brickbook@yahoo.com):

1) Headshot

2) Your name as you would like it to appear, your location and your age.

3) Answer as many of the following questions as you’d like:

What are you building?

Favorite set?

Favorite brick color?

Favorite genre?

What music do you listen to when building?

When’s your best building time?

If I left off a question you’re dying to answer, feel free to include it.

So there you are! Its your chance at those coveted 15 minutes of fame. Get cracking!

(BrickCon people pics by Caylin Fiering and John Langrish)

LAML Radio August interviews (Part 1)

As you may know, LAML Radio is making a special effort to feature one talented builder in a podcast interview each day in the month of August. James is on schedule and has turned out seven episodes featuring the following builders:

Nnenn
Steven Marshall
Shannon Ocean
Bryce McGlone
Nick Dean
Tim Gould
SlyOwl

I will be posting a roundup of the interviews each week.

Nnenn on LAML Radio!

James Wadsworth, host of LAML Radio, has audaciously reached the most mysterious builder on the internet – Nnenn. As a highly prolific space artist, Nnenn has astounded LEGO fans with his polished and stylized spacecrafts. As a person he remained nameless and faceless online. Now LAML Radio has a detailed and comprehensive podcast interview with Nnenn, enjoy!

Furthermore, throughout the month of August, James will attempt to interview one builder each day! Check back often at LAML Radio; you’ll never know who’s next.

More LEGO Sport City details and behind-the-scenes photos from HKLUG

We recently highlighted HKLUG’s LEGO Sport City display, with huge models of the venues we’ll be seeing in the Beijing Olympics next month.

Thanks to LEGO Ambassador and HKLUG member Tsang Yiu Keung (better known as Chiukeung), we have lots more information on the models, including behind-the-scenes photos.

Chiukeung gives a sense of just how large the display is:

Venues recreated in LEGO include the National Stadium (nicknamed “The Bird’s Nest”), National Aquatics Center (“Swimming Cube”), and Olympic Village.

The finished display is certainly impressive, but the behind-the-scenes photos reveal the true scale and impressive techniques that went into the LEGO Sport City.

The iconic National Stadium was designed by Ming, an architect by trade. It took him over 100 hours to complete, and is 128×154 studs in size (that’s about 40″ x 48″). The outer shell includes thousands of hinge plates.

The National Aquatics Center was built by Vincent Cheung over the course of 120 hours, and has a three-tier design with a cell-like structure in the transparent blue walls.

The Swimming Cube is illuminated with a fluorescent lamp inside, and measures 148 by 148 studs, or 46″ on each side.

Chiukeung built the Olympic Village, which is 160 x 224 studs (50″ x 70″). Chiukeung spent 100 hours on the project.

There’s lots more to see (56 pictures in all) in the HKLUG LEGO Sport City photoset on Flickr, including the Equestrian stadium by Hudson, Greek temple by Wai Kee, and various Chinese and European buildings by Andy. The mosaic was built by Hot, who also coordinated the entire project.

If you’re in Hong Kong, you can see this LEGO display for yourself at Grand Century Place between now and August 31, 2008.

Thanks again to HKLUG and Chiukeung for the behind-the-scenes info and photos!

The Brothers Brick turns 3 today! [Editorial]

Today marks the third anniversary of The Brothers Brick!

I believe that 2007-2008 was the year that The Brothers Brick truly became more than just another LEGO blog. All of you out there make this a community, with LEGO Ambassadors representing the tens of thousands of you who visit the site.

The LEGO fan community has seen its shares of ups and downs over this past year. We rallied together during the Great Brickshelf Crisis of 2007, and we’ve avoided much of the fragmentation I feared at the time. In addition to blogs and other online venues like The Brothers Brick, fans can now get their LEGO fix in print from BrickJournal and listen to the LAMLradio podcast on their MP3 players.

We’ve also been fortunate to add two contributors over this past year. Nannan Zhang has brought much-appreciated energy, while we look forward to columns from Keith Goldman. Thanks to Nannan, our event coverage expanded beyond my posts about BrickCon last October to include his news and highlights from BrickWorld in June.

And then there were the fads and bandwagons, proving that with great power comes great responsibility.

We have Tim to blame for cave racers, complete with a Flickr group, culminating in the Pigs on the Wing contest.
Josh’s pacifist troll has also led to a Flickr group and adoption of “Clancy” as the semi-official name of the dark tan troll.
Nannan’s Black Fantasy has inspired and horrified countless masses.

Looking to the future, and giving back

Advertising sucks. We added ads to pay the bills, but now we have enough traffic and so many of you are making your LEGO purchases through us (thank you!) that this is the right time to increase our transparency by sharing what we’ll be doing with the extra income.

We’ll be rolling everything beyond what pays the bills back into the LEGO fan community. It really is as simple as that. Specifically, you’ll see more frequent contests (with good prizes), giveaways (online and at conventions), and maybe even “scholarships” for LEGO fans who might not otherwise be able to attend important LEGO conventions.

All about you, by the numbers

Despite my inability to perform basic arithmetic (“100% more of zero is still zero,” as someone gently pointed out recently in response to one of our taglines), I always like sharing numbers about all of you readers out there.

1,059,789 visits
3,377,860 page views
411,634 unique visitors
1,200 new posts
45,419 spam comments

Although we’ve had visitors from 181 countries (literally Afghanistan to Zimbabwe), most of our readers are from countries where English is the predominant language.

I’ve always listed the top 10 countries, but you might find the top 30 more interesting:

United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
Netherlands
Germany
Japan
France
Poland
Spain

Italy
Sweden
Denmark
Belgium
Hungary
Portugal
Finland
Singapore
Taiwan
Brazil

Norway
Mexico
New Zealand
Austria
Ireland
Switzerland
Malaysia
Russia
Hong Kong
South Africa

So, what are all of your out there most interested in? And what sites are you coming from?

Top Keywords*	Top Categories	Referring Sites
LEGO blog LEGO Agents LEGO 2008 ApocaLEGO LEGO Green Grocer LEGO 7628 LEGO BrickForge LEGO 7036 LEGO Castle 2008	Star Wars Steampunk Castle ApocaLEGO Indiana Jones Mecha Military Minifigs Building Techniques Video Games	StumbleUpon Flickr The old blog Gizmodo BB Gadgets Fark.com Classic-Castle.com idleworm Neatorama NOTCOT.ORG

* Excluding variations on “The Brothers Brick”.

The top ten referring sites are only the tip of the iceberg:

Of seventy million blogs that Technorati tracks, we’re in the top ten thousand, or 0.0143%. Wow!

Our most popular posts run the gamut from the very best (and sometimes weirdest) LEGO creations of the past year, along with the up-to-the-minute news you’ve come to expect from us:

Finally, stuff for the historically minded: