tiberium_blue is known for his technique of making brick-walls out of liftarms as seen in The Sleepy Oak and T’Met Monastery. His latest is another great example showcasing this style, but also notable is the landscape that features embedded boulders that first made their appearance in Castle Palamar.
Mike Doyle spent over 600 hours to create this majestic fantasy cityscape called Odan. The creation depicts the peaceful contact of extraterrestrials with a race of highly spiritual humans. The diorama measures 5′ high by 6′ wide, but more impressive is its consistent quality in every corner as is characteristic of Mike’s focus on detail. We interviewed Mike about his work, which you’ll find below.
The Brothers Brick: How did you determine the visual style of this creation, since it lies half-way between fantasy and science fiction?
Mike Doyle: The visual style evolved over time along with the theme. At first, the intent was to do a piece that was of a medieval society on a spiritually awake planet. It was to be sort of LotR with meditation and the spiritual arts. I was looking at castles for inspiration at that time. You can see the first part of development in the earlier Flickr shots of this.
After creating the Sanctuary Gate (Issis Elb’ien) at the top of the falls, I realized the style of this structure was more appropriate and interesting. It has a bit of an eastern feel or Angkor Wat look. This felt more spiritual to me. So, I went back in and pushed the detail further on the things that I had created and worked to bring in some Asian influences. I also began looking at Mesoamerican structures for inspiration which I later integrated in the piece. Additionally, the theme went from a medieval culture to a space faring one which changed the look a bit.
TBB: What drew you to this style?
MD: This piece corresponds to a new point in my life where spirituality is of high concern to me. I have begun meditating and am working on astral travel. As well have been researching many phenomena that have been reported in the ancient Vedic, Vedic Sanskrit, near death experiences and more. Funny enough, this led me to research ufos which goes hand in hand to all these concepts of spirituality. Inspiration for this came from Dr. Steven Greer, founder of the Disclosure movement and CE5 (close encounters of the fifth kind) protocols for vectoring ETs to his teams’ location. The ufo research transformed the piece from a medieval culture to a spiritually and technically advanced one but still remaining squarely in the spiritual realm. So, I began integrating landing pods (made from metallic Bionical shields. I loved the look of these as they appear like floating lily pads or something organic.
Because the city is an ancient one, I had wanted the main city structure to look somewhat cobbled together as if it had evolved over time. There is little symmetry to it beyond local additions. The style also progresses a bit from the more direct interpretation of castle look on the bottom, to more unusual as you go up.
TBB: How did you plan this massive build? How does the finished product compare to what you initially imagined?
MD: There was not much planning at all beyond looking at some castle artwork. I knew I wanted a castle on a hill and an older city that would work its way up the hills. The process is an organic and intuitive one. I build for a few hours and then stare at it for a while and begin to see what should come next. It is not a totally smooth process. There are areas in the landscape where I pulled up everything and started over. I really only knew I wanted it microscale and very large. I approach each session with prayer as well which seems to help put me in a positive state of flow. I try not to think too much when I build but rather let things happen. I think planning is more like hiking up a mountain. I know basically where I want to go and simply follow a path one step at a time. I don’t know ahead of time the particulars of the trail and try to keep focused on the moment. Generally, like hiking, the path is revealed to me at each twist and turn. Eventually, I find myself at the top of the mountain. Also, if I’m honest with myself, I really stink at planning. Inevitably the process is more a natural one for me to achieve.
As far as comparison to my original vision. It is bigger than what I had originally thought it would be – that is for sure. Also, I didn’t expect it to take a technological twist. Beyond that, I didn’t have a clear picture in the beginning so it’s about what I had hoped it would be.
TBB: What was the most challenging aspect of this project?
MD: I think patience can be difficult. I had expected this only to take 3 or 4 months, but ended up being double that. Also, simply funding this is really tough. I never seem to have enough pieces or enough of the right ones. This and waiting for the orders to come in can be frustrating.
TBB: You did a Kickstarter for this creation once before, that didn’t succeed. What are you doing differently this time on your new Kickstarter project?
MD: Well, I think a few things. Firstly, I have a finished work this time around. This much better capture people’s imagination and interest, I think. In the first attempt, the piece was perhaps only 20% complete and much less impressive. This time around I’m also offering more interesting rewards. For instance, I have five buildings from the model that I have replicated for DIY kits. These kits range anywhere from 220 pieces to around 3000 pieces and include a small fine art print as well as a history of the building in context. Finally, I lowered the funding goal to a more achievable level.
TBB: What will you do with Odan now that it is finished?
MD: The piece itself is in the process of being disassembled for use in future mocs – again, it’s a money thing. As for the series, I changed the original theme from “Odan” based to “Contact” based. The Contact series is designed to promote the beauty of all intelligent life forms as extensions of our family – children under the same creative force. This broadens the whole experience to far more subject matter. I am thinking that my next work will be a representation of expanded consciousness – which will be more abstract in nature. Other pieces could range from tender ET moments – like mothers caring for their young – to contact events to other fictional pieces as Odan was. The story might include a beautiful old Dutch style image of spiritual fruits which some near death experiencers have seen in other worlds. Or perhaps future mocs will simply cover other exotic ET locals. I hope to be interviewing contactees to see what worlds they have seen in their expanded consciousness.
TBB: We noticed that your upcoming publication called Beautiful LEGO features Odan on its cover, can you tell us more about what’s in the book?
MD: The book is a celebration of all the beautiful work I see on the web. It includes work form about 80 designers and has around 380 different pictures of mocs. The book has been treated like a fine art book – which I think is new to LEGO themed books. Pages will have usually 1 or 2 images with a good deal of white space and a simple credit on the bottom. The idea is to elevate building to more of an art level. While many of these mocsmight be familiar to the readers, I have retouched most the pieces – color balanceing and adding complementary backgrounds to freshen the pieces up. To me, many of the mocs seem new simply because the presentation is so much better.
This brightly colored Inn by Nick V (brickthing) is just packed full of detail. I can’t say I would have ever recognized it from it’s source material, but Nick’s description says it was inspired by a number of buildings from Asterix. I’ll take his word for it!
The Iron Throne, that notoriously uncomfortable chair at the heart of the turmoil in Westeros in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, has been wonderfully recreated in Lego by Jacob Nion. And of course, to accompany it is the beloved, if ill-fated, Ned Stark, Hand of the King. Jacob is following the styling of the HBO television series A Game of Thrones in his interpretation of the throne and of Stark, and nicely enough, Ned Stark is easy to recreate in Lego form thanks to actor Sean Bean already having been made in Lego in the character of Boromir.
Brick Vader shows off a LEGO textural study in his medieval witchhunting diorama. I’m particularly fond of the surprise studs in the studs forward segments of the wall. And the leaning chimney is very neat. I’m now almost convinced someone can make The Shambles out of LEGO.
Someone said recently that we don’t feature enough scenes — just models. That seemed like a fair criticism, so I’ve tried to keep my eye out for interesting LEGO photos that don’t necessarily feature a model, as such. This photo by Hayden certainly fits the bill.
We’ve gotten so used to highlighting “well-lit” models on “clean” backgrounds (our words, and how subjective they are!) that I suspect we’ve passed over some nice atmospheric shots like this one.
One of the MocAthalon categories this year is to build a medieval inn. Julien Andries (Julandrius) has built one full of character and detail — from the battered tile roof to the splotched walls and rough stonework.
March is Marchikoma month in the Lego Flickr community, resulting in many variations of think tanks. Chris Maddison‘s variation on the theme is far out of the ordinary, and he attributes it to listening music from Howl’s Moving Castle while building.
Now here’s a gorgeous bit of medieval architecture by Paul Vermeesch. Paul says this lovely seaside monastery was inspired by his deft modding of Bombur’s hair into a tonsure. The white and medium-dark flesh tones of the building give a wonderfully refreshing feeling that’s different than the gritty, disheveled look so many castle builders aim for, and the stone-work on the cliff is a mastery of the technique. Paul even took a shot of his concept sketch for the diorama, showing us a bit of his thought-process.
This castle display by The Brick Time Team is a pretty attractive display. There is a lot of detail, and the edges of the display are decorated quite nicely. What really sets it apart however, is its modular nature. With this configuration, the builders can quickly convert this display into a variety of options. I think there’s a lot of potential here for expansion.
This gorgeous river fortress was built by Soccersnyderi for Guilds of Historica.
I really like how the castle spans the river and the landscaping is quite nice. All the pieces really seem to mesh and create something special here. You also have to love the roof on the main tower.
