Tag Archives: Interview

The people behind the fascinating LEGO models we feature here are just as interesting! Read interviews with notable LEGO builders, LEGO book authors, LEGO set designers, and many others right here on The Brothers Brick.

Interview with Takamichi Irie, builder of LEGO House bugs and a motorized BB-8 [Feature]

A couple months ago, we had the opportunity to talk to one of our favorite builders, Takamichi Irie, about his work. He is most notably known for his use of minifigure parts to achieve life-like shapes in creations ranging from insects to household items. His excellent attention to detail gives his creatures character. Enough character, in fact, to have several of his bugs featured at the LEGO House in Denmark.

Takamichi’s builds have been featured several times on our site, such as his exceptional motorized BB-8, based on the character from the Star Wars franchise. After writing about his Dipodidae, we knew we needed to learn more about his creative process, and ask him about his life and inspiration. 

Tell us a bit about yourself! What got you started with LEGO? Was there a dark age, and if so, what brought you back?

I’m a student who studies Architecture and Landscape Design in Japan. When I’m asked about my passion for LEGO, I always say that I’ve been building with LEGO or Duplo since I was born, because I have an older bother. In my childhood, I asked my parents for only LEGO as birthday presents every year. But I couldn’t buy much LEGO for myself with my small pocket money when I was in junior high school. I only bought some of the small Star Wars sets for their minifigs at that time. That moment was my darkest age, and after that I started building and uploading my own creations on the internet.

Read the full interview with Takamichi Irie

Iconic landmarks in Singapore transformed into Brick Architectures [Interview]

Initiated by the National Heritage Board (NHB) of Singapore working with local brick artists, a recent project has recreated eight historically significant buildings in Singapore to showcase and remind people of the hidden gems amongst the modern city landscape. The eight showcases were built by Xylvie Wong, Eugene Tan, and Andy Goh and was part of the recent team from UNESCO Piece of Peace brick exhibition.

The Brothers Brick had a chance to speak to the trio, and let them share some insights on their journey and what goes on inside of a builder’s mind while recreating impressive large-scale structures like these.

From left are Andy Goh, Xylvie Wong, and Eugene Tan.

Click to read the interview

Celebrating 10 years of HispaBrick Magazine [Feature]

HispaBrick is a free digital magazine for LEGO fans that is published in both Spanish and English.  There are three full editions of HispaBrick released each year, packed with technical articles, interviews, and features on almost every aspect of LEGO. The very first edition of HispaBrick was released back in 2008, making 2018 the 10th anniversary of the magazine, and there are a few surprises planned to mark the occasion.

Within the 10th anniversary edition, there’s an interview with Carlos Méndez, the LEGO fan who proposed the idea of HispaBrick Magazine ten years ago. You will also find a timeline spanning magazine’s ten years, along with interviews with the current staff members. Other features include Andrea Valcanover showing how to build a beautiful tree, Pau Padrós explaining the secrets behind Modular buildings, an interview with the LEGO Technic team and a report of the latest LEGO event in Bilbao.

Click here to see more from the 10th Anniversary Issue and an Exclusive Interview

LEGO Star Wars set designers discuss 75181 UCS Y-wing Starfighter [Video]

The new LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series 75181 Y-wing Starfighter launches on May the Fourth this Friday, and we’ll be bringing you our hands-on review at midnight GMT on May 4th, so check back later this week for our own review. In the meantime, LEGO has released a really great video in which model designer Jordan David Scott and graphic designer Madison O’Neil discuss how they approached the design process, their own background as LEGO Star Wars fans, and more.

The video provides great insights into the LEGO set designer role, rather than just focusing on the set’s play features. We’ll be covering the play features (and more) in our review, so the video provides a wonderful view into the interesting people behind our favorite LEGO sets.

Interview with Jeff Friesen of Cityscapes, The Brothers Brick’s Creation of the Year 2017 [Feature]

We singled out Jeff Friesen’s Cityscapes as our 2017 Creation of the Year. If you’ve missed it then, these are still very much worth a look, and even if you’ve seen them, they’re so mesmerising that you may find something you missed earlier on. It’s almost soothing and appealing to let your eyes wander around these intricate builds.

We could not resist reaching out to have a deeper discussion with Jeff to understand the mind of an artist that could create something so different and unique with the very same bricks all of us see and build with every day.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, e.g. where are you based, your LEGO history, and your work (LEGO/Photography and real life if it is different)?

I’m an award-winning photographer based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, which is on Vancouver Island. I have vivid memories of playing with LEGO from the age of 3 (that was in the early 1970s). I had a shoebox full of white and red bricks in the classic sizes, mostly 2 x 4s. Those bricks were used to make everything from aeroplanes to cities to double-decker car ferries for Matchbox racers. Recently, I was wondering why the brick selection was only red and white. After doing some research it appears the bricks must have been a hand-me-down set from the 1960s. Back then LEGO used to have basic building sets in just red and white.

The late 1970s brought with it the dual treasures of minifigures and Space LEGO. I essentially lived in a Space LEGO drama for a few years. Blue, trans-yellow, and grey were the primary colours of that era. As a child, the actual LEGO building is just the beginning of the fun, and then you get to play with what you’ve made. As an adult, I’ve replaced the play phase with photography.

It’s amazing how LEGO has been there through every stage of life, and now my daughter’s life.

Click here to continue reading our interview with Jeff Friesen

A conversation with Matthew Hocker – a LEGO ephemera collector [Interview]

Matthew Hocker has been on the LEGO scene for quite a while now and has had his builds featured right here on TBB. What you may not know is that he has an extended love and appreciation of collecting LEGO ephemera. The term is derived from the Greek word ephemeros, which means “lasting only one day, short-lived.” An ephemera collection consists of the paper materials that frequently get thrown away or lost because of their short-term usefulness or popularity, such as letters of correspondence, sales literature (brochures, pamphlets, catalogues, etc), postcards, ticket stubs, etc. Matt’s love for his LEGO collection enhances his appreciation of the hobby and its vast history.

  Matt in 2014 together with the wooden duck in Idea House

Matthew has contributed digitized literature and write-ups to Brick Model Railroader and digital contributions to the library section of Brickset. His research skills and appreciation for a collection of this nature stems from his day-to-day role as a librarian.

Our curiosity got the better of us, and we ended up having a long conversation with Matthew, learning a lot about what he does and why he does it. Here’s an insight into Matthew and his collection.


A portion of Matt’s collection of Brochures

Read our full interview with LEGO collector Matthew Hocker

The Jacobite Risings took 5 builders 10 months to build using 1 million LEGO bricks

This year’s big build by Brick to the Past is called ‘The Jacobite Risings: The Fight for Britain’s Throne’. The risings took place between 1689 and 1746, mostly in Scotland as supporters of the Stuart dynasty attempted to restore them to the throne. They were effectively Britain’s last civil wars.
The model is around 16 square metres in size, sitting on the equivalent of 105 48 stud baseplates. It has a mountain in its centre that reaches about 1m high. It was built by the Brick to the Past (BTTP) team,  Dan Harris, James Pegrum, Simon Pickard, Tim Goddard and Steve Snasdell, and took around 10 months to complete.

See more detailed photos of this massive build and read our interview with Brick to the Past

Case Closed: The investigation on Mulder and Scully and their LEGO minifigures [Feature]

This iconic photo of two top-billing Hollywood stars holding their minifigs has been making the rounds in the LEGO-sphere, re-shared and re-surfacing regularly over the past couple of years. Our curiosity got the better of us… Was it a conspiracy from the LEGO Group? Was it a tease of an upcoming X-Files theme? So much mystery from this single photo. So many questions. We know the TRUTH IS OUT THERE, so we decided to do some digging.

Mulder and Scully with Mulder and Scully!

Click to read more on our very own investigation

LEGO Space builders take over the moon [Interview]

This year’s season of LEGO shows in the UK saw a massive collaborative moonbase display, from some of the UK’s best-known and most talented builders. The model was absolutely enormous, 2.5m square, featuring a huge tower and multiple compartments. It was built with more than 50,000 bricks…

Collaborative Space Base build

The moonbase plays host to an impressive collection of landing pads, with Neo-Classic spaceships and rovers of all shapes and sizes…

Collaborative Space Station – top section, view 2

But below the lunar surface, there is even more action going on, with dozens of cutaway compartments and corridors, stuffed with lighting effects, motorised elements, and cool building techniques…

Vehicle Bay by Peter Reid and Jason Briscoe

Brothers Brick caught up with Jason Briscoe, one of the collaboration’s organisers, to find out more…
Continue reading →

Ultimate LEGO Star Wars book now available – exclusive interview with the authors [News]

Ultimate LEGO Star WarsDK has just released Ultimate LEGO Star Wars, a completely new large-format reference book written by The Brothers Brick’s Senior Editor Chris Malloy and Editor-in-Chief Andrew Becraft.

The authors will be holding panel discussions and signings over the coming weeks, including at BrickCon 2017 later this week in Seattle, and we’re pleased to bring our readers the very first interview with the authors.

Continue reading →

TBB sits down with LEGO Star Wars UCS Millennium Falcon designers at exclusive launch event to talk about the biggest set ever [Interview]

Tonight the LEGO Store in London’s Leicester Square hosted the midnight launch event for the stunning new 75192 Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon – the largest LEGO set ever made. Fans queued outside for hours to be amongst the first to purchase the new set, and the atmosphere as the doors opened was something akin to the air of hysteria which might accompany an iPhone launch. The patient fans were welcomed inside at midnight by a pair of Imperial Stormtroopers and the unforgettable opening fanfare of John Williams’ score.

Those first in line were greeted in-store with rounds of applause from the gathered LEGO staff, and a wall of brown cardboard boxes – perhaps visually uninspiring, but a reassuring signal regarding stock availability for those further back in the queue.

Happy purchasers saw their sets signed by designers from the LEGO Star Wars team. Even those who had waited longest in line said they’d had a good time, genuinely delighted as they wheeled their massive sets off into the darkness. The entire event was a testament to the continued power of Star Wars, and the enduring appeal of a really, really big box of bricks.

Director of Lego Star Wars Design Jens Kronvold Frederiksen, left, and Design Manager of Lego Star Wars Michael Lee Stockwell

Prior to the midnight opening, the Brothers Brick joined other members of the press to meet with the lead designers for LEGO Star Wars – Jens Kronvold Frederiksen and Micheal Lee Stockwell. They shared some of the challenges of building such a large model, and their thoughts behind some of its features…

Click to read the interview with the set designers

UNESCO World Heritage sites recreated in LEGO at the Piece of Peace exhibition in Singapore [News & Interview]

The “Piece of Peace” LEGO exhibition is traveling show that recreates UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Sites with LEGO bricks. The exhibition originated in Japan and today consists of 43 reconstructed World Heritage sites representing landmarks in 34 countries. Singapore is the fourth country to host the exhibition, after Japan 14 years ago and Hong Kong and Taiwan back in 2014.

The exhibit originated in Japan in 2003, and TBB covered the Japanese Piece of Peace exhibit back in 2006. In 2017, the show opened in Singapore. To commemorate ASEAN’s 50th anniversary, 8 local builders contributed to 7 new replicas of World Heritage Sites in ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member countries.

Click to see photos of the exhibition and an interview with the builders