The Magazine for LEGO® Enthusiasts of All Ages! Issue 61 • April 2020 $9.95 in the US Making LEGO Figures with Jae Won Lee and Eero Okkonen Patrick Biggs Andrea Lattanzio Instructions AND MORE! 1 82658 00369 2 Order @ Amazon.com or SUBSCRIBE! THE MAGAZINE FOR LEGO® ENTHUSIASTS OF ALL AGES! BRICKJOURNAL magazine spotlights all aspects of the LEGO® Community! It showcases events, people, and models every issue, with contributions and how-to articles by top builders worldwide, new product intros, and more. Available in FULL-COLOR print and digital editions. NEXT ISSUE: #62 SPOTLIGHTS LEGO® TRAIN BUILDING! Next issue ships SUBSCRIBE NOW! May 2020! 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Issue 61 • April 2020 Contents From the Editor ...................................................2 Hongjun Youn: You Can Build It: People Bringing Bricks to Life! ..............................36 Mini Venator Star Destroyer....................64 Andrea Lattanzio: Patrick Biggs: Minifigure Customization 101: Different Places, Same Base! ......................3 Building Bionicle and More! ...................40 Making Vanda Darkflame! .......................70 Holly Webster: Vincent Kiew: Community Ads ..............................................78 Making a Missing Link ...............................12 Building Figures and Animals! ..............46 Last Word ............................................................79 Eero Okkonen: You Can Build It: AFOLs by Greg Hyland .................................80 Character Builder .........................................19 Rickshaw ..........................................................50 Riaan Pretorius: Jae Won Lee’s Building The Walk! .......................................26 The Romance of the Three Kingdoms .............................54 Building BrickNerd DIY Fan Art: Yvonne Strijbos: Makerspace ....................................................59 Dobby, the House Elf ..................................34 People Different Places, Same Base! Article and Photography by Andrea Lattanzio I have always been intrigued by the architec- ture of the middle of the last century, also called Modernism, as I consider it a breaking point with the stylistic elements of the past, in particular those of before the World Wars. So it has come naturally to me over the last few years to use LEGO brick as a medium to create buildings, cars or settings that recall that architectural style. I think that style is very el- ing ideas for my LEGO creations. Thus was born the first egant; simple, but refined. MOC of the series: The Hot Dog Stand, which had great success in the AFOL community, so much that it was cho- Those who follow me know, for example, my ESSO service sen by The Brothers Brick to enter the short list of the ten station, the replica of the service station designed in 1954 best creations of 2018. It was a great satisfaction for me. by the Dutch architect Dudok. It was the first creation that started my series of mid-century themed buildings that Honestly, at first I didn’t think of using the same platform you see in these pages. to build other street food-themed MOCs, but then, with the result of the Hot Dod Stand, in February 2019 I built the Cof- I looked through many photographic books on the archi- fee Stand that combined my passion for coffee with Mod- 2 tecture of the second post-war period and found interest- ernism. The third in the series was the Hamburger 3 Stand which I conceived after seeing the film The Founder, My creations are also heavily inspired by the Googie style, the beautiful movie that tells the birth of the Mc Donald’s a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, jets, fast-food chain. The film was an inexhaustible source of the Space Age, and the Atomic Age. The style later became ideas for my creations. widely known as part of the mid-century modern style. In the middle I also built the Agip Supercortemaggiore gas Even those from LEGO seem to appreciate my creations station—it is not a street food theme but has a typically of this type, so much that I had the honor and the pleasure Modernist architecture, with lots of glass all around. Agip of exhibiting my Modernist Shell Gas Station at the Master- is probably not familiar to you, as it is an Italian gasoline piece Gallery at LEGO House in Billund from September brand that built beautiful gas stations in the ’50s and ’60s. 2018–September 2019—a privilege for a few lucky builders. 4 5 People Article and Photography by Holly Webster Holly Webster: Making a Missing Link 12 13 Promotional art for the movie, with Susan. Holly Webster previously talked in BrickJournal #53 about her Coraline-inspired house that was submitted to LEGO Ideas. Since then, she worked on another film from LAIKA,Missing Susan in the movie... Link. She was inspired to build one of the characters from the movie, and was gracioous enough to talk about it here! ...and the full model. As a follow-up to Coraline’s house, which I built to com- memorate the 10-year anniversary of the film and my own time served as an artist at LAIKA’s stop-motion animation studio, I wanted to do something just as special for this year’s release of Missing Link, which I spent a couple of years working on. I initially planned to build a scene because there are some really stunning sets from the film that would be so much fun to recreate, but I couldn’t think of any existing mini- figures that could properly represent the highly stylized characters of the film. As an alternative, I considered build- ing a microfig vignette, but I really wanted to capture the personality of Susan (aka Mister Link), so I figured a brick- built figure would be a better way to accomplish that. The scale I had in mind was closer to that of the actual puppet from the film (around 16 inches tall); but as I started consid- ering parts, I saw a magenta macaroni tile (part #27925) that reminded me of Susan’s nose, and LEGO had just released newly printed eyes with the perfect iris color (part #49479). The scale was pretty much set by just these couple of parts and I began working on the face. I don’t think I’d intended to go full body at that point, but what’s a Bigfoot without feet?! I soon realized I had to build a full body also, and next thing I knew he was looking to be about three feet tall! The biggest design challenge was getting the overall proportions, shapes, and silhouette right. The character’s proportions are cartoonish; I kept having to make adjust- ments to compromise between the puppet proportions and what worked with the brick-built aesthetics. LEGO can be a particularly challenging medium when trying to make rounded things. You’re sometimes limited by types of parts in certain colors, and I’ve learned to let some things go that I know don’t look perfect if I’m ever going to finish any- thing. He ended up not being as robust as he should have been, but trying to make him more rotund was presenting too many challenges for my deadline and budget. 12 13 People Eero Okkonen and some of his work at the LEGO House. Photo by Caz Mockett I’m Eero Okkonen. I was born in 1995 in Joensuu, in eastern Finland. I have been a LEGO builder since I was a Eero Okkonen: kid, and I never had a major Dark Age. I joined the online community in 2007 and took part in my first event in 2009. It was also the first event of my LUG Palikkatakomo, Character Builder the national LEGO User Group of Finland. I’m a LUG active, and participated in dozens of exhibits and events. Article and Photography by Eero Okkonen I’m currently displaying my Circle band creation in the LEGO House’s Masterpieces Gallery in Billund, and last September I participated in my first international event (Skærbæk Fan Weekend) meeting many members of the AFOL community. I gained several new friends and had an amazing experience. I’m best known for my character builds. This is slightly confusing, as I’m a fourth-year student of architecture in Tampere University and career-wise I’m mostly attracted to buildings, which are the much more traditional subject of MOCs than little, often poseable people. There are several reasons behind this. Making character builds is rare, and it’s interesting to take the less-beaten path. I’m an old Bionicle fan, so the idea of buildable LEGO action figures has been part of my life since I was a kid. But foremost, I really like the challenge of capturing something with personality and life in it in a brick form. 19 Medieval Japan is a constant source of inspiration for me. It’s not a very familiar subject to me, it just has such unique The Samurai aesthetical traits that I find both beautiful and fascinating. The Samurai of the Garden is part of a larger diorama, “Tea Ceremony in Japanese Garden,” which also includes a of the Garden character model of Maiko, an apprentice Geisha.