News

LEGO MCG

Its footy finals!
Head on down to the MYER emporium store in Melbourne to check out our latest mega model, the 70,000 brick LEGO MCG on grand final day.

There is lots of hidden gems in this model which took over 3 weeks to build.

Head over to my flickr Gallery for a closer look.

For those old enough to appreciate the movie “Ferris Bueller’s day off” you can probably remember this car.
I certainly will never be able to afford a real one (they are over $10 million bucks!) i figured id build myself a real one.
At over 1.8m long and 50,000 bricks, I think you will agree that it is “soooooooo choice”

Zoom, Zoom!

I’ve always wanted to fly a plane, but I never did manage to get my pilots license, however that didn’t stop me from building the Pilatus P-9 from the RAAF’s acrobatic Roulettes.
(Complete with working propeller!)

Oh benny!

It has been 30 years since LEGO introduced Benny the Blue Spaceman (as seen in the LEGO movie).
so we figured he might like to celebrate by getting him a new book, you be the judge!

Up, Up and away!

Whilst this colourful hot air balloon looks pretty it certainly was no easy build, its crazy shape along with colour changes made it one of the more difficult things we have ever built.
(Combine that with the fact that it is designed to be hung from above!)

The Hobbit

To celebrate the release of the Hobbit Video game on Playstation 4, I was asked to make the ultimate LEGO Hobbit playstation console.

Its normally hard work to get permission to do licensed product, so this was quite a treat.

The front of the LEGO model opened up to reveal the PS4.

May the 4th be with you

Last year saw us complete a 3m tall Yoda for May the 4th, this year we went a little bit further, a world record 4.6m tall Darth Vader!

One of my colleagues from the USA Dan Steininger came down under and together we managed to pull off the worlds largest LEGO darth vader.

Thanks to everyone who came out to help out we had a blast.

Oh Noes!

Sometimes, just sometimes we get to have some fun, this poor guy is simply called “Oh Noes!”

Well, its Massive!

When we were contacted by Shell last year, we had no idea just how big a model can get, until we heard about a thing called the ‘Prelude”

At just over 483m long it is simply massive, its a floating Liquid natural gas refinery, extractor and storage facility all in one!
It will be stationed off the north west coast of Australia when it is finished and is a huge feat of engineering.

The LEGO Movie

Here’s a couple of builds we have recently finished for the upcoming release of the LEGO movie.

The LEGO Movie logo is one of the biggest builds we have ever done, weighing in at a massive 360kgs!
It is 5x the size of the original logo used in the movie. As you can see the model had some very special challenges around building it!

The minifig Emmett and Lucy were also a lot of fun to build.

Giant LEGO Sydney Opera House

My own personal Mount Everest has now been climbed!
Unquestionably one of the hardest shapes to make out of LEGO bricks, my 75,000 brick version shows the famous Australian landmark off inside and out.
(I love doing my trademark cutaway treatment on the big models!)

For more detailed pictures check out my flickr.

Bond, James Bond…….

From Boxing day until January 27th I’ll be at the Melbourne Museum building some huge James Bond themed LEGO mosaics, come down and help build them with me.

The Designing James bond (50 years of 007) is also at the museum where you can see some amazing sets and props from the movies.

Here’s the first, gotta love that car!

LEGO Melbourne Star

Here’s my LEGO Melbourne star observation wheel. At just over 3m in diameter it is unquestionably the most difficult thing I have ever built.
It is fully motorised using LEGO power functions using just over 30,000 bricks.
The hardest part was the maths and process in doing a 7 pointed star held by a flying buttress while being powered.

(I have no idea if there are bigger LEGO wheels around, if there is I’m yet to see one)

The model is mounted on permanent display in the gift shop after you ride the observation wheel.
The kids and I are in this shot just for scale!

The Melbourne star opens tomorrow (the 23rd of December, check it out!)
http://www.melbournestar.com/

Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly in LEGO

Up at the Perc Tucker Gallery in Townsville my latest mystery mosaic has just been finished.
I’ve always wanted to do this picture in LEGO, and with 23 different colours and just under 50,000 bricks, it was unquestionably one of the most complex ones I have ever done! (Here is the original next to it for reference!)

Pop by the gallery to check it out and enjoy the lots of other activities there.

MYER Adelaide.

Over the last 12 months I’ve been busy updating the LEGO section in some MYER stores.

Here is some goodies from MYER in Adelaide.

(I really did have fun making the Adelaide over scoreboard! – Take that poms!)

Auckland Skytower

I’ve recently been over in New Zealand at the coolest Toy store in Auckland – Toyco

Installing a giant LEGO Skytower, It is so tall I had to leave a bit off the top spire as it wouldn’t fit.

I had a great day installing it with my assistant for the day Jonathan who won the “Be my assistant for the day: competition.

Perc Tucker Gallery

A fantastic new exhibition has just opened at the Perc Tucker Gallery in Townsville.

Featuring quite a few of my works as well as 53 historical items which have been sent directly from the LEGO Idea House in Billund, Denmark.

I’ll be onsite building some cool stuff from the 13th of December up until the 19th of December so come along and join in the fun.

I’ll be back again in Townsville in February so make sure you keep your eyes peeled for dates and times.

LEGO Books

I recently received some LEGO Books from No Starch Press for review.
Before I get into the books, No Starch Press are somewhat famous amongst LEGO circles now in that they have produced many great LEGO books and produce some amazing quality productions, so its always a pleasure to review their latest and greatest.

I have also travelled a lot recently so took them away with me to read. (timing was perfect!)

So 3 books, 2 of which are very similar (same Authors in fact)

I really enjoyed both of these books and it clearly shows when the authors are subject matter experts, these are very well laid out, great illustrations and really do step through each model well. (although I’m not sure about the character George who explains the book – perhaps he is aimed at a younger audience)

If you are into LEGO cars as a lot of people are, these are definite must haves.

The third book “Beautiful LEGO”

This book came with quite a reputation, not only from the name of the book, but also the Author who has made some amazing LEGO models (and photography) So I was really keen to check this one out. Sadly though I was left quite disappointed by this book, not by its quality or production values, as they are excellent, but rather the subject matter, there is some amazingly poor choices of subject matter in the book given the title.

If you are going to call a book Beautiful LEGO then make sure the subjects are indeed beautiful. don’t get me wrong the creations are special and amazingly well crafted and made by highly skilled craftspeople (way better builders than I), but some of them are far from beautiful.

Some of the selections are very niche AFOL orientated as opposed to mass appeal. If that’s the target market of this book then great, if its not and is aimed at the general public, there are some things which will amaze them and others which they will look at scratching their head wondering how these things made it into a grand sounding book.

I’m just waiting for a book whereby Mike Doyle’s work is featured on its own, that would be worthy of the title “Beautiful LEGO”

Some stop motion

I’ve had a few LEGO stop motion jobs of late, here’s one I did some work on.

Click on the picture to head over to YouTube.

Sydney, Sydney and Sydney

A bit of an update on a couple of events;

Saturday the 31st of August form 12-2pm at the Sydney Opera House concert hall southern foyer for the launch of the LEGO Sydney Opera House, be there or be compound curved 😉
Jamie Berard, the designer of the set will be in attendance and promises to be good times all round.

The other event is at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation on Thursday the 5th of September, for an evening of LEGO and fine wine.
Ill be giving a presentation on behind the scenes in my job in what is an amazingly cool secret art gallery.
Click here for SCAF info: http://sherman-scaf.org.au/

Here’s some LEGO recreations I made of some classic Sydney Opera House images.

A little bit of LEGO Western Australia

Here’s a couple of small models which have been made for a department store over in Western Australia.

I’ve been wanting to recreate Australia II winning the Americas cup for a long time now, so this was pretty neat.
Also a real part of WA; a mining truck hauling away some riches. (if you see it in person look out for the secret cave!)