LEGO Batman Movie Review at WonderCon

The LEGO Batman Movie may not be out on DVD till May 21st, but I got to see the West Coast preview at WonderCon! Not only did they show the movie, but there was a Q&A afterward with the director Jon Burton of TT Games and several of the voice actors.

If you haven’t seen the trailer, here it is:

I’ll get back to the Q&A part in a minute. Now for the review — if you haven’t played LEGO Batman 2 yet, or don’t want to know what happens, you might not want to read this review. Spoilers ahead –

If you have played LEGO Batman 2 like I have, read my review of the game here, and read the description of the movie you would think what I thought — that the LEGO Batman Movie is basically the cut scenes from the game.

That is both true and not true. The story line is the same, but an interesting fact that I discovered from the Q&A is that the game is based off the movie!

According to Jon Burton, the director, they were working on the movie and then realized it would be a great game. But the game took less time to make than the movie and that’s why it came out first.

So in watching the movie, the plot is not really a surprise for those of us that played the game. Even so, this is worth watching. I have to admit I enjoyed it a lot more than any of the latest LEGO Star Wars mini movies. It was cute, fun and funny.

And watching a Gotham that’s built of LEGO is just plain cool. One of the coolest scenes is something that isn’t in the game — Lex’s airship. Its massive, shiny and “built” of over 20,000 parts. Like Jon Burton said, all the models in the games and the movie can be built in real life. TT Games actually has LEGO Master Model Builders on staff to ensure this.

What I like about the movie is that you can just watch it, you don’t have to do anything like in the game, and when you get the DVD you can pause it to look at the models more closely.

If you want to watch the Q&A here it is: (more spoilers)

After the panel I was able to meet both Jon Burton and Christopher Smith (the voice of the Joker)

Here’s a picture of Christoper

It was awesome seeing it on the big screen and meeting some of the talent behind it. I highly recommend it!

And don’t forget that you get this awesome minifigure with the movie

Overall 5 out of 5 stars! Fun movie, and I’ll be wanting to watch this one more than once.

SEALUG at Emerald City Comic Con

BrickCon isn’t the only time you can see awesome LEGO displays in Seattle. Emerald City Comic Con is just two weeks away and for the second year in a row SEALUG will have all kinds of LEGO coolness for attendees to see.

And that’s not all — several LEGO vendors will be there too, including your’s truly!

I will be partnering with BrickShirts and AltBricks. So if you are attending, stop and say hi.

Not only that, but I will be giving a presentation at 3:20 pm in Hall C all about my career as a Freelance LEGO Artist.

But if you want to attend the Con, buy tickets soon. The full Con passes and Saturday passes are already sold out but Friday and Sunday are still available.

Baby Colby

So you’ve probably been wondering why I’ve been off the radar for the past few days. Well, if you’ve been reading my blog for very long you know that when I have a project, I tend to let everything else slide.

So here’s my latest creation

I have decided to start selling portrait mosaics but in order to do that, I needed a sample to show my skills. This is a picture of my friend Tiffeny’s baby Colby. Its the first time I’ve done a portrait, although my Remembering 9/11 mosaic was my first based off a real picture.

I wanted to make a smaller mosaic than my standard size of 2 feet tall, so I decided to go with 1 foot tall as I felt it was a nice size, but I could still retain the likeness of the image.

Since I know you are always curious about my process I took a picture of the brick paper design I made for this mosaic.

It looks like kind of a mess, but trust me, it makes sense.

What I do is take the original picture, then I use Photoshop and Bricksaic to find the color values. If you are not familiar with Bricksaic it is a freeware program created by Bob Kojima. Bob is also the man behind BrickShirts. Bricksaic is a program to help you design mosaics. It can be helpful, but it doesn’t work fully for my technique. The best part of it though is that you can constrain the image to only the LEGO colors you want to use. So instead of the mosaic having weird colors in random places you only have the colors you want.

Here’s an up close shot so you can kind of see what I’m doing.

The model took my 40 hours or so to make.

Its funny, I never would have thought that I would be able to create something like this a decade ago when I started in the Model Shop. But after so many years, and so many mosaics, it was relatively easy.

I am selling them on my Etsy shop, if you’re interested, but I admit, it’s not cheap.

Building Life-size Bag-end

The pictures were impressive, but didn’t really highlight the shear size of this model. This new video released by LEGO gives you a much better perspective on how really massive this model is.

Life-size Hobbit House

My jaw literally dropped when I saw this and all I could say was “WOW!”

It took a team of 12 model shop employees 3,000 hours to build this life size model of the LEGO Bag End set. In addition to containing over 2 million 1×1 bricks this model has working lights in the fireplace and over the bookstand as well as a chimney that really smokes!

The people in the picture give you a hint on the shear scale of this model.

Words fail me with this model, its simply awesome! You can find more pictures of this model at LEGO Shop’s Facebook page

My interview on Beyond the Brick

As a trick, or a treat, take it how you like. I’m posting a second post tonight. Last week I was interviewed on Beyond the Brick. If you’ve always wondered what I sound like, well here’s your chance. Click on the picture above to go to the podcast.

The sound is a little bit off, mainly because my internet connection wasn’t working too well. But even so, it was a fun thing to do.

A Vampire is Born (Built) in New Orleans

I posted earlier about the building event that happened this past weekend. Well, here’s some pictures for those of us who couldn’t make it down there.

Its looks pretty cool, but you don’t really get the true scale until you see Master Model Builder Erik Varszegi building it.

And here’s an awesome time lapse video of the whole thing being put together.

This particular building event held its own set of challenges –

1. It was outside at night, in the rain! Those lightening flashes aren’t special effects added to make the video more dramatic, it really was a dark and stormy night

2. The fact that it was an all night event finishing at 6:15 am in the morning. I’ve done these types of events many times, but never over night.

Great work from Erik and LEGO for pulling off this impressive model!

Update:If you are able to go to LEGOLAND California this weekend October 6th and 7th you too can get a chance to build Lord Vampire with Master Model Builder Ryan Ziegelbauer.

New Orleans All-Night LEGO Vampire Build

If you are in the New Orleans area you just might want to check out this building event.

This spooky celebration is open to the entire family and features something for everyone, including performances from New Orleans Saintsations and community costume contest.

WHEN: Saturday, September 29th to Sunday, September 30th
Saturday:
12:00 PM-5:00 PM: Open brick building for Lord Vampyre model
5:00 PM: Lord Vampyre assembly begins
6:00 PM: Costume contest (for children up to age 14)
9:00 PM & 10:00 PM: Monster-inspired Saintsations dance performances
3:00-7:00 PM: LEGO Club Kids Activities
Sunday:
6:00 AM hour: Master Builder, Erik Varszegi, will place final brick
WHERE: Washington Artillery Park Amphitheater
750 Decatur St., between St. Peter and St. Ann Sts.
New Orleans, LA 70116
COST: FREE

Based of Lord Vampire from the new Monster Fighters sets this model will be 10 feet tall when completed. I know I’d be there if I lived closer. This is the first time that I know of an all night build. If you get to go, I’d love to see pictures.

“Building a winning business” at Focus 12 Conference

I know, I’ve been MIA yet again on my blog. That seems to be happening more and more this year. I can’t really complain though, getting more large commissions is a good thing.

So any how. The reason I’ve been offline is I’ve been too busy building. I was contacted by the John Hancock company to do their logo a a financial conference called Focus 12 here in San Diego. The reason they wanted a LEGO model was because their theme was “building a winning business.”

The trickiest thing about this mosaic was the fact that it was in cursive and I decided to make it as “studless” as possible — in other words, showing as few studs as I could. Of course making it studless and using normal (well normal for me ) twisting and turning techniques made the model much more complicated than it could have been. But it looks sooooo much better because of that.

Here’s a close-up

And for those that are wondering the model is 4 feet long and 2 feet tall.

They also asked me to build some giant LEGO bricks with words on them

The 2×4 giant brick is 11 inches long x 5 inches wide x 4 inches tall. The small black bricks with their logo on it are clone bricks with printing on them.

The funny thing was that because of the theme, not only John Hancock wanted LEGO at their booth. I was contacted by a second company, Deutsche Bank, thanks to LEGO and asked if I could help them with their LEGO mystery mosaic building event.

Now obviously I couldn’t be in two places at once so I did the next best thing and recruited my brother Mike Asanuma. It may be hard to believe, but I’m not the only master model builder in my family. Mike creates special effects models and does illustrations and toy design up in Los Angeles, California. He just happened to be available for the weekend.

That’s Mike if you can’t see the family resemblance.

A fun bonus of working the convention was a private Journey concert!!!!

And a total surprise was seeing LEGO Certified Professional Sean Kenney

Sean was hired by Wells Fargo to create a San Diego Trolley. It was kind of funny because I got an email from him on the second day of the event and he mentioned my John Hancock mosaic in the email saying

“Nice job so far! I’m across the aisle at wells Fargo “

We’ve emailed back and forth and we keep in contact through Facebook but I hadn’t seen him in person for about 10 years! So it was nice to actually chat in person with him for a few hours.

So last weekend was pretty cool. It was so funny that there were three LEGO models at the convention and that Sean, Mike and I were able be involved.

And on the heals of that event, I’ve got another one coming up next week. I’ll be posting about that one a little later.

LEGO FriendsHats and other thoughts

The controversy over LEGO Friends continues to rage. Although I try to stay out of it for the most part, not commenting on other blog or Facebook posts that are clearly misinformed or just plain wrong, I can’t help but feel that certain groups have taken an innocent toy and superimposed their political views on top of it. LEGO has even gone as far as issuing a press release about it.

One of the biggest misunderstandings with the new LEGO Friends figs is that they aren’t compatible with regular minifigs. Its as if these unimaginative people can’t see the building potential. They don’t see Friends as an addition to all of the other products that LEGO produces but more of a “this or that” toy. Like the children can only like LEGO Friends or like “normal” LEGO. But what is “normal” LEGO?

Friends is just a new form. Before 1978 there were no minifigs, before 2000 there were no Bionicle, before last year there were no LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean — do you get my point? LEGO is constantly evolving, changing and growing. Friends is just a new type of LEGO figure.

While the figures themselves can’t easily interchange with Minifigs, all the Friends hair can be worn by minifigs and vice-versa. And that goes for the accessories too.

This great video by LDM showcases the headgear.

And the customizing of LEGO Friends has already begun. Check out these custom Friends figs:

And “Wrist articulation: achieved”

I even decided to change my Facebook picture in support of LEGO Friends

And yes, as a LEGO Artist, I really use power drills, wrenches and all manner of tools daily. I have to use math — fractions and geometry especially — to create my models. Because of LEGO not only was it a wonderful, ever changing toy that was only limited by my imagination as a child but it has allowed me to achieve two of my dream jobs — LEGO Master Model Builder and Writer. It has given me not one, but two careers and endless hours of enjoyment.

Like I mentioned in my previous post I was skeptical of LEGO Friends at first. But the more I see of the sets and the things that are already being done with the new figures I like them more and more!