Name: LEGO-masterbuilders
Uploaded: 2014-06-01
Duration: 3 min 38 s
Description: LEGO-masterbuilders

My name's Pete Donner, and I'm a Master Builder here at Lego. [ MUSIC ] Here in the model shop, the projects that we get involved in are more artistically- based, sculptural models. Primarily our focus is the sculptural 3D large- scale models. We have a couple different projects going on in the shop. We have our large- scale, life- size Spider- Man model. Spider- Man is wall crawling, of course, so we're building this large section of a fake city, skyscraper wall and Spider- Man is stuck right to it. It's hard to believe some days when you go in and you play with Lego bricks all day and they give me money, but our job is actually to promote the company by way of inspiring the kids. [ MUSIC ]. So the design process here, for us at Lego, is much the same as anywhere else. We begin with a concepting phase, which is developed off of a brief from one of our customers. And that can be anything from a 3D model on the computer, or a sketch drawn on paper, in a traditional sense. Then you'll use those sketches to develop a 3D asset, which we can then take into a really cool piece of software Lego developed, called Brick Builder. And we can take that and refine it much in the same way a clay sculptor would with clay. We're building this large section of a life size Spider- Man model. We started with this basic human form, and I'm able to create a brick model out of it. I zoom in on his leg, here, and turn on the, the studs, you could actually see the individual bricks. If I wanted to change a few portions of it here, I could just like remove individual elements and add them back in if I feel I need to, change the shape of it at all. Look at these big ol' bug eyes on there. When I'm finally finished with the model, I'll select that and pass it off to the model building team, and how they actually go about building it, is open up the building instructions here. So we can go right down through all the layers of the model, and it is kind of like the cat scan. We're, we're slicing the model layer, by brick layer, by brick layer. The coolest part about the building instructions is you can actually make the entire model without ever seeing what it looks like until it's done. We do a lot of old- school designing as well. One of the things that I do is a fair number of lifelike busts of real individuals. We have found that when we are modeling a human face out of Lego bricks for a real individual, the tiniest brick can make a world of difference and it will drive you crazy. I came into here with a formal art background. I have a degree in, in fine arts, majored in sculpture. If I'm sculpting a head with clay. I can make the most minute detail imaginable. If I am doing it with Lego bricks, it's kinda hard to get under 8 x 3. 2 mm. You know, any detail smaller than that, I really can't do. Working with that scale is what makes I think doing a, a bust of somebody in Legos so difficult. Of course, everything comes down to that basic two by four brick. I like to think what we do in the model shop has really inspired the next generation of master builder, and give them kind of introduction to just how far you can take the creativity of Lego. And if we can put a brick on a model, it should hold together a couple of bricks underneath it. Okay, once you've gotten that down, there's nothing that you can't build.