The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide

As you might imagine, I keep a fairly close eye on ULBG and its various appearances on the web. One place I frequent is the ULBG listing on Amazon.com. Recently, the page was updated with some of the ‘Search Inside’ features that you might have seen for other books. Some of the things you can now look at include:

Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

And there’s another link that caught my eye this morning that I just had to share. It’s right near the top of the page in the ‘Explore’ section. It’s called ‘Concordance’. So the first thing I had to do was find out what on earth a concordance was, because to be perfectly honest I really didn’t know.

Here’s Amazon’s definition:

Concordance

Concordance is an alphabetized list of the most frequently occurring words in a book, excluding common words such as “of” and “it.” The font size of a word is proportional to the number of times it occurs in the book. Hover your mouse over a word to see how many times it occurs, or click on a word to see a list of book excerpts containing that word.

Pretty cool, huh?

So here’s the link you need to see the Condordance for ULBG:

Concordance for ULBG

I’d post the list here, but it’s much more fun to use the actual page on Amazon. If you hover your mouse, as noted above, you’ll soon find out that I used the word ‘bricks’ a total of 850 times throughout the book. Yikes! That’s an average of more than two and half times per page.

AB

If you’ve read my blog over the last few weeks, you know I’ve talked several times about the great episode called ‘Block Party’ that appeared on Corner Gas recently.

I was delighted to get even more information, via email, from Robin Sather. He told me about his connection to the show and with his permission I’m reposting the email here:

Hi Allan,

Just happened to browse by your note on the Corner Gas LEGO episode a couple of months ago! Too cool, huh?

As it happens, the show’s art director and I spoke a year ago about this episode, when they were planning and writing the season, and setting up their summer shooting schedule. At that time, they pegged Brickville DesignWorks to build the city for them, and probably to consult on the rest of the episode. I’d helped with a similar project (see “Nostalgia Boy” on our gallery page). Us Brickville guys said, “Cool! Just say when!". So, we left it at that while they continued their planning.

As time went by, it turns out that the internal set decoration and props department got so excited about this episode that they decided they wanted to do it all themselves! So, Brickville was no longer needed. As far as I know, there were no other “known” AFOLs involved with it. However, the project probably spawned a few new ones!

Too bad for us, but by the sounds of it, the show personnel all had a great time with it.

So, there’s the story!

Robin Sather

I agree, it is too bad that Robin wasn’t able to be directly involved in the show, but I also agree that it seems to have turned out well. I think that’s an interesting reason for not getting an assignment like that.

Be sure to drop by Brickville DesignWorks to find out more about Robin and his partners Scott and Paul.

AB

Thanks to an email from a LEGO builder named Shaun I was able to get in touch with Dennis Jackson from Dark Thunder Productions. As it turns out they were the company behind the animated LEGO segment featured in the Corner Gas episode called ‘Block Party’ that I’ve written about previously.

Dennis was kind enough to send me an email with some details about his company and their part in the episode. Here is what he had to say, posted with his permission:

We are currently shooting our stop-motion series entitled, “Wapos Bay",
for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and the National Film Board
of Canada. It is not, however, with Lego. My wife and I own our production
company Dark Thunder Productions and we have been doing stop-motion
projects in Saskatchewan, Canada, off and on, for the last eight years. We
received a call last summer from the producers of Corner Gas about the
Lego dream sequence of Hank and were asked if we could shoot and
animate the piece. We had just finished our pilot episode for Wapos Bay
and had the technology to do the job in High Definition. We shot the piece
at the Saskatchewan sound stage in Regina where they were still shooting
the other episodes of Corner Gas. We brought our two boys and they met
most of the actors and we also drove to Roloeux, Saskatchewan where they
shoot their exteriors. It was a lot of fun. Their art department built
the town out of Lego and the Corner Gas set attached to the Ruby
restaurant. We shot for two and a half days and delivered the shots in
HD 2 weeks later. It was great to work on this exciting Canadian series
and they’re great people working on that show. Thank you for your
inquiry on behind the scenes.

Thanks again to Shaun for passing along the information that helped me find Dennis. And special thanks to Dennis for filling me in on the rest. Be sure to visit the Dark Thunder Productions website to learn more about their work.

Allan B.

Three of my favorite things.

And this blog entry on Forbes.com shows how all three of those things came together at recent gathering in New York.

One of the questions debated was, “how can we get our kids to think and act more creatively?” I think the LEGO building system is a natural answer, but there’s more to it than just plastic building bricks. There’s how the kids interact with those bricks, how the parents/mentors interact with the children and how childrens’ own lack of creative inhibitions should be supported and not hindered.

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time at the Bricks and Blocks store in St. Jacob’s, Ontario watching kids building with huge tubs of 2x4 LEGO bricks. What amazed me was the determination and focus these kids had in building simple walled structures, sloped roofs and tall towers. The only things that seemed to distract them were reminders from parents about how soon they needed to leave to attend to whatever other plans they’d made. But the interest was there. And I personally feel that folks who claim that today’s kids don’t have long attention spans have possibly not spent enough time watching their kids build with LEGO bricks.

In my mind, part of the answer to getting kids to think more creatively is simply to not prevent them from doing so.

AB

Here’s an idea…..

In the previous entry I posted a picture of ULBG that was taken in one of the LEGO brand retail stores. And in that same entry I asked you to send me a pic if you spot the book in a store somewhere. So why not make it into a proper contest?

Here’s the rule: All you have to do is send me a picture (reasonably sized please!) of The Unofficial LEGO Builder’s Guide anywhere. Yes, anywhere. It could be in a store, as shown below. Or, it could be the book sitting next to a LEGO model you’ve made. Or even a picture of you reading your copy of the book in an interesting location.

The judging will be simple… I’ll gather the pics here and let my mom pick the winner. She’s a huge fan of the book and so I’m hoping she’ll get a kick out of her role in this. So mom, that means you can’t enter… sorry.

The prize will be something. Yes, something. Probably something small. Probably not something very valuable. But I’ll come up with a fun little prize for whoever wins.

So grab your camera and snap a pic. Click here to send me an email with your picture attached.

Have fun… and good luck!

Allan

One of the most interesting things I’ve found, since the book was released, is seeing how it’s sort of found its own place in the world. I’ve gotten great emails from readers and been humbled by some of the kind reviews left on sites like Amazon.com. And here is something else that I’ve enjoyed…

This photo was taken by a co-worker who recently went on a training course in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is of a shelf in the LEGO Imagination Center located inside the Mall of America. So if you’re ever there… be sure to pick up a copy when you’re done loading up your Pick-a-Brick cups.

Have you spotted The Unofficial LEGO Builder’s Guide in a store somewhere? If you happen to see it and have your digital camera along with you, I’d love it if you took a pic like the one above and sent it to me. I’ll post it here on my blog. Send me an email with your photo attached.

All the best,
Allan B.

I know that many of you have been waiting (very patiently) for these, and I thank you again for having such patience.

Take a look at the Instructions page and you’ll see that the instructions for the microscale Empire State Building have been posted again… this time to stay.

Enjoy!
Allan B.