Showing posts sorted by date for query gary. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query gary. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Friday, May 4, 2012
Gary's gotta be rollin' on
Remember Miniland Gary? He's about to move on to another AFOL, but before he goes Ryan found one last picture from Legoland Florida.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Where in the world is Gary?
I've previously noted the travels of miniland Gary. Well, he hasn't been idle. He apparently got to spend his winter break in Florida, where he went to Legoland, DisneyWorld and Epcot. Unfortunately he seems to have lost his head in a tragic accident.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Where in the world is Carm... er... miniland Gary
So miniland Gary came to BrickCon again, but he didn't go home with Nathan, instead, he left with Guy Himber.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Gary's travels
Following up on yesterday's post, last year Nathan brought his miniland Gary to BrickCon, but he got lost. He was rescued by some kind AFOLs, who took him on a global trek for the next year, taking in various sites around the US, and also the homeland - Billund Denmark.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Gary on the move
Okay, I saw something from BrickCon, but to fully appreciate it we have to go back a bit. You may all remember the video from a few years back where some Indiana Jones and LEGO fans recreated the famous scene of Indy running from the giant ball, but with a guy running from a giant LEGO ball rolling after him down a San Francisco street. Okay, it turned out their ball was actually a huge styrofoam ball covered with a skin of baseplates, but that doesn't take away from the utter coolness. Anyway, in 2009, Mythbusters tried it out. In the process they went to Legoland and enlisted Gary McIntire (and, IIRC, a bunch of SandLUGgers) to help build a giant LEGO ball. Be sure to watch the video linked. Anyway, on to this blog. Nathan Proudlove commemorated this with his own Miniland version of Gary and the giant ball.
Monday, May 24, 2010
LEGO: A Love Story
Hi. I'm posting a copy of this book review to each of my four blogs. However, if you read more than one of my blogs, I'm including a unique paragraph to the end on each blog noting specifics of the book relevant to the topic of that blog.
Review: A couple of years ago, I remember hearing on one of the LEGO forums about Jonathan Bender, a journalist who was planning on spending a year exploring the AFOL community as part of a writing project. He started a blog, Brick Bender, to document his journey. I read a few entries, but there are so many different blogs and websites out there that I kind of forgot about it. Recently, though, this exploration came to fruition in a new book, LEGO: A Love Story.
The result is a highly enjoyable book. Jonathan follows the journey that many of us took. He remembers playing with LEGO as a kid, but then goes into a long dark age. Little things remind him of his hobby, and eventually he digs his old bricks out of his parents' basement. He nervously buys new LEGO for himself, afraid that others might learn of his purchase. Then he starts building MOCs. He connects with the community, and is initially nervous that his MOCs won't measure up to the amazing models he sees.
Along the way, Jonathan met up with a great number of people from the AFOL community. One of the first things I noticed when flipping through the book was that it has a great index, and, yes, I looked myself up. To my utter surprise, delight, and honor, there I was. On page 106 he quotes something I posted on Lugnet several years ago about vignettes. But I'm a minor player, of course. He talks to a great number of the major players in the AFOL world, from bloggers to fest organizers, to current and former LEGO employees. He also researches the LEGO company and the growth of the fan community, with a lot of the major events along the way. He travels to several fan events like Brick World, Brick Bash, Brick Show, and BrickCon (hmm, see a pattern in fan fest names?) and gets behind the scenes tours at the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum, Legoland California, and the homeland itself, LEGO headquarters in Billund. And he invites us all along for the ride.
There are several audiences for this book. If you are just interested in the hobby as an outsider, particularly if you are, say, the spouse of an AFOL, he gives a great insight into these crazy people and their plastic brick masterpieces. If you are just coming out of your own dark age, you can learn a ton about the hobby and the people in it. If you're someone who's been in the hobby for years, it's like going to a reunion, where you encounter old friends and share great memories.
Are there shortcomings in this book? Yes, of course. No book can hope to be a comprehensive view of such a large and diverse community. I saw a couple of small errors, and places where I remember events a little differently than he reports. It felt in places like he gave a larger weight to some individuals because he got to know them personally, while other very important members of the community were missed, especially those outside the US. I do wish that he'd spent more time on the evolution of the on-line side of the Legoverse. He has a good picture of the growth from Usenet newsgroups to Lugnet. But as he reports, Lugnet is pretty dead these days, and he doesn't really go into the way that other, more specific forums grew out of Lugnet, or the variety of blogs (other than the Brothers Brick, which he rightly points out as the most important LEGO blog) and Flickr groups. The other thing I really felt the book needed was more pictures. There are black and white photos at the start of each chapter, and eight pages of glossy color photos in the center, but with such a visual medium you could have put photos on almost every page. As a pretty active AFOL I remember a lot of the different MOCs he mentions, but someone less involved in the hobby would benefit from photos of these. I want to reread the book with Jonathan's blog open in front of me, so that I can go back and forth and see his photos along with the events he describes.
The book is intensely personal. In addition to inviting us in to his own feelings as he becomes an AFOL - the fun of discovery, the nervousness about others learning about his hobby, the fear that his efforts would not be accepted by other AFOLs - he invites us deeper. We get to see him building LEGO with his dad as a child, and then again reconnecting through LEGO as an adult. Even more personally, we get his and his wife's fears that they may never have children of their own. I'm not afraid to admit that my eyes were tearing up at the emotional climax in the last few pages. This is ultimately a book about love. Yes, we all share a love for little plastic bricks, but in the end it is about love between people - the lasting friendships built up between community members, the love of a husband and wife, the love of a parent and child. That's what makes this hobby so special, and that's what this book celebrates.
MinilandBricks specific material: In the course of his travels through the Legoverse, Jonathan gets to visit Legoland Billund and Legoland California, and in both cases the highlight is Miniland. He gets to talk with people like Gary McIntyre, who takes him over the fence where he walks the streets of tiny San Francisco and is sorely tempted to hide a Miniland copy of himself. He also speaks with Mariann Asanuma, one of our co-bloggers here at MinilandBricks. These were built only a couple of months ago, so long after the book was finished, but here are Jon and his wife as Minilanders.
Review: A couple of years ago, I remember hearing on one of the LEGO forums about Jonathan Bender, a journalist who was planning on spending a year exploring the AFOL community as part of a writing project. He started a blog, Brick Bender, to document his journey. I read a few entries, but there are so many different blogs and websites out there that I kind of forgot about it. Recently, though, this exploration came to fruition in a new book, LEGO: A Love Story.
The result is a highly enjoyable book. Jonathan follows the journey that many of us took. He remembers playing with LEGO as a kid, but then goes into a long dark age. Little things remind him of his hobby, and eventually he digs his old bricks out of his parents' basement. He nervously buys new LEGO for himself, afraid that others might learn of his purchase. Then he starts building MOCs. He connects with the community, and is initially nervous that his MOCs won't measure up to the amazing models he sees.
Along the way, Jonathan met up with a great number of people from the AFOL community. One of the first things I noticed when flipping through the book was that it has a great index, and, yes, I looked myself up. To my utter surprise, delight, and honor, there I was. On page 106 he quotes something I posted on Lugnet several years ago about vignettes. But I'm a minor player, of course. He talks to a great number of the major players in the AFOL world, from bloggers to fest organizers, to current and former LEGO employees. He also researches the LEGO company and the growth of the fan community, with a lot of the major events along the way. He travels to several fan events like Brick World, Brick Bash, Brick Show, and BrickCon (hmm, see a pattern in fan fest names?) and gets behind the scenes tours at the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum, Legoland California, and the homeland itself, LEGO headquarters in Billund. And he invites us all along for the ride.
There are several audiences for this book. If you are just interested in the hobby as an outsider, particularly if you are, say, the spouse of an AFOL, he gives a great insight into these crazy people and their plastic brick masterpieces. If you are just coming out of your own dark age, you can learn a ton about the hobby and the people in it. If you're someone who's been in the hobby for years, it's like going to a reunion, where you encounter old friends and share great memories.
Are there shortcomings in this book? Yes, of course. No book can hope to be a comprehensive view of such a large and diverse community. I saw a couple of small errors, and places where I remember events a little differently than he reports. It felt in places like he gave a larger weight to some individuals because he got to know them personally, while other very important members of the community were missed, especially those outside the US. I do wish that he'd spent more time on the evolution of the on-line side of the Legoverse. He has a good picture of the growth from Usenet newsgroups to Lugnet. But as he reports, Lugnet is pretty dead these days, and he doesn't really go into the way that other, more specific forums grew out of Lugnet, or the variety of blogs (other than the Brothers Brick, which he rightly points out as the most important LEGO blog) and Flickr groups. The other thing I really felt the book needed was more pictures. There are black and white photos at the start of each chapter, and eight pages of glossy color photos in the center, but with such a visual medium you could have put photos on almost every page. As a pretty active AFOL I remember a lot of the different MOCs he mentions, but someone less involved in the hobby would benefit from photos of these. I want to reread the book with Jonathan's blog open in front of me, so that I can go back and forth and see his photos along with the events he describes.
The book is intensely personal. In addition to inviting us in to his own feelings as he becomes an AFOL - the fun of discovery, the nervousness about others learning about his hobby, the fear that his efforts would not be accepted by other AFOLs - he invites us deeper. We get to see him building LEGO with his dad as a child, and then again reconnecting through LEGO as an adult. Even more personally, we get his and his wife's fears that they may never have children of their own. I'm not afraid to admit that my eyes were tearing up at the emotional climax in the last few pages. This is ultimately a book about love. Yes, we all share a love for little plastic bricks, but in the end it is about love between people - the lasting friendships built up between community members, the love of a husband and wife, the love of a parent and child. That's what makes this hobby so special, and that's what this book celebrates.
MinilandBricks specific material: In the course of his travels through the Legoverse, Jonathan gets to visit Legoland Billund and Legoland California, and in both cases the highlight is Miniland. He gets to talk with people like Gary McIntyre, who takes him over the fence where he walks the streets of tiny San Francisco and is sorely tempted to hide a Miniland copy of himself. He also speaks with Mariann Asanuma, one of our co-bloggers here at MinilandBricks. These were built only a couple of months ago, so long after the book was finished, but here are Jon and his wife as Minilanders.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Behind the scenes at Legoland
Gary McIntire, aka MrGSnot, is a Model Designer at Legoland California. On his desk, he's got this business card holder based on the recent waterpark addition to the park. He also made this cake topper for a colleague who got married. Finally, we get a peek at his workbench, where you can see works-in-progress to design new models and refurbish old ones for the park.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
LEGO Ball Myth-busted!
Although I already mentioned this on my blog I definitely think this is MinilandBrick worthy. :)
Nathan Proudlove created a tribute to the recent LEGO Mythbusters episode with Master Model Builder Gary McIntire and the Giant LEGO ball in Miniland Scale. I think its a pretty good interpretation.
Nathan Proudlove created a tribute to the recent LEGO Mythbusters episode with Master Model Builder Gary McIntire and the Giant LEGO ball in Miniland Scale. I think its a pretty good interpretation.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration day
Legoland is celebrating the inauguration of President Obama in a big way. Let's start with a long shot:
Move a little closer in:
Now let's focus on the center of attention:
You can see more coverage of this on Kristi Klein's blog Brick Star, in the San Diego Union Tribune and on San Diego 6. Most of these pics were pulled from Kristi's blog, so photo credits go to her. In the Trib article Gary McIntyre notes how they researched who would be attending to design the display, so you can pick out individuals such as the Obamas and Bidens, with the elder Bushes and Rick Warren looking on:
On the other side of the podium we see Chief Justice Roberts, the Bushes and Cheneys, with I believe the Clintons and Carters behind them:
I really laughed that George H. W. Bush is falling asleep and Bill Clinton is checking his watch:
Great job to Kristi, Gary, and the whole team that worked on this. I hope I get out to San Diego to see this in person, but a little later today I may try braving the crowds to see the real thing in person. Mainly I'd like my daughter to see it, but it will depend on the weather.
Move a little closer in:
Now let's focus on the center of attention:
You can see more coverage of this on Kristi Klein's blog Brick Star, in the San Diego Union Tribune and on San Diego 6. Most of these pics were pulled from Kristi's blog, so photo credits go to her. In the Trib article Gary McIntyre notes how they researched who would be attending to design the display, so you can pick out individuals such as the Obamas and Bidens, with the elder Bushes and Rick Warren looking on:
On the other side of the podium we see Chief Justice Roberts, the Bushes and Cheneys, with I believe the Clintons and Carters behind them:
I really laughed that George H. W. Bush is falling asleep and Bill Clinton is checking his watch:
Great job to Kristi, Gary, and the whole team that worked on this. I hope I get out to San Diego to see this in person, but a little later today I may try braving the crowds to see the real thing in person. Mainly I'd like my daughter to see it, but it will depend on the weather.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
2008 in review
Hi all,
It's time to look back on the year past. 2008 has been a great year in LEGO, with lots of events, news and, most of all, great MOCs. I'd like to do a month-by-month review of the year on MinilandBricks.
I started this blog back in April, pretty much in response to seeing three great Miniland MOCs: Nathan Proudlove's Mystery Machine, Lino Martins' Batmobile and Steve Bishop's Futurama. These three builders have been a big part of this blog.
Okay, I think this is an older MOC, but in May I blogged Ochre Jelly's Stephen Hawking (I think the micro version was new at that time). Ochre has done a lot of building at the Miniland scale that's definitely worth checking out.
In June, Mainman posted this great scene: Ho Ho, Uh-Oh.
I suspect this was an older MOC, but also that month I blogged K-Hatch's Monsters.
In July we heard the announcement that there would be a new Legoland in Dubai. More recently we've heard that there will be another coming in Malaysia (I've yet to blog that).
Mention of Legoland makes me think of Master Model Builders of the past and present. In August, former MMB Mariann Asanuma started a blog, Model Building Secrets. Also in August I did a bit of a focus on MMB Gary McIntire, his quest for a job at Legoand, and several of his MOCs. Current MMB Kristi Klein also has a blog Brick Star, that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the models at the park.
Hmm, I didn't do a lot of blogging in September. Life got pretty busy that month. This is a good place to note that the Lugnuts group on Flickr has been a great source for Miniland models. Every month they have a new building challenge, and several of the builders (Lino, Nathan and Ralph in particular) are fond of this scale, as you can get a lot more detail on vehicles than at the traditional minifig scale. This month the theme was "sympathy for the underdog," and one of the submissions was Lino's '57 Pontiac Safari.
Two new huge structures appeared this year and were on public display in October. Heather LEGO Girl's Dollhouse was shown at BrickCon and Yvonne Doyle, Steven Marshall and Pete Reid's Hospital was at the Great Western LEGO Show. Any summary of Miniland building would be lacking without a mention of Ralph Savelsberg, so I'll note here that this Ferrari Testarossa was his entry to the Lugnuts year in review challenge.
I feel that I'm being a bit of a Lino fanboy in this summary, but looking at November, I can't overlook his coulrophobia, which was probably my favorite Miniland-scale MOC that came out in 2008.
One of my favorite LEGO December traditions is MisaQa's advent calendars. A couple of years ago she did Dressy Dolls, and this year it was Fantasy Creatures. I'm still meaning to blog more of these.
I finished out the year with a run of Christmas-themed features, such as Steve Bishop's Nativity and Mariann Asanuma's Madonna and Child
Oh, one other quick news item on the year that I still need to blog is the creation in December of a Miniland Flickr Group. What a great year in MOCs, and I've still got a backlog to post. Looking forward to more in 2009.
It's time to look back on the year past. 2008 has been a great year in LEGO, with lots of events, news and, most of all, great MOCs. I'd like to do a month-by-month review of the year on MinilandBricks.
I started this blog back in April, pretty much in response to seeing three great Miniland MOCs: Nathan Proudlove's Mystery Machine, Lino Martins' Batmobile and Steve Bishop's Futurama. These three builders have been a big part of this blog.
Okay, I think this is an older MOC, but in May I blogged Ochre Jelly's Stephen Hawking (I think the micro version was new at that time). Ochre has done a lot of building at the Miniland scale that's definitely worth checking out.
In June, Mainman posted this great scene: Ho Ho, Uh-Oh.
I suspect this was an older MOC, but also that month I blogged K-Hatch's Monsters.
In July we heard the announcement that there would be a new Legoland in Dubai. More recently we've heard that there will be another coming in Malaysia (I've yet to blog that).
Mention of Legoland makes me think of Master Model Builders of the past and present. In August, former MMB Mariann Asanuma started a blog, Model Building Secrets. Also in August I did a bit of a focus on MMB Gary McIntire, his quest for a job at Legoand, and several of his MOCs. Current MMB Kristi Klein also has a blog Brick Star, that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the models at the park.
Hmm, I didn't do a lot of blogging in September. Life got pretty busy that month. This is a good place to note that the Lugnuts group on Flickr has been a great source for Miniland models. Every month they have a new building challenge, and several of the builders (Lino, Nathan and Ralph in particular) are fond of this scale, as you can get a lot more detail on vehicles than at the traditional minifig scale. This month the theme was "sympathy for the underdog," and one of the submissions was Lino's '57 Pontiac Safari.
Two new huge structures appeared this year and were on public display in October. Heather LEGO Girl's Dollhouse was shown at BrickCon and Yvonne Doyle, Steven Marshall and Pete Reid's Hospital was at the Great Western LEGO Show. Any summary of Miniland building would be lacking without a mention of Ralph Savelsberg, so I'll note here that this Ferrari Testarossa was his entry to the Lugnuts year in review challenge.
I feel that I'm being a bit of a Lino fanboy in this summary, but looking at November, I can't overlook his coulrophobia, which was probably my favorite Miniland-scale MOC that came out in 2008.
One of my favorite LEGO December traditions is MisaQa's advent calendars. A couple of years ago she did Dressy Dolls, and this year it was Fantasy Creatures. I'm still meaning to blog more of these.
I finished out the year with a run of Christmas-themed features, such as Steve Bishop's Nativity and Mariann Asanuma's Madonna and Child
Oh, one other quick news item on the year that I still need to blog is the creation in December of a Miniland Flickr Group. What a great year in MOCs, and I've still got a backlog to post. Looking forward to more in 2009.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Gary again
Okay, I'm done for now plumbing the depths of Gary McIntire's photostream for miniland stuff. I'll finish up with his Ariel and boat/card holder.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Dreaming of Tosche Station
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Builder search
Friday, August 1, 2008
Builder focus
Gary McIntire (aka MrGSnot) was a finalist in Legoland's national search for new Master Model Builders. While he didn't win the contest at that time, he later got an opportunity to work there anyway. This article from the Deseret News has some details about life at Legoland (found via ULUG and Based on a True Story)(hey, Nathan, why didn't you post this here?). Below are some Oompa-Loompas Gary built as a gift for another Legoland employee and his finalist entry from the Master Model Builder search.
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