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This weekend, my 6-yr-old and I caught the last day of the LEGO Kidsfest in Hartford, CT. The Kidsfest is almost exactly what it sounds like: a LEGO-orientated expo-style event, with tons of booths and mobs and mobs of kids. If the Kidsfest comes to your area, then it is absolutely worth doing--with a couple of caveats. Here's why it's unmissable: There are amazing, amazing displays. Not only are there statues by LEGO Master Builders, but there are also huge exhibits by LEGO adult groups (NELUG and PennLug stand out in my memory, but there were others), and smaller displays by individuals. (You can see my photos from the event here, or browse the Flickr group dedicated to it.) Plus, there's a ton of LEGO to play with, video game booths, and more.
Now, the caveats:
- If this show comes your way, you will definitely need to get tickets in advance. There were long waits today--apparently up to 3 hours at some points--for walkup tickets. But, that's what the internet is for, plus I'd assume that future iterations of the event will be tweaked to reduce those types of delays.
- If your children are in the 6-12 range, make sure they're in the LEGO club. Kidsfest featured members-only meetings before the event opened on both Saturday and Sunday, and kids got a t-shirt and a bag of assorted bricks. The meetings gave the kids a chance to build and to interact with the master builders--in fact, as far as I can tell, they spoke to every child who wanted about their model. (In fact--in the spirit of the holidays--let me also plug the LEGO Brickmaster subscription as a gift idea. You get the LEGO club magazine, plus 6 sets throughout the year, for about $40. It's nice.) The best compliment I can pay is that, with all those kids, all trying to use the same pieces--I didn't hear any fighting or crying. They were all pretty locked in and focused.
The Master Builders at the Sunday LEGO club meeting were Dan and Chris Steininger, who are father-and-son. My 6-year-old thought that a father-and-son master builder team would interest GeekDad readers, and, although they were extremely busy--and had just given individual feedback to about 75 children!--the Steiningers agreed to speak with us for about five minutes. Here are his questions, and their answers:
GD: How long does it take for you guys to build one of those huge models, like that cake in the corner?
Dan: Well, a life-size model, which would mean like the size of your dad, takes between 125 to 160 hours, depending on the design-if your dad is wearing a cape, or if he's got a really big hat, or something like that. But a 6-foot-tall model-it takes us about a month to build one of those.
GD: So I bet you take breaks?
[adult laughter]
Chris: Yes, we do get a few breaks . . .
Dan: Sometimes we even eat!
Chris: They do let us eat.
Dan: I personally like a good ham sandwich.
GD: How do you get to be a master builder?
Chris: To be a master model builder, it takes lots of practice, lots of building. I grew up building because [Dan] has been a master model builder for-what? fifteen, sixteen years?-almost seventeen years, so that's, at a minimum, how long I've been building with LEGO. But I came into the company doing everything from crate building to display material, and a natural progression for me, because I'm good at it, was building the LEGO.
Dan: If you wanted to come in now, and work for the LEGO company as a master model builder, they're looking for a background in art. So you're like a sculptor. You're an artist, but you're sculpting with LEGO. That's what I do: Instead of working with wood, or with plaster, I work with LEGO bricks. And so those LEGO bricks that I design with, that's my medium. That's what we use. And a lot of times we design them on the computer. That's designing a three-dimensional model on a computer, and then we convert it over to LEGO. So those are the 2 things: sculpting, and 3-D design. And sometimes we take internships, too, at LEGO.
GD: When you go on the computer, how do you build the things without directions?
Dan: It's true, there are no directions when we build the models, but we have different views. So Chris may be looking at one view, because he may like looking at the whole model. He'll look at the whole model on one screen, and if we're working together on a model, I may want to look at just a slice of the layer I'm working on. It doesn't tell you what size brick, but it does show me the outline, and then everything is built one by one. I need to know if the layer steps out, or steps in, and then I get that shape one layer at a time, almost like a CAT scan or a peel of an onion.
Chris: When we build, we don't build solid, we build hollow. We just do the outer edge and try to make them as thin as possible, because we don't want to make them too heavy.
Dan: Right, because that would take more time and more cost, so the less LEGO we use to create a model, the better. Now, some of the big models you see out here actually have steel inside, like a skeleton, and we'll build around that and capture the steel every once in a while.
GD: Do you guys work together a lot?
Chris: Nope. We work in the same department. He goes out on building events, and we normally don't go on building events together, . . .
Dan: But we have done some building events together, and it's nice to be able to go out and work with your son, which has been a real benefit. And as Chris said, he was actually the one who got me into LEGO! When I was growing up, I didn't really play with LEGO, but he and my other children played with it, and when I was offered an opportunity to apply for a job at LEGO, I had already been playing with LEGO with my son, and that actually helped me when I went for my first interview.
GD: Thank you very much!
