LEGO Storytelling: Bringing MOCs to Life

[00:00:00] This is the Battlegorilla LEGO Podcast Episode 32, LEGO Storytelling, Bringing Mox to Life.

[00:00:09] The secret title of today's episode is The Brick Teller.

[00:00:15] Last week I indicated that this episode would have a lot to do with the intersection of Mox, built for established IPs and fan fiction.

[00:00:26] Then I started taking my notes for this episode and I realized that I wanted to talk about Mox Storytelling in general first.

[00:00:35] So the episode you were expecting today should drop two weeks from now.

[00:00:40] Okay, who wants to talk about Storytelling?

[00:00:45] The disclaimer. LEGO is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this podcast.

[00:00:55] Are you ready to listen to the world's number one LEGO Podcast recorded in my apartment?

[00:01:26] Welcome to the Battlegorilla LEGO Podcast. My name is Mike Snethen, I'm your host, let's get right into it.

[00:01:35] I am first and foremost a storyteller. When I was a young child and someone would ask me what I was going to be when I grew up,

[00:01:47] I always had an answer for them. It's never the same answer, it depended largely on what had most recently influenced me.

[00:01:57] If I'd recently seen an episode of Sesame Street, I would tell them when I grow up I'm going to be a puppeteer.

[00:02:05] But after that there were seven words that I added.

[00:02:12] And those words were, and I'm also going to write books.

[00:02:18] Sometimes the answer to the what do you want to be when you grow up question was when I grow up I am going to be a circus clown.

[00:02:26] And I'm also going to write books.

[00:02:31] I'm going to be an astronaut and I'm also going to write books.

[00:02:38] I'm going to work at the local grocery store and I'm also going to write books.

[00:02:44] Side note, I actually did end up working at that grocery store when I got older.

[00:02:51] I did not however write books while I was working there which makes me kind of sad now.

[00:02:59] What do I want to be when I grow up? I want to be a bouncer and I'm also going to write books.

[00:03:08] Once somebody explained to me what a bouncer was, I thought that the notion of grabbing drunk people and throwing them out of a bar sounded like a lot of fun.

[00:03:21] And you can earn money doing that? Yes please.

[00:03:26] When I grow up, I'm going to be the Maytag repairman and I'm also going to write books.

[00:03:34] I never really wanted to be the Maytag repairman but when I was growing up there were these very ubiquitous commercials about the Maytag repairman

[00:03:45] and the fact that he's the loneliest man in the world because since Maytag appliances never break, nobody ever calls him for his services.

[00:03:56] I started seeing that commercial when I was real young and I didn't get that it was sarcastic.

[00:04:04] I didn't get that a real Maytag repairman would indeed have to repair Maytag's.

[00:04:13] I just thought hey, being left alone for eight hours at a time, perfect.

[00:04:21] I'll bring a typewriter with me and since I'm also going to write books, I'll write my books then.

[00:04:30] I was so disappointed when I learned the truth about the Maytag repairman commercials.

[00:04:36] When I grow up, I'm going to be a parapsychologist and I'm also going to write books.

[00:04:43] My desire to be a parapsychologist happened long before Ghostbusters hit the screen.

[00:04:49] I was kind of a strange kid.

[00:04:53] Although after Raiders of the Lost Arc hit theaters there was a period of time where when I grew up I was going to be an archaeologist and I'm also been in write books.

[00:05:05] But that didn't last too long.

[00:05:08] I looked into archaeology and real world archaeology looked a lot different from Indiana Jones style archaeology.

[00:05:18] I didn't really care about the real world stuff.

[00:05:22] I just wanted to chase scenes and to punch Nazis.

[00:05:27] And throughout this entire period of my life I was constantly building with Lego, turning my love of Lego into a profession never occurred to me back then.

[00:05:40] And if it had, I would have pointed out to you that I'm also going to write books.

[00:05:47] I think that the first half of those answers were always simply about profession.

[00:05:55] But the last half, that was about my actual purpose in life.

[00:06:04] Eventually the plan was to simply become a novelist.

[00:06:10] No need to say and I'm going to write books after that because that's implied in novelist.

[00:06:16] But that plan got derailed when I suffered a still unexplained neurological episode that left me without the capacity for speech for a little over five years.

[00:06:28] Imagine that and took away my ability to write fiction for, let me check my watch 27 years and counting thus far.

[00:06:41] I save thus far because I like to pretend that I still have hope that the writing ability will come back someday, someday soon.

[00:06:53] Maybe even today today.

[00:06:57] Anytime now.

[00:07:01] Okay, I'll be here waiting.

[00:07:07] Anyway, while I'm not able to write them, I still constantly have characters, settings and storylines getting pumped into my head.

[00:07:20] Because of this, I've always got a story that I'm sort of working on, not writing but taking notes, making lists of character names and other similar stuff.

[00:07:35] Never writing the story, but sometimes writing about the story in a sort of nonfiction way.

[00:07:43] And what this story is changes all the time.

[00:07:47] It's usually whatever the most recent really good idea I had was.

[00:07:55] I've noticed that there are a lot of my more recently thought up characters that happen to be adult fans of Lego.

[00:08:04] Sometimes as a character quirk, sometimes as an actual important to the story part of the plot.

[00:08:13] I've got a 21st century superhero who managed to get herself trapped in the far future of an alternate reality.

[00:08:20] And one of the things they don't have there is Lego.

[00:08:25] The earth in that reality never invented it.

[00:08:30] So she's constantly trying to get Lego like blocks fabricated, but they never work like she wants.

[00:08:37] There's an urban fantasy novel I'd like to write whose main character is someone discovering that he has the power to do magic.

[00:08:45] He can manipulate a physical medium and use it to cast spells through, like a pyromancer does with fire or a geomancer does with earth or rock.

[00:08:57] Only in his case, the malleable medium and spellcasting focus is ABS plastic.

[00:09:05] More specifically Lego.

[00:09:08] The novel's working title is of course the brickmancer.

[00:09:14] So far incorporating Lego into stories that I'll probably never get to write has just been flights of fancy.

[00:09:23] Nice to think about, but probably ultimately pointless.

[00:09:29] So let's talk instead about incorporating stories into Lego.

[00:09:37] In recent years my primary creative outlet has been mock building right up until I got this odd impulse to start podcasting anyway.

[00:09:49] So usually when I'm building a mock, I am building it as a storyteller.

[00:09:57] This doesn't mean that all of my mocks include a story.

[00:10:01] I'm the guy who once took two of the big ugly rock pieces, attached them back to back on a plate and then covered the whole thing with trans red one by one round tiles and flame pieces and named it big ugly volcano.

[00:10:18] But I'd say the majority of my mocks include a story or our story.

[00:10:25] Even if the story is only known to me.

[00:10:30] The piece that I consider to have been my first real mock as a self proclaimed adult fan of Lego was the Gotham City Police Department building, which I built for an online build competition.

[00:10:46] This building was four stories tall.

[00:10:48] You could peek in through the front doors and see the desk sergeant sitting there with a towering stack of case files.

[00:10:55] That was all the interior that I built for it.

[00:10:58] Aside from the ground floor, it was just one big hollow building shell.

[00:11:04] Up on the roof however, there was tons of stuff going on up on the roof.

[00:11:12] I had built a raised platform with a control box and the bat signal.

[00:11:17] I could have stopped there, and it would have qualified as a Batman themed build.

[00:11:23] Or I could have gone just a little bit farther and put my Batman minifig and a Commissioner Gordon looking minifig up there.

[00:11:33] But that wouldn't have been enough for me either.

[00:11:37] There was a fight happening on that rooftop.

[00:11:41] Batman and Robin versus Mr. Freeze and some of his goons.

[00:11:47] The GCPD, including Gordon and Bullock, were there to start arresting the goons that Batman had taken out of commission.

[00:11:56] There was also one screaming police officer frozen inside a solid block of ice.

[00:12:03] Two of the goons had aimed their freeze cannon at him.

[00:12:08] Two other goons were freezing over the door to the roof to stop more cops from showing up.

[00:12:14] And on top of the bat signal platform was a minifig with red pig tails.

[00:12:20] She represented Gordon's secretary Stacy.

[00:12:24] In the comics at the time, Stacy, being a civilian employee, was the only one allowed to turn the bat signal on or off.

[00:12:34] If the police were caught doing that, it would mean that Gotham's law enforcement was condoning vigilanteism.

[00:12:41] Batman doesn't carry a badge, you know.

[00:12:45] The first mock I ever displayed at a convention was chickens and guns, Part 1, conflict profiteers.

[00:12:53] I was talking about that back in episode 6, which was about me attending my first ever Lego convention.

[00:12:59] That mock featured anthropomorphic chicken gun runners selling arms to both sides of a street war between anthropomorphic cows and anthropomorphic pigs.

[00:13:13] It might be one of those you had to be there situations to fully understand.

[00:13:21] But that mock had two sequels in the following years.

[00:13:26] And a lengthy list of other follow up mocks that never got built because I skipped going to Seattle's brick con for several years.

[00:13:35] There are a couple of different mocks that I have built that I would consider candidates for the title of largest mock I've ever built.

[00:13:47] To figure this out definitively, I would have to use math.

[00:13:53] And I am love to do so.

[00:13:57] I would have to take into account square footage of the two-dimensional footprint.

[00:14:04] I would have to consider height.

[00:14:06] There's a case to be made that number of bricks would lend itself to largest mock over a mock that took up a larger area that had fewer bricks.

[00:14:15] It's too complex a question for me.

[00:14:18] I will say that one of the biggest mocks I've ever built was called Attack on the Layer of the Calendar Man.

[00:14:29] Calendar Man is one of the more obscure Batman villains.

[00:14:35] And this is a mock that I first thought about building in 2012 when when Lego started producing the Marvel and Batman superheroes sets.

[00:14:50] I had Batman many figures, I had other Batman characters.

[00:14:55] No calendar man, but I thought wouldn't building his layer be fun.

[00:15:02] The only thing that stopped me is that I didn't want to have to try and customize a figure into calendar man.

[00:15:13] Fast forward to 2017 when the Lego Batman movie comes out.

[00:15:19] And Lego releases a bunch of sets and two separate waves of collectible mini figures.

[00:15:28] During which time they throw in pretty much any Batman villain you can name, including the calendar man.

[00:15:40] And the moment I had that in my hand, I realized it was time.

[00:15:50] Why does Attack on the Layer of the Calendar Man qualify as a contender for one of the largest mocks I've ever built?

[00:15:59] Because it was seven and a half feet long.

[00:16:04] I had to build it in sections and just hope that my math was right and that it would all assemble properly once I got it to the convention hall.

[00:16:16] It did. I didn't even have panic attacks when assembling it, it all worked out well.

[00:16:23] Attack on the layer of the calendar man was basically two sections.

[00:16:30] You had the back half of the mock and the front half of the mock.

[00:16:36] The back half of the mock consisted of 12 giant calendars made from the Lego brick built calendar product that they had offered several years earlier.

[00:16:49] January through December in front of each calendar were individuals who were acting out the primary, let's say holiday of that month.

[00:17:04] There were questions as to whether they were there voluntarily or not.

[00:17:10] I set the mock up the first day I displayed it at Bricks Gasgate and this was one of these years where I stayed in the exhibition hall during the public hours.

[00:17:23] I stood there right behind my mock and it was a good thing because people had questions.

[00:17:31] A lot of people looked at the calendars along the back wall and would come up to me and say, okay I get the January's New Year and February's Valentine's Day and March's St. Patrick's Day and April's Easter.

[00:17:49] I get that July's Independence Day.

[00:17:52] I get that October through December are Halloween Thanksgiving in Santa.

[00:17:58] What is going on with May, June, August and September?

[00:18:06] May depicted a woman taking a pie out of the oven and was representative of Mother's Day.

[00:18:14] June showed a man in a wood shop building a bird house. That was Father's Day.

[00:18:21] August was a birthday party. Lots of people asked me if I was born in August thinking it was my birthday, it was not.

[00:18:31] I was born in December.

[00:18:33] But while trying to figure out what the heck to stick in the August slot, I discovered that August has on average more birthdays than any other month of the year.

[00:18:50] So I thought birthdays are like a personal holiday and if a lot of them are aggregated there, let's do birthday in August.

[00:19:03] September the only thing I could find to put in September was attribute to talk like a pirate day.

[00:19:12] So there were pirates there.

[00:19:16] It was the front half of the mock that filled me with a little bit of glee every time somebody came up and looked it over,

[00:19:28] and then looked at me and said is this yours?

[00:19:32] And after I said yes it is, they said okay explain to me what's going on here because they could tell there was a story there.

[00:19:42] It just weren't sure exactly what it was.

[00:19:47] I have to say that mixed in and amongst all of this was Batman, Robin, another Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Batwoman and Ace the Bat Hound attacking either a calendar man or his henchmen.

[00:20:09] But from left to right, we had a kind of a loading dock area in the left most wall just inside the mock was a cargo van that was being unloaded.

[00:20:29] There were henchmen carrying sacks of money from the back of the van to an area with three or four tables with other henchmen set up with those money counting machines that you see during the drug lab scene in movies who were counting how much whatever robbery they had just committed,

[00:20:57] beyond that area was a briefing area couple of screens up front, bunch of chairs in front of that.

[00:21:07] I would then point out to whoever I was explaining this to that if you count those chairs, you will discover that the calendar man has 31 henchmen in his employ.

[00:21:19] That fact always brought at least a grin if not a little bit of laughter.

[00:21:25] Beyond that were more tables, these tables had crates on them. These crates looked enough like the long boxes that serious comic book collectors keep their comics in that I had several people ask is that his comic collection and I would have to say you're close.

[00:21:45] Yes, that's his personal collection of calendars. Beyond the tables with the calendar collection were 12 cages. I would say about half of these cages were occupied all with female minifigures.

[00:22:03] When I asked about the cages, I would explain that the calendar man had started kidnapping swimsuit models.

[00:22:13] And they'd look at me and say why is the calendar man kidnapping swimsuit models.

[00:22:20] I would point at the next section, which was a elaborate computer setup with a couple of large monitors. Beyond that was a green screen photo setup and I would explain that the calendar man has decided to start creating his own swimsuit calendars.

[00:22:45] The kidnapping swimsuit models, having them pose for the camera in front of the green screen and then the giant computer they would add beach backdrops and whatnot for the backgrounds of the photos.

[00:23:00] The last section was a large wardrobe of seasonal costumes. I had torsos from Santa Claus suits, leprechauns, had an uncle Sam style patriotic top hat there, just all sorts of stuff.

[00:23:21] And at the front of that section, I had a three screen mirror where you could look yourself over after putting on whatever costume you had decided on or had been assigned.

[00:23:37] Over the two public days of Bricks cascades, I gave that explanation, that little verbal tour of the calendar man's layer, 186,282 times.

[00:23:53] Okay, that's not an exact figure. That's actually the speed of light in miles per second. But you get my point. I repeated that a lot.

[00:24:04] And a lot of people thanked me for it afterwards. They'd say thank you, that explains this, that this is so cool. It was interesting before they asked me to explain what was going on afterwards. It was cool.

[00:24:22] There are also mocks that I've produced that nobody looks at and says, tell me what's going on here. Because the story that I have built isn't obviously a story to anyone except me.

[00:24:38] But a lot of times when I build these mocks each minifigure in the mock has a name and the backstory.

[00:24:50] I had a couple of criminal gangs in space western last year. And I knew the names and maybe a paragraph, fourth of backstory on each of them.

[00:25:05] And then late last year my hard drive crashed. And so far none of the data has been recoverable from it.

[00:25:12] So I don't currently know any of the names or backstories from those minifigures. I did once upon a time.

[00:25:23] And much like Indiana Jones's father, I wrote them down so I wouldn't have to remember them. But I did not actually back that data up to a disc. So away it went.

[00:25:37] I could tell other stories of mocks that contained storylines in their construction.

[00:25:45] Many figures that have become characters that have appeared in more than one of my mocks.

[00:25:51] But once again, if I went through everything we'd be here all day.

[00:25:59] I don't know to what extent mock building and storytelling go hand in hand for other mock builders.

[00:26:07] I would assume that a lot of them incorporate story elements when they can.

[00:26:15] If for no other reason than to have people able to spot Easter eggs or seek catastrophes that are just about to happen, or the vents of good fortune about to unfold.

[00:26:28] But it's always something I look for when I'm looking at mocks.

[00:26:33] And it's always something I'm thinking about when I'm thinking up what my next mocks are going to be way back in the fifth episode of this podcast.

[00:26:44] I talked about the Lego Hikou.

[00:26:48] A minimalist build criteria I developed using the syllable count of the Japanese Hikou poetry style as the specific number of bricks to build a small three section mock.

[00:27:02] A quick definition, a Lego Hikou is a complete mock in three sections usually lined up in a row.

[00:27:11] The first section being built from exactly five pieces.

[00:27:16] The second or middle section being made from exactly seven pieces and the final section being made from five pieces.

[00:27:27] I've always wanted the Lego Hikou to be some caught on within the Lego community.

[00:27:32] I wanted Lego fans to hear about the Lego Hikou and think wow that's interesting.

[00:27:38] Now I want to see if I can build the Lego Hikou.

[00:27:42] And yes, there is the somewhat egocentric yearning to have people here the name Mike Sney than or battle gorilla and immediately think oh yeah that's the Lego Hikou guy.

[00:27:54] I haven't built a lot of new Lego Hikou mocks recently.

[00:27:58] I'm hoping that changes once I'm finished frantically building stuff for bricks cascade.

[00:28:03] I've got a lot of ideas for new Lego Hikou.

[00:28:06] I just need the time and the pieces to make them a reality.

[00:28:11] I've decided that I want to start doing something to help promote the Lego Hikou here in the podcast.

[00:28:18] I'm calling this the Lego Hikou challenge catchy right.

[00:28:23] It isn't a contest.

[00:28:25] I'm not going to be selecting winners.

[00:28:27] I'm not going to be handing out prizes.

[00:28:30] Assuming that all went according to schedule last night, I should have posted an image on the podcast's Instagram account.

[00:28:38] Instagram dot com slash battle gorilla of two thirds of a Lego Hikou.

[00:28:45] A Federation Starship.

[00:28:47] Not the enterprise, but clearly a classic Trek era Federation Starship and a Klingon bird of prey.

[00:28:55] Each one of those is made from five Lego pieces.

[00:29:01] I would like you to look at that image and then build the missing seven piece section.

[00:29:07] Then photograph it and post it on Instagram or Twitter or Blue Sky.

[00:29:13] With the hashtag Lego Hikou challenge.

[00:29:17] I'm very curious to see what you come up with.

[00:29:21] This mock will be one of the Lego high coups that will be on display at this year's Bricks cascade.

[00:29:27] It will be displayed complete.

[00:29:29] I've built my version of the seven piece section already.

[00:29:32] It's just not in the photo.

[00:29:34] I'm planning to post a photo of the entire Lego Hikou when the March 26th episode of this podcast drops.

[00:29:42] But I want to see what you can come up with starting with those two Star Trek ships.

[00:29:48] Unleash your creativity.

[00:29:51] You could use your seven piece allotment to build a third Star Trek ship.

[00:29:56] You could build a seven piece ship from some other franchise.

[00:30:01] Star Trek is usually a video medium.

[00:30:04] You could build a seven piece camera that's filming the two ships.

[00:30:07] Go wild.

[00:30:09] Blow my mind.

[00:30:12] I expect that the Lego Hikou challenge is something that I'll run from time to time from here on out.

[00:30:19] In next week's episode, I'll be talking about the 2024 Bricks cascade which starts just a couple of days after that episode drops.

[00:30:28] It will probably be my last Bricks cascade focused episode until 2025.

[00:30:35] Links to the podcast's social media and wish lists can be found at battlegirlrela.com slash links.

[00:30:44] As always, if you enjoy this podcast, be sure and tell all your friends about it.

[00:30:49] And if you hate this podcast, well, why not recommend it to your enemies?

[00:30:56] The podcast's intro and outro themes podcasting is awesome inspired by Tegan and Sarah's everything is awesome.

[00:31:02] And Oud to gibberish were created by Michael Rankich.

[00:31:07] I think I just closed Pandora's box.

[00:31:13] Oh no, if you could punch a sucker.

[00:31:16] How else would you know that I've done everything except any of it?

[00:31:22] You can have your bald eagle afraid of fire and you can eat it too

[00:31:27] and there could be so much joy in my libido well.

[00:31:31] How else I mean me? Wish me luck, nonetheless.

[00:31:35] Prayers for junk food.