I know that many of you love building with Legos, did you know that you can become a Master Builder when you grow up? But it's not that easy.....read on and learn what it takes to become one! (By the way, the story was written by sixth-grader Lucas Miller, who also happens to be my son!
For Christmas, my brother and I got
4,287 pieces of colored plastic. We were extremely excited. These weren’t
random bits of plastic, they were part of a Lego set of London’s Tower Bridge.
But that’s nothing compared to the 20,000 bricks in the giant Whale’s Tail or
the 304,500 bricks used to create Neptune in an exhibit at the Sydney Aquarium.
Millions
of people around the globe play with Lego but not many can name the people
behind the gigantic and beautiful plastic brick creations seen in storefronts,
theme parks and museums and places. These are the works of the Lego Master
Builders. I
already knew a lot about Lego in general but since I didn’t know much about
Lego Master Builders I chose to make them the focus of my I-Search paper.
I
wanted to learn what Master Builders do and who they are. I really wanted to uncover the history
of the Lego Master Builder. I wanted to know who had created the position, and
how the job has changed over the years. I also wanted to discover how someone
could become a Master Builder and the different duties they would have before
becoming a full-fledged master. Another thing I wanted to know was how many
Masters there are, and who they are. But most of all I wanted to find about the
creations they make, and how they are designed.
Since
Lego is extremely popular, I thought there would be loads of information on the
Master Builders. But... there wasn’t. The Lego Book, by Daniel Lipkowitz, which
I own, had a two-page spread but it is mostly pictures and has very little information.
My dad helped me check the New York Times’ entire archives since 1851 and there
was nothing on Master Builders. When I first Googled the topic, I found a June
2010 story by a WBEZ radio producer in Chicago at
www.marketplace.org
about a Master Builder named Daniel Morey but it didn’t have much information.
Very few Google results contained
any useful facts. Many were promoting Lego, especially the company’s “Master
Builder Academy,” in which kids learn how to build with Legos.
I felt very frustrated. I almost
gave up and wanted to change my topic. I asked my dad for help and he showed me
how to put words in quotes in Google and how to refine my search.
Finally,
I found three good websites with stuff about my topic: zakkalife.blogspot.com
(October 2011), geekmom.com (June 2011), which I only found through something
on wired.com, and geekadelphia.com (March 2010). But then one site that just
had Lego images,
www.antalik.com, led me
to another good site, www. Fbtb.net, (August 2005), after I clicked on the
Neptune picture just because I wanted to see it up close.
Zakkalife
had an interview with Lego Master Builder Steve Gerling, Geekmom had an article
about Gerling that also had some Master Builder history, Geekadelphia had an
interview with a different Master Builder, named Pete Donner, and fbtb had an
interview with Master Builder Erik Varszegi. Most of the people who published these articles/interviews
do not have any real journalistic credentials, they are mostly just Lego geeks
with blogs about Lego, but considering that most of the stuff I found were just
Q&As, I don’t really think credentials are necessary. They were very
informative and answered most of my questions.
I
learned from the geekmom site that the job of Master Builder was created in
1961 by Dagny Holm, who was the niece of one of Lego’s founders. Today, there
are Master Builders at the U.S.
headquarters in Enfield, Connecticut, the world headquarters in Denmark, inthe
Czech Republic, and in all of the Legoland theme parks (here in America, in
Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom). Some of these people started out as
artists, either painters or sculptors or woodworkers but some came from other
backgrounds, as scientists or even clowns.
In
the Pete Donner interview, I learned that Master Builders have to start just as
model gluers doing basic work and then move up to being a model builder before
eventually getting promoted to Master Builder.
In
the Steve Gerling interview, which is the most up-to-date information I found,
I learned that there are seven Master Builders at Lego in America but that they
also use six or eight freelancers. One thing I learned in the Gerling interview
and in the Varszegi interview that really surprised me is how much of their
work today is done using computers.
“We
do a lot of our prototyping for our big models on software that the Lego
company developed that allows us to take a virtually designed generic model and
turn it into a virtual Lego model that can be used for a prototype,” Gerling
says. “We can copy that layer by layer.”
And
Varszegi comments, “If we were to grow the
department it would be helpful to have an art or architecture background like
some of us here. Also these days, like most jobs, we are relying more and more
on computer skills. We make use of 3D software like 3DStudiosMax, Maya and
Poser. AutoCAD, we use that a lot and graphics programs like Photoshop. “
One
quote I really liked from Gerling showed that they don’t build the commercial
sets that my brother and I might build and also about creativity. “We're
not the ones who design the set that you buy in stores,” he says. “Our job is
to promote the imagination.”
I
really learned a lot about Lego Master Builders and I was glad that I learned
from the actual Master Builders themselves.. Even though the research part was
frustrating, I think it taught me more about how to do research on a specific
topic. I don’t think there is any more I need to learn about this topic but I
think that whatever the next topic I need to do research on may be I will be
more prepared to do the job.
