LEGO – Andertoons Cartoon Blog

LEGO Dala Horses

September 9, 2018 andertoons

Some of my heritage is Swedish, and I’ve always loved the simple beauty of the traditional Swedish Dala Horse.

Originating from the province of Dalarna, the painted wooden horses were originally carved as toys for children, but gained wide popularity as souvenirs of Sweden at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. They continue to be collected and displayed proudly in homes today.

Recently I decided to see if I could come up with a simple and elegant LEGO representation of the Dala Horse:

And once I started building them I started looking for fun ways to decorate them. Soon I began making other variations and I was amazed at how much could be conveyed in the Dala horse form.

So, here’s my first batch of pop culture LEGO Dala horses! Enjoy!

LEGO Captain America Dala Horse — Captain America

LEGO AT-AT Walker Dala Horse — AT-AT Walker

LEGO Trojan Horse Dala Horse 2 — Trojan Horse

LEGO Classic Space Dala Horse — LEGO Classic Space

I’ve got ideas for dozens of other LEGO Dala horses, so stay tuned!

Pint-Sized Pew Pew – 41 Tiny LEGO Spaceships

September 12, 2015January 10, 2017 andertoons

I have a huge LEGO collection. (It’s kind of ridiculous.) And while it’s fun having bin after bin of brick, all that plastic had pretty much filled my office. And, frankly, all the finding and sorting and organizing was making building more overwhelming than fun.

So I packed it all up and stored it away in my crawlspace, except for one medium sized bucket filled with random parts. Now I have some elbow room to write and draw again, and the limited number of available bricks has really spurred my creativity. And in that spirit, here’s 41 tiny little LEGO spaceships to show how much you can create with just a few pieces:

Not bad huh? And that medium bucket of bricks is still mostly full. I’ll post some more spaceships as I build them.

But if you’re still in the mood for more LEGO, , here’s some other stuff of mine you might like:

How I Made My Own LEGO Set with Custom Printing & Instructions

November 6, 2014January 10, 2017 andertoons

Every year around Thanksgiving I send out a gift to clients, vendors, and prospects. I try to be creative and have sent stuff like:

Andertoons Hot Sauce (3 Flavors)
Cartoon engraved chocolate bars
Andertoons lunchboxes (Filled with Laffy Taffy, Snickers, and Chuckles)

But. as you might know, LEGO has a special place in my heart. (Check out my Pigeon, Catwoman, and A-Z Spaceships) So, after many years of consideration, and a few months of planning and execution, I finally achieved what I think is the best thing I’ve sent out yet – a custom LEGO set of me at my drafting table, complete with instructions and custom printed parts!

As I said, this took a while to figure out, so I thought I’d share with you, step by step, how I did it. Enjoy!

Prototyping

I’m quite fortunate in that, being an AFOL, I have a pretty sizable LEGO collection laying around. So I just dug in and started building.

I first tried some building with some brackets and hinges making the tilting drafting table and legs, but things never quite lined up right. Then I tried some modified plates and tiles, which worked better, but might have been more difficult for people who don’t build with LEGO as much as I do. I finally landed on an easier to build design with traditional hinges and a simple, but quite accurate, lamp made out of just 4 pieces.

It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. And, more importantly, the pieces needed were available in the colors I wanted at a reasonable cost.

Buying Parts

BrickLink is like LEGO heaven. It’s an unofficial marketplace where people can buy and sell nothing but LEGO pieces. Need a few hundred jumpers? Some plants to dress up your project? Looking for that rare white Boba Fett minifig? It’s all there.

To make things easier, I created a wanted list and sorted for quantity, condition, and location. I ended up ordering from 16 different vendors (including 1 in Norway) and waited for my parts to arrive.

Custom Printing

Every summer my son and I go to Brickworld here in Chicago. It’s a great place to chat with other LEGO builders, share ideas, marvel at their creations, and do some shopping.

In recent years there’s been an explosion of custom items including some high quality and very LEGO-esque custom printing. One of my favorites is Citizen Brick, not just for the quality of their printing, but for their sense of humor.

I contacted them about printing two different pieces for me: a modified tile for the table top, and a minifig torso. Their pricing was quite reasonable, so all that was left was for me to deliver the images I wanted printed.

I already had my logo in an EPS format, but the cartoon required taking some line art from Photoshop into Illustrator and tinkering with Live Trace until it was just right. After sending over the files and waiting a few weeks, Citizen Brick delivered some really terrific custom printed pieces that look like LEGO might have done them themselves.

Instructions

The other daunting obstacle was creating instructions the recipients could use to build the set themselves. After a bit of research I found a really informative post at Bskog that got me 95% of the way there.

I had some familiarity with Bricksmith, but I needed to update my parts as I was missing the famous cheese wedge for some reason. After recreating my model step by step, I saved it moved onto familiarizing myself with LPub.

LPub took a bit to set up. I downloaded LDView and told LPub where it was, but the LDraw root directory path had me stymied for a while. I eventually located the LDraw parts.lst here, saved it, copied it to the correct location in Bricksmith, and directed LPub to it. (More info here.)

But once LPub was set up and I tinkered with the configuration, it produced a really beautiful set of PDF instructions!

Then I created a cover and back cover in Photoshop, sent the whole thing over to SmartPress, and I had my instructions soon after.

Packaging

Now that I had my standard parts, my custom parts, and my instructions, it was on to the packaging.

I ordered a couple different sample boxes from Uline as I wanted one box for the set, and another for shipping. I settled on their S-15138 for the set, and S-16648 for shipping and they fit perfectly. I also ordered some 2 Mil poly bags to protect the custom printed pieces in transit, and contain all the pieces in the box, just like LEGO does it.

Then it was back to Photoshop to create the image for the outside of the box, which took a while to get just right. After some research I chose Sticker Mule to print up the rather large stickers, and they arrived about a week later.

Assembly

Once I had everything I needed from all the different vendors, I set up in our family room and assembled everything over about two weeks in the evening while watching TV with my wife.

Putting all the pieces in the poly bags was probably the worst part as I was constantly paranoid about the possibility of missing a part. So every time I started putting in a new part, I checked the bag for the last part I had put in to make sure I hadn’t missed it.

There are only 25 pieces in total, and some of the pieces repeat, but it was probably 15 rounds or so of counting, filling, checking, etc…

Then there was the box assembly, sticker application, packing the piece bags and instructions, and then more boxing to put the whole thing together. Whew!

Shipping

I used Endicia to print up all my shipping, and after a few trips to various local post offices, all of my custom LEGO sets were on their way.

My hope is that clients and vendors will really enjoy a unique gift, and that my prospects will be sufficiently surprised by the whole thing that I get some press and/or some new business. But mostly it was a really fun challenge from beginning to end, and I finally got to create my very own custom LEGO set!

Here’s a few more pics for you. Enjoy:

LEGO Zombie Spaceship Powered By Brains

October 7, 2013January 10, 2017 andertoons

Recently I’ve been working on a series of LEGO spaceships based on the months of the year. So, with the Walking Dead starting up again soon and Halloween on the horizon, I present October – The Brainpower! (Click on the pics for larger images.)

It’s orange, of course, and piloted by a space zombie. Want a closer look? OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Brainpower actually runs on 12 LEGO brains built right into its twin engines. And there’s one more brain in a jar toward the rear in case our pilot wants a snack.

Apparently brainpower glows an eerie green. (Also, I was especially happy to be able to work the new orange brick separator into this model.)

Side view! Pew pew!

If you’re flying through space and you see this in your rear view space mirror, hit the gas!

Braaaaaiiiiinnnnnsss… ZOOOOM!

And here’s one last long view:

So there you have my LEGO Zombie Spaceship! If you want to see it super huge, check it out over at Flickr.

Wanna see some of my other LEGO projects? Here’s a few you might like:

Drawn to LEGO

July 22, 2013January 10, 2017 andertoons1 Comment

You might remember a few weeks back I did a How To Draw lesson for a giant robot. Well, the more I looked at the final drawing the more I saw it in LEGO. So I threw this together over a weekend and thought I’d share. Enjoy:

More Andertoons LEGO robots you might like: