This weekend is Star Wars day, and as we previously reported LEGO Australia is going all out with a record breaking Star Wars event in Penrith.
As part of the event Bricking Around was given the chance to chat to LEGO Master Builder Dan Steininger. Dan is one of only 7 master builders in the world and is clearly living the dream of any AFOL.
Our chat with Dan covers a heap of topics including Star Wars, new LEGO themes and even other building block brands.
Check out the interview below.
Welcome to Australia Dan
Thank you.
How are you finding it so far?
I love it. We had a little rain last night, but the weather was just gorgeous yesterday.
Is this your first time in Australia?
No I was here about three years ago. At the harbour they had a museum there that we built some LEGO sculptures for. That was about three years ago. They had this 20ft shark that we were building. When it came over by boat it kind of cracked so I had to come and do some repair work to the shark.
So you are here to celebrate Star Wars day, have you always been a big Star Wars Fan?
I am a big fan, in that I saw the first three movies when they were in the movie theatres. So that shows that I am a fan, and also that I’m old.
When they first came out I saw them in the movie theatres and like everybody else I was just… it was crazy.
We have one guy in the shop, Erik Varszegi who is also a master builder, who is just… he is very dedicated to the Star Wars line. So if I have any questions “hey I’m building a tie fighter, what colour are the lasers at the front?” and he just tells me exactly everything you want to know; the shape the size, everything. He’s amazing, much better than I am with information on Star Wars, but still – may the 4th be with you.
Is there anything from the Star Wars universe that you’d love to build but haven’t had a chance to yet?
Actually this is one of them that we’re doing here. The 4 metre tall Darth Vader, I’ve never built before. This will be the first time that I’ve built a Darth Vader this large. This is a LEGO first here.
Last November I built a three metre tall tie fighter that had lights and sound in it, that was very cool. We’ve built a lot of the characters before, life size characters. LEGO also built the life size X-wing that was revealed in New York City in Time Square.
So you were involved in that one?
Actually it was a repair thing again. That was built in the Czech Republic and it was shipped over so I went to New York and did some repair work on it and then answered some questions about it and stuff like that at the reveal in Time Square. That was enormous; I think it was like 3 and half million pieces.
That was a very impressive build.
So when I found that I was going to interviewing you I did a bit of Googling, and in everything that I saw with you in it you seemed like a natural entertainer. If you had to choose between doing public events and building models which do you think you would prefer to do day-in day-out?
I really like the events I have to admit. I really like the events. The travel I’m not too crazy about. Getting to the events you know, that’s the only drag. So I get to see a lot of malls, airports and hotels which are not exciting. It sounds exciting at first when you tell people I travel a lot and then when you’re doing it for a while it’s not very exciting.
But I like the events I think because I get to do both; I get to build at the event and entertain – I do a lot of giveaways and stuff like that. I also have an acting background and I get to scratch that itch too when I do the events. So that’s a lot of fun.
Once in a while I like to bury myself in a model at the shop and just don’t do any expense reports, try not to go to any meetings and just build right in the shop. I have to admit that even after 21 years that’s still very enjoyable for me to just build, to build with the brick and have it in your hand and create something out of nothing.
Yours definitely seems like the ultimate dream job, but how much of it is things like meetings and expense reports?
Yeah a lot of my day to day job is meetings, because they will have different brand managers. It could be Ninjago or it could be Chima, it could be City. LEGO has a brand manager for each specific line and so they have a marketing budget and they want to help promote their products. And so they’ll get me or other master builders for meetings to try and flush out what can we do to make something, or a particular brand, kind of pop. How do we get the brick into the kid’s hands.
We do different kinds of things – we do demonstration events, this one this weekend is going to be an interactive event. I’ll be assembling what the kids build. So they will be building a 4 times brick, like a 2×4 only 4 times larger. So they will actually have a hand in building it.
Our theory at LEGO is you put the brick in to the kids hands and let LEGO take over, and the magic of building it creates just kind of… you don’t have to talk about it anymore, it kind of takes over and does its own thing. So a lot of the projects that they run through the process it’s a lot of brainstorming meeting. It’s not always a glued model, sometimes it’s just a different marketing idea; a different way that we can reach the kids.
I believe that a lot of the modelling of the large scale models is done in software like Maya, do you see that being a key skill for somebody looking to pursue a career in LEGO?
You’re absolutely right, so you’ve been doing your homework. We use Poser, 3D Studio Max and different programs. At the moment it’s all pretty much Maya; which is the recognised program in the industry. We model it first in Maya and then we import that 3D image into a program called LEGO Brick Builder, actually we’re in the second version so it’s LEGO Brick Builder 2. That changes that 3D image all into LEGO bricks. It’s all 1×1 plates or 1×1 bricks, whatever we have it set at. It doesn’t give you instructions from that, but it does create a 3D image and the builders then look at that like a CT-scan layer by layer. Then they build the model from that.
But as far as people wanting to do our job now, when I started it was ground level and had no experience, or very little experience with LEGO, but I had a background in sculpting. I played with LEGO with my children. Now computers are so important to the job, it cuts the design time about in half. It’s so much faster with Maya and brick builder to create a prototype to build the model, a virtual prototype.
Computers right now, 3D design with the computers, definitely with the younger guys in the shop is very important. I muddle my way through it, especially brick builder. I’m not very good at Maya at all. If I have a project that I am project lead on I get one of the other guys to design it in Maya, then I can have somebody else do it in brick builder or I’ll do it myself. I’m fairly confident at that but there are a whole lot of people a lot faster than I am.
Kids, adults or whoever is looking at it that’s what they are looking at now for people, is the computer skills.
So how hard is it to make the transition from LEGO fan to LEGO employee? I’ve heard the interview process is fairly tough.
Yes. There are lot of folks who would love to have my job, you know what I mean? There’s 7 LEGO Master Builders within the LEGO Company and we’re all based out of Enfield, Connecticut in the states. Denmark they have designers and they have some builders there too. In the Czech Republic they have probably 300 builders and 20 designers; so it’s a huge, I guess you’d say factory, building models there. But Master Builder is kind of a term that was adapted in the states, so I was trained by a master builder, who was trained by a master builder who was trained by somebody from Denmark.
The skills and tricks, you don’t learn those anywhere else other than at LEGO. There is no LEGO university, there is no school where it teaches you how to build these things. Get the design skills from university as far as Maya and the other modelling programs but you have to be at LEGO and just learn how to repair, how to build, how to do all the events and stuff like that. It’s on the job the training.
For me I’ve never know anybody that was hired as a Master Builder, they’ve all started and got their foot in the door and then kind of weaselled their way into the model shop. That was what they really wanted to do at the beginning so they go a job somewhere. We had one guy that was making crates; he was a carpenter making crates. His name was Steve Gerling. It was funny he comes up to me and goes “I’m really an artist” so I said you’ll have to show me your portfolio; he had it in the car. He eventually became a designer and master builder too.
There’s not too many of us out there, but there’d be a whole lot more if there was a need for it.
Then the internet came along. We used to think before the internet that we were like “it”, the top of the heap you know? Then the internet came along and we looking at what these postings were on the internet that people had created in their homes and stuff like that. I remember one was a short little movie on the internet; it was a farmer’s field that had a LEGO train going around and all the buildings were built out of LEGO and the cows in the field were turning their heads to watch the train go by. That had to be about 1998, 2000 something like that.
Of course since the internet just blew up, nobody knew that there were so many people playing with LEGO and not just kids; adults were playing with LEGO. The internet came along and they found each other and then we realised that we weren’t as good as we thought we were.
So as a master builder you are still impressed by the stuff that everyday adult fans of LEGO are building and sharing online?
Yes, no doubt about it. Erik Varszegi is actually an AFOL too. He had the job at LEGO first and then became an AFOL. They have different groups throughout the country; he’s in the New England version so he is always on the pages. He’ll call us over and show us a picture or share something along.
It’s actually something that other members of the company, different marketing areas or sales, will see something and show us and say “How come you guys aren’t doing this?” so it keeps us on our game. We have to in order to be relevant and stay on top. A lot of it has already been done out there.
One thing we did recently was a lenticular model. That was fan based. We didn’t come up with that. It uses cheese wedges to create that different view as you go around it, and it’s totally awesome. I saw that first maybe two or three years ago. I think it was at a fan event and it was Harry Potter turns into Voldemort or something like that. I was like “are you kidding me?”
We’re always surprised. We’ll steal it. We’ll try and take their good ideas and we’ll use it too.
Do you remember the last retail set that you built?
Yes, the last was one was the Mindstorms EV3. I can’t program that to save my life but I can build anything. So that was the last one that I built. I think I built three of them in a row. We call those in the shop “build-ups” where you are actually building the actual set. Most times they’ll be sent off to something like the headquarters of a Target or a store chain and it’s going to be in a flyer for a particular promotion. So they’ll promote a sale or something on a particular set so they need the actual set sent to them because they need to take pictures of it. In this case these were going to be for a LEGO fan-fest they do in the states where it’s a traveling LEGO show. They are actually playing and building with the Mindstorms sets so they needed a build-up in advance so that’s why I did three of them.
So if somebody came to you and said “Dan, we need an idea for a new theme” what would your first instinct be for a new LEGO theme?
A whole new theme?
That’s a great question. I’ve been there for 21 years and nobody’s asked me that question before. I’m a little disappointed in LEGO. I like farm equipment, that’s a little crazy but I like farm equipment and it might have to be a licensed theme; in the states they have John Deer the tractor company. I’m sure they have all different companies that produce them in different countries. I’d like to see stuff like that, more farm equipment that’s kind a cross between creator or city type of theme with technic gears. So that actually works and can do what it’s supposed to do. I think that would be fun.
When Friends first came out I was building a lot of Friends sets. I never saw so many adult fans so excited to see all those colours that are in the Friends sets and the different pieces. I think that incorporating that a little more into realistic sets, probably city, but with more of the wild colours.
So you have said that you got in to LEGO when you were building with your son. How different do you think your life would be if you’d have not bought LEGO and got the other brand of building toys instead?
(laughing) How come I’m not doing you for all of my interviews?
Well I’m very biased. I recognise and appreciate the quality that is in LEGO. I like to think… being raised by my parents it was you do a good job, you represent yourself well and you pride yourself on being a good quality workman on whatever job you’re doing. You do your best. I think the LEGO values and the LEGO quality are something that matches very well to my family and how my wife and I raised our own children. I think for myself it’s not just the LEGO product itself but also the brand image and everything is something that I identify with and appreciate very much. I think I would find that hard to do with some of the other brands because I have played with a lot of them and there are imitations out there that just aren’t up to the same quality standards that LEGO is.
Then there are the ones that are completely different and I can respect them. I used to play with Tinker Toys and Lincoln logs when I was a child. The more play time that kids can get building with their hands is terrific. I don’t begrudge any. It’s just that some of them latched on to LEGO’s already existing system and tried to do a little cheaper version and I think I’m happy working for the company I’m working for.
Thanks for taking the time to chat to us today.
For your chance to meet Dan in person, head along to the LEGO Star Wars event at Westfield Penrith this weekend.
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