Meet a member: Carbohydrates
Posted by Huw,
Today we are taking to Tom Gion, aka Carbohydrates, who's in Texas. I suspect, like me, he tires of picking white cat hairs out of his LEGO models...
How long have you been visiting Brickset?
I have no idea! I can't even remember when I started visiting. My profile says I've been a member since 'Before November 2010.'
What's your favourite/most used feature of the site?
Definitely the incredible databases. Being able to look up sets by year or by theme, what sets a certain part came in, and all the various official IDs is incredibly helpful. I also love the reviews and Brickset is my main source of news as well.
What is your first LEGO memory?
Building 6670 Rescue Rig with my mom. I would have been probably 5 at the time. It's the first set I can remember building, and I loved it. In retrospect, what a great set, too! Interesting build being 4 studs wide at the front and 5 at the rear, and it had 6 printed pieces and those super cool transparent red slopes that I worked into almost every MOC I built as a kid.
Did you have a dark age and if so what caused you to emerge from it?
Yeah. My interest in LEGO declined in my teenage years, largely due to pressure from my dad to "grow up," to the point where I wasn't really buying sets any more. I did buy the Creator Expert modulars every year, since I could justify those to him as being more "adult", but eventually I gave up, sold them all, and stopped buying LEGO.
Once I moved out, I still kept a loose eye on news sites over the years and bought a small set once in a blue moon, like the 21103 The DeLorean Time Machine and 21108 Ghostbusters Ecto-1, but they would get built once and put immediately into a closet. What brought me back?
I saw some of Jonathan Elliott's amazing cars featured on The Brothers Brick in 2017 by pure chance - I was checking that blog maybe once every month or two - and they blew me away. I had so many questions! What was "Speed Champions?" How did he do all those curves? It led to a flurry of Google searching, learning, finding blogs like New Elementary (that I immediately devoured the entire archive of) to learn about all the new and interesting pieces that new existed, bought some Speed Champions sets starting with 75881 2016 Ford GT & 1966 Ford GT40, and just immersed myself in getting up to date.
Which set or theme has been most influential upon you, as a LEGO fan?
Speed Champions, for ending my dark age. A close second is Creator Expert, for constantly teaching me new techniques and elevating the hobby as a whole. Runners-up are amazing original themes like Western, Adventurers, Ice Planet, and Pirates, all for really cementing my love of LEGO as a kid in the first place!
What are you building right now?
I just finished 10265 Ford Mustang, which I received as a gift. Looking forward to getting my hands on 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay, though I have no idea where I'll put it!
How do you store your LEGO?
You know, to be honest, I have a very small collection of pieces. If I buy a set, it's usually just to display. If I'm working on a MOC, I order the parts I need for it and little more. It's rare that I buy a set to part out, but it happens, and occasionally I stock up on pieces that can be hard to find in a pinch. So my meagre collection is a series of nested plastic bags in a cardboard box, sorted by type and sub-type.
Do you build MOCs? If, so what?
Absolutely! It's the biggest draw of the hobby and always has been. My focus is on Speed Champions-scale cars, mostly classic American muscle. I was strongly influenced by builders like the aforementioned Jonathan Elliott, Hachiroku24, Rolling Bricks, Norton74, ER0L, and so many more.
I really love the challenge of working in the (pre-2020) 6-wide scale, because it's that much more difficult to build identifiable caricatures of cars, and I love being able to implement them in minifig scale layouts. I think minifig scale is just something that really resonates a ton with people since it's so ubiquitous. Larger scales let you fit in more detail, sure, but minifig scale lets people picture it on the streets of their own cities, maybe with their sig-fig behind the wheel.
My other favourite thing to build is mini modulars, based on the standard used by the old Toys-R-Us exclusives. It's a project I do with my partner, and it's what pulled them into the hobby, too - they like to design or sketch buildings, and then I'll iterate them into LEGO, and we dial in the details together! It's a fully collaborative thing with the person I love the most.
What is your favourite part?
The new 1x1 bracket changed my life! I've used it in almost every MOC I've made since it was introduced! Classically speaking, though, my favourite part for most of the years I've enjoyed LEGO was the classic 4070 headlight brick. I didn't even have to look up the part number to type it here. Any pieces that enable compact SNOT connections will likely always be my favourites.
What set/theme/part (take your pick) would you like LEGO to produce? I actually really like working within a set of constraints, which is the appeal of LEGO as a medium in the first place to me, so I'm reluctant to request a specific part. That said, were I tempted with the offer to do so, I would want a variation of 99206 that's just, like, the front 1/4 of it. So basically a 1 x 1 x 2/3 with a stud toward the top of one side. This piece's existence would make my life so much easier.
Do you have a presence on Instagram, YouTube or elsewhere?
I'm on Flickr.
Do you have any interests or hobbies other than LEGO?
I play guitar and write surfy punk style music, a la Dead Kennedys, Agent Orange, Man... Or Astro-Man?, etc. I also play games, frequently with my partner who's even more into it than I am. Currently, I'm playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Overwatch, and Borderlands 3.
Are you a member of a LUG?
Dallas/Fort Worth LEGO Users' Group as of last year!
Have you been to a LEGO event?
I've only been to a small local event in Texas, but back when I lived in Washington, I attended NWBrickCon and it blew me away. In fact, seeing how outclassed I was by the raw talent on display there was a huge motivating factor in stepping up my MOC game so I could put my best foot forward and try to hang with the best.
Thanks Tom!
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14 comments on this article
I've got to say, I've never seen that bracket before! Thanks for the interview!
Great interview! Just one small thing - the Flickr account link is a bit broken :)
"Interesting build being 4 studs wide at the front and 5 at the rear, and it had 6 printed pieces and those super cool transparent red slopes that I worked into almost every MOC I built as a kid."
I'm so glad that I'm not the only kid who was completely enraptured by those transparent red slopes.
6670 was one of my favourite 90s vehicles, so I never disassembled it, ergo, I never used those transparent red pieces on any other sets.
Hi Tom, those are some great cars you have there. Did you actually used a mini gig roller skate to make a door handle?
Excellent design idea!
Link sorted, thanks.
@Tom, do you share your MOCs on Rebrickable? Some nice builds ther
Love the cars! Agreed on 6-wide!
Awesome interview. I really like the mini-modulars build- clean, detailed, and displays well! Also the Speed Champions-scale MOCs are amazing. I know members of our LUG would love to see these. I'll definitely be sending this article their way. Cheers.
@Slobrojoe said:
"I've got to say, I've never seen that bracket before! Thanks for the interview!"
Yeah, it's great, huh? Theres's the downward-facing regular version, and the upward-facing inverted version. Both were introduced in the Ninjago City Docks set and I was integrating them into MOC designs before I even had one in my hands physically, thanks to how quickly Mecabricks updates their database.
@ChicoCheco Yup! The skate-as-door-handle idea is one I saw from somebody else first, so I can't take credit, but it works so nicely.
@jdm Yessir, just look for the same username on Rebrickable: Carbohydrates. I didn't mention it in the interview because that felt like it would be pretty self indulgent.
Thanks, everybody! Hey, if you wanna talk shop and swap building techniques and such, don't hesitate to reach out!
The lament of a LEGO loving pet owner. Seeing a completed build in better light and realizing there's a pet hair stuck between two bricks... of course always down at the bottom. Then your left w/only two options. The first being to try and barely separate those pieces and pull the offending hair out, and risk partially destroying and reconstructing the entire model (and thus end up w/more furry un-friends inside). Or option 2 of just trying to pull out the protruding pet particle, and then force yourself to reconcile w/the fact a permanently lodged fur chunk is stuck inside. Oh the trials and tribulations we go through lol.
PS. The '66 Ford GT 40 is my favorite LEGO and Speed Champions car, hands down. Plus my favorite car of all time to boot :) Awesome cars man! Great midi-city too!
@carbohydrates
Love those cars, Tom! What are they? The blue and white one looks like a Datsun 240Z. And the grey car with a black stripe... is that Eleanor?
Edit
Aha! Just checked your Flickr link.
Cheers!
Totally agree on 6-wide cars...with the caveat that I prefer to make mine capable of seating two or more minifigs side-by-side.
Let’s see:
AMC Rebel Machine (Nice!)
Datsun 280Z
Ford Mustang Mach 1
Corvette Stingray
Chevrolet Camaro
Is that close?
@MutoidMan said:
"Let’s see:
AMC Rebel Machine (Nice!)
Datsun 280Z
Ford Mustang Mach 1
Corvette Stingray
Chevrolet Camaro
Is that close?"
Very close!
AMC Rebel The Machine
Datsun 240z pace car
Eleanor
Chevy Nova SS
Chevy Camaro
The Nova is admittedly hard to tell from this top-down angle since you can't really see its fascia.