LEGO Masters NZ - Season 2 - Week 2
Posted by FlagsNZ,
The nine episodes of LEGO Masters NZ, Season 2, were broadcast over three weeks with three episodes per week.
In New Zealand, you can still see all the episodes from seasons 1 and 2 on the TVNZ website.
As some of the contestants were unavailable to be interviewed after their respective episodes aired on TV, it has taken a bit of time to catch up with all the teams to enable the interviews to be published in the elimination order.
In this article, I interviewed the team who were eliminated at the end of the fifth episode.
To avoid spoilers for those who have yet to watch these episodes, I'll refrain from identifying them until after the break.
Amy and Llewe
COUPLE
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David: What has struck me about LEGO Masters NZ Series 2 is how it has been broadcast so quickly: three episodes per week over three weeks. From start to finish, it's been challenging to keep up!
Amy: Yes. People needed help to keep up. We've found it hard trying to watch it three times a week and keeping up-to-date with the show.
David: And now you've got to respond to all your friends on social media after each episode. After all these months of silence and keeping quiet about the show and now it's all out there.
Well, thank you for eventually catching up with me. Where we left off last time was you had completed the first three episodes, and you have since been on two extra episodes. You missed the episode with the swinging ball that smashed the buildings!
Amy: We really wanted to do that challenge. In our media interviews, we said we wanted to smash something and have some glitter sparkling throughout it, but we didn't get to do that. So, we did our own smashing challenge, but we have yet to release that to the public. We did one for fun and used a giant Swiss ball.
David: I last talked to you about your build on the third episode where you built the bungee jumper.
Amy: So, Episode Four was all the special occasions we had to build, and we got a wedding, and we had to build a scene from a wedding that opened up with a scene inside.
David: Talk to me about your wedding build.
Amy: Well, we weren't allowed to build anything representing food or church, so we had to go with something that was different. We had to ensure that it wasn't culturally insensitive items. We chose to do a model of a ring bearer's wedding cushion that is used as someone walks down an aisle. We had a couple of giant gold wedding rings.
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Llewe: We were pleasantly surprised with the outcome because we did struggle with it. But it didn't look too bad on TV in the end. It was pretty interesting. It was a chaotic wedding where everything that could go wrong was going horribly wrong, but the story on the inside worked out, looking quite cool.
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David: That's right. You had a wedding bearer that tripped up and flew through the sky. And I liked the challenge in the episode where you got eliminated: I thought it was an ingenious challenge I haven't seen on any other LEGO Masters series.
Amy: Yeah. It was a new one.
David: It was the reflection of a scene and then having to build the thing that is making the reflection. It was almost like a WASGIJ jigsaw puzzle where you see the crowd gasping at something happening behind you, and then you've got reverse engineer the jigsaw. Where a scene is shimmering in the water or a pond or something, and you had to build the castle. I've never seen that on any other LEGO Masters shows. Was that a first of its kind?
Amy: Yes. Robin Sather was trying to produce some new challenges. He thought it would be tricky, but we pulled it off quite well. Robin was quite surprised at how well we all did, really.
David: So, describe the process. You were given a rectangular reflection.
Amy: It was a 48 by 48 picture.
David: You put that down, and then it became part of the scene's foreground.
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Amy: Yes. We wanted to incorporate it into the scene; we didn't want to put it on the side, so we decided to include it.
And then we wanted to play a surprise on the side where we said we'd got the King and Queen who have come to buy the castle, and they have seen the picture of the castle - which is the reflection - and when they arrive there they see that it is infested with dragons. So, we built three Dragons to go into that scene.
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Llewe: Our story, and part of that challenge, was to try and show what wasn't being shown in the reflection . . .
Amy:. . . and the story of a ruined castle.
Llewe: Seeing all the chaos that was going on outside the scene.
David: And also, there was a twist at the end where you had to incorporate a character into the scene at the exact position of viewing the reflection. You had already built the King and Queen into your story.
Amy: The reflection scene was quite interesting because we were unsure of the castle draw bridge. It came out on an angle, and we had to try and figure out which end was in the reflection. It sounds easy, but it was strange.
We decided to build a little baby dragon. We first decided to put it up on the spires of the towers, looking down as it would be the best vantage point. But we were told we weren't allowed to change that reflection, which comes across on TV. So, we shifted him off to the side, but it might have been in a better vantage point, and it might have been better at the front.
David: Are you saying you wanted to add a reflected dragon into the reflection scene and build a real dragon in real life?
Amy: You were allowed to change 10% of the picture in the reflection picture that they gave us, but when we checked to see whether we could see the dragon in there, Robin said we were not allowed to put a dragon into the picture.
David: That's quite a fundamental change. It's not just artistic license. That's asking to put another tangible object into the view, perhaps?
Llewe: Yes.
David: I really liked how you built the castle, and a couple of times during the show, you had to make amendments because what you created didn't match the reflected image. I think the spires were one thing they were too flat, and you had to build them up. You put a lot of effort into trying to make the alignment of the model match the picture.
Llewe: I was really happy with the final result, and Robin pushed us to try and give it a level of accuracy which was a good kind of encouragement from him. Overall, it looked amazing.
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Amy: Standing there judging it, Robin was pleased with this new experiment.
David: All the models for that challenge were pretty good.
Amy: They are all such amazing builders. They were all so talented!
Llewe: The game got lifted up a bit with that challenge.
David: And where to now for you and your LEGO journey? You're a celebrity - world-famous in New Zealand in the LEGO community. The Christchurch Brick Show is coming up. Are you going to that show?
Amy: We will go to the Christchurch Brick Show, and I'm part of the planning committee for the Wellington Brick Show, which will be in September. So, we are gearing up for some Brick Shows. We visited some LEGO stores while we were over in Australia. We want to build a giant Elsa scene from Frozen II, another castle, that we will spend more time perfecting.
Llewe: It won't be quite the same scale . . .
Amy: . . . Maybe about forty studs high with the little turrets. As you can tell, I really liked the colours from the Frozen theme. There are all these orange and pinks, so we have ordered five-hundred pink leaves here and five-hundred yellow leaves waiting to go with all the other parts we ordered.
David: In your LUG – Well LUG – have you taken away some ideas to challenge some of the members? Do you encourage members to build LEGO Masters styled builds for your displays?
Amy: Well LUG is working towards a LUG Olympics at the moment, which will be an international competition between LUGs as there will be some Australian LUGs competing there, too. So, it will be a competition between LUGs that will include games and challenges, World Record type challenges, and other similar things. But I'm not sure all the details yet.
We are also including computer programming and how to program the train hubs so people can do more motorised functions with some learning. And then we do all sorts of random activities that push people to use different parts and different techniques that they haven't before.
David: That's certainly something I'd like to get more into. Putting a light sensor on my trains and put some coloured tiles on the track. So, the trains can slow down as they come to a station and come to a stop—that sort of thing.
Llewe: We used the SPIKE Prime system on LEGO Masters with the light sensors and programmable hubs—the educational version of Mindstorms. You should look into it.
David: Yes. Thanks for that. I'll look into it. Well, thank you very much for catching up with me.
Amy and Llewe: Thanks a lot.
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LEGO Masters NZ
LEGO Masters NZ episodes can be viewed on the TVNZ 2 website.
26 likes
9 comments on this article
Needs proof-reading, as before.
I quite liked this season although it's quite apparent that this show is more on a budget than the US and AU versions. Some of the builds were quite fun and this season sure had some interesting and unique contestants. For me personally, Robin is an amazing judge and does his job accordingly. He's a real solid addition to the show. I still think that Dai is the wrong host for this show... He's such a far cry from the outgoing characters like Will Arnett or Hamish Blake. Dai's humor just feels too "forced". Anyway, it was a good season and hope to see more.
Once again Brickset completely ignores Lego Masters Australia. I need to stop reading the front page, maybe find another way to track my collection.
@Brikkyy13 said:
"Once again Brickset completely ignores Lego Masters Australia. I need to stop reading the front page, maybe find another way to track my collection. "
Not true -- LM Aus. completely ignores Brickset, that's why we have no coverage.
Got bored watching LEGO Masters Australia. Forever NOT doing an elimination to drag the series out, and got sick and tired of 'Brickman' banging on and on about how it's 'got to tell a story'. Why? Why does every build have to be a story? The guy has absolutely zero appreciation of genuinely creative or expressive art, as evidenced by the very first eviction.
But then the whole selection process is evidently an exercise in audience-targeting over talent, along with most of the later elimination decisions.
@Huw said:
" @Brikkyy13 said:
"Once again Brickset completely ignores Lego Masters Australia. I need to stop reading the front page, maybe find another way to track my collection. "
Not true -- LM Aus. completely ignores Brickset, that's why we have no coverage."
You don’t need press packets to do a weekly update. This site feels like a corporate mouthpiece.
@JayCal said:
"I quite liked this season although it's quite apparent that this show is more on a budget than the US and AU versions. Some of the builds were quite fun and this season sure had some interesting and unique contestants. For me personally, Robin is an amazing judge and does his job accordingly. He's a real solid addition to the show. I still think that Dai is the wrong host for this show... He's such a far cry from the outgoing characters like Will Arnett or Hamish Blake. Dai's humor just feels too "forced". Anyway, it was a good season and hope to see more."
Thanks for your comments, @JayCal ! The "Upon Reflection" challenge was a brand new one to the LEGO Masters Universe, and I think it pushed the teams to create some of their best work. The original mosaic reflections were actually 64 x 64 studs (4 x 4 of the new 16 x 16 mosaic base "bricks"), and all of them were kind of "off" in certain ways, to really challenge the teams. For Amy and Llewe, that drawbridge in the image was ... interesting ... :-) They were 1 of only 2 teams that actually extended the mosaic further, which I did not expect, and worked out really nice! - Brickmaster Robin -
@Brikkyy13 said:
" @Huw said:
" @Brikkyy13 said:
"Once again Brickset completely ignores Lego Masters Australia. I need to stop reading the front page, maybe find another way to track my collection. "
Not true -- LM Aus. completely ignores Brickset, that's why we have no coverage."
You don’t need press packets to do a weekly update. This site feels like a corporate mouthpiece. "
One thing we do need is an Australian correspondent. None of the current team can legally watch it, which is obviously an obstacle to writing articles.
@wyndryder said:
" @JayCal said:
"I quite liked this season although it's quite apparent that this show is more on a budget than the US and AU versions. Some of the builds were quite fun and this season sure had some interesting and unique contestants. For me personally, Robin is an amazing judge and does his job accordingly. He's a real solid addition to the show. I still think that Dai is the wrong host for this show... He's such a far cry from the outgoing characters like Will Arnett or Hamish Blake. Dai's humor just feels too "forced". Anyway, it was a good season and hope to see more."
Thanks for your comments, @JayCal ! The "Upon Reflection" challenge was a brand new one to the LEGO Masters Universe, and I think it pushed the teams to create some of their best work. The original mosaic reflections were actually 64 x 64 studs (4 x 4 of the new 16 x 16 mosaic base "bricks"), and all of them were kind of "off" in certain ways, to really challenge the teams. For Amy and Llewe, that drawbridge in the image was ... interesting ... :-) They were 1 of only 2 teams that actually extended the mosaic further, which I did not expect, and worked out really nice! - Brickmaster Robin -
"
Hi Robin,
So nice for you to comment. The challenges this season were very innovative, especially those mosaic reflections. I also liked the twist on the childrens book episode. Some good stuff there. If the show gets renewed, I'm hoping you'll judge it again. Keep up the great work!