This new domain accomplishes a number of things such as the ability of visitors to rate the various episodes and to also post comments.

I will no longer be posting The Brick Side here, and hope that you’ll follow the links over and subscribe by email or RSS to the new site. Please also take a few minutes to post comments and rate the episodes.

As an extra incentive to check out the new site, I’m posting three brand new comics there today, in addition to the complete gallery of existing ones.

A Few Random Thoughts For Those Really Interested in the History of The Change

All along I have had mixed feelings about The Brick Side appearing here at Duckingham Design. Originally I had hoped to implement the separate domain name, but time is always a limited resource, and it did not happen. But The Brick Side did happen, is happening, and will continue to happen.

Besides time, I also has a mental picture of how I wanted the site to look. Shortly after the series launched, Smashing Magazine launched a new WordPress theme that was exactly what I was looking for. I’ve spent the last couple weeks maintaining the comics on both sites, while tweaking the new site to get it the way I wanted it. It’s not completely there, but much closer, and I’m getting tired of updating similar content on both sites.

Over the next few days, all the comics from Duckingham Design will be redirected to The Brick Side, and Duckingham.com will return to its original purpose of being a showcase for my freelance LEGO artwork.

The Job Muller Contest

I’ll admit, first off, that The Bread Collector was my second idea. I still want to go back and do my first idea, so I won’t say anything about it for now.  But why not subscribe to my feed by RSS or email and stay tuned…:) (okay, that was shameless self-promotion, wasn’t it?)

Anyhow, for whatever reason I was thinking about the Monty Python skit and said to myself, “what if the guy was calling out, ‘bring out your bread’ and some of the peasants have armloads of bread, and then there’s the guy carrying an old man who is saying, ‘I’m not bread.’”

The Bread Collection Crew

This is a 4-man crew. In the movie, you have the “Dead Collector”, two guys pushing the cart, and another guy pulling. In the movie, they were all wearing brown hoods and stuff, so my front man doesn’t exactly fit, but that’s part of the joke. I love the expression on his face, and the green helps bring the whole thing out more.

The Bread Collector

In the movie, he’s the guy banging the giant spoon or mace or whatever against a triangle. The sound effects crew seemed to have that thing making much more noise than you’d expect, and what in the world? Aren’t you supposed to use a triangle like that out on a farm to round everyone up for dinner? Well, I didn’t think I could make a very convincing minifig scale triangle, so I went with a dinner plate from my Castle Advent calendar.

Woman beating out a cat

You may not notice it the first time through on the skit, but up the stairs there is a woman beating out a cat against the wall. If you don’t notice it visually right away, you probably noticed it audibly. That cat is not too happy. No explanation is offered (that I recall) for a woman beating out a cat, but such an element must not be overlooked in a MOC. Admitedly, that cat was black and mine is white … but it’s the thought and the limitations of one’s LEGO pieces that count.

Skeleton in the Wash Tub

In the scene-setting first half of the skit it seemed like there were a lot of people inexplicably crawling into barrels and buckets and tubs. So I thought a skeleton would be appropriate. And fun. Plus, I was running out of brown outfits. And besides, a skeleton sticking out of a tub is much funnier than a peasant. Doing anything. Usually. Sometimes.

Random Peasants

Speaking of peasants … there were a lot of them in the skit, so I had to include a few. These ones happen to be adhering to the Bread Collector’s call.

The Unsavory Fellow

He probably has a real name. Like Ralph. Or Throgmorten. But to me, he is The Unsavory Fellow. Why? Well, you’d have to be pretty unsavory to pawn off an old man as a loaf of bread … or an already-dead-fellow. In the movie, he looked pretty much like all the guys on the Dead Collection crew. So I wanted my man to look unique. A little more unsavory. Yet shrewd. And here he is!

The old man

Who is he? Where did he come from? Why was The Unsavory Fellow trying to pawn him off as dead or bread? And why did he want to go for a walk? We may never know. But there he is. A victim of circumstance and plague.

Frogs

I’ve read that every episode of Seinfeld has a Superman in it somewhere. I’m not a fan of Seinfeld (only ever seen bits and pieces), and I don’t have an easy way to incorporate Superman (note-to-self: lobby LEGO to acquire license for Superman the next time a movie comes out), but I have spent some time acquiring frogs. And you can tuck frogs in just about anywhere. Sure, I didn’t notice any frogs in that part of the film, but lets just call this part of my MOC signature. Ooh. Maybe I could make my MOCs be like those little picture search things like you have in Highlights.

Anyhow, there are 5 frogs in this MOC. All are visible from the main overview image of the MOC that I included on my previous post. Can you find them all? I’ll give you a hint: 4 are green and 1 is blue-grey.

Context is everything. This particular make is a direct reference to a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a movie that I can’t fully endorse, but has several hilarious and well-known, much-referenced  scenes. In this particular scene of the film, the “Dead Collector” and his crew are making their way with a large cart through a plague-riddled town, collecting the bodies of those who have succumbed (in death) to plague. Humor ensues when one gentlemen tries to get rid of an old man who pipes up and says, “I’m not dead” and tries to prove his point by saying things like “I’m going for a walk,” and “I feel happy.”

I’m not sure what exactly got my train of thought in this direction, but it was probably a “what if…” In this case, “What if the guy wasn’t saying, “bring out your dead,” — what if he was saying, “bring out your bread.”

Here’s a close-up of the Bread Collector dickering with the Unsavory Fellow:

And here is an overview of the entire MOC:

I plan to follow-up this post with another discussing some of the particular aspects of the MOC, but for purpose of publishing these images for the contest, I am limited to 3 images, hence those posted here.

“I’ll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white suits…” Back in 1966, the hit song “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” caused quite a ruckus, drawing protests from a variety of different groups. While I didn’t hit the scene for another 10 years, and wouldn’t discover the song until the early ’90′s as a Dr. Demento staple, I always found it very amusing. And maybe I’m just crazy, but it really is an innocent and funny song, right?

Anyhow, when I first saw the new minifig head above, it struck me pretty quick that it was a good epitome of the song. I went onto Bricklink as soon as possible and got ten. Which head? All of them … they’re all the same; the head is reversible. The sinister-serious expression on the one side, and the all-out let-me-get-out-of-this-mayhem scream on the other side.

To illustrate the head-reversal, let me show you this same vignette from behind. Equally as hilarious. Of course, here you’ll notice one of the tricks in getting all those “clean white suits” — popping out their arms and putting the front pattern on the back.

For more information about the song, check out the Wikipedia article. I did.

This MOC was inspired by my 6-year old son, who took a minifig head that had bright blue sunglasses and stuck it on the body of a storm trooper. I got a big kick out of it and got to thinking how funny it would be to put together an assortment of storm troopers with a variety of faces. And then I came up the slogan about the Empire being an EEOC afiliate. What better representation of big government than The Empire from the Star Wars saga. I thoroughly enjoyed putting this MOC together. It got tricky trying to figure out the right number of minifigs to use.

My first photo session had 6 or 7 more minifigs than this one, but it was way too crowded, and Darth Primate was over their heads. That left a lot of whitespace to the sides and detracted from the shot. But I really felt that he was necessary — I can’t remember anywhere else I’ve seen a 4-lightsaber wielding LEGO monkey, and that idea in itself was almost worth its own picture. On the other hand, I felt he fit right in as yet another species that the Empire wouldn’t discriminate against — especially since he hasn’t removed any of his own limbs flinging those 4 lightsabers around.

The wheelchair is largely based on one done by Brickshelf user mijasper. Again, while I may have seen someone give a monkey a lightsaber (though I can’t think of any examples right off), I’ve certainly not seen him pulling a General Grievous, and especially not with 4 dark side-colored red lightsabers. And, if you’re wondering, yes, that is a whip in the hand of the guy on the back-left — right actor, wrong movie, I guess. And the Imperial Guard is not other than a bespecktacled Harry Potter. I love the contrast of the old guy’s white beard along with his black pilot’s outfit — makes me wonder how hot it is in the helmet with all that beard stuffed in there. And I very much appreciate the LEGO Company diversifying it’s offerings of various flesh-colored minifigs over the last few years, particularly in the licensed sets. It’s helped spice up the variety. GO MINIMAN GO!