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Hm, company doesn't want to be associated with BrikWars? Company HQ in
Billund? Have fun working for the Lego company Mike!! Give my regards to
them, and tell em we need more high-detail sets! :-)
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In lugnet.fun.gaming, Jack Millikin writes:
> Hm, company doesn't want to be associated with BrikWars? Company HQ in
> Billund? Have fun working for the Lego company Mike!! Give my regards to
> them, and tell em we need more high-detail sets! :-)
What are you talking about? I'm lost.
LFB
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In lugnet.fun.gaming, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> In lugnet.fun.gaming, Jack Millikin writes:
> > Hm, company doesn't want to be associated with BrikWars? Company HQ in
> > Billund? Have fun working for the Lego company Mike!! Give my regards to
> > them, and tell em we need more high-detail sets! :-)
>
> What are you talking about? I'm lost.
>
> LFB
Take a look at his resume at http://www.mikerayhawk.com/
Adrian
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In lugnet.fun.gaming, Jack Millikin writes:
> Hm, company doesn't want to be associated with BrikWars? Company HQ in
> Billund? Have fun working for the Lego company Mike!! Give my regards to
> them, and tell em we need more high-detail sets! :-)
The secret's out! But keep it down - I don't think they've figured out who
I am yet! ;)
This job has been a real eye-opener for me - if there aren't enough
high-detail sets hitting the shelves, it's not the fault of the designers.
(*cough* Marketing *cough*) The models the designers have sitting around
the office would make you weep to see them - their awesomeness is beyond
belief! Apparently that's the product of access to warehouses full of Lego
and getting paid to play with it on a full-time basis. Unfortunately, if I
brought a camera to work and started flashing pictures I think I'd be
summarily dragged out to the parking lot and shot.
There's a sign on the door of our wing of the studio that says "TOP SECRET
RESEARCH FACILITY - USE OF DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED." I'd been here
almost a week before I read the reast of the sign - some wiseguy had gotten
one of the signs from Area 51 and hung it up as a joke. For some reason I
had never thought to question even for a second the idea that killing would
be justified in defense of Lego secrets. In fact I was even hoping to get
fingered for a mission to go out on a couple of pre-emptive strikes against
the Mega Bloks offices, just to show that we were serious.
So the lack of Lego death squads was a disappointment. Regardless, as all
the folks who've already e-mailed me can tell you, I'm still not actually
allowed to talk about the job in anything but the vaguest terms, so don't
everybody send me a pile of letters hoping I'll reveal secrets of Lego's
inner workings.
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OMG! Congrats! Your an Awesome artist, you totally deserve it.
BTW, I can't beleive I haven't seen your web-site before, just fantastic.
I still keep the image of your space man illo in my computer ever since I
first saw it.
youda man.
e
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In lugnet.people, Eric Sophie writes:
> OMG! Congrats! Your an Awesome artist, you totally deserve it.
Indeed, great stuff.
I really like the "in progress" cover illustration for Brikwars. Very cool.
Any chance of publishing a larger version of the picture for backgrounds?
Anyways, congratulations.
-Jason
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
Jason Spears
MichLUG - http://www.michlug.org/
Lego Page - http://www.ozbricks.com/brickcentral/
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
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In lugnet.people, Jason Spears writes:
> I really like the "in progress" cover illustration for Brikwars. Very cool.
> Any chance of publishing a larger version of the picture for backgrounds?
Actually I was planning on publishing a very large version indeed, so that I
could sell it as a poster through cafepress.com - but since Lego still has
serious form copyrights on the minifig, it looks like I probably can't make
any income off of "minifig-like" pictures without getting sued (and now,
maybe fired!). I'm still exploring this angle though, maybe something can
be worked out.
In any case, I do plan on making a background-sized version available on the
"downloads" page of the BrikWars site, once the painting is finished.
Unfortunately I left it behind in L.A., so I can't make any progress on it
until I get back from Billund in March.
Right now the background on my computer at work is
http://www.mikerayhawk.com/psycho.htm
which gets a lot of raised eyebrows from the design managers.
I'm still waiting for Lego security to come down and tell me I that Lego
employees aren't allowed to post to Lugnet. Or worse, for Lugnet security
to come down and tell me the same thing. It's tough being a corporate shill!
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In lugnet.people, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> In lugnet.people, Jason Spears writes:
> > I really like the "in progress" cover illustration for Brikwars. Very cool.
> > Any chance of publishing a larger version of the picture for backgrounds?
>
> Actually I was planning on publishing a very large version indeed, so that I
> could sell it as a poster through cafepress.com - but since Lego still has
> serious form copyrights on the minifig, it looks like I probably can't make
> any income off of "minifig-like" pictures without getting sued (and now,
> maybe fired!). I'm still exploring this angle though, maybe something can
> be worked out.
>
> In any case, I do plan on making a background-sized version available on the
> "downloads" page of the BrikWars site, once the painting is finished.
> Unfortunately I left it behind in L.A., so I can't make any progress on it
> until I get back from Billund in March.
>
> Right now the background on my computer at work is
>
> http://www.mikerayhawk.com/psycho.htm
>
> which gets a lot of raised eyebrows from the design managers.
>
> I'm still waiting for Lego security to come down and tell me I that Lego
> employees aren't allowed to post to Lugnet. Or worse, for Lugnet security
> to come down and tell me the same thing. It's tough being a corporate shill!
I doubt it's an issue unless you're doing official Lego Business, in which
case you'll get one of those nifty little Lego Logos to go beside your name
on the web interface. You'd just have dual accounts, like Jake McKee does.
Adrian
--
http://www.brickfrenzy.com
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In lugnet.people, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> In lugnet.people, Jason Spears writes:
> > I really like the "in progress" cover illustration for Brikwars. Very cool.
> > Any chance of publishing a larger version of the picture for backgrounds?
>
> Actually I was planning on publishing a very large version indeed, so that I
> could sell it as a poster through cafepress.com - but since Lego still has
> serious form copyrights on the minifig, it looks like I probably can't make
> any income off of "minifig-like" pictures without getting sued (and now,
> maybe fired!). I'm still exploring this angle though, maybe something can
> be worked out.
I've always been a huge fan of this particular piece ... well, who am I
kidding, I *love* minifig art or all kinds ... but this one in particular
speaks to me. I really do hope you manage to come up with some sort of
arrangement, it would be amazing to have a large copy of this picture hanging
on a wall in one's LEGO room.
There's another site I know Mike is familiar with, which also showcases some
great, albeit in some cases sacriligeious and controversial, minifig art.
Between that work and Mike's, LEGO rooms throughout the world could become
surreal retreats, even more so than they are now!
> In any case, I do plan on making a background-sized version available on the
> "downloads" page of the BrikWars site, once the painting is finished.
> Unfortunately I left it behind in L.A., so I can't make any progress on it
> until I get back from Billund in March.
Mmmmmmm, Billund.
> Right now the background on my computer at work is
>
> http://www.mikerayhawk.com/psycho.htm
>
> which gets a lot of raised eyebrows from the design managers.
I know I've mentioned this to Mike before, but I really consider this a
superlative piece of art. I'm curious how many people pick up on the fact that
the hapless patient in this case is a self-portrait of Mick Royhook himself?
Knowing that the person isn't just some anonymous shmuck, but is in fact a
well-known and universally celebrated shmuck - er, I mean, icon - makes the
picture that much more beautiful and disturbing.
> I'm still waiting for Lego security to come down and tell me I that Lego
> employees aren't allowed to post to Lugnet. Or worse, for Lugnet security
> to come down and tell me the same thing. It's tough being a corporate shill!
Welcome to shilldom. We will assign you a number based on your personality
type. If you do not have a personality, one will be assigned to you.
"You nervous?"
"Yeah."
"This your first time?"
"No, I've been nervous lots of times."
Please keep the updates coming!
-s
(slightly giddy from having shoveled lots and lots of snow this morning)
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In lugnet.fun.gaming, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> So the lack of Lego death squads was a disappointment. Regardless, as all
> the folks who've already e-mailed me can tell you, I'm still not actually
> allowed to talk about the job in anything but the vaguest terms, so don't
> everybody send me a pile of letters hoping I'll reveal secrets of Lego's
> inner workings.
I only have one question, if you're at liberty
to answer it: How did you land such a great job?
Did they come to you, or did you apply, or...?
In any case it's a wonderful meeting of soul and
vocation, and I wonder if we'll see the Mike Rayhawk
"stamp" on anything from TLC in such a way that
we'll recognize it.
best
LFB
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In lugnet.people, Shaun Sullivan writes:
> it would be amazing to have a large copy of this picture hanging
> on a wall in one's LEGO room.
You are such a wiseguy. And this is such a transparent gambit to give
yourself the opportunity to gloat.
> There's another site I know Mike is familiar with, which also showcases some
> great, albeit in some cases sacriligeious and controversial, minifig art.
> Between that work and Mike's, LEGO rooms throughout the world could become
> surreal retreats, even more so than they are now!
Hey, I'd forgotten about him! Going back to look at the site now, I see
that I had also forgotten the many reasons he should never have been given
access to Flash. If anybody's curious, his web address starts with
"www.plasticf" and ends with "cker.com" and I'll leave it to you to guess
the letter in between. I can't really recommend it except as a curiosity
though - the pictures aren't offensive enough to interest anyone who enjoys
being offended, but they are still too offensive to interest anyone who
doesn't, and it takes a long time to load either way. There is one painting
of Nazi Lego, which I suspect is why Shaun is so fond of the site.
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In lugnet.people, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> I only have one question, if you're at liberty
> to answer it: How did you land such a great job?
> Did they come to you, or did you apply, or...?
It was just about 99.44% luck, as much as I hate to admit it, and that's
with a .56% margin of error. I had never even really considered working for
Lego, the job just kind of fell in my lap. And here's the complete story!
By total coincidence, Lego was reactivating one of their concept studios
right at the same time that I was graduating from art school. They needed a
whole pile of new designers - I don't know what happened to the old studio
that led to its getting shut down, but my private and non-LEGO-endorsed
suspicion is that it was because they committed some kind of horrible crime
(*cough* Galidor *cough*).
But back to the story. During the last couple of days of every term, the
graduating students at Art Center put their work up all over the walls in a
big senior exhibition, and big companies send their executives out to fish
for talent. Our Product Design department is pretty solid, so Lego's
newly-appointed hotshot studio manager came out to check out the Product show.
Now I was in Illustration, so I was putting up my work in a whole different
section of the building than the Product show, but fortunately I'd spent
enough of my time at Art Center yapping about Lego that I'd gotten a kind of
reputation for it. The final stroke of good luck was that the Lego manager
ran into my buddy Jeff on his way out of the building. Once Jeff found out
that the guy was recruiting for Lego, he practically dragged him over to see
my show in the Illustration section. I was just finishing hanging about a
half-dozen Lego paintings, and was about thirty seconds away from heading
home to get some sleep, when Jeff brings this suspicious-looking character
up to meet me. The guy introduces himself, we talk about the Lego business
for about five minutes, he pockets my entire pile of business cards (each of
which had a different minifigure painted on it), says he'll be in touch, and
then takes off.
At that point my only thought was that he was some kind of advance scout for
the Lego legal team and that I had maybe two days to live. So I did what
any rational person would do in that situation, and went to Las Vegas. I
had a truly monumental weekend, thanks for asking, and when I got home there
was a message on my answering machine calling me in to the studio the
following morning.
So as it turned out, when I arrived at the studio it was not full of lawyers
with baseball bats like I expected. Instead, I got a perfectly congenial
interview with the studio manager, who gave me a whole bunch of Chips Ahoy!
cookies and a sweet job. The End.
So for everybody who wants to get a job coming up with new ideas for LEGO,
that's the process you need to follow. Especially the Las Vegas part.
> In any case it's a wonderful meeting of soul and
> vocation, and I wonder if we'll see the Mike Rayhawk
> "stamp" on anything from TLC in such a way that
> we'll recognize it.
If I see anything on the shelves in the next couple of years with the
Rayhawk stamp, or even the vaguest Rayhawk-esque nuance, you can bet I'll be
taking all kinds of credit for it!
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Great story and great luck Mike, it couldn’t have happened to a more worthy
guy. Did they at all review with you your dark side, or your panache for
mini-fig Mortal Kombat? I have always really loved your spin on traditional
mini-fig paintings. I just hope and pray that this all goes well, and that
you are not going to be the new painter in charge of the Galidor or Jack
Stone lines! :)
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In lugnet.people, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> In lugnet.people, Shaun Sullivan writes:
>
> Hey, I'd forgotten about him! Going back to look at the site now, I see
> that I had also forgotten the many reasons he should never have been given
> access to Flash. If anybody's curious, his web address starts with
> "www.plasticf" and ends with "cker.com" and I'll leave it to you to guess
> the letter in between. I can't really recommend it except as a curiosity
> though - the pictures aren't offensive enough to interest anyone who enjoys
> being offended, but they are still too offensive to interest anyone who
> doesn't, and it takes a long time to load either way. There is one painting
> of Nazi Lego, which I suspect is why Shaun is so fond of the site.
No no no! My German militaria (sp?) is giving me a bad rap ... grrrrrrr. I
should make a post refuting any implicit associations between the Wermacht and
the Nazi party. Ugh.
Definitely listen to the site mentioned above with the sound on, though. It is
entrancing (as opposed to enchanting).
Mike's right, though, it does take a looonnnggg time to load. And his work
isn't nearly as nice as what Mr. Rayhawk produces, nor as detailed. Gad, I
can't summarize it any better than Mike did, actually ... too offensive for the
layperson, not offensive enough for the, emmmm, sick.
Still greiviously jealous of Mike's European Adventure,
-s
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In lugnet.people, Scott Costello writes:
> I just hope and pray that this all goes well, and that you are not
> going to be the new painter in charge of the Galidor or Jack
> Stone lines! :)
But just imagine if I were! You can bet you'd see a new spin on those two
themes. In fact I might just do a painting like that for fun, I'm picturing
that robot Jens glinching his arm into an industrial food pasteurizer and
jamming Nick's head into it. It probably wouldn't get a positive response
from Galidor's current target age group, but I bet it would be a big hit in
the "Boys 14-18" segment.
Fortunately the project I got assigned to is much more in line with my way
of thinking, I don't know what I'd have done if I got stuck in something
like Belville or Clikits. The other day I even found myself arguing that
one part of the play theme needed to be less lethal, if you can believe it,
but fortunately I caught myself before it got out of hand. I've set some
time aside to investigate the causes that led to that lapse of character, to
make sure that disturbing incident isn't repeated.
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Ignoring all the Lego stuff: nice portfolio. The Art Center in Pasadena is
a great school for illustration and design, for those who aren't familiar
with it (though I worked for a number of years just around the corner at the
Lab, I never quite figured out where it actually was located).
-->Bruce<--
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In lugnet.fun.gaming, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> This job has been a real eye-opener for me - if there aren't enough
> high-detail sets hitting the shelves, it's not the fault of the designers.
> (*cough* Marketing *cough*) The models the designers have sitting around
> the office would make you weep to see them - their awesomeness is beyond
> belief! Apparently that's the product of access to warehouses full of Lego
> and getting paid to play with it on a full-time basis. Unfortunately, if I
> brought a camera to work and started flashing pictures I think I'd be
> summarily dragged out to the parking lot and shot.
Marketing...it's like Dilbert come to life...so, is their excuse that we
have the constructive abilities of a pickle? or that we simply have the MIND
of a pickle? Mabye the next time they refute the 10:1 scale Death Star,
remind them that they shoved out Galidor...
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In lugnet.people, Jack Millikin writes:
> Marketing...it's like Dilbert come to life...so, is their excuse that we
> have the constructive abilities of a pickle? or that we simply have the MIND
> of a pickle? Mabye the next time they refute the 10:1 scale Death Star,
> remind them that they shoved out Galidor...
One thing I was surprised to learn, is that one of the single most important
factors in set design is the age rating on the side of the box. If it says
for instance "8-12" on the box cover, then Marketing goes out and grabs a
bunch of eight-year-olds who have never played with Lego before and gives
them each a copy of the set. If any one of those eight-year-olds can't
build the set properly by themselves on the first try, then it gets sent
back for redesign (read: juniorization).
If you look at the lists of great old sets that they're offering up as "Lego
Classics," I don't think a single one of them would come even close to
getting through Marketing nowadays.
Believe me, I have a lot more to say on this subject but I suspect it would
eventually result in serious reprimands. Before you ask, there is NO WAY to
convince Marketing to raise the age rating once they've decided on it. You
wouldn't believe me if I told you some of the things we've done to try and
change their minds on this score.
So if you feel like a pickle, that's the reason. All I can suggest is for
everybody reading this message to go out and buy a couple thousand Star
Destroyers, and then maybe Marketing will start taking the advanced market
segments more seriously.
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In lugnet.people, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> Believe me, I have a lot more to say on this subject but I suspect it would
> eventually result in serious reprimands. Before you ask, there is NO WAY to
> convince Marketing to raise the age rating once they've decided on it. You
> wouldn't believe me if I told you some of the things we've done to try and
> change their minds on this score.
Just reminded me-- this may have been a fluke somewhere, but this set:
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/7316
actually had its age range change from 2001 to 2002! Also of note, it
changed its piece count too (and various other box-art-tidbits). I'll have
to check the boxes to see what the age range changed to/from, but I believe
it went from 7-12 to 8-12? I forget. Wonder why...
Anyway, this proves it's possible and that you're just under the corporate
influence and can't be trusted. To redeem yourself, stop all Juniorization.
DaveE
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