Welcome to a new series of interviews, called
howibuilt (in this case,
how we built)! The idea with these interviews is to get inside the minds of your favourite builders and get an insight into their building processes. We've already had
one howibuilt post, about the
Mistral II, but now I'm officially starting the series.
The recent collaboration between famous builders Nannan Zhang (
NannanZ) and Tyler Clites (
Legohaulic) created what I think I can safely say is one of the best MOCs of the year:
Containment, a massive diorama of an alien world, a cross between a utilitarian space station (built by
Nannan)and a post-apocalyptic wasteland (built by
Tyler) complete with market sellers.
So let's get started with the interview between myself and Nannan and Tyler!
John: Where did the inspiration for Containment come from?
Nannan: We drew inspiration from the general concept of contrasting an orderly cityscape with a chaotic wasteland. Eventually the city that I was planning to build turned into a factory that took on the theme of isolation from the movie
Moon.
Tyler: A lot of the inspiration comes from films and video games. Some of the themes present in the display are inspired by
Moon, District 9 and
Enemy Mind. Some of the aesthetic inspiration for things like the crashed ship come from films like Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes.
John: How long did Containment take to make, and how many bricks did you have to buy especially for it?
Nannan: We started planning at the beginning of April. Tyler built consistently, but I built my portion in the last three week before the convention due to graduation. I don’t have an estimate for the brick count, and I bought most of what I needed from Bricklink. Tyler was more resourceful and used more pieces from his collection.
Tyler: We finished it several days before Brickworld. The only bricks that I bought specially for the display were roughly 400 dk tan parts.
John: How was the diorama planned? Presumably you met to build it together in the end, but did you build individual sections on your own beforehand?
Tyler: The dio[rama] was planned via Skype. We would occasionally get online and brainstorm different ideas. Nannan came to my house the week before Brickworld. About 95% of our respective parts were complete prior to our meeting.
Nannan: I traveled to Tyler’s house five days before the convention to put everything together and photograph the diorama. This process was the most rewarding experience of the collaboration. Building with someone else is not only fun, but it’s also a great way to become really good friends with another builder.
John: Before announcing the project, you released a dozen of smaller teaser vignettes. Were these originally part of the plan, or did you have that idea later on?
Tyler: The teasers were not originally part of the plan. Nannan approached me with the idea about a week before we began uploading them.
Nannan: As our dio was nearing completion, I wanted to draw some hype for it through a series of vignettes that reveals the backstory to the creation. I believe that a creation of this caliber requires an introduction. Just dropping it from the blue might give someone a heart attack.
John: Do you think you'll have more collaborations in the future? With each other or with more builders?
Nannan: Yes! We plan on more collaborations, at least for Brickworld 2011 if not earlier. I don’t know how we’re going to top what we just did, but we’re up for a good challenge.
Tyler: We will definitely be doing more collaborations in the future. Not only did we manage to create something that we are both immensely proud of, we also got to know each other better as friends and not just as fellow builders.
So there you have it - the complete story of Containment. Thank you very much to Tyler and Nannan for agreeing to answer my questions so soon after BrickWorld.
Hopefully I'll be back later for more howibuilt!
~John
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