- Friends, welcome back to Brick by Brick,
I'm your host Adam Ward
and we have an awesome show for you today.
We've got a build that is going to,
it's a paper airplane.
Dear Adam Ward of Brick by Brick,
there's an extreme brick shortage in Cleveland,
and you're needed immediately
at the Cleveland Science Center, Friends.
I gotta go!
Walking Los Angeles to Cleveland, surprisingly easy.
(jazzy music)
The wonder of science.
All right friends, so now we are on our way to the Shop.
This is like the behind-the-scenes tour here
at the Great Lakes Science Center.
You know, normally you would need one of these,
but don't worry, you're with me,
you're totally invited in.
This is my home for the next week.
This is where all of the exhibits
at the Great Lakes Science Center get created.
Not just the Lego stuff, but all sorts of stuff.
They've got Lego over there,
we've got my work station.
Both of those suitcases were filled with Lego,
more Lego here,
every single tool in the world you could possibly want.
This is where the magic happens,
and whenever you're working on a project
it's important to get the support you need,
whether it's time or materials or people,
and here at the Great Lakes Science Center
they have an amazing staff.
They can build anything.
They are totally helping me out so I can focus on the Lego.
I've got a lot of building to do, my friends,
so I can't just show you every single thing here.
This museum is enormous, it's so super-cool.
Next time you're in Cleveland check it out.
I've gotta get building, so I will see you soon.
This desk is already a mess!
One of the coolest parts about being involved
in the Build It exhibit
is all of the other amazing Lego builds,
and sculptures, and pieces of art that are here.
This thing is bananas!
The original Lego Castle had like 800 and something pieces,
so this artist decided to create the same thing
but 12 times the size.
Think a million bricks all together.
It's one of the largest Lego sculptures in the world.
This is made of Lego.
You can see this alone is like 250 pieces or something,
just to build a one by two.
This spaceship looks like it actually might fly.
It's from Serenity or Firefly,
or those might be the same thing, I don't know.
Some of my favorite stuff is over here.
We've got Springfield with all the details
from the world of the Simpsons,
the Cleveland skyline,
space stuff, space, space, space, space, space.
This thing is incredible, it has a working robotic arm
and smoke comes out and it lights up.
It does everything but actually go to space.
This is one of my favorite pieces in the entire exhibit.
This is called the Monkey King by Tyler Halliwell
and it's based on a piece of Chinese mythology.
He just looks so super-cool,
such cool usage of pieces all throughout.
If you take a closer look, there's boat tiles
to make the armor,
there are these cool satellite dishes for the knee guards
and it's just a beautiful build.
I could talk about it for a long time,
but I gotta go teach a class.
I get to go teach a class.
We're gonna do a class on moving Lego parts right now.
Hi there.
We'll call this my table.
(someone laughing in background)
(museum announcer voice on speaker system, too much echo)
- [Blonde Woman With Glasses] One, two, three.
- [Everyone] Lego!
- Our friend right here is super-ready. (laughing)
This part of the exhibit is called Move It,
so it's all about Lego that moves,
that you can interact with, that you can play with,
so that when you're done with the build
you're not done with the fun.
You can keep on going.
Here is our snake monster
which I teach how to make in one of our episodes,
and this is just a bunch of ball and socket joints.
And another thing I like a lot is this.
This is a transforming robot that I designed.
So right now you see in robot mode
but if you flip the head around,
fold the arms in, flip the legs around,
a robot turns into a jet.
(audience cheers and applauds)
Is that cool?
So what we're gonna do is we are gonna kick it off
with our little Lego lid.
There's light gray pieces and dark gray pieces.
I want everybody to take out two of each.
(cuts in) Make sure it has a friend,
and I've got more up here
so if really want (fades out).
- I'm Jaime Kravitz and I'm the Exhibit Project Manager
of Build It the Lego brick exhibition here
in Cleveland, Ohio at Great Lakes Science Center.
We learn so much more when we're interacting with things,
when we're moving, when we're touching,
when we're making mistakes.
We're focusing on Adam Ward's creations,
showing that you can create movement in your Lego builds.
Now I never knew that you could do that.
This is not a do-no-touch exhibition, right?
We want you to get involved and build
and leave your mark here in our exhibition.
We want you to be inspired and go home.
I've heard so many stories of kids
who've come with their families,
and the first thing they did when they went home
is started making stop-motion films with Lego
and started posting on YouTube and that means a lot
when people get so excited about what they see
that can then realize, "I can do this!"
To be able to say that I remember this place
from my childhood and now I'm here
and creating exhibits, it's just mind-blowing,
it's awesome.
- Does it look like anything yet?
Or the part of something?
A part of a creature?
The bricks that you grabbed,
I didn't even have you grab specific bricks.
Okay cool!
Those are some ball-socket joints.
On Brick by Brick I also teach you how to make this snake
which uses ball and socket joints.
Friends, it's Day Three of the installation.
We've made some great progress but we've got a ton
of building left to do.
But that's what I live for!
I love build-filled days.
We have got three days until the exhibit opens,
so people from all over Cleveland and Ohio
are gonna be coming to interact with my exhibits
so I gotta get them ready.
I'm not stressing out, I'm staying hydrated,
I'm eating plenty of cookies, I'm getting good rest.
Now it is time to get my build on!
(jazzy music)
The next simple machine that I built
doesn't even really look that simple.
It is this, it is an Archimedes Screw,
an ancient design that I decided to give
a very futuristic spin.
It's a little bit like a spaceship,
and what you would do is you would have water or material
or something down here at the bottom
and you would spin it,
and just by the arm rotating
it moves whatever you're moving up a steep slope.
So if you needed to get water up the hill
or move a bunch of like gravel or sand,
this is all you would have to do.
And these awesome Technic arms are one of the only
flexible Lego pieces out there.
They're really, really great.
You can bend them in all sorts of ways.
They allow us to get this really beautiful curve,
almost a perfect circle,
that creates our screw
and go all the way up our central arm.
They snap in perfectly to these
little Technic pins and connectors.
There's only a Technic axle on the bottom
and the top connecting it,
so I had to make the middle super-duper strong
so it didn't sag.
Because if you have an axle it's very important
that the entire thing is totally straight.
We're going to the super-awesome IMAX auditorium.
I'm gonna talk a little bit about my journey
to becoming a Lego artist,
and the journey that I continue to be on as one,
turning this passion into a career,
and show a little bit of my work and hopefully
people will have some questions.
We're gonna show the super-quick
How to Be a Lego Gangster in 17 Easy Steps.
This auditorium's amazing.
- [Presenter] Without further adieu please join me
in welcoming Adam Ward.
(audience applauding)
- So I started thinking about Lego not just as a toy
but really as a medium,
and a medium is anything you can use to make art,
anything you can use to tell a story.
So I'm gonna show you a little bit
and talk to you a little bit about my path,
about what I do, about why I do those things,
and then I would love to entertain any questions,
any ideas, any exclamations, any build ideas.
Hi everybody!
Sticker, sticker wanters?
- Oh, that's a wonderful question.
Um, I love the snot brick, you know,
with more than just one stud?
There's so many wonderful artists
that you can go out and really get inspired by,
and then think about, oh, how can I do that in Lego?
Or that's a really cool way to do it,
is there another way to do it?
Sometimes people say like, oh, you have done it,
you are a Lego, like, but I'm still in process,
like I still wanna get better.
I still wanna continue to learn.
I'm Adam.
Hey it's good to meet you, man.
- Oh, that's a good question!
- [Kid] Thank you!
- You're so welcome!
Thanks for your wonderful curiosity!
Bye-bye, nice to meet you!
I just got to give two presentations
to wonderful Lego fans and science fans here in Cleveland
and then answered a ton of really awesome questions,
really great, young Lego builders.
A couple people showed me models that they had built
from Brick by Brick.
It's always wonderful to have people who are interested
in what I do, in what the Lego community is doing,
and it's great to see young people interested in building,
making their own things and not just having a screen
in front of their face.
- We watch a lot of Brick by Brick episodes.
That's about the only thing we do on YouTube.
I like the Puzzle Box episodes, my favorite episodes.
- Building way beyond their age.
The installations are up,
the presentations were a huge success,
the classes were so much fun.
I can't believe it's been an entire week.
It's totally flown by!
You know, when I take a job I don't know
how much fun it's gonna be or who I'm gonna be working with
or if I'm even gonna be able to pull it off,
but the people at the Great Lakes Science Center
were such a treat to work with, so creative,
such big fans of science and Lego
and all the things that I love so much.
I hope you had fun getting a sneak-peek behind-the-scenes
and thank you so much for watching.
As always to see even more Brick by Brick,
click on the box right here,
and to subscribe to SoulPancake,
click on the Subscribe button
that's probably near my knee, right there.
Give my old knee a click!
Subscribe!
It's a great day in Cleveland, the birds are chirping,
the water is wet. (chuckling)