- Citizens of Gotham, we interrupt this regularly
scheduled program of Brick by Brick to present ...
Nah, I'm just kidding.
Or am I?
No for real it's me (laughing).
(jazzy music)
Good people of Gotham, welcome to Brick by Brick.
I'm super excited for today.
We teamed up with Warner Brothers to bring you
a super special episode, inspired by the Lego Batman Movie.
Yeah, that's right.
And growing up, Batman was my favorite super hero.
'Cause he wasn't an alien, he didn't have a bug bite him
or get acid dumped on him or get struck by lightening
four times on his birthday, he was just a billionaire
who knows how to do karate.
And I'm bad at karate and I'm not a billionaire.
But, maybe one day.
But until that day I don't need to be Batman.
'cause I can call him when whenever I need some help.
Batman!
You rang?
That's right friends, we are building a Lego Bat Signal.
I know, the bat signal has got a lot going on.
But don't be intimidated, it's actually made up of
just a few different sections.
First thing we build is the bat symbol,
and this one disconnects.
Woo woo woo, and can double as a Bat-a-rang.
You wanna learn how to build a Bat-a-rang exactly
like this with all these different curves?
We made a special video telling you exactly how to do it.
And then our lamp is put inside of this housing,
which carries our LED light and this whole things sits
on top of this bracket, with these cool vertical pieces.
And these attach with a hinge, so you can point your
bat symbol up and down.
Now I know it's a lot of pieces, but if you want to
check the video description, we list every single one
so you can know exactly what you need.
Let's get building.
So we are gonna kick this build off with the front
of our lamp.
Got the bat symbol and it attaches to this wall of
one by two transparent plates.
So we want to make sure that our wall surrounds
our symbol entirely.
And you can see that the whole thing is transparent pieces
except for these little bricks, and these little bricks.
And these are very special bricks.
These are called SNOT bricks.
That doesn't mean they're gross, it just means they have
a stud not on top, S-N-O-T.
So they have a stud sticking out of the side,
so that lets us add more pieces to the front of this.
And that's how ... our symbol attaches.
So, as you get your transparent plates,
what you want to make sure, when you're building the front
of your lamp, is that you don't just put them all right
next to each other.
That each row is shifting over one.
'Cause that will make your signal even stronger.
Building a bat signal is actually a lot like building a lamp
and I know a lot of you out there have really wanted
to learn how to make a lamp.
So, you want to give your bat symbol double duty,
you can have it work as a lamp too.
And you just repeat that pattern, keep stacking, stacking,
shifting one over each layer until ...
You've got the entire front of your lamp.
Alright friends, next up is the housing for our lamp.
And to figure out how wide the housing is going to be
and how big the housing is gonna be, we just use
the front of our lamp for measurement.
Go ahead and lay it down, and look at the bottom row.
And we just grab some plates, boom just like that.
So we've got 16 plates across, so the bottom of our housing
is gonna start at 16 across.
When you're deciding how deep your housing should be,
you just wanna make sure it's gonna fit your LED light,
your lamp, whatever else you wanna put inside.
I decided to go 12 bricks deep, and I had plenty of room
for the light, the cord, everything and it looked great.
Awesome, and what we're looking at here, this is actually
the bottom plate level of the bottom of the housing.
So we're gonna put another level right on top,
and we put another level right on top,
we're not gonna have it be the same size, because
we want to go around the front of the lamp.
So we're actually gonna go one bigger.
One bigger on the right and one bigger on the left.
So it'll be 18 all the way across.
Once you've done that, you'll have a piece that
looks like this.
You want to make sure it's the right size.
Pick up the front of your lamp.
Pop it on there and you'll see you got one stud
sticking out on each side.
And from there,
we're gonna build our walls.
To get started on the walls, we're gonna take off
the front first.
We're just gonna do a row on both sides of two by bricks
all the way back.
So pull some out, and make sure as you put them down,
that you're overhanging one brick.
And that side, what we do on the right side,
we're gonna do on the left side too.
Good bat signal symmetry.
And then once you finish a row, it's good to just pick up
your front, don't have to push it all the way down,
just rest it in place.
So if your build is off, or you've made a mistake,
you can figure it out fast so you don't build so much
and then have to unbuild so many bricks.
Looking good, ooh!
But we see something.
We see that this next level is actually one, two studs here.
So we're gonna have to come out even one more
than we have been.
So we can't do it with these, 'cause that's not far enough,
we need another one.
So we use our two by threes.
Boop, put 'em on their side like that.
And sometimes in the side of your wall, you're not gonna
be able to have a different seam.
So if your seams start lining up, just have
a few plates nearby.
And if you see any seams that seem weak,
just pop 'em into place.
What's cool about the plates is they're so low profile
and they're really strong, so they'll improve the wall
and they won't get in the way of your bat signal.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna just keep on going
up on the right side, following the curve of the
front of our lamp to the halfway point.
Then I'm gonna switch over to the other side.
So we finished another level, let's grab the front
of the lamp, put it in place.
Aha, we see at this point, we don't need to go out.
We need to go straight up one.
So, I'm gonna take some bricks, and go right on top
of this level.
Use the front to measure ...
We're in good shape and that's the halfway point.
So we don't want to go up any higher.
What we're gonna do now is we're gonna match what we did
on the right side on the left side.
So I've already gone ahead and I've built that section
of the wall.
Gonna snap mine in.
Let's do a quick mistake check, how'd we do?
Woo hoo, passed the test.
So instead of going any higher on the wall, what we're gonna
do is we're gonna pause on the wall, that way we can
slide the back in just like that.
If we build too high, it becomes really really difficult
to get the back of the wall in.
Now it's time to work on the back of our bat signal.
This is what the back of the bat signal is going
to look like.
You can see how it looks when it is nestled cozy inside.
Some things you might notice:
I left an opening in the bottom.
Because this light, it has a cord.
This is an LED puck light, and what's awesome about
using LEDs, especially with Lego builds, is LEDs
basically give off no heat.
So you don't have to worry about them melting bricks
or starting a fire, and there's no wiring to deal with.
In addition to the cord, you'll also see that I built a
little-little shelf for our little puck light.
What's great about having a shelf for your light is that
when you're showing your bat signal off to friends
and you're shining it up at the sky and down
the light stays secure where it is.
You don't want your light loose and knocking into things
and maybe breaking part of your build when it's
inside your bat signal.
So what we're gonna do now is flip this around,
so now the front of the bat signal's pointing to me,
the back is pointing to you and take some two by bricks,
and start putting 'em into place.
You'll see I'm leaving a big opening here and just like
we did, when we were working on the wall, we can always
pick it up, put it in place and make sure we're doing great.
You might be thinking to yourself, now would be a great
time to build the shelf ... and you're not wrong.
But, it can be tricky to get the shelf in just the
right place until you have your whole wall built,
you know what kind of light you're using and you
have your bat symbol in place.
So I recommend just building the wall all the way up
and then putting your shelf in afterward.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna continue going
all the way up.
Once your back wall is complete, it will look a lot like,
you know what's coming?
I think you know what's coming.
It will look a lot like this.
You're shocked, I know.
We take it, and we can place it into the back,
spin it around and we can even take our front now.
And slide that down.
And what's awesome, so once we have out back and
our front in place, now the rest of the housing
becomes such a breeze.
All we gotta do is follow this curve up to the top
and boom, our housing is complete.
Now before we wrap up our walls and close up the housing,
let's make sure our light works.
So, moment of truth.
Three, two, fun.
Wooo, looks pretty awesome.
It's time to do the top of the housing.
And this is a piece of cake.
We're just taking bricks, and filling this in.
So I've gone ahead and I've already built what that
looks like, it's basically a mirror of the bottom
and as you can see, I've already added in the little
plates to make 'em even stronger.
Before we start pushing stuff down, just make sure
it is all making sense.
Look good to you?
Looks good to me.
So now what the housing needs are the pieces that let
us attach it to the bottom bracket so it's got
really cool swivel.
So what we're gonna do, slide some pieces over.
We've got two by two base, on top of that, you can use
a one by two but I just have some one by ones.
On top of those you put our technic one by two with a hole.
Gonna go right like that, straighten out our pieces.
More bricks right on top.
Really nice and easy, and then we take this ...
And very gently put it in.
Now we've got our second two by two, just snap it on top.
Got a couple one by twos, now snap into place.
And we'll use a little bit of our black little wedges
or cheese pieces some people call 'em cheese pieces.
Especially the yellow, they extra look like cheese.
Snap that on there.
Just to give it some Batman fanciness.
Flip the other side, and I've gone ahead and I've
built a second one.
So take the top off, slide it up in there.
Click that on.
Now that these pieces are on, we will be able to
attach the bracket, boom.
Right there and right there, and we'll have our
awesome, swivel-y motion.
Now it's bracket time.
All the brackets really have to do is come up from the base,
and hold on to our bat signal housing.
But, they gotta look good while they're doing it, right?
So, I think it's really cool to do this addition
to the bracket.
We've got these one by twos, but these one by twos
have this little claw that comes out of the side.
So we make a stack of them.
We go two, three in one of the stacks.
Two, three, four in the other stack.
Because what's better than one stack?
Two stacks!
And what's better than one snack?
Two snacks!
And we take our two stacks, put them together.
And when you're snapping in the antenna,
it's important that the bulgey end, the bigger side
where the Lego stud will go, is on the outside.
And then we do another one.
Now that our brackets are started, it's time to add
the base, gonna keep the bracket party rollin'.
So, we'll start with a two by four, and on top of the
two by four, we're gonna take a one by two if you got 'em,
but I'm using two one by ones on one side.
And then we've got our SNOT pieces are making a return.
And they are going to stick on like this,
so that the little notch is sticking out to the side.
But on top of that little number, we put a one by four.
Now we bring out some yellow.
Batman loves yellow, not as much as black, not as much
as dark gray, but yellow, definitely the color
to highlight with.
Then on top of this, another one by four.
Then we have two more yellow friends joining the party
right on top like that.
And another black, and some more yellow.
Okay, now we are ready to take our two columns
plug 'em right on.
So now what we're gonna do is you can see this
tower's got a really cool lean, it's taking a break.
But this tower has got to work because, the entire
stability of our bat signal depends on it.
So we're gonna put another plate on the bottom.
There we go, break's over, back to business.
Just put a plate on the bottom, now, we're gonna
put a plate on the top.
Now that this plate is in place, we're going to grab
two more SNOT bricks, and put them right above the brick
that we put down before.
So we've got SNOT bricks way up here at top, and
waaay down here at the bottom.
I'm going to take some of our one by twos, put them
right in there.
And after we've put those plates down, this is a
very important part.
We take our one by two Technic piece with the opening
and we put it right there.
Right in between the SNOT bricks.
And this is the piece that's gonna like up all the way
over here, with this piece.
And take a small plate, put it up top, and that allows us
to use this really cool curved pieces that snap right on.
I'm gonna keep the cool curviness going with
some little very Batman-y one by one wedges.
And keep it even, slide one more plate down there.
Add some more curves to it, and ...
Another pop of yellow.
Now we've got this pop of yellow on top, and we got
a ton of yellow on the sides, so it's time to cover up
some of that yellow.
So we got these really cool one by twos with bars
and we're gonna put these right there,
and right there.
Now I've got these one by eight tiles.
Snap those on top.
Then what we're gonna do is we're gonna have two more
one by eight tiles,
one goes on that side, and one goes on this side.
This gives us a really cool gradual curve from
the bottom to the top.
And from the back to the front.
Super Batman-y indeed.
So we're gonna do one of these for each side, so that
means we're gonna need one more.
So go ahead and make one more of these, and it should
look a lot like this.
What's up cuz?
Just chillin'.
They're identical cousins.
It happens sometimes.
Now is a super important part of the build.
So, on the back of the bracket, you see the hole.
We've got Technic pin, and a Technic pin.
And these are gonna go right in there.
This is a super important piece, and make sure you
push them in all the way, there's a very reassuring snap
when they actually click in.
It's great.
Now it's time to bring back our lamp housing.
Welcome back, lamp housing!
Good to see ya.
And before we can snap these in, we've gotta turn
this convertible into a hard top.
So, all we've gotta do is build up two level high plate
cover for our lamp housing.
Should look a little something like this, goes
from one side to the other from the front
to the back.
So, now you can snap on the sides.
And see if they're a little bit taller than the housing.
And we want it a little bit taller, that is intentional.
And the base is super simple, you just go measure
from one all the way to the other.
And then raise it about a brick, maybe a brick and a plate.
Once you've done that, bring it out.
Snap one side, in snap the other side in.
There it is, our bat signal is practically complete.
All it needs is our Bat-a-Rang, slash bat symbol.
Snap that back onto the front.
Ah, we did it friends, I can't believe it.
Thank you so much for watching,
thank you for building along if you built along,
I'd love to see what your bat signal looks like.
And a huge thanks to the Lego Batman Movie for making
this episode possible, making this build possible,
this has been so much fun and I hope you're gonna
make a bat signal, I hope you're gonna go see the movie
and I hope you're gonna be a little bit more like Batman.
And I don't mean get closer to being a billionaire,
or get better at karate, I mean going out and helping
people, because at the end of the day, that's what
Batman is all about.
And wherever your Gotham is, whether it's a big city,
little city, a farm, you don't live near anybody,
go help the deer in your neighborhood.
Go help somebody, and let's together make this
world a more Batman-tastic place.
You don't even need a mask.
But I mean, it does help.
We'll see ya next time.
Hey, this is Batman, the Dark Knight himself.
It's not Adam.
I'm telling you right now, go see my movie.
The Lego Batman movie, in theaters this Friday.
It's going to be Bat-tastic.
This isn't Adam doing an impression.
It's the real Batman.
Go see my movie.