ArsGeek

Not too long ago I posted a review of a wonderful Lego book, Forbidden Lego by Ulrik Pilegaard, and Mike Dooley and published by No Starch Press.

While the books not due out until later in the summer (I can’t wait, by the way) I thought an interview with one of the authors would help to keep the hoards of Lego fans satisfied until this book is available for general consumption.

Without further ado, I bring you an interview with Ulrik Pilegaard, one of the incredibly nice guys who wrote Forbidden Lego.

What was the first interesting creation you made from Legos that didn’t come with a set of instructions or from a kit?

I was crazy about building cars with front wheel steering and rear wheel suspension. That was before LEGO made a spring so I remember I used rubber bands to make the rear suspension work. Later I found out that a spring from a ball point pen actually worked great when sitting on a LEGO Technic cross axle. So when I started at LEGO I just had to build a mega 18 wheeler with steering on front and rear wheels, air-suspension all over and a giant trailer to carry whatever I was going to build the week after. I think it was about 3 ft. long.

What would you like to see built entirely from Legos that no one has ever attempted before?

I like everything mechanically clever and since the book has a paper-plane launcher I would love to see a machine that can fold a plane out of a piece of paper…maybe I should try to build that myself!

Have you ever personally been injured by Legos? I only ask because my daughter has recently discovered my Lego stash and I find myself navigating a mine field of Lego bricks.

Sure! Growing up with tons of LEGO sets my mom even took into account when picking a carpet for my room that it should be relatively easy to see LEGO pieces on it! Steeping on small parts is not fun! Working at LEGO I have had some close encounters with cross axles when cutting them with pliers! That’s pretty dangerous.

Do you use any sort of computer program or CAD/CAM when creating your designs?

Only for the building instructions. When coming up with ideas I use pen and paper first to sketch some concepts down and when I have a solid direction I start to build. If you isolate the different functions and try to solve them one by one you’re going to get to the goal a lot faster. Then there’s a phase of combining every subassembly in a clever way at the end.

If I were to acquire a small swimming pool filled with little, detached Lego people heads, could I coax you to dive in?

Sure! Since I know how it feels to stick my hand in a bucket filled with LEGO parts I’m sure a pool filled with small heads would be quite therapeutic, I might want to wear goggles though.

How much time did you and Mike Dooley spend on writing Forbidden Lego? I’m hoping there will be a follow up book, can you give us any hints as to whether there will be or not?

Coming up with all the models and projects in the book probably took about 3 months, the text evolved over 4-5 months and the graphics was done in a couple of weeks. The most time consuming part of the book was definitely the building instruction. That does not explain the 5 years the book have been on its way though. That’s a whole other story. J

I would love to make another book and since LEGO recently came out with a new Technic motor set it’s not unlikely at all.

Do you prefer to design and build your Lego creations in silence or do you have music on in the background? If you do, what type of music do you listen too while you create?

When I was working at LEGO every builder had their own radio and we luckily agreed to the same station. So as you can imagine it was kind of loud everywhere! I like a lot of different stuff all the way from classic rock, lounge, and jazz to heavy-metal!

Are you a Windows, Mac or Linux user?

I have been using Mac for the last 15 years since there was a time when the Mac was the way to go if you where doing graphics and using certain vector based programs. Now I am using a Windows machine at work to run CAD programs. At home I have 2 windows machines and one Mac.

Could you ever see Legos falling in to the wrong hands, perhaps an evil genius, who would use them as a cheap way of manufacturing an army of Mindstorm robots to conquer the world? If so, do you think any of your projects featured in your book would be used? Would you be willing to design some Lego counteroffensive devices for the world if that were to happen?

Ha ha! Doctor Evil…well, he would have to withstand the power of the HVALP-D project from the book. It will dispense LEGO plates at a rate no evil genius can cope with! The name is kind of funny; High Velocity Automatic LEGO Plate – Dispenser. We named it HVALP because that means puppy in Danish and seemed like a fun internal joke at the time. <grin>

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