Introducing Dan (one of the new authors)

Hello! I'm Dan, one of the new authors here - but you may know me from my posts at the LEGO Model of the Day blog. I'm looking forward to writing about town buildings here without the pressure of having to post every day. Although I blog about everything LEGO on that blog, when it comes to what I've actually been into building lately, I'm more of a Cafe Corner fan.

I'm a bit picky about calling things "done", but I'm pretty happy with the Cafe Corner compatible Lab building that I built for Futuron astronauts (it's late 80's LEGO space thing). I was really surprised by how well the geometry of some of these larger, Space-oriented windows fit in with the Cafe Corner scale - two large Space panels on their side are the same height as a floor of a building in the Cafe Corner style. Once I figured that out, this idea seemed too fun not to try (even if it is a bit less traditional in appearance). Also, if you don't have enough plate-hinges in your collection to make bay windows in the Green Grocer style, you can try a studs-not-on-top approach to it with larger elements the way I did here. Photos are from my flickr set for this model.

I've also been bringing "partial" buildings in for displays put on by the North Carolina LEGO Users Group. My post on the NCLUG blog about DGXPO has links to some videos and some BrickShelf galleries of our most recent town layout. I've really been the "crazy idea guy" for our town layouts - some highlights I brought that you can see in Doug's gallery include a restaurant with Bionicle, Throwbot, and Technic parts used for detailing, a revised Metro Station set with real (non-LEGO) glass windows, an attempt at a town with floating boats and real water (originally this was going to be part of the main layout, but we were worried that we'd run out of DUPLO bricks to hold up the baseplates). In my own gallery, you can also see a building with Bionicle Katana blades used as windows (the use of polar bears as gargoyles and Soccer field panels as roof bits are a bit interesting too, but the 4.5V train track used as an arch was borrowed from another LUG's layout that I saw on Brick Town Talk).

Of course, you should look around that whole gallery - there are some other great buildings in the Cafe Corner style built by Carin Proctor and Matthew Kay. The large building with the Technic-enhanced crane was built by Doug Eaton.

As you can see, I'm really into finding interesting uses for non-Town parts in this context. I am, of course, excited about most of the models I see in this style as well, but I really love seeing unusual parts and building techniques. Feel free to e-mail any of your town models (or any others you've seen that I may have missed) to me at legomodeloftheday@gmail.com

Enough about me, though. In the future, I'll be less long-winded and post in the usual format for this site. Thanks to Richard (Brick Street) for taking me aboard the Brick Town Talk team.

Dan