BOOK REVIEW: Amazing Vehicles

[Blakbird]

Publisher No Starch Press recently released two "LEGO Build-It Books" entitled "Amazing Vehicles" and "More Amazing Vehicles" by Nathanael Kuipers and Mattia Zamboni.

Regular readers of the Technic forum here on Eurobricks will be familiar with Nathanael Kuipers and his work. As a former Lego employee and designer, he is responsible for such sets as the 8292 Cherry Picker and the 8674 Ferrari 1:8 F1 Racer. He's also the designer of a number of incredible Technic MOCs such as the Jeep Hurricane, the Concept Car, and the Pony Car. The latter two even have full instructions available. All of this surely qualifies Nathanael to be considered an expert designer.

The Book

Each soft cover book is 130-150 pages. The content is all full color and printed with excellent resolution and contrast. In fact, it is somewhat better than the quality of real LEGO instructions. I can't miss the opportunity to compliment Mattias' amazing renders of each model. For a long time I was convinced that these were very crisp photographs. Eventually, I realized they are computer generated. As a long time renderer myself, I can appreciate the incredible amount of work that went into these photo-real images.

The Content

I should start with a caveat. I am almost exclusively a Technic guy, so those funny little round studs are a bit of mystery to me. Sure, I've built the Architecture, UCS, and Modular Houses so I know how they work, but I am hardly an expert in the genre. With that in mind, I found these books quite refreshing. Each book present instructions for 10 models which can be built using the parts from Creator set 5867. The instructions themselves are every bit as simple and detailed as you might expect of the alternate models in an official set. Now, given a fixed pile of parts I could cobble together 10 models which are vaguely recognizable, but I'd not be able to come up with these even with an infinite palette. Granted, that is partly because I don't know what I am doing, but these are no kludges. Each model is well thought out and feature rich. Frankly, I am astounded that so many high quality models (20) were produced with such a small number of fixed parts. Although all are vehicles, there is a lot of variety here from cars to motorcycles to trucks and even a baby carriage. The building techniques are varied as well. Some are traditional, others are filled with SNOT. The chassis of the classic car is even built upside down. Expert AFOLs may not find anything they don't already know here, but the rest of us could learn a thing or two.

My favorite thing about this book is using it against my son, age 11. Nearly every weekend we have a discussion that goes something like this:

Me: You should build something with your LEGO.

Him: I wish I could, but I don't have any parts.

Me: What are you talking about? You have a giant bucket with thousands of parts.

Him: Yeah, but none of them are good. I can't make anything out of them.

Me: You have examples of almost every kind of LEGO part in your bucket.

Him: Yeah, but not enough of them and they are the wrong color.

At this point I am usually becoming highly agitated. Now I simply plop him down in front of Nathanael's book with a tiny pile of parts and say, "Here, build these." The book dispels the idea that you need a huge collection of parts to make excellent models, and teaches you some great techniques in the process.

If there is one criticism I have of the book, it is the choice of model used for the parts. Set 5867 has been out of production for a couple of years and it wasn't very popular in the first place. I confess that I knew this book was coming in advance so I went on Bricklink and got a copy of the set to use for parts. Even at that time, pre-book release, there were only 4 available in the world. I imagine they are all but gone now. Adult collectors will no doubt have plenty of these parts, none of which are particularly rare, but younger readers will have a harder time getting their hands on the parts needed to build these models. In the author's defense, the time it takes to design these models, make instructions, and get the book edited and printed is surely longer than the release cycle of a LEGO set so there is little that can be done about it.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed these books and learned a lot from them. Proving to my son that he can be more creative is easily worth the price.

[robt]

Thank you for your review, Blakbird.

What I don't know is if you need only one 5867 set to build all vehicles.

[Blakbird]

Thank you for your review, Blakbird.

What I don't know is if you need only one 5867 set to build all vehicles.

Yes, you only need one copy. Of course, you can only build one of the models at a time because they all use the same parts.

[robt]

Thanks for the info, Blakbird.