Space Jam Pegasus Racing Team - BrickNerd.png

What defines a good team? To answer that question using a single sentence, it would be when a group of people come together and achieve something greater than the sum of their individual contributions. The annual Space Jam sci-fi building competition wrapped up a few weeks ago, and the entrants delivered some great examples of this good teamwork.

For those not familiar with Space Jam (the non-movie), it is a large-scale LEGO Sci-Fi building contest with six diverse building categories that change each year; space ships, creatures, vignettes, etc. One of those categories has always been some kind of team collaboration category. The challenge is for 2-4 builders to create models that not only express their individual creativity and skill, but also display strong team coherence at the same time. This can be done in various ways; through color schemes, logos, a common part usage, sharing an aesthetic style, etc.

This year’s entrants were asked to create a Space Rally Racing team, with each person tasked with creating a different type of racing vehicle. One team that really impressed me with their teamwork was Pegasus Racing. They were neck-and-neck for the lead in the Space Jam rally, but in the end, they were edged out from taking a victory lap by “The Super Six.” Although it doesn’t make for much of a consolation prize, I thought I would feature their team here on BrickNerd (well, at least it’s a better prize than getting “Boggle” as a bar mitzva gift…).

Here is a quick look at their four racers, and some of the things that caught my eye in each of the designs:

BobDeQuatre Epsilon-K SkyRacer on flickr

Seeing BobDeQuatre’s Skyracer in flight is an afternoon delight. The spoiler-stylized forward canard and tail wing definitely sell the sky racing vibe. The angled engine intakes and forward-swept wings are well-shaped and well-crafted too, especially considering how much color blocking is incorporated into them. I also really liked the usage of the angled Nexo shields along the top of the nose. With Mira being the Latin word for “wonderful” or “astonishing,” this skyracer’s pilot is aptly named for flying this wonder of aeronautics.

Brick Spirou Monowheel Speed Racer on flickr

Brick Spirou’s Monowheel Speed Racer is one of my favorite entries from this year. As a mechanical engineer by degree—if no longer in actual practice—I always appreciate seeing technical greebling where I can actually visualize all of the functionality they might provide. The webbed radar dish makes for the perfect cooling vents on the off-center motor hub. The long arm across the wheel likely manages wheel shape, and I imagine those are braking or steering pads at the far end. Everything I see here seems thoughtfully placed and plausible in an actual real-world design. The color usage and stickering choices are stellar as well… and if you look REALLY closely at the back, you can just make out a bumper sticker that says “My other car is on TLCB.”

If you aren’t following F@bz on Flickr already, now would be the perfect time to start. Known for creating curvaceous builds, this Sailing Hydrofoil delivers curves as well with those forward telescoping arms. Flexible, tentacle-like metallic arms are certainly a classic Sci-Fi standard; think of alien tripods roaming the planet, the appendages of Spiderman’s nemesis Doc Ock, or even the ‘80s cartoon favorite Inspector Gadget and his go-go-gadget arms. I don’t recall too many other MOC’s embracing them to this degree, and the greebling where they connect to the ship’s hull is spot on. This racing hydrofoil is certainly going out on a limb to take yacht rock to the next level.

What has four legs and flies? Well, in addition to the mythical winged horse Pegasus, Lokiloki’s Off-Road Quadroped most certainly does as well, as it clambers across whatever planetary terrain is put before it. I really like those wicked angles that shape the legs and sides. And speaking of legs, I haven’t seen such a perfect integration of the Bionicle Tohunga foot part since Jon Palmer’s M-Wing. The dark grey greebling of the actual feet is out of this world as well, with very clever part usage. Simply wonderful stuff!

Since Pegasus Racing worked so well together in creating a diverse, yet coherent, racing team, I reached out to learn more about how they pulled it all together.

Ted Andes: First off, congratulations on being so close to taking the victory. I’m not sure if you were aware, but it was a split-decision between the judges, with just one vote being the difference. I really thought your team did a great job building coherency across such a broad range of builds.

Pegasus Racing: Thank you for that, and for your interest in our teamwork. It’s always a pleasure to answer questions about our creations.

TA: Was this the first time the four of you have ever collaborated together, or have you collaborated before?

PR: It was the first time for all of us to work together, although we have known of each other’s works for a long time. We are all members of the French community forum “Brickpirate,” and have been for some years. F@bz and Lokiloki were both searching partners for the contest with a public message to our community, and then BrickSpirou replied fast as the racing theme (and the team) was a really exciting idea to him. Some of us already had the opportunity to meet in real life, but our main interactions have been through social media like Brickpirate or on Flickr.

TA: How did you communicate with each other once your team had been formed? Did you set up a private group on Flickr, a private chat, or use something else to discuss ideas and share photos?

PR: The first thing that we needed to decide was indeed how to communicate in an effective way. We finally agreed on using Discord and Bob set up a private server for us. This was very convenient, as we were able to discuss general subjects and everyone’s creations in dedicated channels, and Discord is easy to use on any platform (PC, mobile, tablet). After setting up the Discord server and channels, our first discussion was about choosing a color scheme.

TA: Your team’s color combinations of white/dark blue/bright-light orange looked really sharp (with the additional pops of lime green too)! So how did you arrive at that color scheme and the “Pegasus Racing” theme?

PR: We tried some different color variations while taking into account everyone’s else color availability and preferences. Once the color scheme was settled, we then started to dig into our collections of stickers to find ones that would fit best with the color scheme and the racing theme. We also tried to find some common markings and a logo too. We ended up going with the Lance’s Mecha Horse (70312) sticker sheet. It was available at a cheap price and in good quantities on BrickLink, so we adopted this equine as the team logo. This led us to the final team name “Pegasus Racing” ... after eliminating others like “White Stallions” :-)

TA: No way! WYLD STALLYNS would have been most excellent! (Oh, you said White Stallions… anyway…) I really enjoyed the diversity in your types of vehicles. Did each builder bring their own ideas as to what they wanted to build?

PR: Yeah, we agreed that we wanted each vehicle to have its own unique and well-defined design, and custom to each race on different types of terrain. This decision was quite fast as each of us already had desired ideas that met this requirement. From there, we tried to imagine some original designs.

TA: As you were building, did any of you adjust your designs to fit in better with the team in any way?

PR: We shared WIP photos, but we never really did anything more than offer some advice to fit the creations together, this was more or less natural. The process was quite smooth. For Brick Spirou and the monowheel racer, there was some minor adjustments in the color proportions of the build to match up better with Lokiloki and Bob’s racers, as their WIP builds were at more advanced stages.

TA: The photo editing with the template and backgrounds was also done consistently well. Did one person take that task on?

PR: Lokiloki took that on and did a really great job on the final presentation of our creations. Big ups to him. The goal of this process was to show the diversity of our vehicles while keeping a consistent look. As he had some experience with photo editing, he added Spirou’s, Bob’s and his MOC onto fitting backgrounds (F@bz did his own). Spirou’one was the most difficult because he couldn’t find any freely-usable photos of an empty futuristic racing track. Lokiloki had to merge several photos to get it right.

F@bz also had this idea of showing the minifig in the pictures. From there he created the graphic overlay that includes some data about each driver and their machine. We thought it would be fun to simulate what we sometimes see on TV or video games about sport. It gives more depth to our team while allowing us to hide a few Easter eggs! This process had to be done by a single person for more consistency, even though everyone suggested improvements. Spirou also vectorized the sticker to create the team’s logo.

TA: Ooh. I better go back and look for a few of those Easter eggs… Before I do though, is there anything else you would like to share about the builds? Any challenges that each of you faced with your specific design, or any special sources of inspiration?

PR - BrickSpirou: I was very interested in making a monowheel vehicle for this first time, but I wanted to build at minifig scale as we decided to display our pilots too. It needed to be something bigger than a monowheel bike (unicycle), so I went in that direction not really knowing where it would end up. I did some research about sci-fi monowheels during the building process but never choose one particular work to inspire on.

PR - Lokiloki: For me, I wanted to build a racing mech but I wasn’t very inspired by biped ones. F@bz showed me some concept art by Alex Jaeger with six-legged racing vehicles that I really liked for their aerodynamic look. I made a compromise and opted for a quadrapod inspired by rally cars.

TA: That research certainly resulted in some very handsome machines. Thanks again for sharing with us, and great job! Party on, dudes!

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Would you watch the Pegasus Racing Team compete? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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