Brick by brick

DIORAMAS come to life through the stories it tell, and Angela Chung makes good use of Lego to depict scenes that are tied to our daily lives. One of her dioramas portrayed the arrival of a baby with stunning detail to the hospital’s labour room.
The scene was featured in an international website which has a strict rule in introducing My Own Creation (MOC, pronounced “mock”). The article noted the variety of medical machinery and particularly, an incubator trolley with its little heat lamp waiting to keep the new arrival cosy.
Chung actually built this diorama after being disappointed with the result of a competition she joined where she didn’t make it to the top five. The welcoming of a new life motivated her that there is always hope, and true enough, she won first prize in the next competition she joined.
As a kid, Chung enjoyed assembling jigsaw puzzles but as she grew up, it no longer satisfied her and she switched to 3D puzzles and model houses. Then in 2014, her colleague introduced her to Lego and her first set was the 10211 Grand Emporium.
“I always thought Lego only produces ugly-looking vehicles until I built this set. I was totally stunned by the details of the interior and exterior design. That same year, I bought all the modular sets that were still available in the market and assembled them all during Labour Day. That was the start of my love for Lego,” she said.
What started as a hobby, turned into a great passion for Chung as she gained much joy and satisfaction from Lego. She said it creates infinite possibilities. You can make different sort of things with the same amount of parts, and you can improvise what you have already built. Lego helps her to imagine, think and create – there is no limit and that is what she enjoys most about it.
When Chung creates a diorama she thinks of how to make it look real, and does that by setting some focus points and having interesting colour tones. Mini figures also really help light up the scene.
“I am not so good at imagination so when I want to build something, I need to do a thorough research.
For example, the Shell petrol station diorama, I went to a few different stations to snap photos of them and I studied their structure from websites. I also studied the inside of the building in order to build a petrol station that looked exactly like the real one,” she said.
Coming from an engineering background, Chung likes motion and when she learned that Lego has motor parts that can create movement, her first project was to create a chair-lift. Chung said it required a lot of patience before it worked.
She also used an Arduino processor in her other projects such as the train controlled gate and the river rocking ride (pirate ship ride). Chung wrote the software to dynamically control the speed of the motor that drives the Lego.
“A small vignette can be completed in half an hour if the idea is already conceptualised, while big dioramas take a long time, especially when it takes time to fine-tune and improvise. My city diorama took me a year to complete, and it took me more than a month for the superhero earthquake diorama. The building in the latter was fragile and kept falling apart. I had to rework on it multiple times,” she said.
Being serious about city planning, Chung used Microsoft Excel to plan the layout of her city diorama. Her plan was to have an urban city complete with residential area, a theme park and seaside. She bought many retired Lego sets to fi ll her city, and it was completed during Chinese New Year in 2016.
As a Sunday school teacher in church, Chung uses her Lego dioramas in her story-telling sessions, and that has made the kids excited and paid attention to her Bible stories.
“What satisfies me most is when I see children become excited to see my dioramas and wanting to play with them. I like a diorama to be playable. It is satisfying to see children having fun playing with my creations. Even if sometimes they break things apart, the good thing about Lego is we can always fi x or make it better.
“Lego is known as a children’s toy but over the years, it has expanded to become popular among adults. I wish I will one day be able to commercialise my MOC. Perhaps, I can create some customised dioramas for rent or for sale to commercial shops.
“But before that I need to make myself known so I created a fan page to showcase my creations (Angela’s Brick on Facebook). I have also thought of starting a Lego Cafe in Penang so my dioramas have a proper place to be showcased,” she added.