KAYSVILLE, Utah – A man in Kaysville who builds incredible Lego creations recently undertook an Enterprise that is out of this world.
Chris Melby invited FOX 13 News into his “Lego Cave” to show off his masterpiece, a Lego recreation of the USS Enterprise from the “Star Trek” franchise of TV shows and films.
He said his philosophy when it comes to Lego building is to, "do something that's hard to do or almost impossible to do."
He said that philosophy helped him decide to launch his endeavor.
“And that's where I came up with the Enterprise as a subject, because it's always been a favorite of ship mine and it is just super round, so it was a very hard shape to obtain out of Lego ,” he said.
Melby worked on the creation for about eight months, and then he and his wife made a film of it.
“It took us eight hours to film it,” he said “We put it online, and a blog by the name of Brothers Brig picked it up, and it's just been huge since then... it's been all over the world."
Melby said he thinks of himself as an artist--delivering a look with Lego’s that hasn’t been done before. He works to hide the Lego studs in order to create a smooth look with rounded surfaces.
“It's really layered,” he said. “It's got a lot of different layers and a lot of different lines going different directions in a small amount of space, and with Lego that's very tough do, so I had to start breaking it down into components. The other thing that's hard about this ship, it has lines that are just hard to achieve in Lego period.”
The hours spent creating his Lego art, like a 60s hot rod and the HMS Beagle, hasn't detracted from family life, as his wife said he gets the whole family involved. Leann Melby said her husband is the brains of the project and the family are his helpers.
She said: “A lot of times he'd call me down into the room and be like, 'What do you think of this?' and 'What should I do here?' What's going on with this?' you know, even sending me texts saying, 'This is what I’m dong now, does it look OK?' It's been a lot of fun.”
Melby said he feels like pioneering a new way to build Legos is his trademark. For more information about his work, visit his website.
