Brendan Powell Smith

The Brick Testament website has been updated today with the final four new stories from the book of Revelation: God Burns Remaining Humans to Death, Billions to Be Ceaselessly Tortured for Eternity, God’s Garish Eternal Tribute to Himself, and Any Moment Now. Here are a few preview images: Enjoy, Brendan Powell Smith The Brick Testament - The world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible

Wow, gorgeous scene. Inventive and memorable.

I know I differ from most people on this subject, but I just can't work up the effort to be offended, outraged, or in the least bit nonplussed by the mere appearance of taboo words such as the so-called f-bomb. I can certainly understand taking umbrage with the sentiment being expressed when someone uses a taboo word in ways in which they are commonly used, like "F-bomb you!". But I don't find that the least bit more offensive than someone expressing the same venomous hatred using non-taboo words, like "I hate you from the pit of my heart and hope your life is filled with suffering and despair." Both such sentiments are equally worrisome to me, one is just more succinct than the other. As for the other taboo words that are names for copulation, genitals, and feces, our collective avoidance of particular words for these things while considering different words with the exact same meaning as perfectly acceptable, I find to be truly bizarre and seemingly superstitious. It seems to imbue these taboo words with some magical power over us they utterly do not deserve. Marcus, I don't know if you were saying that the f-bomb is the reason you wouldn't show The Brick Testament's illustration of Revelation to children, or whether it's the overall subject matter of Revelation (illustrated or not) that makes it unsuitable for children. It's very hard for me to relate to a mindset that would consider torture and mass slaughter appropriate subject matter for children but then suddenly balk at the idea of a child seeing a taboo word. As I said, it's not clear to me from your post that this is what you are saying, but I have certainly encountered that sort of reaction to The Brick Testament before, and I always find it quite confounding. Alas, this is a LEGO forum, so we probably shouldn't delve or debate too deeply into this subject here. I may have already overstepped my bounds. I appreciate that you had something nice to say about the construction of the stories even if you disagree with aspects of their presentation and have a significantly different interpretation of Revelation. Regards, -Brendan

I can certainly understand that. Thanks. I'm not sure I can quite be said to have "custom" elements, but I suppose it's debatable. As a rule, I have chosen not to use any 3rd party LEGO-compatible elements like the ones available from Arealight, BrickArms, BrickForge, etc (though some of them are so cool, I sometimes kick myself for adhering to this rule). I do happen to have a few parts that were most likely prototype LEGO parts, like the black one-piece hair-and-beard element worn by the King of Kings in the Armegeddon story. Other than that, I will occasionally "modify by subtraction" official LEGO elements when I cannot find any better solution. For example, cutting the metallic silver longsword so that its blade sticks out of the mouth of the King of Kings. Didn't get a chance to see the original text, but I don't want anyone to worry about saying something critical of my site. I can handle it. -Brendan

The Brick Testament website has been updated today with four new stories from the book of Revelation: Son of Man’s Bloody Gorefest, God Tortures Remaining Humans at Length, God Tortures a Whore, and Armageddon. Here are some sample images (see the rest on the website): Enjoy, -Brendan Powell Smith The Brick Testament - The world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible

@Hinckley: Thanks! I'm not sure what "BAC" means. Being a Christian? Blood alcohol content? (I suppose either of those could help one accept a literal interpretation of Revelation.) Thanks for turning your evangelical powers toward spreading the word about The Brick Testament to your improv friend. :) @svelte_corps Glad you liked the beast. Before starting in on Revelation--which seemed like a very daunting task--I tried tackling some of the key characters and creatures I knew I would need. So the beast was the first thing I made and he's been waiting patiently for a couple months for his "screen time". I tried out all sorts of ways to give him a "body like a leopard" before settling on just using the alternating 1x1 yellow and black plates. The lion heads are just a variation on the lion I made for the Sampson story. Been loving your reviews of the new Indy sets, btw! You must get asked this all the time, but how are you getting your hands on these sets so early? Would have loved to have had some of those parts available for these Revelation stories. @Guss Glad you highlighted that photo. That made the shortlist of ones I was going to include in my post, but didn't quite make it in. @Yloquen Thanks for the compliment. I have a pretty high interest in illustrating other non-Biblical works or subject matter, but until I finish with the Bible, it would take a lot for me to prioritize something else above it. I am driven not by religious devotion, but by the conviction that everyone, religious or not, benefits from a greater knowledge of the contents of the Bible. If I was born into a world where the Odyssey, Illiad, or Lord of the Rings was taken by millions and millions of people in my society to be the word of God, our best moral guide, etc, and were equally as unread, I am sure my efforts would go toward illustrating those texts. @Sandy I have wondered what boundaries I shoud draw for material to include within The Brick Testament. For instance, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox Christians disagree over exactly which books are accepted as "part of the Bible". I also have a high interest in the early Christian gospels, epistles, and apocalypses that did not get included in the eventual New Testament canon but were used as scriptures by Christian communities for hundreds of years. But I'm not sure how it would affect things to suddenly add something like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, or the Apocalypse of Peter in with the rest of The Brick Testament, as much fun as those would be to illustrate. I'd probably start a sister site for apocryphal works if/when I illustrate those. @Etzel I'm inclined to agree, but we all know what happens to "that guy" in the next panel. @Tom Bricks Can the nerdiest minifig ever not wear glasses? That seems wrong. I made some effort to make the 144,000 male virgins look sort of nerdy/dorky, but the high-pants wearing happy face guy was more of a fluke. :) Thanks to everyone for the comments! -Brendan

The Brick Testament website has been updated today with five new stories from Revelation, bringing the total number of illustrated Bible stories on the website past the 400 mark: God Tortures Everyone Except 144,000 Jews, God Kills One Third of Remaining Humans, Satan Thrown to Earth, Alternative to God Proves Very Popular, and Remaining Humans Doomed to Torture. Here are a few preview images: Enjoy, -The Rev. Brendan Powell Smith The Brick Testament - The world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. @Toa of Whimsy: I agree, the image does seem "so wrong", but this is to match the text. Something also seems very wrong about the idea of rounding up 144,000 Jews to put a mark of identification on them. @Guss: Thanks, I do hope my skills are sharpening after seven years at this! It really makes me want to go back and re-illustrate the stuff I did back in late 2001 and 2002. I certainly spend a lot more time and effort on each photo than I did way back when, so that's part of it. But the rest is techniques I've come up with that suit The Brick Testament's particular type of LEGO building/photography or innovative techniques I've incorporated from other builders. @Etzel: I wanted something a little more impressive/dramatic than the lil' globe I did for the Jesus's Teachings stories a couple years ago. I worked off some fairly simple LEGO sphere instructions (sorry, can't find the link at the moment) but worked out the continent shapes and coloring myself, plus added in some plates at my discretion to make the curves a little less blocky. I had seen some great LEGO Earth globes, but hadn't seen one that used multiple colors for the continents. Of course, now that I look around, it seems Nathan Sawaya made a really nice one (holy crap, is that light blue for the oceans? WTF?). My globe is only actually a half globe. Because I'm lazy. @SirNardoj: Compliments are extra weighty coming from one of my favorite builders. Your work has been inspirational. I'd be very interested to see your take on the book of Joel. I'm sure you'll get to it before I do! At your prodigous rate of output, you could probably finish the whole Bible before I do despite my enormous headstart! @Algernon: The Brick Testament is not intended to celebrate the massive amounts of human suffering described in the Bible, but rather to bring it to people's attention in an engaging way. I am an atheist, and I imagine that if more people actually read the Bible there would be significantly more atheists (or at least atheist as concerns the God presented in the Bible). Of course, I could be wrong about that. There are a fair amount of believers who have read the Bible cover to cover and plenty who are fans of The Brick Teestament. I would say my main bias when illustrating is to sympathize with the victims of the massive amounts of human pain and suffering in the Bible rather than sympathizing with the ones carrying out such pain and suffering (which is the bias I tend to detect in most other illustrations and retellings of Bible stories). @Darth Legolas: Thanks. Indeed, the point of the charred landscape image was to be both highly disturbing and at the same time aesthetically impressive. I would say The Brick Testament works best at such moments. Thanks again to everyone for the comments! -Brendan

The Brick Testament website has been updated today with four newly illustrated stories from Revelation: Terrorized Humans Wish for Death, 144,000 Jews Saved, God Burns One Third of Earth , and God Poisons Humans, Sealife. Here are a few preview images: Enjoy the stories, -Brendan Powell Smith The Brick Testament - The world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible

The Brick Testament website begins its illustration of the final book of The Bible today with the first four stories from Revelation: Future Revealed to Guy on Tiny Mediterranean Island, Children to Be Killed as Warning, Heaven Revealed, and God Tortures, Kills Billions. Here’s a couple of preview images: Enjoy, -Brendan Powell Smith The Brick Testament - The world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible

The Bible does not say anything about Job's skin being restored. I'm not sure whether the author (or authors?) of Job intend for the reader to assume that Job went back to looking as he did before God had Satan physically torture him. If we are meant to think so, I would guess Job would have somehow been given new skin. This would be in line with his receiving new children intsead of his killed childen being restored to life, new animals instead of his old animals being restored to life, and new riches instead of his former riches being returned. But as the story has come to us, there is nothing said about Job's skin. That being the case, I decided I'd depict Job's skin as beginning to heal once God stops tormenting him, but as with any case of a skin ailment that profound, I imagined that the effects of it would never fully go away (without some specified supernatural intervention, that is). I think, for me, it also represented the idea that although Job was given twice the riches he once had, and a new "replacement" set of ten children, he would always have with him the torments he suffered emotionally and physically. Interestingly, the Bible also never says what happens with Job's wife. It doesn't say whether Job's ten new children are born to a new wife (or wives), or whenther his original wife stayed with him through everything. So I just decided not to show any wife in the last few illustrations since no wife is mentioned. -Brendan

You have my permission to use material from The Brick Testament for the off-line, non-commercial purposes you are suggesting. My general policy for such usage can be found here: http://www.thebricktestament.com/churches (Sorry, but the "courtesy credit" image is currently unavailable. If you could instead just make sure your audience is made aware that the images are not your original works and are borrowed from www.thebricktestament.com, that will be fine.) And I'll stress again, this is for off-line usage only. Nothing that will appear again on the Internet or made a profit from in any way. Best regards, -Brendan

Well, I don't have any future plans for him if only because he doesn't really exist except in those photos. The scabs and boils were hand-drawn on for each photo using Photoshop. That process was rather grueling, but I don't think I have the requisite skillz to get the same effect using paint on an actual fig. I put a lot of thought into how best to portray Job in his tormented state. As always, I very much wanted to find a purist LEGO solution. I was very happy to have the Mandrake head from Harry Potter, but try as I might, I couldn't think of a way to find a matching LEGO body that looked nealry disgusting enough to provide the visual impact I was looking to make. Maybe I'll re-illustrate Job in a more purist way after LEGO releases their Medieval Plague sets in 2013. Thanks, Zepher. I do appreciate comments, and always try to reply. Glad I was able to make Job visually appealing (well, maybe not the fig himself). I had my worries about that since there's so much dialogue. But I tried to keep the camera angles dramatic and fresh at the least. Now it's time to start planning for Revelation... -Brendan

Happy Thanksgiving! The Brick Testament has been updated this week with eight new Bible stories illustrating the Book of Job in its entirety: Meet Job, God Makes Wager with Satan, God Kills Job’s Children, Servants, Animals, God Tortures Job, Three Friends Accuse Job, Fourth Man Accuses Job, God Refuses to Explain His Cruelty, and God Gives Job Replacement Children, Money. Here’s a few preview images: Enjoy, -Brendan Powell Smith The Brick Testament - The world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible

Unfortunately I do have to deconstruct just about everything I build for The Brick Testament within a week or two of final photography. As you might guess, this is required to have enough raw material to keep constructing the buildings, characters, and props for each set of new stories. Not to mention that if I kept everything intact, I'd quickly out of room to store everything. There have been a few exceptions. I kept the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel around for a few years as display pieces. But one day I accidentally knocked over the Tower, and over time I kept pulling pieces off of the Garden whenever I was running low on flora or green baseplates. Also, for example, I've been keeping the sets for Solomon's palace and the Temple of Yahweh around for months now since I knew I'd have to keep returning to them for many different stories. And yet I still can't resist pulling off parts from when I need them for something else, so right now these sets are in pretty rough shape. When I got invited to display some work from The Brick Testament at an art gallery I had to build the display pieces over again from scratch. The Garden of Eden I rebuilt at home to figure out what pieces I'd need, then deconstructed it into boxes and built it once again on site at the gallery. The Last Supper scene traveled a little better. It's weird because unlike a lot of my fellow LEGO builders, I generally don't think of the actual LEGO dioramas as my finished product. It's the photos of the LEGO scenes I consider the actual works of art (if I can use that phrase without sounding too pretentious). I almost always build my sets "for the camera". This allows me to take shortcuts (like not building all four walls of a room if only two will be seen, etc) and work faster, but it also means my actual LEGO scenes are not really suitable for display on a pedestal. I had to explain this to the curator of the gallery, and so we compromised and had a few large blow-ups of photos from the website as well as a 50-foot banner showing an entire 17-photo story that was displayed on the outside of the gallery. Thanks for the interest. Glad you're enjoying the project, and I never mind getting questions about it. -Brendan