Look: A huge model of Center City built out of Legos!

Levi Buffum, 32, has been constructing an enormous model of Center City Philadelphia out of Legos for months; you can follow his progress on the Facebook page Legodelphia. We chatted with him yesterday after photos of it popped up on Philly Reddit, and it turns out Buffum is also the creator of another thing we love — a series of videos that turn prestige TV series like Breaking Bad and The Wire into Nintendo-era pixelated RPGs. We also talked about the corgi that appears in the background of many shots of Legodelphia, because we are serious suckers for a corgi.  

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So what do you do when you’re not building Philadelphia out of Legos?

I do freelance art and music, and I’m a 3D modeler for design patents; basically lawyers send the materials to my company and they contract me to build the models for it. They make the drawings for the patent from the 3D models I make. The other stuff I just do sparsely whenever somebody contacts me about doing it.

 

So the Legos are all-white — why is that?

I started with the Lego Architect's Studio, which is a free-build set, and the whole set is in white. I decided to stick with the white when I started to build more than just a couple blocks — white and clear were the only colors I used.

 

How did this project start?

It started when I ran out of the Architecture series that Lego put out — I did all the models in that series and I wanted to build more. So I tried my hand — Lego has a program called Lego Digital Designer, it's basically a 3D modeler with their pieces built in. So I was fooling around with that, trying to make my own Lego-style Liberty Plaza.

When I had done that, I decided to do a couple more blocks, and basically I issued myself a challenge to build a certain block each day. I worked my way out from Center City, but after about a dozen blocks, I was taking apart the old blocks and using them to make new ones, because I only have so many pieces. So I went online, got a bunch of white blocks on eBay, and kept going. At some point I decided, "OK, I'm going to make this from river to river, and I'll decide how high and how low I want to go eventually.”

 

How high and how low does it go?

The northmost point is the top edge of Race Street, the bottom is Spruce Street.

 

Do you have any relation to architecture?

I actually initially did go to school for architecture; I did one year of that and decided I didn't want to be an architect — every architect I ever met seemed miserable. (Laughs.) But I've always had an interest in architecture, and I thought the 3D modeling stuff was fun, I picked that up the first year. That's kind of how I ended up in the job I'm in now, and how I ended up playing with Legos as an adult rather than as a kid. (Laughs.)

 

So how do you go about creating a 3D model of a big section of the city?

I put together a scratch in the Lego program — they just have every possible piece they've ever created as a part you can put in the 3D space in the program. Anyway, those pieces go together automatically, so it's a lot easier.

I referenced mainly Google Earth to get the overall look of the city. Google Earth has built up parts of the city, like, anywhere there's major landmarks. People contribute their own models as well, but they get professionals to do the famous parts of the city. Then I'd come down to the street view on either side of a building to get a better idea of the smaller parts of the city.

 

Have you done other projects with LDD?

Small stuff — I eventually found this site called bricklink.com where you can buy pieces by the piece, but before that, if I wanted to build any of the stuff I was making I'd have to buy lots and lots of bunches of pieces on EBay and hope that I got the piece I need, or buy them individually on EBay and pay more than they're worth. So it didn't seem like a wise investment at that point in time.

But I did put together a couple things — I made a little Master Sword from the Legend of Zelda  out of Legos. But aside from actual sets that I've bought, this is the first Lego thing I've tackled on anywhere near this scale.

 

 

You made several really great 8-bit RPG versions of prestige TV shows for College Humor a while back. It seemed to me like these are a little related — you're distilling something down to these chunky blocks, while still having it be very recognizable. Did it feel similar to you?

There are a lot of similarities. But the way Legos are designed it's kind of like trying to cut the squares out — like, if you take the square block in the base and then they have all these nifty pieces that allow you to turn things sideways, slant them, stuff like that. I guess the basic building blocks of Legos are blocky, but at least for the architecture style Lego blocks, they try to eliminate the square, they try to make it look as seamless and round and angled as possible when the architecture of the original subject calls for it.

 

Was there a point where you were like, “OK, we’re doing this”?

No... with a lot of projects that I do, I never think of an idea like "OK, I'm going to build a giant model of Philadelphia out of Legos," because it would feel too vast from the beginning, and I bounce around between a lot of hobbies, 945?? without getting too involved in one thing too quickly. I tend to have my hands in a lot of things and see what pays off and what doesn't seem like it's going to be as much fun. There's never a clear "Oh, this is going to be a big thing now," it just kind of escalates and before I know it, out of control. And that's just how it happened with this.

 

How’d you end up doing your first 8-bit video?

I was actually trying to get into doing chiptunes and throwback music using old video game sounds. I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon's work, and Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog, and I thought OK, I'll make a couple of these using my Nintendo. (I have a piece of hardware that lets me use the original Nintendo as an instrument.) So I made a couple of tracks, posted them online, and they got a bit of attention.

At some point I decided, "Hey, it'd be fun to add a little animation." I'd done pixel animation before, nothing spectacular, just taking a sprite from a video game and making that character run around in a different world, just for fun. I figured I’d make a short video to go along with the tracks — again, I didn’t think start out thinking it was going to get out of control — a short video or a couple stills to go along with the tracks, and just like that I ended up making an animation for basically the entire film. And that was kind of the first time I got the reaction I was looking for. College Humor saw it, and was like, “Let’s do a whole series!”

 

 

What I love about those videos is how they distill these complicated, morally ambiguous plots into these simple RPG choices — like in the Wire, you have the option to “Give A Fuck” or “Bribe.” Was there any one of those that you were particularly proud of?

Well, for those shorts they sent me scripts, so I had very little to do with that. They were OK if I popped something in there that I thought should be there, but I didn’t have as much to do with the script on those particular short.

Their writers were fantastic, though. There’s a lot of similar RPG elements that they used over the course of a lot of those shorts, like “A Wild Whatever Appears!” These mechanics that they’d reuse, they’d find a way to relate pretty seamlessly.

 

 

Were there any particularly tricky areas or buildings?

The main buildings were ones I’d seen before, so they didn’t take as much trial and error. But there’s a lot of buildings, you don’t see them from the top, so you don’t know what they’re shaped like. Like, the Chinatown area, a little bit north of there — that’s an area where I didn’t know what stuff looked like from any other angle than from the street. Once I got on Google Earth and was looking at stuff from the top down, and how it actually went together — some random buildings had a creative architect, I guess, and had some shapes that were more of a challenge than the basic box structure that most of the city has.

 

So how big is it?

I did measure it once, but I forget exactly … here, I have a tape measure somewhere around here, let me measure right now. I believe it’s somewhere around… 20 inches by five and a half feet? Something like that? But I’ll get you a more accurate measurement.

 

SURE! About how finished are you?

I’d say roughly 80%.

 

What do you plan to do with it when it’s done?

Forty-five… (laughs) hold on, I’m adding in my head.

 

Oh, sorry!

…Sixty-four… so yeah, it’s five feet, four inches from river to river, and then about 20 inches wide. Sorry, what were you asking?

 

Oh, just what were you going to do with it?

I haven’t decided! I have a… I wouldn’t call it a philosophy, but my work style … I don’t really advertise myself or, like, try to push myself out there. I just put it up and see what happens, let the work speak for itself. So I’m doing it for fun, really. It’d be really cool if there was a building in Philly somewhere that wanted to display it, City Hall or the Comcast building or something. I’m not looking to necessarily sell it or anything, I’m not trying to make money off it. I just would like to see it out there.

 

Tell me about the Corgi that’s in the background of a bunch of the pictures.

 (laughs) He always sneaks in the back! Half the time I don’t know he’s there. He’s… pretty adorable, first off. He’s very much a human dog. He loves humans, he doesn’t really like other dogs. There’s a couple dogs he’s OK with, other Corgis he’s kind of iffy about. At my old place, I had a couple roommates, we used to throw big parties all the time, and he just loves walking around the room getting petted, just right in the middle of everyone, that’s his thing. His name’s Einstein, after the corgi from Cowboy Bebop, if you’re familiar with that —

 

 

(Laughs) Yeah, I am.

So that was actually the first time I knew what a corgi was. I never had seen a corgi until I saw the show, and I immediately assumed it was a made-up dog from the future. My roommate in college, we were watching it, and he was like, “No, that’s a corgi.” And I was like “I want that dog.” (Laughs.) And so I got one!