Meet the LEGO® Pro. Comedian and certified LEGO® PRO Dirk Denoyelle
26 de març 2019
In this article for our series Meet the LEGO® Pro, we have an interview with a very talented man. Dirk Denoyelle is a successful comedian and imitator of voices, and thus a well-known personality in Belgium. Besides, Dirk is one of the only 17 officially certified LEGO® professionals in the world. Via his company Amazings, you can order very special LEGO® art works and constructions and have them built. Therefore we are very happy that Dirk has found some time for ToyPro and we asked him how one becomes a certified LEGO® professional, we talked about his very special work and enquired after his plans for the future.
For those who are not familiar with Dirk Denoyelle the comedian, please go to the following Crash Test Dummies imitation, you will like it.
ToyPro: how does one become a LEGO® Certified Professional?
Dirk: in my case this turned out to be easier than one would think. Oh well, you have to know that because of my status as well-known personality in Flanders, I was lucky enough at the end of the nineties to get the bricks for my first project for free. LEGO® literally said: we receive 100 requests per year, usually we honor only one request, and this year it is your turn.
So, for my theater show, I built the head of Flemish bard Willem Vermandere. And as this head turned out to be a success, I was bold enough to ask LEGO for more bricks, so I could realize 25 celebrity heads.
LEGO® bust of Flemish bard Willem Vermandere, by Dirk Denoyelle
That exhibition would travel along with my jubilee theater tour. And I made it. The tour was quite successful and the heads were exhibited at the first editions of LEGO®WORLD and the Efteling (Dutch Attraction Park).
After some time LEGO® Benelux suggested I become a LEGO® Certified Professional. The idea stayed with me for a while. It was by pure coincidence that one day I spoke to Jan Beyer (Community Engagement at LEGO® in Billund) about my plans, as he was one of the people on the management team of the LCP program at the time. I put my plans down in an email, and one month later I was an LCP. I suppose it probably helped that in Billund they were already acquainted with my heads.
In the meantime, rules have become much stricter, and the program has changed, too. You need to live in the right region, you need to be able to prove the actual quality in your work, and you have to be a professional in the sense that you need to make a living out of it (at least part time) and most of all: you must be able to put up with the ever more numerous restrictions imposed by Billund. To be perfectly clear: I pay for my own bricks, as an LCP.
LEGO® scale model of the Dutch city of Almere consisting of 1, 5 million LEGO® bricks
ToyPro: who are the customers at your company Amazings?
Dirk: different types, really. For companies, mainly ranging from SMEs to international giants, we have team building sessions, LEGO® Serious Play Sessions and workshops. We do portraits for private customers (mosaics), while 3D-busts are generally gifts for the very rich (sheiks captains of industry) or for museums. Our scale models go to museums or medium sized companies, most of the time. Home decoration is for wealthy citizens. The word “rich” or “wealthy” is often used in the previous sentence: LEGO® in itself is expensive, and everything is made by hand.…
LEGO® Amazings Experience exhibition
And then there is our exhibition. It is more like an “art experience with LEGO® bricks” than an ordinary exhibition. Presently we are restyling it, and I am not running it anymore, myself, as a consequence of the new LCP contract. Our customers are organizations who would also organize “Walking with Dinosaurs” or “Körperwelten”.
ToyPro: for what kind of projects can interested parties contact you?
Dirk: I think my previous answer more or less covers that question. To put it this way: people want an object in LEGO® for a few reasons. In order to draw attention: hence the scale models on trade fairs, or in museums and shopping centers. Or because they want something educational, for children quite often: we find ourselves at museums again, but also in the medical sector for example. Or they want a positive representation of something: architecture models for city planning, for example, scale models of hospitals or schools etc. And the last category are the customers looking for an original gift for someone who already has everything but always remains open to something fun. We used to make customized gifts as well, as business gifts, but Billund put a halt to that not so long ago, for LCPs.
LEGO® construction inspired by painting
ToyPro: have you got any favorite LEGO® themes yourself and what is it you enjoy so much in these?
Dirk: I am a modular-fan - and from time to time I treat myself to an Architecture set.
ToyPro: what sort of LEGO® MOCs do you enjoy building most?
Dirk: I really enjoy making up works of art. Things a bit surrealistic, they must be pretty to look at but also hold a twist, even something downright weird. Sometimes literally.
ToyPro: which are the projects you are proudest of?
Dirk: our Rubens is quite a performance. And quite recently we made a project which is difficult to photograph: Marilyn Monroe imprisoned between four of her admirers, turning from to the other. And what we managed to build in Almere: the entire city, block for block of houses…. 1, 5 million bricks!
LEGO® Rubens art project
ToyPro: have you any plans, objectives and/or dreams for the future in the field of LEGO®?
Dirk: although it is out of my hands, I hope that “my” exhibition will be allowed to travel around the world.
ToyPro: in general, what are the greatest challenges in new projects?
Dirk: funnily enough, that is checking with Billund whether they will allow us to go on. Besides, there is a logistic issue. I order my bricks directly from the factory, but even so, I sometimes notice that the one very important brick I really need was not on my order list. And often it is not just one brick but one thousand of that same brick. LEGO® is a punctual supplier but not very fast. So deadlines are tight, sometimes.
ToyPro: which designers do you admire or follow yourself?
Dirk: at LEGO®’s I am a Jamie Berard fan - mostly because he is such a very nice guy. In fan-world I am often astonished by what Scheider Cheung in Hong Kong can do. Among LCPs it is difficult to choose, but someone like Nicholas Foo (Singapore) is definitely worth a closer look. That man is far too modest! And of course I have a weak spot for my New York friend and former LCP Sean Kenney.
ToyPro: have you got any tips for our readers who want to make their own LEGO® work of art?
Dirk: my advice would be to remain close to who you are. Don’t just try to imitate, try to add a little something of yourself.
ToyPro: Dirk, thank you so very much for your time and beautiful stories. If you wish to see or read more about Dirk Denoyelle and his work, please go to website Amazings and admire the great many works of art in LEGO®. We wish you a lot of success for the future, and for building more wonderful and unique LEGO® creations.
Do you feel inspired after reading this article and you want to get going yourself? At ToyPro’s you will find more than 18,000 unique LEGO® pieces. Just order the pieces you need for your creation.
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