You know I’m not much of a football fan at all, but even that can’t stop the forces of inspiration.  I want to try to create LEGO creations for each season and display them around the house until I think of something new to create, and the Steelers going to the superbowl was the biggest event I could think of.  I did a quick google search for “pittsburgh steelers LEGO helmet” just to make sure no one had done it before, and then set off!

I used basically all my black 1x and 2x pieces.  Pretty ridiculous.  I had been itching to try my hand at a sphere, because this has always been a struggle of mine.  It’s hard to think in 3 dimensions while building in 2 dimensions.  I think I’ve found the trick is to set a base shape and then build exactly the same on both sides.  Having a consistent and uniform curve makes the brain accept the rounded shape a lot easier!

I built most of the helmet in about 4 hours, and left one side empty while I brainstormed on what to do about the logo.  I think it turned out pretty well!  If you have a good eye, you’ll notice that the logo doesn’t say “Steelers”.  I had just put a 1×3 black brick centered in the circle, but it looked crappy.  The trick of creating in LEGO is the art of suggestion!

I did have some extra 1×2 black and yellow, so I threw them together to spell out “Steelers”, even though I couldn’t make the stencil font come out and keep the proportion small.  At first attempt, I had the back of the helmet sticking out way too far back.  I brought it in about 4 studs and tapered the bottom in.  Perfect.  Total time about 10 hours.

When you’re engaged in a group discussion, and someone makes an allusion to a person whose name you don’t recognize – assume it’s a football player.  The accuracy of this assumption can be increased when you hone in on context clues like the gender of the reference, the male ratio of the discussers, as well as the time of year (ie: draft season).  Let the rule also state that the afore mentioned “draft season” does not imply awareness due to social responsibility, but rather awareness by previous conversations around the same chronological period.