I've been a friend of his on flickr probably for as long as I've had a flickr account (late 2007), which I acquired to share my LEGO creations with members of the community and to look at the creations of the other members that inspire me. I rarely post anything to my photostream, but almost every day I go into my "contacts" section and see what everyone else has uploaded to their photostreams. I've enjoyed nnenn's space ship models for ages, and he seemed to build and upload pictures of them quite often, so I really got to know his work as a LEGO builder. I knew the art, not the artist. He has a lot of fans for obvious reasons, but he also seemed to have a lot of critics due to his controversial techniques like modifying LEGO pieces and using other brands of building blocks. I think even the critics would probably admit the final products of those techniques usually looked great. Being a bit of a purist myself, even I would sometimes cringe when I saw what he did to certain pieces, but then I'd relax and appreciate the model the piece was used in.
It often seemed like the main reason he uploaded pictures of his creations wasn't to show off, but to inspire other people to build, and in that way, more than just his building techniques were inspiring. The attitude was less "Look what I built!" and more "Look at what you can build! Now stop sitting at your computer and go build something too!" And he inspired many people to do just that.
Here's one of my favorite things he's built. I love the combination of colors (something nnenn was really good at) and how he made those rather complicated brick-built designs on the wings instead of sticking on decals.
My flickr "contacts" section will seem much more empty from here on.
