Pop Culture Characters
I love building characters from various popular franchises, including those pictured here and so many more!
Sam Wilson - Captain America
August 2021
Inspiration: My good friend Pondering Peregrine and I enjoyed the Disney+ original Marvel show "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" and decided to each build characters from it. I built Sam Wilson and he built Bucky Barnes, each with their outfits from the season finale. I started with a mechanical wing that could fold and unfold, but ultimately it felt too gimmicky and wasn't worth how much it detracted from the model. I redesigned the wings giving precedent to form over function, and I'm very satisfied with the result. This was built in a matter of days and I photographed it shortly before leaving my LEGO collection for a bit. Due to having built it on a whim, a handful of parts had to be changed colors in photoshop afterwards as I didn't have the right colors on hand. Creating the action shots for both Sam and Bucky was also a fun challenge, trying to match the color grading of the Marvel show.
Features: posable wings, highly articulated frame, detachable Redwing
Animaniacs
November 2020
Inspiration: I wanted to post this in time for the Hulu Animaniacs Reboot, so I rushed to get it all done, but I'm pretty happy with the result regardless! As these are the Warner brothers (and the Warner sister), it would be out of character to build them following all of the rules. So, these builds are jam packed with illegal techniques and questionable connections! They were a blast to design!
I updated them in November 2021 so I could post instructions to coincide with the release of Season 2. The biggest change I made was to the color of Yakko's pants, from tan to medium nougat, as I felt that medium nougat looked a little more accurate to the show. It also gave me a chance to update Wakko's mouth, which I hadn't been satisfied with on the first draft.
Build Time: 5 days, 3 days to update
Optimus Prime Bust
January 2021
Inspiration: Built for Iron Forge round 3 using the 2x2 trapezoidal flag as the seed part. This was one of the first ideas I had for this round, but as I built it, I kept finding more and more ways to add more flags. The video was written as a reflection on the Iron Forge Round. While this model doesn't transform, check out my Transformers page to see a bunch that actually do!
Build Time: 1 day
YouTube | Instagram | Flickr | Rebrickable
Hiccup and Toothless
May 2020
Inspiration: I had been wanting to build a minifigure scale version of Toothless from how to Train your Dragon for awhile. My favorite version by far was the model by Joss Woodward. I'm not comfortable enough in CCBS to do something more similar to his or Tyler Clite's, but I quickly settled into a scale that worked really well for me, starting with the 3 stud wide head. Getting the cute circular reptilian head is key to building toothless, and I think I got that pretty well. I built this model for Iron Forge Round 4 with the seed part being the technic connector. I used this part throughout, multiple times on the wings as well as on the tail and ears, though admittedly it wasn't really a key part of the model.
My favorite part of the model is probably Hiccup. I failed at making Toothless minifigure scale, but Toothless wouldn't be the same without his rider. I built a slightly larger than minifigure scale figure and it works pretty well in my opinion.
Build time: 2 days
Flickr | Instagram | Rebrickable | Joss Woodward | Tyler Clites
Clint and Kate - Hawkeye
January 2021
Inspiration: my favorite part of Disney+'s Hawkeye show is all of the interactions between Clint Barton and Kate Bishop. Thus, when I wanted to build a model from the show, it was only natural to want to build the two leads, in their outfits from the finale.
Build Time: 2 days
Na'vi Warrior
January 2021
Inspiration: The trapezoidal shape of the minifigure torso, Iron Forge's round 1 seed part, looked like the noses of the Na'vi from James Cameron's Avatar. I had just seen Avatar a day or two prior, so that also definitely influenced my decision to build this.
Build Time: 3 days
Johnny 5
May 2020
Inspiration: I couldn't build Wall-E ,since he had already been built by another builder in the Iron Forge round that this was for, so I went for another cute pop culture robot. The tracks can't roll because they were too long and they actually loop inside the track area to make them shorter.
Build time: 1 day
Beauty and the Beast
May 2020
Inspiration: I built this for Iron Builder Round 2. The stud shooter looked like Lumiere's head and nose, thus, I set out to build all of the Beauty and the Beast servant characters at this scale. My favorite is Mrs. Potts who uses a minifigure arm and other odd techniques. Many of the stud shooters belonged to Pondering Peregrine, who let me borrow them for the round. This model was the my highest scoring build and the one that let me advance to the following round.
Build time: 2 days
Terminator and Super Soaker
May 2020
Inspiration: I was inspired by the great book "The Winston Effect" to build this character. I was brainstorming things for the Iron Builder Round 3, with the seed part of the stud shooter. I used many stud shooters throughout the model, notably 3 on the face. I was also inspired by the general feel of Aaron Newman's fantastic terminator model. As for the super soaker, Terminator didn't look right without a gun, but I'm not a gun person at all, so I decided that an old fashioned super soaker would fit perfectly, and add a great element of comedy to the model.
Build Time: 2 days
Flickr | Instagram | Aaron Newman's Terminator
