Pop Culture Characters
I love building characters from various popular franchises, including those pictured here and so many more!
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
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 Aaron Newman's fantastic terminator model, but I made sure that mine was very different than his. 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
Animaniacs
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.
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 Jonathan, LEGO BrickTrix on YouTube, who let me borrow them for the round. This model actually was the one that got me into the following round.
Build time: 2 days
Johnny 5
Iron Man Mark XLVII
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. Also I had just seen Avatar recently so that probably also influenced my decision to build this.
Build Time: 3 days