Lego Tales: Homemade Minifigs Part 2

As you know from here, 7-year-old Noah had been repurposing his old minifigures with paper, markers, crayons & double-sided tape to change them into the minifig characters he wanted to play with. Most of his homemade minifigs were limited to paper masks & shirts, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that he also "decorated" Wolverine's pants. I just love Wolverine's claws made out white cardboard!

It has become common for him to prepare his minifig artworks. See the shirts of the Spiderman characters he plans to make.

Though so far, all he's made is Spidey...

... and the Big Lizard - who he probably started to make as a minifig (see the cut-out shirt above?) but decided against due to the villain-minifig's inaccurate proportion vis-a-vis Spiderman.

Love the eyes he drew and glued onto his Lego creation!

While I prefer the shirts he draws himself, I eventually gave in and printed the Batman minifig characters he had been pining for. I used a black & white printer this time so he opted to color in the parts that needed color.

See how he used red & black markers on Harley Quinn and a green marker to color in Poison Ivy's bodysuit?

But even though I saw how he prepped for Harley Quinn, I did not imagine his finished creation would look like this!

He used red, white & black clay to fashion Harley Quinn's jester hat! I was so amazed!

He used clay too for Two-Face's wild hair...

And even on Catwoman's mask...

Notice how he used black clay to cover up her white arms - the only arm pieces he had left after making all the Batman characters (he ran out of hands & legs to finish Black Spiderman)? Here are the rest of the Batman characters...

Even mixed with the actual Batman minifigs he owned (Joker's a remnant of an old keychain, see the hook on his head?), I still think (warning: mommy-goggles on!) Noah's homemade ones look way better than the store-bought ones!

Noah, at 7 years old, had moved beyond just Lego & paper to create his minifig characters. He had evolved to using clay as well. A true artist using mixed media!

My Noah... His creativity never fails to amaze me!

Photos are all my own.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series. Click here for Part 1 of this Homemade Lego Minifig post.

Lego Tales: Homemade Minifigs Part 1

When Noah turned 7 (click here for his Lego creations at 6), a love for Lego minifigures surfaced.

He started out by insisting I print him the Young Justice minifig bodies (I printed several sizes in the hopes that one of them fits his Lego minifig bodies). Then he cut out the bodies (just noticed now that he didn't just cut out Superman's shirt, but also his briefs! What attention to detail!).

He made a cape out of paper...

... and colored it in with a red marker.

And voila! Young Justice minifigs!

Noah already has a Lego Batman minifig but his shirt is gray so he opted for the black shirt cut-out. If am not mistaken, he used his old Harry Potter shirts for Martian Manhunter & Alfred. And the Martian's heads, I believe, are Toy Story army men's heads.

Notice how the faces of Red Tornado (the tornado legs made me chuckle!), Superman, Robin & Green Lantern are also taped on? Am amazed at how small the pieces are! Especially since he uses double-sided tape to stick the tiny pieces of paper on his Legos.

It took me a while to print out Nightwing's minifig so Noah drew a minifig while waiting (& constantly nagging me to finally print it).

It's quite obvious that Nightwing's face is taped on. But if you look closely, you will see that Noah even covered a yellow head with white paper (see the sliver of yellow at the neck?)!

When the Avengers movie was released, (after creating Avengers paper magic here), I guess he was itching to make Avengers minifigs and could no longer wait for me to print them out for him. So he drew the parts he needed himself! Shirt, shield, goggles...

Love the abs he drew for Thor & Hulk, how he used his old penguins' beaks for Ironman's hands, the boosters on Ironman's feet, and how Noah moved Captain America's goggles from his helmet to his eyes for the photo op!

This is version 1 of Noah's homemade Avengers minifigs...

But just a week later, he made new versions and adorably lined them up so they copy his Avengers movie poster. 

I much prefer his first version of Ironman vs. the Megablocks one here. Oh, and he had to add a Nick Fury minifig for consistency with the poster.

Noah even made Thor's blond hair...

... and Loki's helmet & scepter out of paper!

But out of all of his homemade minifigures in this post, his Captain America mask, molded out of paper...

... is my absolute favorite!

Photos are all my own.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series. Watch for more of Noah's homemade minifigs in Part 2!

Lego Tales: Instruction-Less Creations

Ever since Noah turned 6, he has been building Lego creations purely from his imagination. He didn't need instructions to create Batman and a Batmobile.

Or Transformers' Bumblebee.

This next one is my favorite of Noah's instruction-less creations. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to make Disney Cars' Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater out of whatever Lego bricks he owned. But Noah did it, with no instructions and no help from anyone - just pure creativity and imagination!

I find that lightning symbol on McQueen's side sooooo adorable!

And finally, a minion from Despicable Me.

Wasn't 6-year-old Noah's Lego talent just awesome? Stay tuned for 7-year-old Noah's Lego creations. Soon on this Lego Tales series.

Photos are all my own.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series. 

Lego Tales: Cannes Lions Winning Ads

This Lego campaign from Germany won a Silver in the Outdoor category of the recently concluded 2012 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. I love that you can immediately tell it's Bert & Ernie even with just a few Lego bricks.

Did you recognize the Smurfs?

What about Donald and his nephews?

They remind me of Noah's Toy Story creations here...

This is what I love about Lego: how, with creativity and imagination, you can create anything out of those tiny, colored bricks! It is the perfect, perfect toy!

And it has been for 80 years! The Lego Group just celebrated its 80th birthday on August 12 with an animated short film here about how the company began. Turns out, Lego means "I put together" in Latin. 

Echoing my thoughts, the creator's grandson Kjeld narrates, "With a child's imagination, Lego could be anything in the world - over and over again. The imagination is the limit." The perfect, perfect toy! Happy birthday Lego! 

Photos are my own, a screenshot of the video here and from here.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series. 

Lego Tales: Legoland Humor

Another thing I love about Legoland is their sense of humor. They poke fun in a subtlely silly, crazy way. From a lifeguard reading a how-to book on swimming to an old lady luring some pigeons to (gah!) cook.

To their hilarious restroom sign of mini-figs that badly need to go...

They even put in a restroom - with a man going #2 - in the Miniland replica of the Grand Central Station. Too bad, I didn't get to take a photo, but you might be able to make out the man on the toilet in this photo (check inside the circle).

I think the name they chose for their Italian restaurant was pretty clever.

And this idea of adding a Christmas twist to the San Francisco replica at Miniland via a falling sleigh and firemen holding up an inflatable catcher is quite funny too.

Finally, my favorite of all. This unassuming dog...

... doing what dogs do at hydrants.

Hysterical!

Photos are my own except for the Grand Central Station photo, the link to which I've sadly lost. If you know where the photo is from, please email me so I can give due credit.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series.

Lego Tales: Noah's Toy Story Minifigs

We got Noah this Lego Toy Story 3 train set two Christmases ago (Christmas 2010). As you can see, he's got the real Lego minifigs of Rex, Woody, Buzz, Jessie and Bullseye.

But just a month later (January 2011), he decided to make his own Toy Story mini-figures out of Lego bricks!

I could not fathom why he would make minifigs out of Lego bricks when he had the actual ones.

Then again, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. Because more than 2 years ago, even though he had an actual Buzz Lightyear costume...

... He still begged Isabella to make him Andy's cardboard box Buzz costume.

He drew the purple stripes himself with his crayon.

And played pretend-Buzz (or was it pretend-Andy?) for hours after.

I have to say that I love how Toy Story creations made out of cardboard and Lego bricks can bring just as much joy as the real thing!

Photos are mostly my own edited with pixlr except for the one from here and the Toy Story backgrounds on the pages of one of Noah's scrapbooks. I never meant for the scrapbook pages to get published so I didn't take note of the source. If you know where it's from, please email me so I can give due credit.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series. Click here for the down-in-the-dots version of this post.