In the summer of 2021, my sister Lauren and I appeared on the second season of LEGO Masters on FOX. These breakdowns delve into each episode and talk about the process behind the build, the challenges Lauren and I faced, and the stories of our finished products.
When we walked onto stage for Episode 2, and saw the words “Boom! Pow! Smash! Splat!” on the walls, we knew what we were in for. And we knew it was going to be epic.
This week’s challenge was the Hero Shot. We were each given a minifigure hero, and an element with which our build would spectacularly explode in the background while the hero walks away, unscathed.
Lauren and I pulled the Ladybug, with the explosive element of colored dust. The first thing we think is: how do you make a tiny, cute Ladybug look like the toughest hero out there? But for every hero, we know there needs to be a villain. LEGO Batman taught us that. We toyed with some villain ideas--a praying mantis? No. Too spindly. Then the obvious hit us: a frog. Its tongue could be stretching out, right about to eat the ladybug until...she blows it to smithereens!
We also wanted to incorporate our element in a deliberate way that worked into our story. Yellow colored dust could look like pollen, and lily pads often have flowers on them. So, our story started to form: Lola the Ladybug plants a pollen bomb in the flower on the lily pad, and detonates it right as the frog is about to eat her.
I got to work building the face of the frog, while Lauren started putting together the lilypad. I realized very quickly that building to break is much more difficult than it sounds--especially when you’re trying to build sculpturally. I am so used to locking at multiple points, but for the frog’s face, I tried to make every brick attached by as few studs as possible, so it would be ready to blow. It kept breaking apart on me as I was building, but after about 2 hours, I had an outline of a face that looked like it would work. As an experiment, I added a couple of round, translucent submarine window parts over the eyes, and it ended up having a cool reflective effect that I didn’t expect. Lauren meanwhile built the beautiful flower on the lily pad, using white wedges and pink plates, angled with rocking plates. It turned out great!
When the Brickmasters came around and saw our frog face, Jamie said it felt like he was at LEGOLAND. Having gone to LEGOLAND California almost every weekend as kids, Lauren and I loved this--we were totally influenced by the awesome animal builds we saw there. Jamie recommended putting the frog in a more aggressive pose, like he’s leaping out at the ladybug. I thought that was a great note, and course-corrected to get the frog’s legs flailing out behind him.
Something we loved about this challenge from the beginning is that the Brickmasters told us to “be the director.” I love to direct short films in my spare time, so this felt like something right up my alley. I really liked framing up the shot by kneeling down in front of our hero fig to see just how it would look on-camera. This helped me adjust the pose and the eyes of the frog so it would look like it was staring down its prey. It also helped Lauren readjust the flower petals: the front ones had to be angled downward, so that the whole flower could be seen from our ladybug’s perspective.
On the flip side, something that was especially hard with this challenge was figuring out where to put the explosives. We had to build compartments to house the explosive material (squibs, which are usually used to create fake gunshot impacts in movies). Trying to build strategic compartments inside an already-fragile frog proved to be difficult, and led to several re-designs. We decided to put all our explosives inside the frog, packed right behind his head so it would all blow outward, hopefully sending his long tongue flying and preserving the ecosystem around our hero.
With two hours to go, I built the tongue as flimsy as I could, using stacks of 1x2 pink bricks side-by-side, with minifigure legs on the end to get the curl at the tip. While this was happening, Lauren built up the lovely reeds and cattails in the pond. We took a gamble with those: part of our story was that the reeds would stay standing after the explosion, but the only way to build them is long, thin, and ultimately rather weak. We placed the reeds behind the frog, in the hopes that the explosion would be directed forward and outward, saving everything behind.
With 10 minutes left, we scrambled to do the finishing touches: I added all the little yellow freckles to the frog, and Lauren built some nice ripples in the pond using translucent plates. One of the frog’s legs fell off with 30 seconds to go, and I scrambled to put it back in place right before Will said “time’s up.”
While they didn’t show it in the edit, we all had to move our builds from the judging podium to a second podium where the explosion would be filmed. We made sure to move it as gently as possible so the fragile build and long tongue wouldn’t break apart.
When it came time for the explosion, Lauren and I were nervous. Would the explosives work the way we wanted them to? Would the frog face even break apart? Would the hero minifig fall over? Then Will said “it’s time for this froggy to croak,” and...BOOM.
From where we were standing, we couldn’t see what happened to our build, or if the fig stayed standing. It was blocked with all the camera equipment filming the explosion. I quickly ran to see behind the cameras, and...Lola survived! We then watched the slow-mo instant replay, and realized just how close it was. The frog’s tongue shoots outward, pink minifigure legs flying, and ALMOST hits Lola. Crazily enough, she was saved by her little pollen TNT detonator, which stopped the tongue and sent it flying in another direction.
Lauren and I were so excited with how the explosion came out. It could’ve gone wrong in so many ways! But in the end, the habitat was safe, and Lola pulled off her epic stunt scene and got rid of her froggy predator for good. We were so thrilled and honored to be called by the Brickmasters to win this challenge--there were so many AMAZING builds, and this group is so incredibly talented. We were just happy that Lola made it to fight another day, and we hope the next frog will think twice before trying to eat a stunt hero Ladybug.
Watch a full “brickdown” video of our episode 2 build here.
