Hi everyone! In the summer of 2021, my sister Lauren and I appeared on the second season of LEGO Masters on FOX. These breakdowns will 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.
Episode 1’s challenge was the LEGO Day Parade. We were tasked with creating a parade float that would represent us—while showcasing our creativity, storytelling, technical ability, and in this case, motion. Lauren and I immediately got thinking about what represented us: childhood stories, and fairy tales. Lauren LOVES to read fairy tale novels, and I make fantasy short films. Storytelling’s been a huge part of our lives, and it all started with our parents reading us bedtime stories. So we set out to create Sibling Storytime: our mom would be reading us a bedtime story at the base of the float, and we’d see that story spring to life out of the pages of a book. We chose our fairy tale to be Rapunzel. Lauren and I were very influenced by the Fairy Tale Boat Ride at LEGOLAND California growing up, and wanted to bring that playful LEGO fun and humor to our model. So, we decided to put a twist on the classic story: the Prince is tugging on Rapunzel’s hair, which she doesn’t appreciate at all!
Lauren’s main objective at the beginning was to build the lush green environment at the base of the float, while I focused on Rapunzel’s tower, and the characters. I started with the characters: I wanted them to be brick-built, rather than minifigures, to get that cartoon-y, larger-than-life feel just like in a child’s imagination. It was really fun to create the expressions on both characters’ faces—a personal favorite of mine is the Prince, with his mouth agape and his eyebrows raised in shock.
Once the characters were built, I had to get going on the critical feature of the build: motion. We decided our motion would be with our Prince, hanging off of Rapunzel’s hair in an undulating, swaying movement. Creating motion with LEGO motors is a relatively new thing for me; I have some practice with it, but it’s limited. One thing I knew for sure is that I wanted a more complex motion, that converted the circular motion of the motor into something else. With Technic, I built a gear arm that creates a whip-like lever motion. I attached the gear arm to one of Rapunzel’s locks of hair, and the motor and hub were placed inside our hollow tower.
The big challenge with this movement was getting the large, brick-built Prince to stay attached. LEGO motors function best when they’re moving light weights—maybe a few ounces. This Prince character was about a pound. I decided to use an angled Technic beam as one of his arms, wedged perfectly against his side. I attached that Technic beam to the motorized lock of hair, and it worked! He was hanging off the hair, with a somewhat-violent motion that looked like he was tugging. Brickmaster Jamie mentioned that he didn’t know how we achieved such a heavy object hanging onto a motor like that—not entirely sure I do either, but I bet he could figure it out pretty quickly!
Meanwhile, Lauren was tackling her biggest objective: the massive storybook framing the back of the float. One detail we really wanted to include was having “writing” on the pages of the book, using black plates within the white pages. The pages were on hinges so they would open like a book, and the blue binding has a nice gold frame around it. She did a great job!
While the book was coming together, I went super-speed on building up the octagonal pink tower. That was a place I knew we could save time, considering the motion was time-consuming. One thing I didn’t anticipate, however, was how tricky it would be to get the balcony onto the tower. I built the balcony as a circular platform out of standard bricks—without thinking how I’d place it on top of an octagonal tower. There ended up being only two small points on the tower that aligned with the circular balcony—the rest of the octagonal tower supports had to be tiled over. I was very worried about pressing the Princess onto the balcony—what if the entire balcony caved into the hollow tower? Luckily, it didn’t, and you can see my look of relief when Rapunzel fit right on there.
While this was happening, Lauren was busy at work on the base of the build. Once the book was fastened at the back (using some carefully-positioned jumper plates), she got to work building a vibrant green meadow that looked like it had grown straight out of the book. At the front of the float, she built a lovely blue lake that’s spilling over the sides like a waterfall. She included bright green vine parts and lavender flowers stemming from the pages of the storybook, which added a really nice touch. She also made several small trees, using a technique with a 4-sided SNOT brick and wedges. They ended up looking like pine trees straight out of a fantasy forest!
As the base came together, I got to work on a second piece of motion—the other side of Rapunzel’s hair. It’s easy to miss in the episode, but Rapunzel’s hair is moving on the other side of the tower, just like the Prince is tugging on it. I included a second motor and gear arm there, attached to another lock of hair. This one was much easier to achieve without a heavy Prince hanging on!
Rapunzel’s hair then swept all the way around the tower to connect with the swaying Prince on the other side. When Brickmaster Jamie came around for his check-in, he noted that the Prince should be in some kind of peril, to motivate him clambering onto Rapunzel’s hair to get away. We thought that was a great note, and built some thorny brambles at the base of the tower using ball joints and spiky Technic parts that the Prince desperately wouldn’t want to fall into. We loved that Jamie bought in to our story and gave great advice on how to make it more compelling.
With an hour and a half to go, we still had a lot to do. This was where the time stress really kicked in—I still had to build the whole spire of the tower, and the tree stump at the base for our minifigure scene. Lauren still had to build out all the lush greenery around the edges of the float, plus the cute minifigure bed and armchair for our storytime scene. We went into crunch time—thankfully, the spire came together in about 20 minutes, which freed up time to fix up everything else. We toyed with the idea of having our tree stump & minifigure scene spin—but ended up having to ditch that idea due to time. Lauren did a great job with the cute minifigure bedtime scene, and even had our minifig Mom holding a blue book, just like the massive blue book on our float!
Finally, time was up. We had finished pretty much everything we wanted to achieve, which we were proud of considering this was our first time building under a time constraint—with cameras, and judge check-ins, and meeting Will Arnett!
As the float came around the bend, I was worried that the motion of the float would affect the Prince’s precarious swaying motion—it was a miracle that it worked to begin with! I was so happy to see the Prince working great as the float came around the corner, and Jamie noted that he was surprised the motion kept going for such a long time.
While it didn’t make the final cut, part of our story is that the build begins with the minifigure scene—our mom reading us a bedtime story. That story is then coming to life in the float, springing out of the pages of the book. We built this as a thank you to our parents for empowering our creativity and imaginations.
