tomottomott

THE LEGO MOVIE ... I would love to think that we somehow influenced the guys who directed The LEGO Movie ... but I doubt it. And regardless, The LEGO Movie was leaps and bounds beyond anything we were thinking about. Those guys just hit it out of the park. I *do* think we influenced how LEGO games were *animated* for the next decade or so. The animators at Digital Domain did an amazing job of figuring out how to animate mini figures running, jumping, ducking, etc -- with just the right balance of elasticity and stiffness. Rock Raiders and LEGO Racers hadn't quite tackled that, so we set the precedent. Back to The LEGO Movie: while it's true that early on in production we had the idea to mix-and-match characters from all the different themes in order to defeat one overall baddie, we evolved away from that pretty quickly. (And besides: ideas are cheap. It's all about the execution. And I'm a big fan of The LEGO Movie.) We veered in a different direction. I mean ... a gymnast, a drum major, a mad scientist, a magician ... not exactly typical mini-figures. And the whole idea of starting out in a human-size house and then jumping into the toaster, dog bowl, flower pot to enter these LEGO mini-worlds of Mt Fridgy and The Roller Toaster -- that's a different direction than actually using the existing themes. It was sort of a mash-up of The Borrowers, Dozers from Fraggle Rock, and and then taking inspiration from games like Banjo-Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing with their crazy, themed levels and bosses. In LEGO Media's defense: they knew how to market products to 8-11 year old boys, and they needed a specific type of product that they could get behind. From their point of view, it was the right call. And they got a new theme out of it too, which lasted longer than the computer game, so they made the right call. THE SETS We didn't realize until the end of production that LEGO was planning to release real-world sets based on the game. They designed those sets entirely on their own. The characters came from us, and maybe in the initial launch, they took some inspiration from the computer game for Evil Ogel's Lair. But LEGO immediately spun the sets out in other directions, and designed a bunch of cool vehicles that we didn't have in the game. I have to admit ... as cool as it was to have worked on the game, it was *really* cool to walk into a LEGO Store and see the characters I had helped design and name on the sides of those boxes! THE CHARACTERS As I mentioned in emails a couple years ago, we were having a lot of trouble getting the character design for DASH approved, so I told the artist to just draw to look as much like Mattel's producer as possible. The producer had no idea, but loved the design and finally approved it ("I dunno ... there's just something about Dash's looks that I like!") CRUNCH was a no-nonsense Ernest Borgnine type. RADIA was partly-modeled on a (very sexy) raver girl I had dated briefly a couple years earlier. CHARGE was partially based on Wesley Snipes. CAM -- I think we were going for a Janeane Garofalo type of thing, but we struggled with that character design a bit. I always though FLEX looked a lot like our lead animator, Kevin Jackson, but I'm not sure if that was intentional, or if that was just me. SIDE NOTE Four members of the LEGO Alpha Team production team went on to be in Legion of Rock Stars. (YouTube: Fibboxsll)

Hi everyone, I was the game designer on the LEGO Alpha Team computer game. A little late to the party here -- but I'm happy to see there *is* a party! Or was. Boot up LEGO Alpha Team and type ~niblik Let me know how it goes! :-)