LEGO’s Voltron-themed Ideas set has generated a lot of excitement amongst LEGO and Voltron fans alike (check out our full review of 21311 Voltron). But as a fan of the show myself, I found the set something of a disappointment. LEGO decided to only focus on the show’s ships, not its characters (there aren’t even any minifigs in the set). It is also based on the original 80’s version rather than the wildly popular new Netflix reboot. To address this glaring oversight, I decided to craft my own LEGO tribute to the show that explores different kinds of ships …relationships!
While one segment of the Voltron fan base enjoys its large mecha and explosive battle sequences, another group prefer to engage in shipping. For the uneducated, shipping is the act of expressing, arguing or obsessing — often via fan art — over which characters you would like to see become romantically involved. Each “ship” even comes with its own Hollywood celebrity couple style name, for example, Lotor + Allura = Lotura.
We seem to live in a time where it has become acceptable to openly express intolerance toward the diversity that is so fundamental to our society. But this intense yet creative corner of the fan community has given me the perfect opportunity to use LEGO to remind people that love will always win over hatred, and that it should not — and cannot — be constrained by boundaries of race, gender or nationality.
For this project I wanted the figures to be screen accurate but also extremely poseable. This required me to develop a new style of character building that blended some old and new techniques, revisit the black art of brick dying, and even engage in some occasional brick ‘surgery’! Some of the models have over 20 points of articulation, and for the most part they stand quite happily in the poses that I dreamt up. Observant readers may even spot a few Easter eggs in the form of creatures from other shows and a guest appearance by LEGO’s own Voltron set!
This is probably relatively unexplored territory for the LEGO art community, but I hope you enjoy these images and their message of love and acceptance as much as I enjoyed creating them. And to my fellow Voltron fans – I’m sorry if I didn’t cover your favorite character or shipping combination; maybe I’ll add more at some point in the future.