We sat with LEGO meme factory, Iain Heath, who immediately revokes my Gen-X card, schools us on the not-so-subtle art of going viral, and tells us what it’s like to hobnob with celebrities. Hilarity ensued! Grab yourself a good beverage and a bag of popcorn and join us as we lift the hood and try to figure out what makes him tick. Hint: I’m pretty sure it’s London Dry Gin and Jägermeister.
TBB (Lino) Thanks for being with us, Iain. I’ve known you for many years as an artist who engages in several mediums including video making, painting, and LEGO. No matter the medium, you have been consistently irreverent and funny as all get-out. Our readers likely know you by the formidable name of Ochre Jelly (I had to google what that was). How did you choose this name and is the Ochre persona different from Iain, or are they one and the same?
IH: The name comes from a monster in D&D. Lino, as a fellow Gen X-er, I can’t believe you did not already know this, but also not have its stats memorized. For shame… I think the only fitting punishment here is to confiscate your vinyl copy of Sports by Huey Lewis and the News. Bro, do you even D20?!
IH: The name is less of a persona and more a mask to hide behind, as I think many of us online prefer to do. Some people are comfortable putting their own identity and persona front and center of their art, especially creators who make a living from it, or posting daily, or want to use their personality as part of their brand (I’m looking at YOU Lego Masters contestants!). But in my experience you are more likely to just run into people’s prejudices that way (which in my case usually means age-ism, as I am older than Cthulhu). I’d prefer to be seen as a Lego Banksy, using my art to anonymously poke fun at the world, rather than “some old dude with too much free time on his hands”. Not to say that I don’t sometimes step in front of the camera for the sake of The Bit.
TBB: There is something you have a knack for that eludes most of us and that’s the art of going viral on the internet. You have done it enough that we know it isn’t a fluke. You are certainly not a one-hit wonder. You’ve chosen some LEGO projects that seem ephemeral and wouldn’t make sense a few weeks before or a few weeks after. But you have sort of a magical ability to jump on something that is hot at that moment. What is your secret? Do you know ahead of time what is going to skyrocket? Is there any advice you can give to others who might like to ride that viral train into the sunset?
IH: Virality has very much been my schtick as a LEGO builder, right from the beginning when I built a Stephen Hawking and was surprised to see it blow up. That was a big “ah-ah” moment that shaped my future as a builder and paved the way for projects like this one:
IH: Part of the trick here is that my focus has always been brick-built characters, when the rest of the AFOL community were focused on buildings, vehicles, and minifig scenes. This is what led to me and my old chum Tommy Williamson spearheading “Bricks of Character”, a LEGO convention theme focused on characters and pop culture, that really helped legitimize character builds.
IH: Character builds also seem to resonate strongly with the larger (non-AFOL) audience, especially when the subject is something from pop culture. Everyone has childhood experience with LEGO, so who wouldn’t wanna see their most beloved IPs or cultural moments captured in the brick?! It’s the perfect mashup, every time.
IH: The first part of creating a viral LEGO build is just being plugged into pop culture. For me that means obsessively consuming social media, with TikTok probably being the best tool for that to-date. So: spot the trend while it’s still fresh, consider whether there’s a meaningful way you can recreate it in LEGO, and figure out how your version will add value to the trend (eg. though your personal sense of humor, or by mashing it up with a parallel trend).
The second part is to build FAST. It’s no good spending 4 weeks building a LEGO version of some meme, since the meme will be dead by then. My solution here is to build *small* so my version can ride that fresh wave of virality. One-day or two-day builds at the most. It’s fair to say my building skills have become honed to that method, making me generally too lazy to tackle larger builds unless they are just personal passion projects.
TBB: With all that said, what was your most viral moment thus far?
IH: I’ve been blessed with many successes, probably more than one builder deserves. But based on numbers alone the winner would have to be when I mimicked the viral “Hit Or Miss” TikTok dance by cosplayer NyanNyanCat. That one damn build ended up racking up 50M views and earning me a YouTuber silver plaque, probably in part to it being shown by PewDieDie (Lino, we will forgive you if you have no idea who that is).
That video was actually my first attempt at LEGO live action / puppetry. And it’s when I had the epiphany that pop culture was moving from photos to video, and that I needed to follow suit. So since 2020, many of my builds have been presented as short-form vertical videos rather than still images. It’s definitely more work, but it allows me to chase larger audiences, on the same platforms from which a lot of these memes now originate. I believe this is the future for fan builders, and having video editing skills is definitely an advantage. I haven’t really seen any other AFOLs trying the same thing yet.
TBB: Are there any pop culture moments that happened that, in retrospect, you wish you had lampooned in LEGO but didn’t? Like you said to yourself “this would have been a perfect Ochre Jelly moment”!
IH: Answering that would involve me remembering things that happened more than a week ago, which you’ll agree is a stretch at our age! Overall I think I jumped on enough of them that I got the hits that mattered, as well as plenty of damp squibs from memes that didn’t hit. Machine-gun the medium, as they say (I assume).
Every time I see something going viral, I am always asking myself “should I jump in, should I commit, what if it blows up and I miss out?”. There’s also the risk that another builder gets there before me, and/or just does a way better job than me! A good example of that was the recent “Chill Guy” meme. I think it was a builder at LEGO headquarters itself that got there first, and did way better than I would have. I’m a competent builder at best compared to the current talent pool; but I’m an opportunist first and foremost! I guess another thing I have going for me is that I’m not worried about upsetting people or covering “iffy” subject matter, because I’m not holding out for a future job at LEGO or spot on a game show, so I don’t care about ruffling feathers. And believe me, I have ruffled plenty over the years.
TBB: Sometimes what we like and have high hopes for in our builds is different from what the public reacts to. Have there been instances like that in which the public didn’t engage as much as you would have liked?
IH: Well, this is a bit of a sore point for me atm! Social media has been going through a huge shift in the last few years, from being more follower driven, to being more algorithmically driven. And the effects of that caught up with me in 2024. I put my heart and soul into four IP-based passion projects that I thought would resonate with fans, even pulling out all the stops and making video content. And they all promptly fell flat, thanks to the algorithm. Also, IP fan bases can sometimes be indifferent or even openly hostile toward “interpretations” of their precious lore, so it can be a bit of a crap-shoot.
IH: But I think there’s another component at work here… The LEGO Company itself is ruining the fan build scene. LEGO’s annual output of sets, and the number of IPs it adds every year, is astronomical compared to previous decades. Also noteworthy is the way it has zeroed in on the adult segment, marketing adult sets as this decade’s most desirable disposable income trend. If you walk into any LEGO store now, it basically kid sets down one side, adult sets down the other, it’s 50:50. And don’t even get me started on what a cluster$@%& LEGO Ideas has grown into.
So this has created a shift in mind-set for adult consumers of anything LEGO related: now, for it to have value in their eyes, it has to be LEGO branded. It has to be perceived as an official set to carry any weight. This is why I often present my builds in fake box shots now. In fact, last year I did an experiment: For last year’s Star Wars day, I had done an irreverent take on the final battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan, even presenting it as a humorous video. It flopped, getting only around 160 likes on Instagram. So the very next day, I reposted it as a fake box shot and it got 16,000 likes. That’s a factor of 100. Because people nowadays react more positively to something that feels official and branded, versus something that is “just” a fan creation. If they can’t buy a copy, they’re not impressed any more.
IH: This is why I’m pulling back from building for the time being, until I can figure out a new “how” and “why” of my craft. Last year was also the 50th anniversary of D&D (which of course you OBVIOUSLY ALREADY KNEW, Lino! Right? RIGHT?!). I had a whole series of D&D builds planned, that I just walked away from (because I am clearly nothing more than a petulant attention-addicted child lol).
TBB: For the most part, it seems you have been a viral hitmaker without showing even an inch of cleavage. That’s an impressive feat that denotes true talent over cheap thrills. But, BUT, BUTT Kim Kardashian broke the internet in 2014 when she showed off her shapely rear on the cover of Paper magazine and she broke the internet again in 2021 when she donned an unsettling all-black identity-masking Bunkaru-inspired outfit for the Met Gala. You lampooned both acts in LEGO. Did they garner as much internet-breaking attention within your own sphere of influence?
IH: Well at my age I have plenty of cleavage now available, so maybe that needs to be my new angle. I don’t recall how well those builds were received, but that was a big year for LEGO butts – iirc I did a Christmas version of that Kardashian photo, as well as doing Justin Bieber’s butt too? I guess I do these things because no-one else dares to!
TBB: You also have a knack for getting on the radars of many celebrities. In 2014 Ellen DeGeneres took a selfie at the Oscars with a bunch of her celebrity friends. You immediately turned to your LEGO bricks to replicate the moment. She, in turn, showcased your creation on her show. Did she send you a nice fruit basket or something?
IH: No fruit basket, not even a threatening cease-and-desist letter. Frankly I was amazed that my version made the show, and I’m grateful to her team for not cropping my watermark. However, it did lead to an interesting opportunity: A museum in Berlin staged an exhibition devoted to “selfie culture” and asked if they could include that model. Which is where it now remains, for all eternity! I got my art in a museum without even being dead!
TBB: What other celebrities have you or your art crossed paths with?
IH: Is this the part where I “humblebrag” lol?!
It’s true the subject matter of my work has sometimes involved close brushes with celebrity. Frankly I’ve never got the “famous actor worship” parasocial relationship thing. If Mark Hamill wants to drop by for a cup of tea and argue about the price of cheese, I’m quite happy to treat him as a regular guy. Before I inevitably steer the conversation toward WHY HE REPOSTED ONE OF MY STAR WARS BUILDS WITHOUT CREDITING ME! Mua-ha-ha!
Tbh I’m more in awe of celebrity creators. Such as other builders who are way better than me, like Tyler Clites (btw I TOTALLY CALLED that he would win Lego Masters the minute I heard he was competing). And an interesting thing about being part of the West coast builder community is that you get to meet a lotta creative types who work in the entertainment industry, but in a behind-the-scenes capacity. A great example of that is Angus MacLane, who was a Pixar character animator that shared my love for character builds. Amusingly, it turned out he had been college room-mates with Avatar The Last Airbender co-creator Bryan Konietzko, which ended up with me creating a custom ATLA build for Bryan that he was kind enough to pose with.
IH: In a similar vein, it’s been an honor to have my creations reposted by the “targets” that inspired them. Such as the creator of the video game DOOM or the owner of the cat from the “Screaming Woman / Salad Cat” meme. Or when Wil Wheaton posed to sign a model of him that I created while attending a comic convention. OH WAIT, HE NEVER DID… Which led me to exhibiting a little “revenge piece” at the same convention the following year! I swear 50% of everything I build is a stunt. LOL!
IH: Another example of a satisfying brush with another creator was when I recreated a bunch of characters and scenes from the twitch VTuber Code Miko. I’ll wait while Lino googles “VTuber”. This is a young creator who took a huge risk and was working really hard to create something truly fresh and unique, and with deserved success. I have the utmost respect for that. She loved my little models, and graciously showed them on air. So at TwitchCon that year I was able to get a few of them smuggled inside and gifted to her in the middle of her live stream haha.
TBB: You are also quite good at video-making. Your “Fifty Shades of Tubby” still haunts my nightmares. Is entertaining the masses with video something you’ve had formal training for?
IH: Back in the day, like many others, I tried my hand at becoming a YouTuber. Playing to my strengths, I went down the more creative editing / visual effects route than trying to sparkle in front of the camera. But I tried to bring my particular irreverent sense of wit to the medium.
Up until a decade ago, I’d only edited family home videos. So I taught myself Adobe After Effects and found myself creating videos of questionable taste that mashed up or parodied popular tropes, but somehow where the background music was always an integral part of the experience for some reason.
TBB: What are some of your proudest video-making moments?
IH: Well my proudest moment was definitely NOT my attempt at a meme-themed remake of Chocolate Rain. That well-intentioned cringe ended up being hated by everyone. So your readers should definitely NOT look that up. Under any circumstances. Definitely not. Nope. Forget I even mentioned it. Mentioned what?
More infamously though, is my video featuring an animated LEGO version of a certain X-rated animation about a certain character from Animal Crossing. People either loved it or loathed it! But I take it as a badge of honor that because this now comes up as the first hit in any google search involving “lego” and “ankha”, it’s a cert that LEGO will never be able to add that character to its Animal Crossing line-up. YOU’RE WELCOME.
But I guess I’m generally most proud of the videos that I’ve made for my LEGO builds. Video has been an integral component of those builds, from the outset. The Shadow Wizard Money Gang video had a lot of people commenting “this goes hard”. So that’s kind of my yard stick now for new stuff: does it “go hard”?
TBB: It seems weird of me to bring this up so deep into a TBB interview, but you are a Brothers Brick alum. You did a stint with us before my time here. There was a review you did in which it appears your threw a rather expensive Helicarrier review set off the roof of your house. I believe you still hold the record for that. No other reviewer has ever attempted it. Can you tell me about that bit of hilarious cinematic magic?
IH: Man, I got so much hate for that stunt …but almost no-one realized it was a hoax! The version I threw was a cardboard mockup that took me about 8 hours to make. Ironically, as part of that same set review, I later threw the ACTUAL set into a lake, but for some reason no-one seems to talk about that.
![LEGO 76042 SHIELD Helicarrier - Part 2 [Review]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-RFoGcCtENQ/hqdefault.jpg)
TBB: Did they revoke your hot tub privileges for that? Because they revoked mine for reasons not having to do with throwing an expensive LEGO set off a roof. I’m just trying to build a rapport, a brotherhood here. Please tell me I’m not the only one who has been denied TBB hot tub access!
IH: Well Lino, everyone at TBB is familiar with Jacuzzi-Gate. You were told what would happen if you got that iguana drunk and you’ll just have to deal with the consequences. I’m still in therapy because of that.
TBB: Speaking of denied hot tub access, did you ever voice the lemur? I did twice and it failed hard!
IH: I dunno why the Lemur got so much hate. He was creepy but in a good way. But I nevertheless wash my hands of the whole concept. But seriously, what a genius idea to use nightmare fuel as a mascot!
TBB: Were there any other fun stunts you did while at TBB that I’m too lazy to research myself?
IH: As someone who is unswervingly irreverent and a piss-taker, it did require effort to rein myself in to keep TBB respectable! But there were a few stunts I pulled off that I think were well received by the readership. My favorite is the “We are not a cult!” campaign that we used to recruit new writers. The video showed that TBB didn’t take itself too seriously, despite its stature within the AFOL community. If I recall, we even had t-shirts!
TBB: When you lived in Washington State I had a chance to hang out with you once at your place affectionately called “The Jelly Dome”. I found it to be sort of a hillside gamer nerd’s haven and James Bond villain’s lair all rolled into one. Do you have a similar vibe going for you where you live now?
IH: Oh man, that was a great lair, er, house. And for a while we had some legendary post-BrickCon gatherings there! It was all going swimmingly until the year I ordered $400 worth of catered food and nobody showed up! I think everyone was too exhausted from the Con to come. Fortunately I had 8 house guests at the time, who begrudgingly spent the next few days eating nothing but Middle Eastern cuisine. The plumbing never recovered.
Sadly, that house had to go in order to pay for my two kids college tuition (no regrets!). My new place, aka the “Jelly Barn” is in the so-called “inland empire” of Southern California. Which is both a literal and cultural desert. Sometimes I pretend I’m hiding down here under the witness protection program. It’s an open-plan space, which allows me to have areas for multiple projects going at once and just hop between them, or the kitchen. And it’s good and hot all year round, which I love! My old bones couldn’t take the cold and damp of Seattle any more.
TBB: I’m fully aware that we shouldn’t spoil surprises before they happen but are there any fun projects in the works you’d like to share?
IH: Nothing LEGO brewing at the moment, sorry! I definitely need to re-invent myself as a builder. Still waiting for that ah-hah moment. Maybe I just need a good passion project, and virality be damned! I also badly need to revitalize my brick collection with a lot of the newer parts that LEGO has introduced. Right now I see upcoming builders doing some amazing things with them and it’s more than a little intimidating!
The fact is, I’ve secretly been making electronic music on the side for some years now, and have been using this hiatus to up my game in that regard. But I wear a separate mask for that side of my creative life, so I’m not gonna plug it here. All I can say is that it’s like “what if Hans Zimmer and The Prodigy had a baby” ;-)
TBB: If we wanted to soak in all things Iain, where can we find you online?
IH: These days I’m all about the gram, baby! You’ll find my LEGO work exclusively on my Insta nowadays. Plus whatever video stuff I’ve cooked up is on my YouTube and TikTok channels.
https://www.instagram.com/ochre.jelly
https://www.youtube.com/ochrej
https://www.tiktok.com/@ochre.jelly
TBB: And while you’re at it, be sure to peruse our Iain Heath archives for more LEGO snark and hijinks. Thank you, Iain. You’ve been a delight to hang out with as always; although I’m pretty sure I need to clear my internet search history now. We are indebted to the amazing work that you’ve done with us in the past. We are forever and always a fan of all your stuff and look forward to whatever endeavors you have in store for us in the future. I think I now have the confidence and know-how to try that viral internet sensation thing for myself, so thank you for the education. Wait, what’s a Code Miko again?