Hi there! I’m Aidan, you may know me as @stuntmanbrick on Instagram, and I’m fortunate enough to be TBB’s guest writer today. A little about myself – I’m a screenwriter based in Los Angeles and I just graduated from USC with a master’s degree in writing. I write mostly family/adventure/sci-fi-type features, and I say all this because film is one of my two passions – the other, of course, being LEGO.

A lifelong fan of the plastic, I’ve been running my LEGO Instagram page for about six and a half years now, accruing over twenty-thousand followers in that time. My work mostly focuses on recreating pre-existing characters from movies and television, whether it’s 1902’s A Trip to the Moon, this year’s Sinners, or anything in between. With that, let’s talk LEGO customs. 

Custom LEGO minifigures have been around as long as LEGO has been around. I have no real way of backing that up (I’m 25), but I like to think that kids would make their favorite characters, or even their own likenesses, out of LEGO long before the minifigure itself was introduced. Then, when minifigures were released in the late 1970s, and the parts and prints slowly became more specific, the possibilities quickly became limitless. 

As the internet became more widespread, the sharing of customs became common. One of the most famous examples of early-internet custom sharing was S. Fujita’s LEGO Star Wars masterpiece, dating back as far as 1992! These builds and figures (only a few are pictured above) depict scenes from the Original Trilogy and remain instantly recognizable, which is all the more impressive – there were only so many figure parts back then. But we use what we’ve got, right? Equally as impressive was the early Star Wars work of @moko_bricks, starting as far back as 2004, some of which I recently recreated on my own page (both of our Han Solos in Carbonite pictured below). Moko has been an inspiration to all LEGO creators for years now, with his recent work focusing on incredible mech builds. 

Thinking about using what we’ve got, sometimes we’re not limited by market availability, but age. Growing up, I could be pretty young sometimes. Around age two or three, I was too young for LEGO, but just old enough to like Harry Potter, which brings me to what actually might have been my first custom. A typical LEGO custom? Debatable. But a custom nonetheless. My parents got me a floppy stuffed doll, and my dad drew Harry’s minifigure face print on the doll, plus stars on the back to represent the starry cloaks those figures wore. Then, it was up to me to fill in the rest. The result focused heavily on rapidly-applied blue – maybe I wanted Harry to do a Jack Stone thing. Point is, in my few pre-LEGO days, I still had the instinct to customize. 

I grew up in a time where licensed LEGO, my all-time favorite kind, was still fairly new. Back then, the choices were really only Harry Potter, Star Wars, and brief waves of Spider-Man. Those themes and sets were pretty cool, but I’d have to wait till 2008 to get an official version of my favorite movie character: Indiana Jones. Like S. Fujita, I made do. The focus of this custom, c. 2005, wasn’t color or exact accuracy; it’s far from exact in all senses, but it hit the iconic markers of Indy (pictured right) by including the hat, whip, and some kind of a jacket. Same with my custom of Marv from Home Alone (pictured left). Even then, I was focusing on very specific characters that LEGO would eventually make – call it ESP? But this custom, also c. 2005, had a similar approach to Indy: Marv had crazy hair, a beard, and a long, dark coat. Just three boxes for this figure to check to clearly represent one of Kevin McCallister’s nemeses. 

In 2011, my family and I went to LEGOLAND California. Wasn’t the first time, wasn’t the last, either. While there, I bought a book on minifigure customization, written by Jared K. Burks of Fine Clonier Customs. Mesmerized by the pictures within, I read that book what felt like a hundred times that summer. It introduced a level of customizing that I was totally unaware of: modifying the pieces and prints themselves, or even creating parts from scratch. Inspired by a photo in the book, I used modeling clay to make several Boushh helmets from Star Wars. Only one turned out just right, that was my go-to Boushh helmet for years, sitting atop a 2002 Tusken Raider torso to make Leia in disguise from Return of the Jedi. 

These days, I try to stick to the purist route, mainly so that others can recreate my work easily with parts they might already have. For example, I did a render of a classic-style reimagining of the “Boarding the Tantive IV” set from Star Wars a while back. The wonderful Instagrammer Thomas (@obiwankenobricks, shout out to him!) recreated my render with physical bricks (pictured right), which was very cool to see. 

That all being said, I wind up breaking my own rule all the time, whether it’s erasing print off a physical part or digitally editing color on the photo itself (like in the example below, I’m pretty sure LEGO hasn’t made a completely blue and glowing Ben Kenobi or 80%-transparent Yoda). But, generally, I try to stick to purist parts for my customs, just personal preference. And while my preference has changed over time, my approach has stayed the same. Ever since Indiana Jones, ever since Marv. 

I often get asked about my selection and setup. It’s not infinite, but it’s close. I mainly divide my minifigures between two hobby kits: one for general/multiuse parts, and one for Harry Potter parts, then several littler tubs for clusters I have fewer parts of: Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Simpsons, etc. I keep some amount of preassembled figures in each, whether they’re favorites or figures that I return to often for posts. Some choices might not make sense, like keeping a motorcycle/sidecar sitting atop easily-creased capes, but as long as I know where stuff is up here (I’m pointing at my head right now), it works. This type of organization works well for me since I’m someone who just really likes touching the stuff. Half the fun is just digging through and feeling the plastic, all sorts of textures, sounds, colors, it’s a hobby that engages all the senses – or most, I don’t know how much smell goes into it (or how much I’d want it to). 

We’ve covered a lot of ground here today, so I may need to wrap this up. I could keep going, though. I love talking LEGO. To close, I’ll offer some bits of advice to any who may seek it. In terms of posting and the social media aspect: treat this as the art form it is instead of chasing likes. Make the kind of content you want to make, or would want to see yourself, and let the people who are genuinely interested and invested come to you. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of followers on my Instagram page. If I had zero, I’d still post the same amount. Do this because you love it.

In terms of the craft of customizing: think of it kinda like a caricature, but of the entire character and form, rather than just the face. What stands out about them? Do they have a signature piece of clothing that’s necessary to pull off their custom? Do they have a certain hairstyle that you know you’ve got the perfect piece for? I know this sounds simple, but just checking the boxes does work, and that leads to successful, spot-on customs. And this has been a major helpful thing for me – practice. Shift your gaze like Emmet Brickowski and see the world in terms of LEGO. Watch any movie or TV show and think about how you’d make every character out of plastic parts. And I mean every. Because who wouldn’t want to see themselves out of LEGO?

Take care, keep building, and, above all else, be kind.