Today we meet the newest 10K member, Yannick Godts (a.k.a. yannickbuildsthings) and his incredible BIONICLE: TOA HEAD STATUE. We're sure the many fans of Bionicle will be calling out for this set to be the next LEGO Ideas set. You can show you support for Yannick by liking and commenting.
ABOUT YOURSELF
- Who are you?
My name is Yannick Godts.
- Where are you from?
That’s complicated but the simplest answer is upstate New York, though that’s neither where I grew up nor where I live now!
- How old are you?
I’m 32 years old.
- What do you study or do for a living?
I am a professional lighting designer for theatre and dance, though I take gigs on the side designing scenery and props too, and occasionally illustration.
- What hobbies do you have?
The LEGO hobby! But besides that, I keep a lot of houseplants, enjoy hiking, play video games and board games, and bake a lot.
- Do you have a personal LEGO portfolio website that you can share with us?
No website for my LEGO portfolio (just for my professional design work), but I keep an Instagram account, @FlamboyantMop016, where I post my builds.
- Have you created any LEGO MOCs (my own creations) that you’re particularly proud of? What is it, why are you proud of it and do you have a photo of it?
I think all my favourite builds happen to be crabs. It’s a running gag among my friends at this point, that I can’t stop building crabs. But I’m proudest of my work that feels like I’ve managed to create something truly original that hasn’t been done before, whether that’s as simple as a new colour combination or really a full-scale idea.
- How and when did your interest in LEGO products come about?
When I was a very small child! My family bought me Duplo sets at some point, and there have been LEGO bricks in my life ever since, since before I can even remember.
- What is the LEGO hobby to you? What does it mean to you? How does it fit in your life? E.g. build, display, meetups, play the games or 'just' watch the cartoons.
Big question! As a child, I was building with LEGO bricks all the time and it was pretty much my favourite thing. Then when I was 10 years old, Bionicle came out, and something about it captivated me in a way that nothing ever had before - or, in some ways, ever since. As a teenager, I was very active in the online fan community for Bionicle, and that exposed me to a lot of creative feedback that helped me grow considerably as a builder and as an artist. I still have a handful of dear friendships in my life even today that started in that community.
I stopped being able to build anywhere near as much when I went off to college, and to a large extent that carried over into my adult life. From college through my first few years of internships and then professional work, I was both very busy and regularly moving from place to place, which meant I never had more than one or two LEGO sets with me - not very much to continue a building hobby with! But I would still attend conventions when I could, and of course, my attachment to LEGO building never went away.
It wasn’t until the pandemic hit in 2020 that I really started building again. At a time when I had lost the vast majority of my work as a creative professional due to theatres being closed, having a creative pastime I could really throw myself into was hugely important for keeping myself busy and sane. I built a LOT in 2020 and 2021 for the first time in years and years, and even when the world started opening up again and I started having regular work, I found it very useful having a creative hobby that wasn’t tied to my career or income.
Now that I’m an adult and a professional designer, LEGO building means something rather different to me now than it did as a kid. I see everything I make out of LEGO bricks as, essentially, just another design project - a way to explore form and colour and composition just like I would in my professional work. It’s also a way to practice the creative skill of realizing in 3D what I’m seeing in my head, without having any kind of stakes attached to the outcome!
- What is your favourite LEGO theme (current or past)? Why? And has any theme inspired your building style or preference in any particular way?
Almost impossible to choose! Obviously, Bionicle was a huge influence on me and is still what most of what I build is based on. And there have been so many themes I had growing up that I loved - the Aquazone line in particular sticks out in my memory. But nowadays the Botanical Collection is definitely my favorite thing the LEGO Group is making right now.
- Is there a LEGO designer (official LEGO designer or fan designer) who you are inspired by and look up to? Who and why?
It would be hard to pick just one! I’m friends with some incredible Bionicle-based builders whose work inspires me enormously and it would be impossible to pick out just one or two of them without slighting the rest. So let’s go with Nick Vás, who is himself an official LEGO designer now — I loved his attention to colour and detail, and now that he’s making actual LEGO sets too, I think he has a great sense of humour in how he builds, which is very important. Especially thinking of the Bonsai Tree model with its frog cherry blossoms, and many of the alternate “bonsai” trees he’s shared on social media.
ABOUT YOUR PROJECT
- Where did your interest in this particular model come from?
A while after Bionicle ended, I came across Christian Faber’s blog sharing a lot of his initial concept art for the early years of Bionicle. Those had always been my favourites so naturally I was hooked by seeing the sketches behind them. In particular, I’ve always loved the design of the Kini-Nui temple and the giant Toa head carved into the hills behind it, so initially I wanted to build a diorama of that entire scene.
- How long was the process of making the project, and what did you have to research as well? What kind of prep, research and design phases did you go through to produce your creation?
As I mentioned above, this started out as an idea for a full landscape scene! At some point, I was home either on a break from college or from my internships and started putting together chunky grey slope parts to try to get the shape of the Toa head roughed in, but I never tried to make any of the rest of the scene.Then, maybe 6 or 7 years later, I had the idea to pick the project up again. The 20th anniversary of Bionicle was coming up, and that seemed like the perfect occasion to finish up the model and share it. After some tinkering with my original model, I realized I could work on it digitally, and that opened up so many possibilities to me! Not only could I now work on it anywhere I travelled to, but I also had access to an infinite amount of LEGO parts, no matter whether I had them in my real-world collection or not.
Somewhere around then was when I decided to change it into a display piece rather than a diorama. I was encouraged to submit it to LEGO Ideas somewhere along the way and that shaped a lot of how I proceeded with the project from there, as I now had to think about consumer feasibility.
- What special challenges did you face creating the model? What was the most difficult part to recreate?
The angles. The Toa Head element is a very very detailed design. It’s full of intersecting angles and planes that meet in ways most LEGO parts don’t want to intersect. So it was a huge challenge trying to recreate those shapes on a larger scale, especially while keeping the overall design smooth and mostly stud-free.The key ended up being something I stumbled upon very early in the process, which was that it was much more effective to reduce the Toa head design to simple blocky shapes than to try to recreate every angle exactly. Even so, parts of it were still very challenging to recreate. Mostly, getting the forehead to sit in the right place and be stable, and also getting the angles in the lower “jaw” area to match up correctly and cleanly.
- If you could talk to yourself before you started on this project, what would you tell them? What do you know now that you wish you knew then?
I’m honestly not sure - it was so long ago and in a completely different part of my life. Mostly, if I could somehow beam all the knowledge of design theory that I have now back to my past self, that would have come in very handy!
- How long did it take to complete the model? Did you finish it fairly quickly, or did it take a long time? And how did the build time compare to the time you spent promoting your Product Idea to reach 10,000 supporters?
Ignoring the gap of 6 or 7 years in the middle, I’d say probably 2 or 3 months from when I started working on it again in earnest. And that was a lot shorter than the time it took to go from 0 to 10,000 votes!
- How did it feel when you reached the magic 10,000 votes and how long did it take?
Over two years I believe! The project had a huge wave of popularity right at the beginning, but then it slowed down quite a bit for a long time. It took about 18 months to reach 5,000 followers, and after that, the growth was so slow that I had basically given up on making it to 10,000. And I was okay with that - a lot of people had seen my work and loved it, and that was enough for me.But the Bionicle community really rallied in the last three months or so to make it happen - and people very much rose to the occasion! I can’t thank enough the many people who did a lot of cross-promotion to get people to support the project - everyone from very dear friends to complete strangers to some critical promotion by Christian Faber of the original Bionicle creation team!
Truth be told, I had been so busy with work the last couple of months before it crossed the finish line that I wasn’t keeping tabs on the project at all any more. I had seen a few messages come in, seeing that people were tagging me on Instagram, but I was too overwhelmed by work to keep up with it all. Then, the very morning I went to finally see how things were doing, it crossed 10,000 votes!
- Approximately how many LEGO bricks did you use to create your model?
The final model uses 208 parts!
- What is your favourite building technique or part/section that you’ve incorporated into your Product Idea?
I’d have to say, the way the cheese slopes line up where the lower “jaw” connects to the upper jaw is probably my favourite technique.
- If you built your model digitally, what software did you use to build and render your model?
I did the whole thing in Stud.io.
ABOUT LEGO IDEAS
- Do you have any useful advice about creating a successful LEGO Ideas project?
Know your audience! There’s no guaranteed way to success, but you’ll have a much better chance if you make something that you know people are clamouring for.
- What is your favourite LEGO Ideas Product Idea (besides your own of course)? Are there any Product Ideas you think have been overlooked?
Probably the Ship In A Bottle, for my favourite! I haven’t kept close enough tabs on LEGO Ideas overall to be familiar with ones that didn’t make the cut.
- What is it about the platform that attracts you? What tips would you give to anyone who is thinking about uploading an idea?
For me, it was the opportunity to make a reality out of something that this niche community has been wanting for a long time. I had an idea already, the 20th Anniversary was coming up, and the series of Star Wars display busts made me think that a well-made Bionicle bust might actually have a shot at being produced.
If I have any tips to give, it’s really just general advice for pitching a product - find where there’s both a demand and an opportunity and jump on it!
