Today we introduce another festive project to the 10K Club. Please welcome Donovan, a.k.a. donnydings, and his TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR creation. Inspired by Taylor Swift's original stage from the Eras Tour, this idea will be sure to impress all Swifties out there! Please share your support and comments in the section below.
ABOUT YOURSELF
- Who are you?
Donovan Cho.
- Where are you from?
Austin, Texas.
- How old are you?
17.
- What do you study or do for a living?
I’m still in high school so that takes up most of my time, but in terms of employment, I’m a lifeguard, tutor, and video editor. In the future, I hope to double-major in Business and East Asian Studies.
- What hobbies do you have?
Honestly, I get a lot of hobbies out of Lego. I’ve collected Lego for most of my life, and I also enjoy building MOCs and making custom minifigures through sculpting and painting. I used to make brickfilms as well, but I haven’t had time in a while since school comes first. I love listening to music (always bumping Taylor and SZA) and I sometimes play the piano for fun. I’m currently learning to play Enchanted and Dear John!
- Do you have a personal LEGO portfolio website that you can share with us?
My Instagram is @donnydings77, and my YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/@donnydings) has some old brickfilms, though I don’t really use it anymore.
- 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?
The MOC I’m most proud of has to be my Eras Tour Lego set, which has recently reached 10k as well! It’s a roughly minifigure-scale functional recreation of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. I’m really proud of how I was able to accurately recreate the majority of the stage’s functions (raisable platforms, hidden pianos and houses, trapdoors, fireworks, and more!) and include every era. It was challenging to mentally engineer the mechanisms without being able to tangibly feel them, but I think I was pretty successful. I’m also pretty proud of my Kom’rk-Class Gauntlet Fighter MOC. I built this with spare pieces as a larger and more accurate alternative to set 75316. It has retractable landing gear, a rear docking ramp, and can fit 4 Mandalorians + cargo. The cockpit has 360* rotation and the wings move in sync. The official set requires you to move each wing separately, so I wanted to improve that by ensuring that moving one wing would also move the other. Like the Eras Tour, I’m proud of my accurate mechanism recreation.
- How and when did your interest in LEGO products come about?
One of my earliest memories is building the Sith Nightspeeder (7957) set on my grandparents’ glass coffee table while visiting them in Hong Kong. I think that I’ve always had a passion for creating things since an early age, and my parents introduced Lego as an outlet for that. I’ve probably been a Lego fan at least since I was 4, which is also around the time I became a Star Wars fan. Being able to play with Clone Wars characters and vehicles while watching the show was definitely a big contributor to my early love for Lego.
- 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.
I have always enjoyed building Lego, but I think the most important thing about it is that it serves as an auxiliary for the imagination, which I’ve found has begun to dry up as I’ve gotten older. As a kid I could spend hours making up my own stories with Lego, and I’ve lately realized the importance of reconnecting with this part of my identity. Even simply fiddling with a minifigure or two has become an invaluable relief from the stress of IB. Though my time for it is limited, Lego rejuvenates my creativity and greatly improves my mental health.
- What is your favourite LEGO theme (current or past)? Why? And has any theme inspired your building style or preference in any particular way?
My favorite theme has to be Star Wars. The vast majority of my collection is Star Wars, and it’s the theme I follow most closely. And as I mentioned earlier, my interests in Lego and Star Wars are closely intertwined. I suppose the Star Wars theme has influenced me to build in a more sci-fi, futuristic style, especially around vehicles and their play functions, so the Lover House was a step in a new direction for me. However, I really like the Monkie Kid theme, particularly the sets that most closely adhere to the original story.
- What is your favourite official LEGO set ever? Why?
This is a tough choice, but I have to go with The Legendary Flower Fruit Mountain (80024). Being half Chinese, The Journey to the West is a story that my childhood familiarized me with. I really appreciate having a Lego set that is not only visually beautiful but also full of story-accurate details, especially at a time when Chinese culture is often vilified in favor of Japanophilia. I love the moving waterfall feature and the rock that Wukong pops out of. I’m also a big fan of monkeys, and I think having 7 minifigures of them is pretty neat.
- What is your favourite LEGO element? Why?
It’s hard to pick since there are so many pieces and ways to approach the question, but I’ll go with the 12x6 Wedge Plate (30355/30356). I just like the shaping overall, and these pieces were indispensable as a kid building spaceships.
- Is there a LEGO designer (official LEGO designer or fan designer) who you are inspired by and look up to? Who and why?
I’m not sure if this counts, but minifigure customizer MGF Customs was a big inspiration when I was younger. His work is incredibly intricate and he’s the reason I started minifigure customization.
- Is there one or more particular LEGO-related websites (not official LEGO websites) that you visit often and/or are inspired by?
My Instagram feed has a lot of great Lego content, and I sometimes visit Bricklink when looking for parts.
ABOUT YOUR PROJECT
- Where did your interest in this particular model come from?
I became a big Taylor Swift fan after her album Midnights. The themes and lyricism of the album strongly resonated with what was going on in my life, and while I had enjoyed Taylor’s music before, Midnights sucked me into the rabbit hole of her discography. With songs like The Archer, You’re On Your Own, Kid, and Castles Crumbling, Taylor weaves a profound depth into her lyrics and has an incredibly comforting ability to articulate in song what ordinarily can’t be put into words. The resulting catharsis found in listening to her music cemented my fanhood and admiration for Taylor. So when I saw the viral tweet proposing a Lover House Lego set, I knew I had to do it, especially when the official Lego account replied! I must admit that I wasn’t expecting so many other Swifties to join in as well.
- 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?
It took me around a bit over a week of intensely working over Thanksgiving break. My research included learning how to use stud.io since I’d never used it before (shoutout to @lod.rocket12 on Instagram for helping me out) and rewatching the Lover music video over and over again. Taylor had also conveniently revamped her website to be Lover House-themed for the holiday season, which was useful for finding detailed reference pictures. I planned pre-build by deciding what scale to build at and made a template for the base of each room. Finding a good scale was difficult, but once setting a precedent made things easier later on. I designed the house to function modularly, so I built each room separately and then connected them together at the end.
- What special challenges did you face creating the model? What was the most difficult part to recreate?
Properly scaling the house and all of its furnishings down to a minifigure scale was a fairly significant but enjoyable challenge. It’s been months since I finished the build so it’s hard for me to recall specifics, but there were definitely parts that went through dozens of iterations before I was happy with them. I do remember being particularly frustrated with the parts where it was necessary to hang things from the ceiling (Fearless, Speak Now, Red, Evermore), but I’m pretty happy with the end result. Another minor frustration I had was stud.io’s limited minifigure piece/print selection, which made making minifigures out of Taylor’s outfits tedious. Some of the prints and hairpieces definitely don’t fit exactly, but they get the job done well enough.
- 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?
When building the Lego Lover House, I made the mistake of projecting my perception of Taylor’s personal life and relationships onto my artistic interpretation of the music video. It seems silly in retrospect, but I definitely should’ve populated the house purely based on the music video and nothing else. It’s a bit embarrassing that it took renewed and unwarranted tabloid scrutiny upon Taylor for me to learn this lesson, but I think it was an important one to learn. I would also tell myself to look into making custom prints for certain pieces, like the Reputation projector screen and Taylor’s outfits. I was trying to finish the project as fast as possible so I didn’t consider the possibility at the time, but I think it would’ve added a lot to the model.
- 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?
Like I said earlier, it took a bit over a week of intense work. I finished fairly quickly, much faster than I would’ve at any other time in the year since my schedule was luckily pretty free. The week it took to complete the model was definitely much shorter than the 7 months it took to reach 10k, but 7 months isn’t too bad of a time to achieve support!
- How did it feel when you reached the magic 10,000 votes and how long did it take?
How did it feel when you reached the magic 10,000 votes and how long did it take? I actually reached 10k on my birthday, exactly 7 months from the date it went online! Achieving support felt really good and it happened unexpectedly on a great coincidental date. I joked that it was a great birthday present, and it kinda was.
- Approximately how many LEGO bricks did you use to create your model?
2763.
- What is your favourite building technique or part/section that you’ve incorporated into your Product Idea?
It has to be either the Folklore stairs (even though I made them face the wrong way, oops lol) or the roof. The roof is made of hinged panels that angle perfectly with the sloped brick wall, and I like how they add texture to the house and have a spot for Anti-Hero Taylor. That isn’t part of the Lover music video, but I thought it’d be a neat addition to include all 10 of Taylor’s eras. I also like the rubber ducks in Fearless.
- If you built your model digitally, what software did you use to build and render your model?
Stud.io
- If you used custom stickers or prints for your design, how did you create them or where did you get them?
I didn’t use any.
ABOUT LEGO IDEAS
- Do you have any useful advice about creating a successful LEGO Ideas project?
I think my best advice is that it’s important to understand the market. I knew that Taylor-themed ideas would be immensely popular among her fanbase, especially after seeing the viral tweet. I also knew that Swifties would go out of their way to make TikToks and such promoting ideas that they liked, and I took advantage of this by posting my idea to Taylor-themed groups online and using prominent current hashtags like #tstheerastour. Catering to a large yet specific demographic definitely helped my product stand out and allowed me to focus on a target audience. Some more general advice would be to make your idea as polished and appealing as possible so audiences can better see its merit. Overall, promoting your idea as much as possible helps, but calculated promotion is more effective than unspecific general publicity. For example, posting one Reel using trending audio will yield better results than many Instagram posts just using hashtags.
- What (if any) methods did you use to advertise and attract support to your Product Idea?
I touched on this in the previous question, but my main method of advertisement was posting my idea online and asking people to support and share. Once I got Instagram in late March, I posted about it a couple of times and also posted a couple of Reels. For this particular project though, I primarily relied on the trendiness of the Lego Lover House as a whole.
- What is your favourite LEGO Ideas Product Idea (besides your own of course)? Are there any Product Ideas you think have been overlooked?
It’s hard to choose a single one, but there have been many amazing ideas based on Avatar: The Last Airbender! I hope that one eventually will be approved, especially one featuring Appa and the Gaang.
- What is it about the platform that attracts you? What tips would you give to anyone who is thinking about uploading an idea?
I love that it gives regular people the chance to have their ideas made into a real Lego set.
- Do you have plans to submit any other Product Ideas in the future? If yes, can you give us a hint what that might be?
I doubt I will have enough time anytime soon, but I would love to make a project celebrating the culture of my heritage (I am half Korean and half Cantonese). I’m particularly drawn to making a microscale replica of Gyeongbokgung Palace, the most prominent example of surviving Royal Korean architecture. Korean architecture deserves much more celebration, and it is shameful that so many magnificent examples of it (like the Goryeo Dynasty’s Manwoldae) have been lost to violence and imperialism.
By
Hani2