Back with another 10K Club Interview! Please welcome Ashnflash and his fantastic SHREK'S SWAMP - 20TH ANNIVERSARY. This iconic character needs no introduction, but you can find more about this awesome project here.
ABOUT YOURSELF
- Who are you?
Ashnflash.
- Where are you from?
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
- How old are you?
24 years old.
- What do you study or do for a living?
I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design. And my full-time job is YouTube.
- What hobbies do you have?
Besides the LEGO hobby, I would say that I watch a lot of TV shows and movies, as well as play video games. Unfortunately drawing and art have sort of been placed on the backburner.
- Do you have a personal LEGO portfolio website that you can share with us?
YouTube
- 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?
Over the last five years, I have created over 80 custom minifigure series, custom Advent Calendars and some custom sets. But of everything I’ve created, I’m definitely the most proud of Shrek.
- How and when did your interest in LEGO products come about?
I can’t recall specifically if I was 4 or 5, but I know which sets were my first sets. But I know that 1355 Temple of Gloom or 7106 Droid Escape were one of my very early LEGO sets.
- 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.
The LEGO hobby means a whole lot to me. Again, it was a huge part of my life growing up. When I was in school or university, if I ever had the chance I would always try to do projects or presentations related to LEGO building. But I’ve also been fortunate enough to build a career around the LEGO hobby as well!
- 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 favourite LEGO theme is definitely Super Heroes. My love for Super Heroes started back with the original Spider-Man films and a handful of sets. But it wasn’t until 2006 that I was introduced to the world of DC through the new LEGO Batman theme that launched that year!
- What is your favourite official LEGO set ever? Why?
My favourite set is probably Ninjago City Gardens. Not only is it an amazing looking set, but it’s so detailed and chalked full of references to the Ninjago series! It’s so stunning!
- What is your favourite LEGO element? Why?
It’s probably the masonry bricks. There’s just something so satisfying when they’re next to each other and the patterns all line up!
- Is there a LEGO designer (official LEGO designer or fan designer) who you are inspired by and look up to? Who and why?
I would have to say Marcos Bessa. Back in 2013, I saw an interview with him talking about the design process for creating the Arkham Asylum set from that year. And that’s what inspired me to look into what it took to become a LEGO designer and ultimately me getting my bachelor’s degree.
- Is there one or more particular LEGO-related websites (not official LEGO websites) that you visit often and/or are inspired by?
I became aware of the online LEGO Community through a site called brickepedia and later Eurobricks. From there I became inspired by a lot of people’s MOCs that they would share there and on Flickr.
ABOUT YOUR PROJECT
- Where did your interest in this particular model come from?
I have loved Shrek for as long as I can remember. I would watch the original one on DVD a lot as a kid in my room while building LEGO sets. But Shrek 2 was the movie that I watched the most because it was my favourite of the quadrilogy. I had it on VHS and I would watch that movie on a loop, so much so that I have most of it memorised. I could go on and on about my love for the franchise with the other films, shorts, Universal Studios, video games, etc.
But specifically with my LEGO Ideas submission, the idea came to mind around the time of the first film’s 20th anniversary in 2021. And the idea to base it on Shrek’s Swamp was easy because it’s the most iconic location from all the films. Because of the second film’s 20 Year Anniversary coming up (which is mine and a lot of other people’s favourite Shrek film), I wanted to make sure this reached 10K and could potentially be picked to celebrate its milestone.
- 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?
So I’ve been working on this for a couple of years now on and off. But because Shrek is so important to me I wanted to perfect the set. The idea of the set having a dollhouse feature opening up down the middle was inspired by the Winnie the Pooh IDEAS project.
Research-wise, I rewatched all the films multiple times while working on the project. I looked up concept art from the films, and took screenshots of the interior and exterior of the tree. I had to double and triple-check that the doors were all swinging and opening the proper way like in the film. The list of the easter eggs and little details included in the set continued to grow with every rewatch of the movies.
I’ll touch on what took so long with this project in the next question, but it started with me designing the base of the tree first, then the removable trunk, the interior, the mini figures and then the milestone minifigures to promote the project.
- What special challenges did you face creating the model? What was the most difficult part to recreate?
This somewhat ties into the last question. But the reason this set took so long to finish and upload is because I was never satisfied with the trunk’s shaping or colour. Depending on the movie, the lighting on the tree would constantly change. So I played around with it and constantly would go back and forth between different browns, tans, and greys. But the shaping of the trunk… That was the most challenging. You can see in the attached pictures a few different versions of the trunk. The trunk would either be too short, too long, or just didn’t look like it was in scale with the bottom of the tree.
The pieces used for the grass effect also changed multiple times. Because the set took so long to finish, a lot of new pieces were also introduced by LEGO so I went in and updated a few builds and details with newer, more useful parts.
- 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 would tell myself to just push through and finish designing the set. I kept pushing it off over and over again and I wish I had finished it sooner.
- 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?
As I said before, this had been in the works for a really long time. I had announced that I was working on this idea by revealing one of the original builds for the set in a video in June 2021. I tried my best to find a specific date when I began working on this but I couldn’t find one…
The project reached 10K in about three days. So there wasn’t much time spent promoting the project. But there was a lot of prep time involved prior to submitting the project.
- How did it feel when you reached the magic 10,000 votes and how long did it take?
It was truly a strange feeling for a number of reasons. I think the speed at which it reached 10K votes took me by surprise. I always dreamed and hoped that the project would be well received. But never to the extent that it has been.Because I had been working on this project for such a long time, I never really had any time to just absorb the fact that the project was FINALLY finished. It seemed so weird to have people finally be able to see the finished product of this dream that I had for years. So, those things together just made the whole thing so surreal.
- Approximately how many LEGO bricks did you use to create your model?
The set has about 2700 pieces, but I definitely went a little overboard with some of the terrain and environment detailing.
- What is your favourite building technique or part/section that you’ve incorporated into your Product Idea?
Before I began work on the project and while working on this project over the last few years there had been a few Shrek projects submitted to LEGO Ideas. But the very last thing I designed for this set was actually something I could vividly picture in my mind. That was the Outhouse. I always had in my mind this idea that you could have Shrek pushing up the door to his Outhouse with a sliding play feature. It still makes me laugh when I look at the GIF of it opening on a loop. I can hear the song starting “Some-BODY”
- If you built your model digitally, what software did you use to build and render your model?
I used a site called mecabricks to build and render the model.
- If you used custom stickers or prints for your design, how did you create them or where did you get them?
I created all of the prints and stickers in photoshop and was able to import them into the digital model on mecabricks.
ABOUT LEGO IDEAS
- Do you have any useful advice about creating a successful LEGO Ideas project?
Patience. It sounds ironic maybe, but I knew that if the shape of the tree or a specific print on a figure was off then it would bother me that I didn’t give it my 100%. So even if it took me even more time to complete, I wanted to be happy with the final product.
- What (if any) methods did you use to advertise and attract support to your Product Idea?
I’m fortunate enough to have a lot of people who supported the project from Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. So I made social media pictures and videos ready of the model to post there. I was also inspired by bulldozer who has created these minifigure milestones for his other Ideas submissions. It gives people a bit more of an incentive to support the project in order to reveal their favourite Shrek characters in Minifigure form.
I also believe that the biggest factor of this project's success was just Shrek. Shrek as a character and franchise is so beloved. But more recently he’s become a very popular meme online. So put those two things together with people’s existing love of LEGO bricks - it was crazy. While my posts garnered a lot of traction, other people’s support on this blew me away. I was getting notifications from people from all around the world posting about this set in different languages. Different platforms like TikTok and Facebook. Altogether bringing millions of eyes on this project.
Just quickly going back to the milestones, I included characters from the two Puss in Boots movies as well. The latest one, 'Puss in Boots: the Last Wish' had just recently been released in theatres and was taking on a life of its own on social media. The villain of the movie, Death was quickly becoming so popular and iconic. Putting him as the milestone reward for 10k really paid off. Out of the ten characters I had as milestones, some of which are fan favourite characters who are 20 years old - Death. by a longshot, received the most comments from people sharing their excitement.
- What is it about the platform that attracts you? What tips would you give to anyone who is thinking about uploading an idea?
Just the chance to be a part of the process of turning an idea into an official product really excites me. It’s been a dream of mine for a really long time and I hope Shrek is the one to get me there. The most important tip I can give to someone is to be passionate about the idea you’re submitting. I think that if you have a connection to something your love for the project, it will show.
- 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 do have another project in the works that I haven’t shared with anyone. It’s something that no one has ever submitted to Ideas before, so I hope that it won’t take as long to finish as Shrek did!
