Product Idea |

Plants vs. Zombies

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Plants vs. Zombies is one of the most iconic mobile games of all time. The now-13 year old classic, Plants vs. Zombies has a long and proud legacy, one I hope to have captured in this submission. The model contains the player’s house, the lawn, and the pool. You can rearrange the plants and the floor tiles to recreate classic scenes from the game.

The model features a fearsome horde of the undead with a Basic Zombie, Flag Zombie, Conehead Zombie, Buckethead Zombie, Pole Vaulting Zombie, and Football Zombie.

To face off against the zombies, build up your defenses with plants like the Peashooter, Sunflower x5, Wall-nut, Potato Mine, Snow Pea, Chomper, Repeater, Puff-shroom x3, Sun-shroom x3, Fume-shroom x2, Scaredy-shroom, Lily Pad x5, Spikeweed, Torchwood, Sea-shroom, Starfruit, Magnet-shroom, Cabbage-pult, Kernel-pult, Garlic, Melon-pult, and Gatling Pea.

Find lots of little knick knacks inside the house like the Marigold, Coffee Bean, Jalapeño, Cherry Bomb, Mini-Peashooter, Car Key, Shovel, Taco, Almanac, Note, and Lawnmower. There is also plenty of room inside to store any spare plant you aren’t using. You can also open and close the door to the backyard and remove the roof to get better access inside.

If you too would like to someday see this as an actual LEGO set, then support would be much appreciated.

Pre-emptive Q&A
Why did you make it?
Plants vs. Zombies is one of my favorite games of all time. I actually had this idea years ago but the IP wasn’t available at the time so I shelved it. Now with the IP in the clear and all these new skills acquired since, I felt it was time to do it justice.

What tools did you use to make it?
I used Stud.io for building, Adobe Illustrator for custom printing, Stud.io Part Designer for applying custom prints,  Blender for posing and rendering, and Photoshop for compositing.

How long did it take to make?
It took about two days to build, another two to get all the printing done, around four days to port and render everything, and another two to composite and post everything.

How many pieces are there?
There are 1207 pieces in total.

What were some of the challenges you ran into?
This was my first time doing custom printing at a large scale and a lot of the prices were curved or warped in some way, making them very hard to print. This also was my first time using Blender to render Lego models, so that took a bit to get right. But I think the project is better for it and who knows, maybe I’ll make some more animations (no promises, rendering takes forever).

What is your favorite part?
Probably all the references I managed to squeeze in. Looking for more really got me back into the game.

Any Miscellaneous info?
I used a lot of references while working on this. u/Aggravat0r1’s post on the r/lego subreddit was especially helpful in figuring out all the details and filling all the gaps of the original design.

More Specific Questions

How many custom printed parts are there?
50 in total with 30 unique prints

What doesn’t the Peashooter use the stud shooter?
That was my thought too, in theory it’s the perfect piece usage, but in practice, it takes away too much from the overall look and makes the Peashooters too big for the tiles.

Why is the lawn in sections?
So you can rearrange it to make all of the stages. You could even put them all together to make a super-stage.

Why is the lawn so short?
I wanted you to be able to store the pool behind the house while the front lawn is set up, but before, the pool would stick out so I decided to shorten it overall. I also did this to make it line up better with the roof.

Why is the house so short?
With how thin the house is width-wise, the original height looked too tall. So I shortened it by 2 studs and axed the second floor and I honestly prefer how it turned out.

Why is there a bike instead of a trike?
I tried a trike but it was way too big. Maybe if you squint enough it looks close enough.

Why is the chimney the wrong color?
I originally wanted to color it salmon as the other reds were used by the roof, but it was prohibitively expensive, even for a proposal. The light yellow also grew on me while working on it.

Why are the lawn plates like that (studded with a center stud)?
I originally had them with only the center stud and everything else was tiled off. But this looked too smooth and made posing the zombies more constrictive. I decided to replace the tiles with studs to get that more grassy texture and to give more options for posing the zombies. I kept the tiled off look for the roof though as I think it works far better there.

What about Dr. Zomboss?
While he is iconic, I couldn’t justify adding hundreds to the piece count to do his mech full justice.

Why aren’t there any flower pots for the roof?
Every design for them didn’t look good and they weren’t as important as other inclusions.

Why is there only one lawnmower?
I decided that while there are canonically five lawn mowers, I couldn’t justify adding that much to the piece count for more single use items.

What decides if plants get duplicates?
Mostly what looks good. I have a general rule of thumb that each lane should be sufficiently defended in every lawn setup. For more specifics, I had to include five sunflowers because they are so iconic. Puff-shrooms and Sun-shrooms are only two pieces so three each is enough but not too much. And I added two Fume-shrooms because it looked weird with only one.

Why is there only one Peashooter?
The front lawn was full enough as is, and I wanted to prioritize including every Peashooter variation over a duplicate, even if it is more accurate to the common experience.

Why is there a chimney but no fireplace?
It would have taken up too much room from valuable reference space.

Why doesn’t the Onion have printing?
I don’t think you can print that part. And also I was originally just a bonus for the house until I realized it was full sized and deserved to be counted as a plant.

Why doesn’t the Scaredy-Shroom have printing?
I tried reusing the Puff-shroom print but it just looked like a Puff-shroom on stilts, so I just went with a more different design that I think looks a bit closer.

Why did you make a Pre-Emptive Q&A?
I don’t know. I guess these thoughts have been rattling around in my head for days and I needed to put them to rest somewhere.

Here is a demonstration of how the lawn changing works.

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