Fan art comes in many forms. And for Rick Martin, that form is Lego. Martin started making Lego as an adult back in 2013 when, as a Federal government employee, he was furloughed for two weeks. “I couldn’t really go anywhere because they could call us back to work at any day,” Martin told me. “I had all these Legos my parents had dumped on me, and I was working my way through some of Brandon Sanderson’s books at the time, so I decided to start building some.”
To date, Martin has made builds based on several authors’ works. In addition to Sanderson, he’s also recreated a slew of scenes from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series as well as installations from Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes, Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth, and Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera, among others.
He was also kind enough to let us share some of those images here (and you can see all of his fan art on his website, secondbrickfast.com), and talk to me about his process.
Picking the Fandom to Build
Martin always has a long list of things he wants to build. So long, in fact, that he knows he’ll never get to them all. To winnow it down, he centers those that get him truly excited. “It’s mostly things that just inspire me, and things that I want to see a visual representation of,” he says. “I try to do things that haven’t been done too much, like when things have already come out in film and TV, they’re less exciting to me because there’s already this well-established visual representation of it.”
Practical concerns are also a factor—he only has so many Lego parts (though as you can see by the image of his workroom above he has an impressive collection that he estimates includes hundreds of thousands of pieces), and sometimes scenes would require too much specialization.
“I’d really like to do the Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemison,” he says. “Specifically, there’s one scene… where there’s an underground city in a cavern with giant gemstones. I’ve always envisioned that, and I think that’d be really fun to do, but trying to make these obelisks and gemstones that are not ninety-degree angles makes it a lot harder… and I don’t think I can amass enough of the right kinds of parts and figure out the geometry to do it.”
Deciding on the Kind of Build
Deciding what to build next also requires figuring out the size of the build. Martin has done installations as large as six feet by six feet, which can take him up to a year to do. He also, however, does smaller builds that focus on a specific scene or character.
“I might do a series of small builds featuring one character to show their character development through a series,” he explains, adding that he can also do those a lot faster, which means he can do more builds within a given year.
Making the Builds
When Martin gets down to actually building, he doesn’t usually sketch things out in advance. The base plates serve as his craft paper, and after doing some rough measurements to figure out what the scale is going to be, he’ll use small Legos in a color not used in the build to outline and mark things out.
“Occasionally, I do have to draw things out,” he concedes. “Especially with a lot of Brandon Sanderson’s works, because he put so much official artwork into his books, and I want to match that.”
One example of this was M-Bot from Sanderson’s Skyward, a sentient spaceship. The wings of Martin’s Lego M-Bot move, and he had to do some trigonometry to figure out where the joints should be to match the official art created by Ben McSweeney.
Customization
You might have noticed that most of Martin’s Lego characters have specific expressions that match descriptions in their respective books. To achieve this, he often sends pieces out to a flatbed 3-D printer, which can print images onto round surfaces like golf balls and, in Martin’s case, a tiny Lego head. In other instances, he also just uses direct-to-film decals that he makes himself.
Showcasing the Builds
Martin also considers how he will be able to photograph his creations once they’re done so that others can best see his work. He’s learned about composition and invested in special lighting, and also keeps in mind how he can best showcase the builds once he’s done.
“I try to keep that in mind what the shot is going to be, not just what the build going to be,” he says. “So what angles am I going to take the photo from? What’s the composition going to be like? Will we be able to see all the character spaces? I keep all that stuff in mind as I’m building, rather than trying to just fix that at the end.”
What’s Next?
In addition to making some digitally animated Lego shorts of scenes from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive and Skyward (which you can check out here), Martin is currently working on his latest project, a chess set with characters from The Stormlight Archive.
“I went through a list of all the different main characters and which chess pieces they would be,” he says. “I tend to like to do that with different books, because it’s a good way to illustrate a lot of different things from a series. Chess sets just seem to naturally have a sort of hierarchy of pieces with two sides. And it works pretty well with Brandon’s books. I’ve done that with Mistborn [pictured above] and with Elantris and The Wheel of Time. So yeah, right now, I’m just about two-thirds the way done with that one.”
You can see the rest of Martin’s creations at his website here.
