Save the date

Justin Winn takes on a celebratory subject matter in this build that has a very personal raison d’etre

Another unusual build for me, given my usual obsession with all things Benny and Classic Space. This is a build I did for my brother-in-law and his fiancé as they were after something unique for their ‘Save the date’ cards as they’d recently tied down the date for their wedding next year.

It started just after dinner, when I was showing them some of the minifigures from The LEGO Batman Movie Series – I held up Fairy Batman claiming it to be one of the coolest minifigures ever produced and the idea stemmed from there. They tried different combinations of figures, and left it with me to do the backdrop.

I got hold of 40165 Wedding Favour set to use for inspiration and do something compact and simple. As you can see, this set still provides the focal point of the build but things pretty soon got out of hand. As part of the brief I was asked to include the date so I began by first forming the numbers and getting those right. Once complete, I spaced them out and realised that the only thing that would do them justice would be a 48 stud wide build and that’s when I decided that including wedding guests would really add life and colour to the scene.

Over the years the LEGO Group has provided a variety of wonderful minifigures but my choices were based on what I knew of the happy couple. The groom-to-be is a 1980s child with a love of Back To The Future, WWF, Spider-Man, alien conspiracies, Indiana Jones, gaming, guitar, Tin Tin and Ghostbusters. The bride-to-be is a dedicated Harry Potter fan who loves cats, Disney, all things gorgeous and kooky and, most importantly, clockwork robots – there were plenty of minifigures to choose from – in fact I had to seriously reduce the number so that they’d fit on the build.

The model is pretty straightforward, favouring aesthetics over tricky build techniques. I really enjoyed building the trees and the two waterfalls at the rear of the build. The part that required the most rework was the transparent section just behind the clockwork bride and groom, in particular forming the red heart shape by using the transparent red, round 1×1 plates.

My experience of any build process is always pleasurable, but this was a real indulgence and has ignited an interest in trying new ideas in my future builds.

Enjoy!

Check out more of Justin’s work on Flickr, where his handle is justin_m_winn.