Cube Car

This was going to be my entry for ReBrick’s The LEGO Movie competition, where the objective was to create a vehicle or contraption that would aid Emmet and the gang in the final combat scene, along with a short animated film showing its construction. The winning entry was actually shown on a computer screen in the movie.

Despite having a degree in animation, it was a decade since I’d even touched a stop motion camera. (Actually I don’t remember doing stop motion animation at all!) I wanted to have a shot at the competition anyway.

My idea was simply to turn a board game (as LEGO Games sets were in their prime at the time) into a vehicle. The animation would have involved a player and a Gorilla Suit Guy working together to create the vehicle from spaces on a large game board, with the player taking the wheel and the Gorilla riding in the back.

The three-wheeled Cube Car has a few interesting features:

• a front-facing cannon (represented by the black spaces);
• retractable twin rocket boosters;
• an internal compartment that houses a “die bomb”.

I couldn’t decide how the vehicle would actually move; maybe it would actually fly, or travel very slowly despite the rocket propulsion.
In any case, I didn’t get around to making the animated film for the vehicle: as well as the time it would take that I didn’t have, a test animation showing the rocket boosters in action didn’t go as planned.