I designed these famous Halloween characters in collaboration with Build Better Bricks (B3). Every year, B3’s head designer Tyler and I decide on two new monsters to build for the holiday; he does one, and I do one. During our inaugural Halloween season, I built the savage Werewolf on the left. For this year, I built a wicked Red Devil. Both figurines are highly articulated and detailed, and are designed as amalgamations of my favorite versions of these iconic monsters.
Read on to learn more about the design choices that went into each of these models, individually, and to find out how I found my way to their striking photo presentation!
Werewolf
I designed this Werewolf in the fall of 2019, jut before leaving New Hampshire to shoot LEGO Masters. At 8” (21cm) tall, the Werewolf’s hunched silhouette proclaims its bestial nature. The model possesses 32 points of articulation, including moving toes and an opening jaw. I designed the model, also, to have the capability to stand on either two or four legs.
I’m perhaps most proud of the design of the Werewolf’s head. It has an evil-looking face, with sharp, evident teeth and movable ears. The parts that hold the ears are actually bars with clips— which double as the monster’s eyes! This ear-and-eye technique worked so well that I reused it on the devil a year later.
I love the Werewolf’s necklace, which is simple and effective. It also, quite effectively, provides a point of visual interest along the creature’s largely grey body.
Although wolves can range from taupe or white to brown and even black, grey is the fur color that jumped to my mind first; and, as was the case for my Fell Beast or Terminator models, grey is a wonderful color to use for a jointed creation, since so many of LEGO’s functional elements come in grey.
I broke up what could have been a monotonous grey-scale creation with touches of brown and dark brown in the fur, as well as dark tan claws and even a touch of black here and there. I think these hues help ground the color scheme.
I leaned heavily on a combination of plates with rock fingers, plates with spikes (horizontal and vertical), and wedge slopes to roughen the surface of the Werewolf’s body and make it look furry. I repeated this texture in the satyr thighs of the Red Devil.
The Werewolf’s bushy tail is built in rings around a piece of flexible tubing. This was the best method I could think of to give its tail the extra-subtle curvature I sought.
Red Devil
For my 2020 Halloween monster, I debated between building a “Swamp Thing” and a Red Devil. The Red Devil won out; I felt like the Swamp Thing might have been too similar in body and shape to the Werewolf, and I also found the Devil the more interesting premise to tackle. Retrospectively, I’m glad with the choice I made! This 12” (30cm) figurine came together remarkably quickly; I finished my first draft version of the character in just a day of building.
The first part of the Red Devil that I designed was his head. I had a clear vision of what I wanted for the Devil’s face: an evil smile. Luckily, I stumbled on the big, round cheeks that you see. To me, these cheeks perfectly convey the exact expression I wanted. During the build process, I toyed around with a fuller, longer beard, but opted for the more traditional looking goatee out of deference to the Devil’s iconography.
I enjoyed designing this monster’s hypermuscular torso. While the physique I pursued on the Werewolf was one of emaciation, I wanted the Devil to look, well, “ripped!” My favorite chest detail is the stacked plates with clips, attached sideways, as his serratus anterior muscles.
The last bit of the build I refined were the Devil’s feet. I love the slightly-cloven look of these narrow hooves, using wedge slopes for the cloven halves.
Tyler gave me some useful feedback about my initial pitchfork design, saying that it looked too much like an eating utensil! I rectified this impression by trading out the originally squared cross-section for rounded macaroni parts, and replacing minifigure spears with harpoons to give the prongs more sharply barbed ends.
The most fun and playful detail on this character is his hair bun, tied with a little gold ribbon. I had an unused connection point at the back of the head, due to my use of a 3x3 dish there, and couldn’t resist the opportunity to give this Devil a little extra personality while simultaneously covering up an awkward stud. Besides, I’m sure the Devil thinks he looks quite dashing!
Photography
I photographed these two monsters right after I got my first color-changing LED panels. I was so excited to have the LEDs to play with, and thought they’d be perfect to bring heightened atmosphere and drama to these models’ presentations. My goal for this shoot was to create a spooky vibe even as I kept the models suitably illuminated— I wanted, after all, to avoid a grainy photo. Finding the line of just-enough-light turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as was refining my setup for these builds. All the work turned out to be well worthwhile, of course, but I thought it was worth breaking down some of the steps in the process.
Aside from minor color-correction in post, this was a 100% practical effects shoot, which was super fun for me to puzzle through!
My first attempt involved using reddish and bluish light from either side, with the builds set against a standard, relatively shallow poster backdrop. There were a few problems with this setup:
It wasn’t moody enough. The posterboard caught the light, and while the colored lights painted a satisfying gradient on it, this wasn’t the kind of backdrop I wanted.
Reddish light washed out the Devil’s skin tone.
The lighting looked really similar to my setup for my Terminator model. I don’t like to repeat looks!
Following my first attempt, I revamped my setup in a few ways:
I changed the LEDs from blue & red to green and amber. The new colors gave me a really spooky vibe, and worked well with both builds’ colors, not just the Werewolf’s.
I Increased depth-of-field substantially. I set up a second table, pulled out away from the wall, which left me more room to isolate the light effects to the builds themselves, rather than the background.
I turned the “sky” from reflective to matte. I draped dark blue fabric as far as I could from the builds, and ended up with a less reflective backdrop that remained dark when I wanted it to be.
The final touch I decided on was adding dry ice “mist” along the ground. To accomplish even coverage, I had to set up four small bowls of hot water on each corner of the presentation table, positioned so that they were just out-of-sight of the camera’s frame. Once dry ice was dropped into these bowls, I only had about 30 seconds of quality mist before the vapor would thin out. For the photos and videos I captured, I went through two pounds (900g) of dry ice!
The mist effect is best seen in video form, as is a flashing “lightning” effect supplied by a third LED panel suspended above and to the right of the builds. Check out the video up top!
Thanks for reading! If you have any other questions or thoughts about these models, feel free to leave them in the comments below.