I built this statue of Codey, a Salesforce character from their Trailhead learning platform, for Salesforce’s TrailheadX 2020 (TDX20) virtual event. At 2’ (60cm) tall and built from nearly 4,000 bricks, Codey is pretty huge!
Incredibly, the window of time between this statue’s conception and its final presentation was only a month. I had less than two weeks during that period to complete the design work for the whole model, since midway through the project’s month-long timeline—as if things couldn’t get any crazier!—I moved cross-country. During this project, I worked with some really cool people, old friends and new; with their help, I accomplished Codey even against an extremely tight deadline. I’m so proud to finally get to share the fruits of this crazy, fun, and growthful whirlwind of a project!
Read on to learn more about the conception, construction, assembly, and design of this custom statue.
Conception—Realizing a Vision
Final approved artwork for the Codey statue
Salesforce planned TDX20 in conjunction with the George P. Johnson agency (GPJ), a world-class event planning and experience marketing firm. It was actually representatives from GPJ who initially approached me with the idea of doing a build for TDX20.
To provide some interstitial content between the virtual event’s myriad speakers and segments, GPJ and Salesforce wanted to present the on-camera construction of a Salesforce-themed LEGO model. They needed the final build to be fun, impressive, and interactive for the at-home audience. This set of constraints felt like an amazing opportunity to challenge myself; I was stoked to sign on to the project!
The initial concept GPJ presented me with was a life size, 7’ (2.13m) statue of Codey. I very quickly talked this scale down! After all, a 7’ model would’ve taken several weeks, perhaps even months, of design work alone—forget about construction!—as well as required a reinforced metal frame and gluing for stability. It simply wasn’t possible to accomplish alone in the timeline we had before TDX20, especially given my impending cross-country move. Anything I’d have to design, I’d need to be able to complete before my wife and I departed our home in New Hampshire.
I’m grateful for the team at GPJ for working with me to find a more viable option. We toyed around with the idea of doing a 2D mosaic instead of a 3D model, but eventually settled on a 2’, fully realized statue of Codey.
Salesforce put together final artwork to meet this vision. In it, Codey stands atop a decorated pedestal and holds a lightning bolt. The model’s necessary “interactivity” would come in the form of an audience poll, run over the course of TDX20, where attendants would be able to influence the design highlighted on Codey’s pedestal through a Twitter vote.
With final art in place, and our goals for the model set, I could start my design!
Final color test, proof model
The first thing that I needed to confirm before I could begin work in earnest was what LEGO colors I’d be constructing Codey in. Salesforce provided me with a Trailhead character style guide, which was extremely helpful for getting a clear look at Codey, and seeing him from multiple angles. However, the CMYK values and PMS swatch colors indicated for Codey didn’t math up perfectly with LEGO hues, so I chose colors that would approximate them best, and then submitted a color proof to Salesforce for approval.
I considered making Codey’s vest normal tan, and his pockets white, but decided against it, since I didn’t want anything to detract from the white in the lightning bolt and on the base. Besides, it was cleaner to give Codey a uniformly warm-tones presence, the better to delineate the character from his cool-colors pedestal.
For the inner lightning bolt and twinkling stars on the base, I chose medium lavender, rather than regular lavender. While medium lavender’s lighter cousin was closer to the bluish purple on my reference artwork, functional parts availability—especially of 1x1 bricks with studs on the side—commended the slightly darker shade instead.
Printout of the design, covered in my calculations
With colors approved and locked, I began construction. The first step in my planning process was to establish Codey’s height in terms of LEGO studs. As I knew I’d be sculpting Codey studs-out (more on that later), it was critical to determine the model’s proportions in terms of that unit of measurement.
Before I started on this process, the Salesforce team agreed to cut down the height of the base, halving it from a cube to a rectangular box. By shortening the base, the team enabled me to build Codey himself as a larger percentage of our 2’ total height. In the end, Codey measures at about 61 studs tall, while his pedestal is 16 studs tall.
I printed out a copy of the final artwork, and drew a line midway through the base to represent the new ground level. Based on the distance between this ground level and the top of Codey’s ears, the height of the finished model-to-be, and the width of a LEGO stud, I was able to establish a reliable cm-to-studs ratio. Thereafter, all I had to do was make a measurement on my printout, convert it using this ratio, and I’d be able to ascertain or check the ideal studded measure of any part of the sculpture.
Construction—Building for Future Ease
The Codey build was my first time creating a “sculptural” replica of this size. By sculptural, I mean to say a large-scale model that approximates curves and rounded shapes in rectangular plates and bricks. Compared to some other LEGO-building artists for whom sculpting is a specialty, I’d had relatively little experience designing in this vein before working on this project.
However, I feel like I picked up the flow and the principles pretty quickly. I realized through trial and error how to flatten or make deeper a curve, picked up a few tricks for softening corners, and figured out how to chart the more complex curves using graph paper.
Codey is built intentionally to be quite modular. Because the Salesforce and GPJ teams wanted the audience to see visible progression on the model over the course of the 3-4 hours I’d be onscreen, I thought it would make sense to design Codey in large chunks which could be assembled cleanly on camera. Not including its pedestal, the statue is divided into 7 subsections: legs and hips, gut, lower vest, upper vest, each of the two arms, and the head. Each of these, in turn, is clad in at least 4 pieces of sculpted “siding” that turns the model’s boxy core into something more organic. All I had to do to build Codey, once I’d built all the pieces of siding, was stack the core modules and attach their rounded shells.
But there was another reason I chose to build Codey like a layered cake. With his body subdivided into horizontal slices, I had the opportunity to position each layer slightly rotated compared to the one below it. This is how I accomplished the twist in Codey’s spine: while his feet stand squarely atop the podium, his shoulders are swivelled laterally by a few degrees. The torque up the model’s core, while subtle, is a huge part of what makes this towering character feel alive and sprightly, rather than inanimate and heavy.
I have a ton of LEGO in my inventory… and yet, inevitably, as I’m working on a project, I’ll always find I’m missing some of the bricks I need. In this case, “some of the bricks” often meant about half of the external cladding! My stores of reddish brown, dark tan, and dark orange plates especially were not numerous enough for me to deck Codey out fully in his fur during my build process. Luckily, Bricklink’s Stud.io program allowed me to create a digital record of my work, “saving” it even as I cannibalized already-designed shells for the bricks to design new ones.
Once I had a complete digital copy of Codey, the time came for me to order all the bricks I still needed. The tricky part of this was: since I was about to move, I couldn’t order the elements to my New Hampshire address. I also couldn’t order them to my final destination, since my wife and I wouldn’t arrive there until a day before the event, and so I wouldn’t have time to verify or sort all bricks. The solution I settled on was trusting in my friend and colleague Bruce B. Heller, a fellow LEGO artist, to receive and verify the elements on my behalf. I picked them up from him in Los Angeles en route to my final destination. Thanks again, Bruce!
Assembly—Live on Zoom
A good look at Codey’s central frame
The pedestal, unadorned
The day before TDX20, I arrived at my new residence, where I’d be on-camera for the event. That afternoon, I had a few “tech sessions” with the Salesforce and GPJ team. They had sent me some equipment to enhance my set-up: a standing microphone, a remote-controlled external webcam, a set of extra lights, and a huge poster to hang behind myself during the show. We verified that all the technology worked the way it was supposed to, and then I got to work on my own prep process.
Due to the relatively short length of the event, I knew I wouldn’t feasibly have time to assemble Codey from scratch there and then. So, the night before TDX20, I pre-built Codey’s internal core, the blank foundation of his pedestal, and a few other sundries, and had them ready and waiting. It was the majority of Codey’s external detailing that I assembled on camera.
Chunks of “fur” ready for attachment
Codey’s gut area, not yet attached
To make my time-sensitive assembly more expeditious, I designed some portions of Codey to be identical or mirrored, so I could replicate the same shell twice. Still, I worked down-to-the-wire to complete all the studs-out elements of the bear’s fur, vest, and face. My time at TDX20 was spent with tons of sorted bags of parts all around me, picking and connecting them at lightning speed!
With one hour left, Salesforce announced the results of the interactive Twitter poll, so I knew what I’d have to build as the central focus of the pedestal. Although I’d pre-designed the logo that appears there now, as well as all the other possible outcomes of the vote, it was still a rush to implement this design, and to add all the finicky textures around it, before time was up.
After 3.5 hours of working, I emerged from TDX20 with Codey completed. The on-screen reveal was especially satisfying for me, because this was also my first time seeing the sculpture completed in real life!
Design Choices
Final statue, front view
Final statue, back view
To me, one of the most striking aspects of this build is its strong color story. Everything is clearly blocked, from Codey’s earth toned fur, to his sandy vest, to the purple of the lightning bolt which is reinforced by the purple of the base. Spots of white, black, and blue get to pop against the broader strokes they sit on. Obviously, the model’s colors were predetermined by the artwork I was given, but I still find their composition beautiful and remarkable!
Something that was more in my control than the model’s colors was its combination of textures. The base, the bear, and the bolt each have a different surface feel. I opted for a SNOT (studs not on top) sculpting technique for Codey for a few reasons, but a huge motivation for me to build him studs-out was to give him a cuddly, friendlier texture than I might have achieved with purely studs-up construction. The lightning bolt, on the other hand, is built to be as sleek and high-gloss as possible, so I avoided exposed studs as much as I could. Finally, the base is textured with random “greebles” to provide it with some extra visual interest.
Perhaps the most fun portion of this project to design was Codey’s lovable face! I opted to use ball joints for eyes out of scale-based necessity; the diameters of 1x1 round tiles would’ve been too small, while 2x2 ones would’ve been too big. A happy coincidence of the ball joints is the way they catch light, which livens Codey’s eyes and, therefore, his whole self.
Codey’s snout, built in medium nougat, makes use of the scarce vocabulary this color offers. I built the outer portion studs-out as much as I could to make it uniform with the rest of the bear’s fur texture.
I built Codey’s head on a turntable. The finished model retains a short range of motion, and Codey can turn his head from side to side slightly.
The last engineering problem I solved on this model was the slant of the neck. In the artwork Salesforce provided, Codey’s head tilts inquisitively to the side; this posture instantly conveys his helpful nature, so I knew I had to get it right on LEGO Codey. Inside his upper torso, a couple of studded beams are held at angle by Technic supports. Masking the slight and unorthodox angle this created with SNOT sections was tough, but not impossible.
The lightning bolt was actually the first piece of this statue I physically built on. It’s a maze of SNOT, slopes attached every which way, and some tenuous connections, but I feel really good about the clear, round-cornered bolt I emerged with.
Meanwhile, Codey’s arms were some of the final parts of his body I designed. While the bolt is essentially flat—and posed a straightforward obstacle—Codey’s arms are some of the most complexly sculpted bits of the build. I especially struggled figuring out how to build his left one, until I happened upon a way to tilt it slightly downward, achieving the gesture I needed perfectly.
From his midriff up, Codey is clad in a vest. I wanted the vest to appear to be a separate piece of clothing, not just a part of his anatomy, which presented a few interesting depth considerations. I needed to build this garment—which sits more or less flat against Codey’s fur—to follow the shape and taper of his torso, while also making it emerge slightly beyond the rest of his body.
Based on some other artworks of Codey, I decided I wanted the pockets to be slightly raised on top of the vest. My highest area of revision on the vest was where it starts to open up, and even flaps slightly away from Codey’s chest.
Codey’s vest was a little tricky to design, especially in the areas where it encircles the armholes. I had to use a combination of SNOT technique, standard studs-up sculpting, and even some bared smooth “walls” at the point where the arms slide on.
One of my favorite details of this whole model is Codey’s back buckle. I’ve used two sets of handlebars to make it, and while I experimented with ways to make the flat ends fit flush together, all solutions I happened upon interrupted the clean line of the strap, so I abandoned them.
The GPJ team and I had the idea to make Codey’s pedestal—a flat purple mass in the original artwork—into something a bit more appealing through the use of a technique called greebling. In essence, this entailed covering the sides with miscellaneous, complexly-shaped elements to lend a sense of texture and depth.
A majority of the greebling on the pedestal is purple-on-purple to ease the eye. However, I followed cues from the initial artwork to include points of azure and lavender, too. Initially, the azure curves weren’t disjointed, but critiques from Salesforce that they looked too cloud-like led me to the more abstract pattern you see now.
There were three possibilities available to TDX participants during their Twitter poll for the pedestal’s decor: the text “#TDX20,” a purple heart icon, or the Trailhead logo. The logo was definitely my favorite—since it was the most complex to build—so I’m pleased it won the vote!
I had to turn the flat Trailhead logo into a slightly 3D version of itself in order to house the angled construction of the mountains. While the final result is “pixelated,” I do think I did a good job nailing its color, essence, and badge-like shape.
Thanks for reading! If you have any other questions or thoughts about this model, feel free to leave them in the comments below. And, if you’re interested in getting a model like this yourself, reach out to me about commissioning one of your own!