Tuesday, October 09, 2012

The Brick Bible

For about ten years now, The Brick Testament website has been online, with sometimes amusing, sometimes poignant illustrations of Biblical scenes.  The author, Brendan Powell Smith, has now produced a comic book version of the Bible using his lego illustrations.  The Old Testament was released last year and now he has completed work on the New Testament.  Time Magazine has an enjoyable interview with the author:

The Brick Bible: Turning Jesus Stories into Lego Scenes
By TIM NEWCOMB

All worth reading, but one particular highlight:
How do you pick out a Lego Jesus?
It is interesting to see the number and variety of Lego faces and hair that have really exploded since I started working on this 10 years ago. There was just one smiley face until the mid-90s, so starting in 2001 it was a little limited. When creating God and Jesus, I just looked at using Star Wars and Harry Potter [sets]. Jesus is Qui-Gon Jinn and the robe is an Obi Wan Kenobi robe. God was a tricky one. I had a white beard from a medieval set, stern looking eyebrows from a samurai master set and a white torso and flowing white robe. For God’s hair—at the time I didn’t have any white hairpieces and I didn’t think God would look right bald—I ended up taking a white space helmet and carving the bangs for hairline and that became God’s hair.
A footnote: British readers of the article will be struck by a difference between American English "legos" and British English plural "lego".


3 comments:

Michael said...

Excellent. British readers might also need the heads up that 'bangs' are fringes.

Mark Goodacre said...

Ah yes, good point.

Jens Knudsen (Sili) said...

Fascinating. This seems to be the go-to version for atheists, but it's interesting to learn that faithful gain from it as well.