The LEGO Movie character design

United States, 2014

Courtesy Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc

Object Objects and artworks On display
Photograph by Egmont Contreras

Long before Emmet declared “Everything is awesome!” in The LEGO Movie, people all over the world proved that you could create awesome stop-motion animation with LEGO bricks. In fact, ‘brickfilms’ were a huge influence on The LEGO Movie directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller and Animal Logic, the Australian studio who created the animation for the 2014 smash hit. Though the film is entirely computer generated (CG), the filmmakers wanted the realistic LEGO look of brickfilms, so they made sure the sets could physically be made from real bricks and the characters only moved the way LEGO does in real life. This authenticity extended to how the CG characters were designed - you’ll notice that Emmet, Lucy, Batman and the whole gang are covered in fingerprints, dust and scratches – just like real LEGO!

Curator Notes

Characters in The LEGO Movie went through multiple iterations as the plot developed. Fan favourite Unikitty started life as the eccentric character King Karl and was briefly conceived as the magical RainbowBumblePhonyPhant during a whiteboard brainstorm.

The Lego Movie trailer

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Collection

Not in ACMI's collection

On display until

1 November 2026

ACMI: Gallery 1

Credits

Production places
United States
Production dates
2014

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

182496

Curatorial section

The Story of the Moving Image → Moving Worlds → MW-05. Character Design → MW-05-C02

Collected

243241 times

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If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/100870--the-lego-movie-character-design/ |title=The LEGO Movie character design |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=12 June 2025 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}