Concept design, brand consistency and visual brief support for the tv show 6 seasons (2017-2022), character design, world building, content/product alignment, comics art direction, building instructions innovation support, video editing, packaging mock-ups, 3d texturing - layout and renderings for selling in and marketing support were most of my tasks working in the LEGO Friends team. In this project showcase I will focus mostly on the Tv Show work.
This is how the LEGO Friends main 5 characters looked like in the 3D animation Tv Show before the 2018 reboot.
And this is how the LEGO Friends main 5 characters looked like in the 3D animation Tv Show after the 2018 reboot I was fortunate to be part of! The 2D concepts we started from were designed by Loish. It was super fun to work on improving the character appeal starting from 2D and pushing it to 3D. I just helped as much as I could with sketches, traditional clay sculpts and zBrush sculpts, Photoshop paint-overs to support the showrunners in translating the 2D concepts into 3D characters. I also supported the Art Direction of the show with mood-boards and visual research on character stylization, environment stylization and design, LEGO product representation etc. After the first season produced by M2, which won about 7 animation awards , I continued until 2021 to help with concept art, visual feedback, brand consistency, script continuity and more to the continuing seasons (2019, 2020, 2021 and some pre-production work for 2022).
For 2021 I had a modest character design contribution to redesigning the main outfits of the 5 Friends under the guidance of the Creative Lead at the time Fenella Charity. They were later adapted to both product, as mini-doll designs by the Graphic Design team and as 3D characters for the Tv Show by M2 Animation Studio.
I hand sculpted this hairstyle from the LEGO Friends TV Show with Super Sculpey polymer clay to propose a wig update for Olivia character mini-doll. Also fun fact, I loved participating in the full design process in both product and content (tv show) sometimes contributing even with story ideas: the episodes where we meet Olivia’s father started out with a story idea written on a post-it: “What if the reason we don’t see Olivia’s dad too often, is due to his long missions as an astronaut on the space station?”
