Beast Mode: Building LEGO Animals with AI Inspiration

The relationship between LEGO MOCs and AI is a knotty one (one we’ve already looked into here at BrickNerd more than once!).

lego-ish dragon designed with playground ai

But in this article, instead of tackling the general ethics of AI or the possibility of it taking over the LEGO MOCing community, I’d like to explore something far more niche—the use of AI as a tool for a very specific sort of MOC, one that many of us often struggle with: brick-built animals.

Yes, some people seem to have an innate talent for it, but for most of us, looking at something like a fox or a horse and trying to think where to start snapping the bricks together is enough to produce a migraine. Their shapes are so organic, bending and blending every which way with a degree of smoothness you can only drool over, and when it comes to LEGO, it seems to require some crazy math or ingenious part usage to pull off in a MOC.

So today, I begin a new MOC trying to build what AI helps inspire—which is far more complicated than you might imagine.

Intelligent Symbiosis or an Artificial Anomaly?

Here are some of my early attempts at brick-built… let’s call them creatures. To be fair, these were built quite a few years ago and I’m pretty sure I could do better now but come on, eyeballing proportions on this kind of thing is just hard!

Nothing seems to be conveniently shaped, nothing looks exactly like a 2x4 brick, or hey, almost any LEGO brick at all! I’ll be honest – I would have built a lot more LEGO animals by now if it weren’t for that builder’s block at the beginning that is just so hard to get over. Where do you even start on something like that?

It was actually this picture below featured a BrickNerd article that first caught my attention. I mean, it’s obviously not LEGO if you know your parts, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s scary good!

A bit of experimenting later, and I had an idea starting to take definite form in my brain – how about using AI to transform those smooth organic shapes into rough LEGO-ish bits, and then use that as a launching pad for building a real LEGO, brick-built animal?

Understanding the limits and components of LEGO is definitely beyond AI’s reach right at the moment, but turning almost anything into something that looks like it was made out of little plastic parts? That’s definitely achievable.

If you’ve been in the LEGO community for a decent amount of time, the concept probably sounds familiar. We’ve been doing this sort of thing as a community for quite a while in a different niche: mosaics. With a few exceptions, almost all mosaic builders first use some computer program or another to pixelate their inspiration picture, maybe even convert the result into the colors of the LEGO palette, and then use that to produce their masterpieces.

While many LEGO mosaic builders will give their builds a lot of personal touches or just use some insane techniques to come up with something phenomenally breathtaking, it still usually comes back to using modern technology as a stepping stone to get started. My thought? What if we were to take this same approach to brick-building LEGO animals? And because castle and pirate themes are my thing, why not try it out with a dragon?

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After creating a few inspirational images, it was time to get building.

We’re Building With Bricks Now

So the first thing to notice is that this approach definitely took me out of my usual, polished building style where each part fits neatly into the place where it clearly belongs and pushed me to the corners of my comfort zone. I started with the snout.

Funnily, I actually find the style looking a lot more like my brother’s than my own. When it comes to things like this (or somehow to Navarre’s builds in general!), it’s almost more like you’re sculpting with bricks than building.

The tricky part is knowing where not to get bogged down in the details of trying to find the very best way to match the shapes the AI came up with and where it actually does matter! I’ve been sticking to the inspiration photos pretty faithfully and enjoying the crazy connections and shapes that it’s been leading me to, as I wanted to give this experiment as fair a trial as possible.

Would I ever build this way without the inspirational photos? Never in a million years. But what is taking shape looks more organic than anything I have ever built before. And it is taking all my years of experience building with LEGO, knowing what parts are available in what colors, what elements exist with specific shaping, and what SNOT and other connections are possible ar different angles.

I’m even emulating the setting and mood with some menacing lights in the eye and the nostrils.

The other thing to notice is that using an inspirational picture like this with all sorts of pseudo-LEGO shapes opens up a world of possibilities for all sorts of NPU… although whether it should actually be called that in a context where even using a 2x2 tile somehow seems like NPU is a good question! See if you can spot some of the most unexpected parts in this build so far!

Only the Beginning

At the moment (and at the end of this article), this build and the challenge that I’m tackling with it are still in progress. It is taking much longer than I anticipated. There are some wild angles to attach, plenty more unrealistic connections, and tricky areas to fill, and then I’ve got to set the scene with some epic medieval or pirate-y goodness! Attaching this eye while concealing the handles is the next challenge on my plate, and then securing the lower jaw will definitely be exciting! But I’ll make sure to bring you along on the journey.

What do you think? Will it end up a masterpiece or a complete failure? Are you eager to explore the possibilities for using this method to brick-build creatures or maybe even to attempt the technique for the human face? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below and will be sure to give this approach another look when I’ve finished the MOC!

Would you use AI as inspiration to build a physical LEGO MOC? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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