BOISE, Idaho — It all started with a napkin sketch.
That's how Idaho LEGO Users Group President Greg Fastabend described the beginnings of a collaboration with some of the top companies in the entertainment industry.
Inspired by the first "Avatar" movie and the first trailer for the newest release, the group in July 2022 began to sketch and resketch what their million-piece project potentially could be.
More than 300 other LEGO groups entered to create the Avatar 2 LEGO project, and in October 2022, the Idaho LEGO User Group was chosen.
"This was a once in a lifetime opportunity." said Shawn Denowh, a designer with the Idaho LEGO Users Group.
The group went back and forth with Disney and Lightstorm until they came to agreement with something that perfectly represented the Pandora World of Avatar.
Then, it was time to start putting all the pieces together.
LEGO parts were slowly but surely coming in. With LEGO as the main sponsor of this project, they provided almost all of the pieces. However, the group had to put together some of their own bricks for ideal color schemes.
It was not until the beginning of February that the group began to put together all the pieces. Fastaband said that just sorting the LEGO pieces was very much a time-consuming part of the project.
The team was originally supposed to have more than six months to finish this project. They were only given three — the beginning of February to the end of April.
The backdrop of this sculpture has more than 200,000 pieces. There are many thoughtful parts in this work of art, Including a running LEGO waterfall and even 20 hidden Idaho shapes built in.
All in all, more than 1 million LEGO pieces are incorporated into this massive LEGO sculpture!
The Idaho LEGO User Group is excited to share its work with people around the world.
The Avatar LEGO piece will be on display for a few months at Bricks & MiniFigs in Boise before the group goes on to showcase the project elsewhere.
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