“R” is for Rex… T-Rex!

“R” was another hard letter for me to do. In fact, it was one of the hardest. Whereas many of my other posts for this year’s A-to-Z Challenge were made months in advance, this post was made on Sunday night. As in this past Sunday. Well, that is not entirely true. The photo shoot and development of the final product took place on Sunday night. The actual set design took me weeks to complete. Even then, I spent a long time jumping from idea to idea when it came to actually making a LEGO-fied poster.

Jurassic Park was my all time favorite book and movie growing up, so I had to incorporate it into the challenge somehow. I could have done “raptor”. I could have even reorganized everything and done “J” for Jurassic Park. But, as I mentioned before, it took me a while to come up with an idea for “R”, so by the end, I figured “anything goes, as long as it has an R in it!” I also decided to go with “Rex” because of that iconic scene where the T-rex breaks out of its paddock. That scene just blew me away when I first saw this film in theaters. I was just awe-struck. It’s amazing that Jurassic Park is now 25 years old, and those effects still hold up.

As you might have guessed, today’s LEGO-fied post is not a recreation of a poster. It is actually the recreation of that amazing scene from the movie when the power goes out, and the T-rex escapes. I have the LEGO T-rex that came out with the Jurassic World sets a couple of years ago (you can click here to read my review of the set). Building the fence and throwing a few house plants behind it for effect was pretty easy. What was really hard was building the Jurassic Park Ford Explorer. LEGO never produced the Ford Explorer as a set. So, this was completely a custom job. It was such an undertaking that I will make a full post just on the creation of that car later. I also did not have enough bricks in the correct colors to make two Explorers, so I had to photograph the same scene from the same angle twice, each time with the car in a different position. I then stitched the images together in Photoshop.

I really loved the Jurassic World theme. LEGO Dinosaurs have made for some of my most enjoyed photography projects over the last couple of years. I am super excited that the sequel to Jurassic World is coming out this summer simply because it means more LEGO dinosaur sets! The sets were actually released online at the LEGO store earlier this month.

Do you have Jurassic Park/World or LEGO dinosaur stories you’d like to share? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below. This post was made as part of the April A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, you can click here to visit the official site for more information.

Until next time!

-Tom