I think most children enjoyed trying to recreate their favorite fictional vehicles out of LEGOs, or at least I certainly did. The Batmobile was no exception. However, I’m pretty sure someone making a 1:1 size replica of the Batmobile out of LEGO bricks is definitely above and beyond anything I ever tried to make at age 7. Artist Nathan Sawaya, over the last few months, has made a wonderful brick monument to the Dark Knight’s car, based on the Batmobile that Jim Lee designed on the spot during the SDCC. Three months and 500,000 LEGO blocks later, Sawaya finished his 18-foot long car. According to Sawaya, he put his own spin on the car as well
Jim did a great job of detailing out the wings and that there’d be the exhaust, and such like that…Then I put my own interpretation on it. For example, one of the things Jim wanted to do — he had Batman, and Robin sitting behind him in the Batmobile, but he had more of an open cockpit. I decided to fill it in. They’re still in there. You just can’t see them.
There’s so many details you can’t see just from pictures alone. The detail of the car is ludicrous, like bat-shaped spokes on the wheels, and not a single LEGO piece being carved.
Not everyone, but there’s going to be someone — and it’s usually probably someone this tall [steering wheel height],who will notice that, and it’s for them. It’s for those kids out there who spend the time looking at all the details of a piece like this. I want to reward them a little bit. If you’re really looking, you’re going to see little things like that.
The car and more of Sawaya’s work are going to tour the world as part of the The Art of the Brick: DC Comics art exhibit, and knowing this, Sawaya had to get this done in time for said exhibit, which was no easy task. The construction of this juggernaut of a LEGO car took 480 hours according to the artist.
This took over 480 hours, and I wish I could have spread them out over a longer period, but that was done in two months. That’s like 6-7 days every week, 10-12 hours every day, just living, breathing Batmobile, because this exhibition opens in November, and this has to go out on a boat. It’s being shipped by boat to Sydney, so I had a limited time frame to get it done…
It weighs several hundreds of pounds, I ended up buying a real jack that can lift three tons’ worth of weight, so I could lift it, just so I could get underneath it to make some tweaks. That was something new for me. I had to crawl under this whole thing, and I thought, “Wow. If I die under a LEGO sculpture… it’s kind of fitting in a way.”
The Art of the Brick: DC Comics will start it’s tour in Sydney, Australia this November. If you’d like to see more pictures of Nathan Sawaya’s fantastic LEGO works, you can visit his website BrickArtist.com.