LEGO DREAMZzz is a brand new story-driven theme that celebrates the power of creativity – but what is it all about? What’s with the giant bunny? How do you make dreams real? Design Director Cerim Manovi and Senior Creative Manager Tommy Andreasen explain what LEGO DREAMZzz is all about in this exclusive interview.
On May 15, 10 episodes of LEGO DREAMZzz will be available to watch on streaming platforms and will introduce the world of dreaming to audiences worldwide. Products will follow in August along with 10 additional episodes. There’s an in-depth feature exploring the creation of the theme in Issue 103 of Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine, available to buy now.
To find out what this is all about, Blocks magazine sat down with Design Director Cerim Manovi and Senior Creative Manager Tommy Andreasen.
What is LEGO DREAMZzz all about?
Cerim: It takes the power of imagination and creativity and it basically combines it with a great adventure.
Tommy: Fundamentally, LEGO DREAMZzz is a story set in reality, it happens in the real world. But then there’s also the fact that dreams are actually real. When you sleep, you go into the dream world. And this is what our characters discover; the dream world is real, you can go in there and become a hero.
What made DREAMZzz a great choice for a new LEGO theme?
Tommy: What we wanted to do with DREAMZzz was to specifically make something that appeals very, very broadly; everyone dreams, old people dream, young people dream. So we thought this was a very, very good theme to explore. It also allows for a lot of very, very fun and crazy creativity that wouldn’t belong anywhere else.
Cerim: I can second that, because it’s more the, the fun and crazy-tivity of it all that we can do here. I I worked a long time on NINJAGO. And there’s things that you carry on just ideas, concepts, development processes, but this one helped to shake it up a bit.
How will the theme encourage creativity and breaking out beyond the instructions?
Cerim: One part is, of course, how you how you see your environment, how you see what’s going on around you, and how you then can use these parts to create something new. I think that is, that is something. The other part is having this guided creativity process and the choice process, it helps the kids to push in that way and to take away the fear of a white canvas and hopefully inspire them to build more and be creative with the bricks.
Tommy: I think dreams is sort of a starting point. And the key word here is really inspiration. We hope that this is something that will help inspire kids to explore some of the stuff that you see in the show and in the toys, but even start to apply their own creativity to it and basically go nuts with all those ideas that you may think may not work. But there’s a quality to exploration and that’s what we see the characters in the TV show do. And that’s what we hope that people will be inspired by.
Do each of you have a character that you most identify with in LEGO DREAMZzz?
Tommy: We have some pretty complex characters. They have strengths, weaknesses, aspirations, they have creative passions. So I tend to flip flop between different ones because Mateo’s the illustrator, so he’s like me, relatable to me, but then Izzie has that bubbling, impulsive personality that I find very inspiring. And then Zoe has the cool factor. So you can sort of pick up different character traits and identify with them in different ways or aspire to be like them.
Cerim: We split our soul into many different fractions.
If you guys could go to any realm in the dream world, which would you most like to go to?
Cerim: I mean, the fantasy realm is super inspiring just to go there. I love the video game realm because I love video games, so of course I would like to go there. There’s so many different places.
Tommy: And there’s so many different places you could come up with that we haven’t explored. But the idea of going into the candy realm or the fast food realm and just munch down a whole bunch of dream foods where the calories don’t count. I think that’s, that’s very, that’s very aspirational.
To get much more depth – to find out where the concept came from, how it evolved, the thinking that went into it, how the products were designed… you’ll need to get Issue 103 of Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine. It includes our special feature inside the development of LEGO DREAMZzz and is packed with beautiful concept art created by the team.
