Designer insight: Theo Bonner
Posted by Huwbot,
Many LEGO set designers use our BrickLists feature to maintain a list of the sets they've worked on and often provide interesting insights about their involvement.
Once a week we publish an entry from one of their lists on the home page to increase awareness of this information and to encourage more designers to create them.
Theo Bonner wrote this about their work on 71748 Catamaran Sea Battle:
I had the privilege of working on this set with my mentor Leonardo Francisco Lopez (leo026). I was tasked with the design of Kai's catamaran, with the goal of creating a speedboat that transforms into a catamaran complete with shooters and a sail. The function ended up taking a month to figure out cleanly, and I'm pretty happy with the final result! Credit goes to Niek van Slagmaat (toothdominoes) for the clever solution for angling the catamaran outriders. Triangles, man!
Graphic design was done by Angel Grau.
Building instructions were done by Brian Kristoffersen.
EDIT: I forgot to mention a fun detail that many people probably won't notice but I was quite proud of: when the catamaran has its pontoons extended, the flame-yellow flag pieces line up and Angel designed stickers for them that align too!
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10 comments on this article
This set does look awesome. I like the "sea" theme for Ninjago in general but the boat designs here are great.
I think Theo did a fantastic job for Lloyd's Jungle Bike being his first ever set!
I have this set. The excellent design pulled me in. Well done.
However, I've yet to put it together. Shame.
I also really enjoyed the sea serpent in 71755 Temple of the Endless Sea. The Dreamzz stuff looks really interesting. I'm glad to see there'll be polybags. Should be fun.
I appreciate the darker turn in the design of 41755 Nova's Room. We've all been speculating about the skull under glass in her room.
Keep up the good work.
I have 2 of this set but waiting to be built. This was one of the top ninjago waves imo.
Some of these sets are exceptionally good. I don’t have the catamaran and temple due to their prices, but they both stood out to me as unique and really cool. I’m excited to see similar designs in the future!
Not got any of the models to date, but Dreamzzz is going to change that... absolutely bonkerzzz!
@StyleCounselor said:
"I appreciate the darker turn in the design of 41755 Nova's Room. We've all been speculating about the skull under glass in her room."
Theo has confirmed that that was an Alpha Team reference.
@StyleCounselor said:
"I appreciate the darker turn in the design of 41755 Nova's Room. "
The skull certainly is quite something different you'd expect from friends.
And as far as literally "darker" colors go, it's a very well done color scheme, the Aqua and Vibrant Yellow are very bright on their own but in this set there's a very well thought out contrast of colors.
Also a nice suggestion of competitive elements with the pc and laptop playing the game against eachother (or perhaps a little bit of "matchfixing" during a live stream)
@TheoBonner said:
"Triangles, man!"
Triangles-Man hates Particles-Man.
Ninjago meets Moana