Backwoods Hoodie
Duration
approx. 1 month
Created in
2024
Piece Count
approx. 15,000
Dimensions
18.3” x 37.8 ” x 40.6”
I was able to work with the George J. Ryan Middle School in Queens, NY, to highlight their National Blue Ribbon School status from 2018 into LEGO form. The idea here was to faithfully recreate the National Blue Ribbon seal as closely as possible, which required some inventive parts usage.
In order to accurately represent the 13 arrows (that represent the United States’ 13 colonies) in the eagle’s right claw, there aren’t 13 shafts, but there are 13 heads to create that optical illusion.
Technic panels were used as leaves.
Minifig surfboards were used for the eagle’s tail.
A brown rigid hose was used to capture the curvature of the wing and get as many feathers in with curved slopes.
In order to accurately represent the glory above the eagle’s head, I used blue hinges to achieve the shape present in the real seal, and round tiles in the place of the 13 stars inside of the glory.
Lettering with LEGO Bricks
When approaching the design of the Backwoods logo on the hoodie, not only was it a challenge to capture the curvature of the emblem across multiple planes, it was also important to design it at a scale to where the letterforms would have enough space and be differentiated visually.
I started with digitally scaling it to a place where I felt comfortable building out the logo, but in my first pass, the ‘A’, ‘K’, and ‘W’ weren’t clear enough and didn’t represent the original logo well - and here’s where LEGO math comes in handy!
5 stacked plates equals 2 studs wide, so I used that formula to better capture those aforementioned letters and the spacing around them. Yes, it sacrificed the sturdiness of the build a little bit, but in exchange for a more accurate design, I’ll take it 10 times out of 10. When sharing this update with the client, they were very happy with it.
