If you’ve been to the Nintendo World Store in New York, you may have noticed a Nintendo DSi built entirely of LEGO pieces. We got in contact with the artist of this sculpture to ask him a few questions. Don’t forget to check out his website after reading where you can see all the different works he’s produced.
NintendoGal.com: How many man hours did it take to complete this project from start to finish? How much of that was just putting it together?
Sean Kenney: The sculpture took about 200 hours to design and build, and was done over the course of about 2 weeks together with two of my assistants. It contains 51,324 LEGO pieces, all of which are available in regular off-the-shelf LEGO products. (Yes, kids, you too can do this at home!) 
The final sculpture has giant-sized versions of every detail, from the screws on the battery cover to the electrical contacts in the power port. The tiny SD card slot is over a foot tall!
About 20 hours was design work, folded in throughout the entire construction process. Normally I spend longer on design than on construction, but the compressed timeline forced me to design-on-the-fly! Before the project started, I gathered as many photographs of the DSi as I could, and then used graph paper to plan out the basic shape and size and all the visual elements like printed lettering, buttons, slots, and so on. Eventually Nintendo mailed me a real DSi and I took hundreds of measurements, from the depth of the buttons to the width of the tiny bevel around the edges. I’d build prototypes of different areas (a camera lens, a button, some text, etc) to see how it would look, often taking them apart and rebuilding them over & over. When I finally would have a button, port, plug, or icon that I liked, I’d rebuild it with glue and place it onto the rest of the sculpture.
NG: Was this completed in the typical amount of time it generally takes you for a commission?
SK: This project was done on an incredibly tight timeframe. I personally put in about 180 of the over 200 hours, in only 14 days; it was a lot of long nights and weekend work to get it done in time. My assistants put in another 38 hours. The people at Nintendo of America and at The LEGO Group were also wonderful and helped service my needs at light-speed!
NG: What tools do you use to do these projects?
SK: All the LEGO pieces are snapped together one-by-one, just like you used to do when you were a kid… there are no tricks or secrets. That said, I do glue the pieces as I place them down, so the sculpture can withstand shipping and the inevitable "curious fingers" during public display. I sometimes use a rubber mallet or compression grips to press together the LEGO bricks if I’m working in a tight space. And I use a LEGO "brick separator" to pry apart LEGO pieces once they’ve been pressed in place. (Or a set of pliers once they’ve been glued!) I also make my own LEGO-shaped graph paper for drawing out my ideas.
I don’t use computers to plan out my sculptures… it’s far too complex, and — if you ask me — it takes all the fun out of it! I like to build the "old fashioned" way, just by sitting down with my LEGO pieces (and maybe a photograph or two of whatever I’m building) and just see where it takes me.
The sculpture is very thin (50cm deep), is 2m tall, and weighs 125kg. To keep such a thin, heavy sculpture upright and stable, I built it around a custom steel skeleton. It is, after all, on public display and even though it’s glued you don’t want it to fall over and flatten anyone.
NG: In other interviews you mention having to special order through LEGO for the bricks, do you go through a different process than most would for buying through them?
SK: As a LEGO Certified Professional, I have a special relationship with The LEGO Group. I don’t get any freebees, though … I have to buy all my LEGO pieces. But The LEGO Group is glad to let me order in bulk. Ordering in bulk is a very manual process that involves looking through grids of data and talking with people at their warehouses in Europe, so placing orders is slower than, say, ordering from an e-commerce site. But the people at The LEGO Group are amazing and they knew I was on a tight deadline; they managed to get 16 crates of light blue LEGO pieces shipped from Europe to my studio in New York in only a matter of a few days! Even the shipping people were amazing… one dispatcher drove his personal SUV to customs at Newark Airport, put as much as he could fit into his car, and drove it straight to my studio!
NG: Is there any particular portion of the piece that you’re fond and/or proud of?
SK: I love all the tiny details, like the text, markings, plugs, ports, and screws. They were a lot of fun to design and build. My favorite feature is the SD Card slot, which simulates the panel door on the side of the DSi. The lettering and icons are built using lots of really tiny LEGO pieces, to simulate beveling into the surface of the sculpture. Everything is all one color, so the shadows and depth allow you to see the shapes as they really are. I think it came out very cool.
NG: Are you a fan of Nintendo or gaming at all?
SK: I used to play a lot of video games when I was younger … I have fond memories of time spent with Mario and Duck Hunt on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. (And, going back further, I did play a fair amount of Pac Man, Space Invaders, and Centipede in my youth!) But lately my LEGO work takes up all of my available time, so video games have had to take a back seat to my other activities. When I do free time I enjoy walking around New York City or taking time off to travel around the world. Although I’ve been playing a lot of iPod solitaire lately…
NG: Since you got a Nintendo DSi, what are some thoughts you have about it?
SK: I was so busy building the LEGO sculpture of the DSi that I didn’t even get to play with the real DSi! I only ever turned the DSi on once… to see what color the different lights lit up! Perhaps now I’ll have some time to actually use it.
NintendoGal.com would like to thanks Sean Kenney very much for taking the time to answer our questions! Be sure to check out his website.
