Elie the Elephant

Every journey has a beginning, and the story of BrickHeadz began with this very small, friendly elephant called Elie. I’ve already described him in more detail in the post about the history of BrickHeadz and I encourage you to read that article first.

Here, however, I’d like to go further into the question of recreating this model accurately. There’s surprisingly little material about this figure and finding it was extremely difficult. It seems that nobody has ever made building instructions for this model based on the original, so we can only guess how the whole structure is put together. While I no longer have any doubts about the outer layers, the inside is a mystery, and as we know LEGO offers huge possibilities and many effects can be achieved in many ways. After hours of searching, looking at photos and interviews, and testing various concepts and building methods, I created a 3D model which, I believe, is the most likely way this elephant was built. The model is in .io format and can be opened with Studio.

I didn’t make instructions for this model because that really is a lot of work. I think any sufficiently determined fan can build the figure from the shared 3D model. I’m also attaching a list of all the pieces needed in XML format, ready to import, for example on bricklink.com.

Another fan has created the instructions we need and they’re available at this address (the instructions are a free download, but you have to give an e-mail address). I have downloaded them, but I’m not sharing them so as not to infringe any copyright. If the link ever stops working, please get in touch and I’ll be able to send you the file. The author also provides a parts list in XML format. Just note that the author didn’t avoid a mistake: he used flat pieces for the eyes instead of domed ones. To be honest, I don’t remember whether there are any other flaws in there; I worked on this material a few months before publishing the article, so I recommend building the model very carefully, comparing the instructions with my 3D model.

There’s also another variation on the elephant figure available online, and although it’s very charming, there are loads of differences compared with the original. I mention it because perhaps some of you would like to build the elephant in that form after all, or someone might mistakenly assume that this is what the original model looked like. You’ll find the instructions and parts list for that version here.

As a quick cheat sheet, I’m sharing an image with all the pieces I used in my model:

Very interestingly, on the whole Internet I found only two places where the back of Elie the elephant can be seen “officially”. The first is Austin’s Flickr and the second is a fragment of this interview (from 52 seconds).