Floating islands are nothing new. What’s more, they’ve consistently captured the imagination of some of the biggest names in LEGO MOCing. Nannan Zhang and Tyler Clites teamed up for Aurora back in 2014; inspired by them, Steven Erickson spearheaded InnovaLUG’s Isles of Aura.

Both of these collaborations developed a bit of story around the floating island concept—Isles of Aura even had a soundtrack—but they pale in comparison to the ambitious plans behind a new floating island project. Greg Tull (yet another name from LEGO Masters!) is bringing his stop-motion expertise to Wandering Skies, and the team’s ambition goes far beyond a series of collaborative builds or even an RPG (Role-Playing-Game). Wandering Skies is meant to become a TV show!

I don’t know about you, but seeing something this ambitious come from the MOCing community feels kind of exciting to me. I don’t know where it will go, but the fact that it’s being tried is pretty special.

So without further ado, let’s ask the Wandering Skies team some questions, and hear about the place they’re creating, the plans they have for it, and the process that’s brought them here!

Let’s begin at the beginning—What is Wandering Skies?

WS: From the swirling terror of the Northman's Maelstrom to the wild islands of the south. From the grand Imperial City in the east to the colorful Low Islander and stony Outcast Territories of the west. From the cold timber islands and ice-covered peaks in the high altitudes to the toxic marshes of the low altitude islands buried beneath the Smog-line—this is the world of Rebecca and Ash Walker. A world of breathtaking beauty and high-flying adventure, a world of deep sorrow and harsh realities. Welcome to Wandering Skies!

Wandering Skies is a stop motion TV series set in a steampunk world of floating islands. We follow a single mother, Rebecca Walker, and her Asperger’s son, Ash, as they fight for survival in a dangerous world dominated by rival factions. Ours is a show of epic proportions, inspired by the kind of complex storytelling in stories such as Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Up. Over the course of 4 seasons, we will take our audience on a roller coaster ride of explosive action, high stakes, and brickfilm on a scale that has never been seen before.

With 4 seasons of at least 8 episodes per season, the eventual runtime for Wandering Skies will stack up to over 12 hours, which is even longer than the runtime for the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy. For the past 2+ years, we have been quietly building our world. During that time, we have developed cultures and world history, created concept art and models, and assembled a rock-solid team.

In runtime, scope, worldbuilding, sets, and cinematic quality, Wandering Skies will blow any previous expectations for brickfilm out of the water and straight into the sky! Our entire show will be created with both physical LEGO bricks and digital models designed in Stud.io. In a world of media that largely overlooks or misunderstands the LEGO community, Wandering Skies is created by LEGO people, for LEGO people.

Our director, Greg Tull—a brickfilm legend and LEGO Masters US Season 3 contestant—has been making epic stop motions for over 14 years via his studio, Monitogo Studios.

WS: “Exploring stop motion from the tender age of 14, through our feature film Bound, then Atlas, and now on to Wandering Skies is what has led to this point,” Greg says. Bound ran for 45 minutes and featured 200K pieces in 65 sets. Atlas only had a runtime of 5:40, but it raised the bar higher in terms of cinematic quality.

“If Bound was a 3 on the scale of difficulty and wow factor, Wandering Skies would be a 9. What we mean is scale, worldbuilding, complexity, and visual feasting will be on an entirely different level. We’re talking about entire cities in the sky, chains of islands, dozens of ships, and crowds of minifigs. What we want is to elevate the brickfilm genre once again—bringing it to its true potential as a legitimate commercial medium.”

What we are trying here hasn’t been done before. We are attempting to tell a story in an underappreciated genre, on a bigger scale, all while using a medium that large studios have mostly overlooked. But we know it’s possible, and we cannot wait to share Wandering Skies with the world!

**Floating islands have been popular among the LEGO community for a while now—What’s unique about Wandering Skies?**

WS: We stand on the shoulders of the “greats” who are the foundations of this genre. Floating islands have been done in unique ways by various builders, but it was really Steven Erickson (Brother Steven) who popularized them. He was inspired by the gorgeous “Aurora” display created by Tyler Clites and Nannan Zhang. From that inspiration, he eventually created the world “Isles of Aura” as a collaborative work with InnovaLUG. Steven has done a great deal to bring the concept of floating islands into the spotlight, including winning a Season 2 episode of LEGO Masters US with a floating island build. We actually referenced many “Isles of Aura” builds as concept inspiration in the early days of forming the idea and “look” for Wandering Skies. Since then, Steven has come aboard Wandering Skies as a core member of our creative team. And he’s stoked about the show.

“I am extremely excited to see a very underdeveloped theme pushed more into the spotlight, as well as to see brickfilming become more mainstream.”

Many floating island builds have been smaller, more contained builds, while the world of Wandering Skies is so big it would take days to fly from one side to the other. And audiences will visually experience that expansiveness in the show. We want to immerse our audience in a large and fully developed world like other franchises such as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

Grace Gidman, our show’s head writer, has taken this big vision to heart: “As a writer, my job is to tell an amazing story that fully engages the unique world we have created. Sometimes I get these big ideas but then I hesitate….what if we can’t pull them off with LEGO? Is my idea TOO big? I’m not a builder myself, so I don’t always know what is or isn’t possible. And yet, almost every time I have taken an idea to Greg, his only reply is ‘do it.’ And that pretty much sums up the philosophy we operate by when creating for Wandering Skies.”

Another reason we chose floating islands is that they provide an effective way to create a sense of distance without breaking the bank on time, money, or space. Many background models, if physically built, could be the size of a room and still only represent a few miles of world distance. In the case of Wandering Skies, the background of our story is largely sky, clouds, and islands. These are self-contained builds, filmed on bluescreen or rendered on a transparent backdrop, so we only have to edit them together in the right orientation and lighting for the given scene. Even though we will still need to build some large backgrounds, we’re able to put more of our time and money towards the detailed builds focused on in the forefront. Audiences will get to have a huge experience within this genre without it costing us an arm and a leg.

Take a moment and imagine every floating island build that you’ve ever seen that captured your imagination—now imagine that this same build is no longer static but instead comes to life with light, sound, and emotion. Picture a city street alive with people. Imagine explosive air battles, fierce thunderstorms, and glorious sunsets. See yourself among the clouds where life is beautiful one moment, deadly the next. This is the experience we cannot wait to give audiences with Wandering Skies, and this is how we plan to elevate the genre of floating islands and bring it to life in a whole new way.

How are you making a LEGO world of floating islands look real?

WS: The LEGO Movie brought that delightful sense of a “play world come alive”, but they still made the entire movie with CGI animation—they didn’t have to play by the rules of the LEGO system or problem-solve the way MOCers do. We are looking to capture the same joy and wonder that The LEGO Movie brought, along with the sense of space, depth, and texture, but we will do it with real LEGO bricks (as well as some digital models.)

Showing scale (distance and depth) is one of the primary ways we make Wandering Skies feel real. In order to accomplish that, we create our scenes in three layers: foreground, middle ground, and background. “When you see this show, you will watch through the eyes of characters looking off to distant horizons, each detail realized from where they are, all the way to the far places they can see,” Greg says.

Foreground builds are where we will put our main details and design. This layer is where all of the physical stop motion will take place. The builds in the foreground are important because they are what our audience will focus on the most.

Midground helps fill out the foreground layer and blends it with the background. The midground will be a mixture of both physical and digital set pieces, depending on the scene. The background is where most of our digital builds will be. Doing our background layers digitally helps with cost, time, and headaches. Digital islands and clouds are used to show distance and depth all while maintaining the brick medium. These islands are usually designed in micro-scale as well so that the build will appear even bigger in the background. In every case, it is important to us to ensure that the stop motion “reality” is not broken. Our sets will be real when they need to be, and digital when it will not matter.

Lighting is also essential to making our world feel real. Since each scene contains multiple elements, lighting must be consistent to make it believable. Physical models are lit with an array of different lights, from creating the “sun” down to the soft glow of a lantern. Digital builds are lit digitally, and the two are blended together in post-production editing.

**Can you tell us about some of the unique challenges that come with building Wandering Skies?**

WS: Creating full background layers requires an airshipload of micro-scale islands. Gareth Gidman (Gareth Builds), one of our designers, has been burning plastic to create these: “Building micro islands is an important job. However, it’s not always fun, and you get to a level of extreme monotony that comes after digitally building a 45K-piece boulder in the sky. SO….MUCH….DIGITAL….ROCKWORK…!”

WS: Many of our physical models are also digitally designed before they are assembled. Building a model digitally that will become a stable physical model also has its challenges, according to Graham Gidman (Graham the Builder), who is our lead designer: “Digital builds are not impacted by gravity, so strength testing can be a bit tricky. I have had to throw together physical test models that mirror the digital version in size and weight to see if things are stable. I tried knocking into an outcropping of rockwork ‘by accident’ to see if it would hold. It did not hold (it also kinda hurt), but I did learn that the rockwork needed more support.”

Stability is absolutely essential in stop motion. It is disastrous if a build breaks during animation, so we sometimes over-engineer to avoid that situation. Modularity is another unique approach that we’ve taken. Many of our builds are modular so that we can reuse work to save us time and money. It began with the very first Wandering Skies model to be built, a floating island by Graham.

WS: “I actually didn’t begin with modularity in mind, it was just the best way to attach the rockwork onto the frame. Once I got my brain on it though, I kept using it for the rest of the build and others since.”

His second island carried modularity even further. It has a base frame with 30 chunks of removable rockwork, these follow a predetermined size and pattern, each having multiple points of connection. This system can be rearranged to make rockwork on at least another 16 islands.

WS: Functionality also has to be considered. Our builders are used to building models to post online or take to a convention, where functionality isn’t always a factor. Doors, for instance, require functionality in stop motion that’s unnecessary in the MOCing world. For this particular build, we had to design a door with half-plate gaps to have room to open.

What’s the development process behind the characters?

WS: Our characters are a huge focus, so all main and secondary characters will be custom designed.

First, Grace drafts a rough concept of what each character should look like based on their personality, occupation, and cultural alliances. Next, our character artist—Melissa Denno—translates the design into a fully developed minifigure style that will be printed into a custom figure.

WS: All of the hairpieces and some of the accessories are regular LEGO parts. We have worked very hard to stay within the limitations and expectations of the LEGO style and system, while at the same time designing a completely new aesthetic within those creative boundaries. What has emerged from that process is a unique, entirely Wandering Skies “look” and “feel”, that carries our story even further.

**Moving on to worldbuilding, what does the team have planned for the finer details of Wandering Skies and where have you gotten your inspiration?**

WS: Wandering Skies is a very strange beast of a show. In terms of character style and overall aesthetic, our story “feels” more Colonial Era with swashbucklers and tricorn hats, while the coal-powered technology is more in line with what you would expect from 18th-19th century Europe. We’ve essentially created a scrapbook where we borrowed influences from multiple cultures and eras and then dropped them into a shared world of steampunk technology, floating islands, and airships.

The Imperials—drawing inspiration from France and England—are the current power players. The Imperial City is populated by tens of thousands of people from multiple economic classes. Imperial culture is several hundred years old, rigidly regulated, and carefully guarded by an organized navy. All of these things can be good or bad depending upon what class you are born into. The Imperial City is stunningly beautiful… in some parts.

“The Imperial City is massive, beautiful, and certainly interesting to us as creators and viewers; but the city itself is a contrast of rich and poor, full of corruption, and it does feature large amounts of dark, damp, and dreary,” Graham explains.

The Imperial City is definitely an awe-inspiring experience at first glance. But as we dig deeper into the city and experience the culture and ideology of especially the high-ranking Imperials, we start to see the internal rot. In attitude, the Imperial City is similar to the Star Wars planet Coruscant, a place where you have the rich living in high luxury and sunshine while they tower over the dark and low places where the poorer classes eke out an existence. Graham’s excitement over the city is one that many fellow LEGO builders are likely to share.

“Imagine the layering of Coruscant mixed with the haphazard style of Lake-town. This type of building is already a huge thing in the LEGO community. We just get to incorporate many of these ideas and concepts into a single city at an immense scale.”

Other cultures, such as the Low Islanders—inspired by Irish and Eastern European cultures—have a much more relaxed approach to life. The Low Islanders are family-centric and love to celebrate life with music, food, and colors. Some of the most beautiful scenes and whimsical moments in our show happen among the Low Islander Territories. Grace feels right at home in the Low Islander culture.

“I love writing the Low Islanders and could easily get lost in their part of the world. The Low Islanders are almost the complete opposites of the Imperials, a fact that causes the Imperials to look down on them. There are pros and cons to both cultures, and we really dig into the tension and conflict these differences create.”

WS: The Outcasts—inspired by Scottish clans—are more focused on practicality, clan identity, and physical strength. While the Outcasts are not featured prominently in Season 1, their influence is still felt upon the world in both story and design style, and they will become a powerful part of future seasons.

Despite the unique characteristics of these cultures, they have a few things in common. Everyone relies upon coal to heat their homes and power their airships. And every culture requires some similar design modifications to facilitate everyday living, regardless of style.

Water collection is an excellent example of this—due to the lack of groundwater, the people in Wandering Skies have to collect water from the sky. For instance, there might be a beautiful Imperial cathedral that also has a giant water collection basin on its roof, a Low Islander tavern with an intricate gutter system that runs into pipes below the street, or a stone Outcast cottage with a single gutter and a rain barrel.

All of the great stories have this shared element of being able to “get lost” in them. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or The Chronicles of Narnia; these worlds feel real because they’ve had so much work put into world development, and fans love to wander those universes. We’re incredibly proud of the time we’ve put into making Wandering Skies feel culturally real and lived in, and we want people to jump in and start exploring these places with us from the get-go.

**That’s cool and all, but the really great thing about floating islands is the airships, am I right? What are the airship plans for Wandering Skies?**

WS: Airships are perhaps the most incredible design feature in our world—to say we are excited about them would be an understatement! Our airships are coal-powered, so they’re equipped with coal furnaces and smokestacks. Fans and balloons serve as the means for thrust and lift. While our airships have to fit into our technology and world aesthetic, they are completely up to interpretation in shape and style.

So far, we’ve created three conventionally-styled airships, which have been used in concept art.

WS: At the same time, we’ve also broken from the norm. Airships can be made in any shape we want. A great example of this is the Skyrider, the ship belonging to Rebecca and Ash. Its hull design is one-of-a-kind.

WS: The Skyrider was originally conceptualized by an early contributor, with the final drawing done by Tyler Clites (Legohaulic), and designed physically by Greg, who’s quite fond of her.

“This ship is a real favorite of mine. It’s a key part of the show’s beginning and almost a character to the crew. The unique hull design with the forward sweep and the tough but flowing curvature is, I hope, a winning combo. Sturdy, elegant, fast, capable—these are a few words that come to mind to describe her. I’ll long be a fan!”

Another one of the show’s feature airships, The Mandible, was also conceptualized by the brilliant builder mind of Tyler Clites, and features a glassed-in bridge.

WS: The Mandible is like our show’s “Millennium Falcon” both in its iconic nature and importance to the story. To have someone of Tyler’s caliber—as an artist and LEGO builder—design this ship is incredibly special to us.

Many LEGO fans have enjoyed a sentimental connection with classic LEGO spaceship or pirate ship sets. We are jumping on board with that same concept with Wandering Skies but taking it to a whole new genre and dimension. We would love for one of our airships to be “the ship” that captures someone’s imagination and sets them off on a journey of exploration and creativity.

Steven is very excited about the inspiration Wandering Skies can be for the LEGO community: “Since being on Season 2 of LEGO Masters, I have been able to experience the joy that comes from so many people seeing LEGO more fully used to its potential,” he says. “The inspiration that comes from LEGO Masters is huge. And that same kind of experience can be replicated with Wandering Skies—our show is a great way to inspire the community at large and is something that not only families will enjoy, but the LEGO enthusiasts as well.”

Do you have any unique creatures in Wandering Skies?

WS: What new LEGO world would be complete without some unique creatures? The first 7 minutes of Episode 1 feature an epic duel with a “centipaur.” Grace has been looking forward to this scene since writing it 2+ years ago.

“Let’s just say if you have a distaste for little centipedes a centipaur is your worst nightmare times 100. The centipaur battle is a crazy kickoff point to an incredibly fast-paced show and will immediately draw you into the high stakes that come with living in our world.”

The first 7 minutes will be used as a pitch video to take to prospective film studios for partnership with distribution and funding. We are putting our best foot forward and desiring to show potential partners what we are capable of—and what better way to do that than with a “monster fight” scene?

Another one of our unique creatures is a flying manta ray (skray) that soars in the skies in huge flocks and is hunted for its hides that are made into our world’s version of leather—they are an important part of both industry and mythology in Wandering Skies.

WS: We didn’t want to shy away from creating amazing creatures simply because LEGO was our medium. While creature design is definitely a more challenging type of build, it’s also super rewarding when done well. Combining the design and engineering of a creature with the movement and speed of stop motion animation will make LEGO come “alive” in a very new way.

**How is Wandering Skies meant to interact with the LEGO community?**

WS: “LEGO media as a whole is mostly intended for children, and that’s great, but the rest of the LEGO community often feels left out.” Steven comments, “They don't have a form of media for them specifically—even LEGO Masters is more targeted for kids and families—so longtime fans of LEGO often feel overlooked. Wandering Skies is a project that we are convinced will not only inspire children and be enjoyable for parents, but it’s a show the LEGO enthusiasts will also love. It’s a marvelous opportunity to bring incredible models, animation, and story all to the forefront at the same time.”

There is a definite lack of LEGO media made for the LEGO community by the LEGO community. LEGO fans are an underrepresented group who are millions strong, incredibly diverse, and located around the globe. Everything we love about LEGO and the LEGO community we want to infuse into Wandering Skies. Ours is a show made by LEGO people for LEGO people, and Greg is here for it!

“We think floating islands are already a point of interest in the LEGO community. On top of that we’re developing airships and an underserved genre through steampunk. Combine that with legends like Tyler Clites, who designed the Mandible, Steven Erickson, who is designing creatures and assisting with story… it’s turning into a family affair and I love it! Add on the potential for some stellar animators like Ant Bandit, and we’re off to the races!”

Even within the LEGO community, there can be great divides between groups. Something rather unique about Wandering Skies is how we’re merging the design expertise of MOC builders with the film experience of stop-motion animators. It’s often the case that the worlds of LEGO stop motion and LEGO MOCers are separated. The focus of the stop motion animator is on the movement and stop motion, whereas the builder tends to focus on the aesthetic and design of a build. We’re merging these two points of view by combining forces. Our set designers are AFOLs who create stunning models for the expert animators to do their magic on.

To our knowledge, this combining of skill sets has never been done like this, or at least to this scale. But Greg loves the idea. “Our aim here is to bring two epic worlds together—all the beauty and design of MOC builders, and all the magic of animation from brickfilmers. Two amazing halves to produce one astounding whole!”

Collaboration has always been a foundational part of the LEGO community, and we are seeking to continue that tradition in a very personal way. Even now, Wandering Skies is running a LEGO build competition that aims to get the fans involved with the world early on, and one of the prizes is to have your build featured in Season 1 of the show!

WS: “Wandering Skies is something by the LEGO community, for the community, and we’d like to make it with the community,” says Steven, who is also one of the judges for the contest, along with Tyler Clites, Greg Tull, Adam Nies (Ant Bandit), and Martin Harris (bricksnaps).

The world of Wandering Skies is pretty broken up, both in terms of visual design and the story itself. The characters must learn to work together and combine their strengths to defeat evil and build a better future. This kind of story translates so beautifully to the medium of LEGO, as well as the LEGO community and what they’ve accomplished together, and it’s a huge part of Greg’s philosophy.

“LEGO is an amazing metaphor for unity. Its essence is to take individual and insignificant pieces and unite them into an astounding whole. What starts as humble and alone is elevated to epic proportions when combined. Have you been to a LEGO convention? Then you’ll know what I mean.”

What is your biggest dream for Wandering Skies?

WS: We hope to use Wandering Skies to connect and inspire. Most people who are passionate about something have had one or many of those “moments” where suddenly their brain lit up and they began to see possibilities and potential that they hadn’t thought of before.

For many people in our audience—as well as on our team—that moment happened when they had a LEGO brick in their hand. LEGO is this small, unassuming thing, but it represents so much more. It represents the wonder and imagination of childhood, and it’s been our observation that many of the AFOLs who still make LEGO a part of their lives have recaptured some of that childlike bravery, wonder, and imagination that others have lost.

Our biggest dream for Wandering Skies would be that we get to be a catalyst spark that lights a fire in someone's imagination, be they a child or adult. We want people to see our show and be inspired to create, imagine, and be bold in the same way other great stories have inspired us. We hope families and individuals will watch our show and then set off on their own journey of creation and exploration—whether they recreate scenes from our world or build one of their own.

Beautiful art changes people and connects them. That's an experience we have enjoyed with LEGO and the LEGO community, and that’s our heart and vision for Wandering Skies.

Hope you enjoyed this in-depth dive into the world of Wandering Skies! The team has taken a familiar LEGO MOC concept and expanded it into an entire realm of characters and story arcs. We’ll be following the development closely, so stay tuned for updates here at BrickNerd!

What do you think about floating islands plus LEGO animation, all in a new TV show? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

If you’d like to help bring the Wandering Skies TV Show vision to reality, you can support the pitch package on Kickstarter!

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