LEGO Masters Season 3 starts on Monday April 19th and I for one can’t wait to see what incredible creations we’ll get this year. While we will have to wait and see what gets built we at least now know who will be building it… introducing the LEGO Masters Season 3 contestants (after this picture of Hamish, for anybody trying to avoid anything about the show before it airs).
ANTHONY (20) AND JESS (30)
QUEENSLAND
Hotel concierge Anthony and science communicator Jess plan to combine their skills to make LEGO sculptures unlike anything you’ve ever seen. They will be creating builds that showcase their love of playing with textures, and using different bricks in weird and wonderful ways.
A lifelong lover of LEGO, Anthony has enthusiasm in spades which extends to his greatest passion. He specialises in replicas and always ensures that his builds are authentic. Given the chance, he would have nailed the DeLorean car featured in LEGO MASTERS Series One. He has an extensive knowledge of bricks and their correct names, and his favourite is either the 2×4 brick or the 1×2 plate, as he has used both in every build he’s ever done.
Jess is bubbly, bright, passionate, and keen to see what she can make out of the LEGO MASTERS never-ending Brick Pit. She says her build style usually involves challenging the norm, and she loves to build upside down or on strange angles. She thinks outside the box and manages to find weird and wacky ways to replicate what she envisions in her mind. Her strong problem-solving skills help in making her visions come to life.
ATLANTA (25) AND JEFF (28)
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Atlanta and Jeff met a Supanova convention in Sydney. They love to create together, whether it be through art, board games, video games or LEGO. They spend hours upon hours building, and although they have different visions of how their builds should go, they always turn out perfectly because of the way these two work together.
Atlanta is a luxury dice consultant who went through a LEGO “dark age” for about 10 years, losing interest in the little bricks. But watching LEGO MASTERS last year with Jeff revitalised her passion and LEGO is now a great source of joy for her.
A self-confessed enthusiastic geek, Jeff says LEGO is the ultimate creative tool and challenge. He loves the opportunity to build entire fantasy worlds from virtually nothing, and his favourite brick is the 2×4, as even though it is the most basic one it’s the most versatile.
DAVID (41) AND GUS (36)
VICTORIA
David and Gus are ready to show Australia their great love of LEGO and excited to transform bricks into any creation they can dream up.
Project manager David says confidently that when he is building with LEGO he can focus solely on the bricks, giving him the ability to produce an unlimited array of transformations.
Gus, an engineer, applied for LEGO MASTERS because he knew it was the perfect opportunity to challenge his creativity, as he loves to draw and sculpt but needed another outlet to bring his passions to life. When it comes to LEGO building styles, Gus’s preference is structural and realist, and he tends to build things that represent real-life objects.
David’s favourite brick is the SNOT (studs not on top), which allows him to create to his heart’s content as it can be built in every direction possible.
AMY (33) AND DAWEI (33)
VICTORIA
With a love of the weird and wacky, Dawei, an auditor, is no stranger to pushing his mind to the limit and confident that LEGO MASTERS is the perfect place to bring his childhood passion to fruition. He met content creator Amy online at the end of 2019, and together they have created the YouTube channel FoxyBloxie where they review LEGO together.
Out of his thousands of bricks, Dawei says that his favourite is the BURP (big ugly rock piece) as he loves how it can rapidly increase the size of any model and provide a lot of context to a model as part of the terrain and scenery.
Amy is confident that patience will be one of her biggest strengths on LEGO MASTERS, and even though she can sometimes be “off with the fairies” her creativity, combined with Dawei’s attention to detail, can lead them to success. As a lover of plants, the most unusual things she has built are lots of different LEGO pot plants. Amy’s favourite piece would have to be the Minifig, but if she had to choose just one brick it would be the round 1×1 translucent plate, which reminds her of little glitter pieces.
HARRISON (26) AND MICHAEL (25)
NSW/ACT
Harrison and Michael have known each other since they were teenagers at the same high school in Canberra, but it wasn’t until years later when they played on the same university touch footy team that they realised they shared a passion for LEGO.
Harrison is a PhD candidate in chemistry and Michael is a physiotherapist. Although these two mates have a love of all things science, this doesn’t mean they don’t excel in the world of LEGO. Harrison describes himself as an extroverted nerd who loves LEGO and says, “It’s amazing how you can start with a seemingly random array of pieces and somehow, following the perfect sequence, form an amazing piece of art.”
Michael is witty and easygoing. He digs LEGO so much that he even incorporates it into the therapy he does with his patients. Michael sees LEGO helping with fine motor skills, with the bonus of bringing out the creative side in people. “I have seen firsthand the excitement and joy that LEGO can bring into people’s lives,” he says.
OWEN (26) AND SCOTT (26)
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Best friends since high school, Owen and Scott will bring their love of LEGO to the creation of whole towns, scenarios and worlds out of nothing. Although these two have very different minds on a creative level, they complement each other perfectly as Scott looks at the bigger picture while Owen is detail-oriented.
Barely able to put the way they cherish LEGO into words, these mates will push each other to new heights, both metaphorically and literally, while they create huge models.
As a systems engineer, Owen is no stranger to building something out of nothing and says that his work is almost like “playing with giant LEGO that is made out of steel”. He says his strengths are his intelligence and problem-solving skills, and he’ll be using these to lead them to success on LEGO MASTERS. His proudest build would have to be the first one he completed after coming out of his own LEGO “dark age” that lasted almost a decade. He created a medieval village which pushed him to utilise the skills and styles he had picked up from other hobbies.
Electrician Scott first got into LEGO when he was a child, but he’s another who went through a “dark age” until he and Owen visited Amsterdam on a holiday. They stepped into a LEGO store, opening their eyes to the wide world of LEGO, and he fell straight back in love. He says that “building LEGO gives me a sense of endless possibilities and unlimited creativeness”. His dream build would be a 14th century castle two stories tall, with enough space for a bedroom and activity room, and a staircase that leads to a balcony overlooking a multi-coloured sunset. T
RYAN (42) AND GABBY (39)
VICTORIA
High school teacher Ryan and occupational therapist Gabby may have different LEGO backgrounds but are keen to meld their love of the bricks by putting put their imaginations and skills to the biggest test on LEGO MASTERS.
Both creatives at heart, Ryan is an avid musician and Gabby trained in theatre arts and stage management.
Ryan enjoys building with LEGO because he finds it enjoyable, relaxing, exciting, fun and surprising, all at the same time. The most unusual thing he has ever created was a “mini me” ventriloquist-style replica doll of himself.
A longtime fan of LEGO, Ryan was always interested in seeing what he could pull out of his imagination and create, but like most AFOLs he too had a “dark age”. He came back to LEGO around 2008, but really threw himself into the deep end again four years later. Now he is fully immersed in the LEGO community as part of a broad range of activities, being a member of LUGs (LEGO User Groups) that have made him well known in the world of LEGO devotees.
On the other hand, Gabby played with LEGO as a kid with her brothers but never owned her own sets, as “back then LEGO wasn’t really aimed at girls”. Today she incorporates LEGO into her work as an occupational therapist, and she was part of a course that used LEGO play to help adults with mental health issues communicate with her. This course proved to be so important that she bought a LEGO set for her son (although admitting it was for her) and the rest is history.
SARAH (45) AND FLEUR (43)
VICTORIA
Sarah and Fleur are two mums both confident that they have what it takes to win LEGO MASTERS.
Larger-than-life Sarah has been building with LEGO her entire life and says she loves it so much because it makes her feel creative and relaxed. Fleur, on the other hand, has had a 32-year “dark age” – since childhood in fact – but knows hat this extraordinarily long time-out will be no disadvantage to her in the competition.
Sarah considers her LEGO style to be colourful and creative, as she loves to work on builds that others would never think of. Fleur has more of an organic style: she likes to start a build without planning and let it come alive.
If any of the contestants happen to be Bricking Around readers let me know!
