LEGO Project Hail Mary figure needed a Botanicals piece

One half of the cast of LEGO 11389 Project Hail Mary didn't require a highly specialised piece, but it did need something new from Botanicals.

The upcoming LEGO Icons 11389 Project Hail Mary set includes two figures of the film's key characters. Ryland Grace appears as a normal minifigure, but Rocky's alien appearance needs something different. The solution to capturing the five-legged creature at this scale wasn't to use a specific figure piece made specially for Rocky, though, and such a possibility was never on the table.

Instead, the team turned to something in the pipeline for LEGO Botanicals to act as the foundation for Rocky. Designer Nathan Heigert explained more to Brick Fanatics and other LEGO fan media in a recent roundtable.

"Probably the most useful for designing the brick-built Rocky was this new Botanicals element," said Nathan. "This wasn't developed for them, but it has five different attachment points all the way around, so it was the perfect element that we could use to depict a five-legged creature.

"We had several iterations [of Rocky]. The Botanicals element was always included because it was the most practical and functional element to include. But we played around with orienting in different ways and used a round shoe (Plate, Round 2 x 2 with Rounded Bottom) instead of the dish element and different choices in the leg and limbs."

This Botanicals piece is currently found in two sets, appearing in a flesh colour in 11503 Flower Wall and in the same green shade used in Rocky as part of 11509 Flowering Cactus. With the foundations set, it was then time to capture the rest of the character, including those five legs.

The team were even encouraged by the filmmakers to use multiple elements for Rocky's legs, blending well with the rough shape of the character and topped with a printed dish piece.

"It came from the filmmakers that it shouldn't be too uniform the way his limbs appear, because he is this asymmetric, inorganic, shaped creature, and so they encouraged us to use several different elements to depict that," Nathan continued later in the roundtable.

"[A moulded figure piece] was not on the table, so I worked with what I had to deliver. But I actually think that the solution was pretty effective, because he is this like less than organic-appearing creature."

Capturing Rocky in LEGO was thanks in no small part to the strong partnership between the LEGO Group and the IP partner, which we detailed in a previous report. This collaboration gave Nathan access to plenty of material to properly depict Rocky at such a small scale, ahead of the general public to boot. After receiving the first references, a later batch caused LEGO Rocky to undergo a makeover to be less spider, more rock.

"I got a chance to see a reference for him, the turnarounds and all that, a little bit ahead of the public," Nathan shared. "We really did see that this creature is very rocky looking, hence the name, and I didn't feel like it was really something that required a novel element designed to depict him, when we had our choice of different appendages that we could attach to this new element.

"I didn't have everything for Rocky immediately, and so once we got some better reference for him, that changed the way we designed him, less spidery and more rock creature, essentially."

You can find LEGO Rocky in the upcoming 11389 Project Hail Mary, available to pre-order now for £99.99 in the UK, $99.99 in the US, and €109.99 in Europe ahead of its release on March 1.

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