Meet the Guy Behind Those Viral ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ LEGO Videos
When the new season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia hits in July, most fans will want to see if it measures up to the previous seasons and a few might wonder what Dennis was up to during that crossover with Abbott Elementary. But artist and animator Trevor Carlee will watch with one thought in mind only: How will this look in LEGO form?
Carlee has become a viral sensation for his spot-on recreations of scenes from various movies and TV shows done completely in LEGO. He’s recreated scenes from The Good Place, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Modern Family as well as complete trailers for new movies like Deadpool & Wolverine, Superman, Sinners and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. But for the most part, Carlee focuses on recreating the shows and movies that are nearest and dearest to his heart. So it makes sense clips from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia appear over and over again on his feed.
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I recently reached out to Carlee to see what goes into the making of one of his LEGO recreations and what sort of challenges converting the gang from Paddy’s Pub into LEGO form present.
Before we get into your Sunny clips specifically, how did you come to start recreating scenes in LEGO?
I worked about 15 years as an editor and producer in television. I dabbled in animation here and there and did visual effects for the stuff that I worked on, but it was never really front and center. Then Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out, and I was like, “I need to get back in animation.” And so, I fully dived back in and I did Buffy: Into the Slayer-Verse. I had a blast and started transitioning my career toward animating.
By happenstance, I did a LEGO animation for fun and put it on my socials and then everybody was like, “Oh my God, yes, this is amazing!” And so, I was like, “Oh, people like this, I’ll just do more.” Then, the more I did, the more people loved it. I was mostly just doing Buffy, then I think I did a Community one and people were like, “Oh my God, yes, do Community.” I was like, “Oh, people want everything.” Then it was this thing that unfolded on itself naturally where I just kept opening it up to new shows, and now it’s my whole career.
What do you make them in?
I make them in Blender. It’s free 3D software. Later, I use other things like Photoshop to make the textures. I edit in Premiere and I color grade in DaVinci Resolve, but the majority of my work is in Blender.
How long do they take to do?
It depends on the scene. The most recent Sunny one that I did of Mac on the couch, it took me about a day because it’s just two characters sitting. There’s one prop that had to be accessed and there’s no real interaction. So, I just had to set up two shots. I didn’t have to build a whole room. It was literally just one wall and one wall and two characters sitting. But then, things like the Superman trailer or the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer, those took me about two weeks each because it’s so many locations, characters, moving parts and different shots.
How do you pick what stuff you’re going to animate?
Everything that I post, I’m a fan of, unless it’s a studio deal like the new Karate Kid. I mean, I love Karate Kid, but Sony reached out to me for that. The majority of what I do, though, is just things that I love. And because I’m constantly rewatching It’s Always Sunny, Community, Parks and Rec and The Office, I add a lot of those to my running list of scenes to animate.
Have you ever gotten into any trouble with LEGO?
I’ve worked with LEGO, so they’re aware of me and they’re fine with it because their whole brand is about the community. I just make sure I don’t choose scenes that go too far; It’s Always Sunny and Veep are the ones that get right up against that line.
One scene in particular that a lot of people request is a blooper from Parks and Rec where they talk about comebacks and Chris Pratt improvised this line about Kim Kardashian — that she got some cum on her back. I’m like, “I’m not going to have a mini figure talk about someone getting cum on their back.” I feel like that’s a line where LEGO is going to call me and say, “No, that’s enough.”
For Sunny, are you afraid to do that scene with Danny DeVito coming out of the couch naked?
A lot of people have asked about that one. That one I feel like I can get away with because it’s really funny and it’s body humor. That’s on my list.
Does DeVito get one of the shorter mini figures?
Yeah, I give him the little legs.
How do you capture a likeness in LEGO?
I think one of the reasons my videos pop off is I try to get all the idiosyncrasies of the body motions. I animate their body fully before I do their faces, whereas a lot of animators do the faces first. Especially with people like Mac and Dennis — those are characters that have a lot of nuance to the body movements. Then I go through and pay a lot of attention to their facial features. I do their mouth frame by frame, then I do that with the eyes, the eyebrows. I methodically go through and make sure everything closely represents the way the characters move.
Getting into Sunny, what was the first one you did from the show?
It was Charlie’s conspiracy theory. I keep meaning to redo it because it was way early in my LEGO animation, and I see many things I would do a lot differently now, both with lighting and the way I have them move.
Speaking of their specific body movements and facial expressions, what’s unique to the Sunny characters for when you animate them in LEGO?
Dennis is a slightly more difficult character to pull off in the face because he does a lot of things that are hard to capture in LEGO. For instance, in the “Impliction” scene, I wasn’t able to pull off his jaw clench because LEGO characters don’t have jaws. Mac moves a lot, but he moves fluidly. He’s actually a lot of fun to animate. Charlie’s chaotic. He’s always a fun challenge. I never quite know where he’s going. Dee’s kind of the straight man, and she has a lot of nuance to the way she performs her role that I didn’t realize until I was zoning in on just the way she’ll nod her head and the way she moves her body. Finally, I don’t think I’ve done enough of Frank to really study his body movements that much.
I notice you do a lot of scenes that aren’t in the bar. Why?
I have a bar built out now, so I’m going to start doing more scenes in the bar, but I was avoiding it for a while because I didn’t have a bar and I didn’t want to keep building out sections of the bar just for these scenes. I finally have a bar built out now, so now I’m picking scenes that take place there. Time spent building a set is time not spent animating, and animating is the thing I love.
