Christian Cantrell

I've never lost my love of toys, so I recently decided to work on a photography project I've had in the back of my mind for a couple of years now. The goal of the project is to tell stories -- some sad, some inspirational, some quirky, and some admittedly immature -- using nothing but toys, and in particular, Legos. Legos present an excellent challenge in terms of creativity because they are so constrained (limited movement, facial expressions, accessories, etc.), and they are so difficult to wring real human emotion out of.

What I love most about using Legos to tell stories is that you can really only hint at the actual story you're trying to tell, and the rest must take place in the viewers mind. This picture is from a series called "Scrapbook of a Stormtrooper" which I particularly like because stormtroopers are portrayed in Star Wars movies as being almost inhumanly unemotional, and don't even have facial expressions that we can connect and identify with. The goal of this series was to get as much emotion, personality, and character out of two blank-faced pieces of plastic as humanly possible.

The full series can be seen here:
http://www.microkosmic.com/comic/scrapbook-of-a-stormtrooper.html