CREATIVE SOLUTIONS SPECIALIST / ARTIST / EDUCATOR

Media Channel: Brick Team Customs

Posted 29th April 2017
Brick Team Customs began life as my hobby, whereby I would construct custom Lego figures that represented some of my favourite characters which hadn't been produced by Lego yet. Making it a nice way to relax during my days off from my educational work whilst still indulging my creative hunger.
I decided to name the channel Brick Team Customs, in part because each episode would showcase a different team of custom brick related minifigures; but also because I was using some parts designed by other people, and so wanted to honour their work by giving them credit and acknowledgment. (With direct credit given via text segments)
Within the space of three and a half months I created the branding, and learnt an extensive amount of knowledge regarding YouTube best practise; I also outlined a carefully considered schedule and marketing plan for two years, and filmed and edited material allowing me to release one video a week for over a year.
The rapid deployment of the videos was facilitated by my E-learning experience, from which I developed a video architecture that allowed me to simply and quickly swap out the content for each episode.
In terms of YouTube progress, my channel exceeded my initial expectations by rising to over 11,000 subscribers and over 4 million views in the space of around a year and a half.
Unfortunately due to work commitments I was unable to continue releasing content for some time, and so progress has been somewhat paused; however version 2 of the series has been in slow development and will be released on the channel in the near future.
Brick Team Customs was featured for my custom Xenomorph tutorial on Action Figure Insider as well as a feature on The Daily Dead.com
A Lego built version of the "Aliens" Powerloader that I designed as a submission for Lego Ideas, was featured on horror and Sci-Fi sites such as Technabob, Pocketlint, and Bloody-disgusting.com.
An unexpected indication for the growing influence of my channel was when a Chinese Bootleg Toy manufacturer copied and released a character that I made.
And whilst there are minor changes, the randomly painted yellow and red dots from my design can clearly be recognised on the duplicate figure.
As I don't sell my figures, I found it to be both amusing and pretty flattering that a bootlegger would know of my work.
Mark Nathan Willetts is a creative entrepreneur from Nottingham, England. His artistic work has been exhibited internationally. And he has worked as an educator and senior editor at companies such as Experian and Velawoods.
"We must continually grow until our ideas converge for a better future"
- Mark Nathan Willetts