Tonight at 8p on Fox,
The Simpsons are doing something they have never done before. Springfield and all of its residents are getting the Lego treatment. That’s right, our favorite animated family is going to become one of favorite toys when we were growing up. It is such a delight to see this happen to them that I will declare that the 550th episode is one of the best ones that have ever done. And I have seen all 550 of them.
Homer Simpson wakes up and everyone and everything around him is Legos. But to him this is normal. That is until he buys Lisa a toy, and he flashes back to his old self. Will he stay in the Lego world or will he come back to his own? You just have to tune in for this very heartwarming episode to find out.
Turning the town of Springfield into Legoland was not an easy job for them. In fact according to the Executive Producers, Al Jean and Matt Selman, it took them two years to make. Jean told us on a conference call earlier this week, “I’ll just say I think it was a beautiful product and it was I think about as labor intensive as any episode Simpsons has ever done.”
Even though it was labor intensive, they make it look like it was easy to combine the CGI and hand drawn animation seamlessly. According to Jean, it might even be the first time it has be done. Since it has never been done before the animators had to learn some new skills to make it happen. They also to change countries for the making of this episode. Normally the show is made in Korea, but for this one they used animators from India. Selman says the learning curve was worth it, because “they really pulled it off beautifully on the technical and the creative side.”
When it comes to the creative side of it all, Selman wants you to watch it again and again. The first time watch it as you would any Simpsons episode. Then watch it again, to see if you can catch all the “funny little LEGO reference background jokes.” Then he added some things to keeps yours open for, “like the photos in the back to like stuff in the church to the love tester at Mo’s.”
They really wanted to reward their viewers with this Lego episode, and boy did they! So make sure to set your DVRs to record the episode, so that you can watch it over and over and over again. Partially to enjoy it as the fantastic episode that it is and then again to see how Legofied they made it.
