Remember the LEGO CubeDude craze from a couple of years ago? It all started with PIXAR-animator and LEGO-fan Angus McLane uploading over one hundred of his brick-built LEGO figures on Flickr towards the end of 2009. He called them CubeDudes. 😀
The stocky, adorable, and easily recognizable characters became instant favorites and everyone started building their own versions of CubeDudes.
The LEGO CubeDudes became so popular that LEGO collaborated with Angus to release two special LEGO CubeDude sets (both Star Wars themed) available only at Star Wars and comics conventions.
Although the CubeDude-mania cooled off, building CubeDudes remains an excellent way to challenge yourself and expand your LEGO building skills. CubeDudes don’t require you to have a large LEGO collection, but they teach you interesting and advanced building skills – usually only available in large and complex LEGO sets. They are kind of like a puzzle, and once you get a hang of the design-concept, you can create your own CubeDudes. From then on, only your own imagination is the limit…
So how do you star building CubeDudes if you don’t own one of the limited-edition CubeDude LEGO sets? Fortunately members at Brickset reverse-engineered the CubeDude characters included in the sets and made the instructions available for download. These instructions will allow you build your first CubeDudes. (You can download the PDF instruction by clicking on the images below.)
Once you build a few CubeDudes, I would recommend you head over to Angus’ Flickr gallery to check out his other designs. He has CubeDudes characters from movies, cartoons, comics, games, etc. There is also a LEGO CubeDudes Group Gallery where other people share their CubeDudes. I’m sure you will get some ideas of what you would like to build next. 😉
And if you feel like you missed out and would like to get the limited edition CubeDude sets, you can usually find some listed on eBay. There are also listings for some pretty nice custom Cube Dudes you might like:
Do you have your own CubeDude designs? You can share them in the comment section below. We would love to see them! 🙂
When I first saw the cube dude, while I didn’t hate them , I didn’t see why people liked them so much. They were kinda neat, but they felt to me like they had too little of detail for the size they were, especially compared to minifigures. Now after looking through the flickr gallery of all of them, I really like some of them and I hope to, if nothing else, try to build some of the ones I saw others build. They feel like the LEGO brick equivalent of a plushie, but easier to make on your own and to edit. Thanks for this post.
Jacob, the best thing about the CubeDudes is not so much their look, but the building challenge. You learn to use pieces in some interesting ways you have never thought of before. It is a fun challenge, a different way to think about LEGO and will definitely improve your overall building skills. 🙂
made a sonic cube dude a long time ago http://www.moc-pages.com/moc.php/304396
I made a cubedude a long time ago http://www.moc-pages.com/moc.php/304396
I’m realy sorry my computer keeps on saying my comment isnt posted and I have to type it again. Sorry!
they look funny
Hi there – These star wars cube dudes are awesome, but the pdfs to the instructions don’t load for most of them. Any chance you could send me the direct links or repost them? We’d love to build C3PO, Yoda, etc., but can only see instructions for R2 and LOM. Thanks!
Cara, hm… the PDFs do open fine for me. I just checked all of them. Sometimes on a slower connection or at busy times PDFs can have an issue opening up, so you may want to try again. I was going to send you the link to the PDFs at BrickSet where they were originally posted, but unfortunately they have been removed for some reason. If you absolutely can’t get them I can also email the PDFs to you, just let me know. 🙂
You are absolutely right — I tried again today (with a better connection) and the links worked. Thanks so much!
Cara, I’m glad you were able to get them. Have fun building! 🙂