We spend a good amount of time making sure our product is not just the very best quality available, but that it looks cool. Enter Bryan, genius photographer to the plastic stars. When he's not making our custom figs look as badass as possible, Bryan works on real life commercials. He knows how to make shampoo bottles look sexy - an invaluable skill in this business. His favorite CB product is the Neutral Face (a classic).
Bryan has a pretty solid origin story here at CB. In his own words:
About 4 years ago I got a bit of stop motion software to learn for commercials. I needed something to put in front of the camera and dug out my old Lego collection, but they were all discolored, dirty, or had teeth marks in them. I was a little bummed. Then I remembered "Holy crap! I’m an adult. I can just go buy a LEGO set."
The day I went to the LEGO store was the day they released a new Collectible Minifig Series. The Lego store I went to, on a weekday no less, was packed with adults. Every open surface in the store was covered in little foil packets. At the time I would’ve thought “whatever nerds” and turned right back around, but I had just had that realization that I was an adult. I was in and I’m still glad I went to the Lego store that day.
I soon found Citizen Brick. The second I saw the neutral face I fell in love, it was just brilliant. When I saw the packages came from blocks away here in Chicago I immediately thought I need to meet these guys one day. Within the month I probably placed 4-5 orders and was using the pieces in a series of photos about sad LEGO people inspired by the neutral and sad faces. On the the last order in Sharpie was scrawled “BRYAN Y U NO WANNA TALK TO US…CALL JOE” and his number.
Turns out Joe had been trying to reach me for a while through Facebook and email which I mistook for shipping confirmations. The first time I met Joe and Ashley they were printing in this tiny fume soaked closet of a space in an old building converted to artists spaces. I started doing some promo shots for new releases and occasionally catalog shots of CB products.
I built out a fairly large lab background for the original “Chemistry Enthusiast” figure. After some interest in the background Joe asked me to condense the design to make into a set that could incorporate other figures and printed parts. The end result was the Superlab Playset. Earlier this year I came onboard part time and have gotten more involved in the day to day.
