Building for Willa the Witch

I'm backed up again, so I decided to work with what I have. My plans for LDD Roundup 2 have been stalled a few days, though hopefully it will still be able to be finished before the next week is out. I just haven't been able to get the last doll for it yet. So let's go back to my cherished LEGO witch, Willa!

When I reviewed LEGO Minifigures Series 25 (S26 is on the list for May!) the Vampire Knight minifigure brought up a lot of discussion as a throwback to the LEGO Fright Knights theme. Fright Knights was a vaguely horror-themed castle fantasy theme starring a villainous faction of knights headed by Basil the Bat Lord (the Vampire Knight remakes his character design), and the co-villain of the theme was a witch, localized as Willa the Witch in the U.S.

Artwork for Fright Knights set 6097--"Night Lord's Castle". Basil is on the balcony and Willa is in the tower.

Willa was the first LEGO witch minifigure, and as somebody very passionate about the witch archetype, I wanted her. And the story of how I got her was incredible.

I won't be too wordy about it because I've already recounted it in the the previously-linked post (which you should read), but basically, I managed to collect my Willa over the span of multiple years by finding each of her halves separately from separate secondhand local LEGO hauls. For a while, I had her lower half from one haul lying around useless until I got a bin of LEGO containing only her upper half a couple of years later, meaning luck or fate or whatever wonderful fortune delivered one figure I dearly wanted through the most unlikely means. It's very possible the Willa I own was a single copy reunited over the years, since I find the odds of building a complete Willa from two hauls and ending up with zero duplicate Willa parts from two separate copies to be even slimmer than the odds of rebuilding one copy who was split in two for ages. Both hauls of secondhand parts came local, so Willa being made from one copy all along is a possibility. Regardless, to have such a wonderful story about getting her rocketed Willa from "beloved" to "priceless". Nowadays, I could easily get her through the fan LEGO market BrickLink for not that much...but my story is way better than that. I think the most magical moments in a collector's life are those acquisitions which are unplanned and perfect. You can't buy that.

Let's look at her first.

Fright Knights ran from 1997 to 1998, but all of the sets with caped Willa were released in 1997, easily dating this figure to that year. She's three years older than I am!

Willa comes from an early era of LEGO, of course, and it's visible in the simplistic print designs. Still, she was from a transitional period where LEGO was experimenting with faces different from the classic dots-and-smile head the brand universally used earlier on. While she's meant to be a wicked villain, there's quite a charming cheer to her face. Willa has eyebrows, a wide red mouth with a white snaggle tooth, and wild hair printed on her head, a technique used for several years but almost never employed today. These days, hatted characters with hair are often depicted with sculpts that combine the hair and the hat together, like this modern piece used for witches and scarecrows:

Custom figure pieced together by me--I call her the Sweet Treats Witch. The head is Dr. Inferno's from the Agents theme.

There are some exceptions where hair is printed on the head still, but it's the norm now for the minifigure's hair not to be depicted at all when hatted, or for a hat/hair combo to do the work. 

Willa wears the classic LEGO mage's hat, which might be falling by the wayside these days as more hat/hair sculpts fill the same role thanks to the above piece and some newer Harry Potter sculpts. The hat Willa is wearing is slightly glossier and looser on her head than later hats with this shape. 

Willa's outfit is all red, black, and yellow, and indeed, the entire figure is save for her white tooth. Willa is the only official LEGO "old hag" witch to be depicted with the human yellow skintone. All other classical ugly witches released in the brand have had green skin. Willa has a spooky spider motif with the brooch on her neck (possibly intended to be the clasp of her cape) and the design on the back of her cape. 

The copyright symbol on the corner isn't very pretty.

New LEGO capes come starched and stiff (unless they're the thicker, soft-fabric type), but over time, they soften and fray a bit at the edges. Willa's still looks good, though, and it's not wrong for her cape to look a little tattered. Willa released in some sets without the cape, all in 1998, meaning this is the "deluxe" version of the minifigure and I was especially lucky with my find(s)! 

I imagine the 1997 and 1998 sets would have shared shelf space during 1998 because LEGO products have a healthy release period, so I don't think the effect was that LEGO cheaped out and made a lesser version of Willa for those who didn't get her the year before--I think both versions of Willa would have been available to the buyers of 1998.

Willa's dress is made of a tall roofing slope, in a technique repeated in LEGO sets up until 2018. Minifigure torsos are designed to fit together with unique pegs on leg pieces that keep them attached securely, but the torsos can also attach to a 1x2 row of studs on brick pieces, and LEGO exploited this by using the roof slopes as a dress or robed lower body. There were two major problems with this idea, though--the roof slope made the figures just a bit taller than the height of a standard minifigure with the leg piece, and the loose connection made it very easy for the figure to split apart at the waist, making it particularly easy to lift off just the top half of a robed figure secured to studs on a brick, or for the figure to break apart when dropped. Willa's slope is an older mold, with a glossy smooth back and no tube inside which would increase the attachment strength on studs--either this was a quirk of the piece in general, or maybe it was a conscious choice to make the attachment weaker and prevent robed figures splitting apart when lifted off studs? Later on, this slope got a rough back and a standard tube underneath. The Harry Potter theme revival in 2018 finally solved the problems with this technique by introducing a proper minifig-use dress slope with minifigure torso pegs and a height that matches the legs. (I think the modern wizarding theme is very well done and the IP is absolutely dead to me nonetheless due to significant disillusionment with the property and my complete disavowal of the transphobic creator. I wish I was able to appreciate the sets more openly and feel comfortable consuming or endorsing them because the design team did a great job and LEGO isn't at fault for any of my negative feelings there.)

Here's a comparison--Willa, a newer figure with a slope-brick robe, a standard figure with legs, and a figure with the new robe legs. All bald to show height better.

Willa, Minifigures S2 Witch (green hands swapped in), Minifigures S25 Vampire Knight, custom witch

Here's the pieces loose--you can see the new dress has the pegs that fit into the torso properly.

And comparing the three slopes--Willa's is glossy, the S2 Witch's is rougher, and the new dress has a concave curved back and rounded beveled edges.

And the undersides. Willa's has no central tube to reinforce attachment to studs.

The tube will fit in the middle of the four studs that fit in the corners.

Willa is technically incomplete. She officially came with a translucent red version of the magic wand piece, but I only have the neon yellow-green, so that's what she carries. (This neon yellow-green translucent color was recently retired by LEGO, possibly as a result of the switch to a new translucent plastic formula that isn't so fragile or so firmly attached when connected with other translucent parts.) Neither parts haul had her original wand, and it hasn't appeared in red for a long time so I don't think I ever had a contemporary opportunity to source it during my years collecting LEGO. I've kind of reinterpreted her less as a villain and more as a quirky recluse, anyway, so my Willa is less sinister overall. I'm considering getting the original wand color through BrickLink someday, though-- just for authenticity's sake. 

The other big thing that came in the second parts haul with Willa's top half was a dragon, and she naturally had to have it.

This dragon is not completed as originally made, though he could have been from the Fright Knights theme--there were two instances of a green dragon in the theme, and both green Fright Knights dragons were in Willa-centric sets, meaning this one very well could have been hers all along. Other dragons, in sets featuring Basil or his knights, were black with red wings, suggesting that maybe each villain worked with their own dragons and Basil's were vampire colors while Willa's were green. This dragon would have originally had a tail in the same green color as his body, and his wings would have been red or black depending on which set he'd have come from. No wings or tail were in the parts haul. I completed him with the tail from a LEGO alligator (the classic LEGO alligator used the same tail and upper jaw sculpts as the dragon!) and the correct wing sculpt, just sourced from a LEGO Atlantis anglerfish model--both tail and wings ended up dark green that way. I once had the wings in black from a LEGO Mixels set, and might still if they didn't end up in a parts cull, but I like the dark green. Them matching the tail also helps the tail look less incorrect.

The dragon has a jaw that hinges up and down, arms with swivel joints at the shoulders, wings on angled horizontal clips that can flap up and down, and a tail that can wave side to side. The dragon has four studs on its back that let you build on it or sit or stand a minifigure, and his arms have horizontal clip hands that can hold bar-shaped LEGO pieces. When closed, the mouth also forms a bar-shaped gap that lets the dragon hold something between his teeth horizontally--a bar can rest near the front of his mouth between the jaws.

The classic LEGO flame piece is also designed specifically for interaction with the dragon.

Translucent reddish-orange has also been recently retired from the LEGO colors.

See those two angled pins on the side of the bar at the end?

Those press into a hole in the dragon's lower jaw, and when the mouth is closed, there's also a front-facing bar hole in the sculpts so the flame looks like it's spurting perfectly out the front!

The two pins on the piece allow you to change whether the flat flame is oriented horizontally or vertically--very clever.

At some point, the flame piece was replaced with a version without pins because with the dragon being long retired, there was no need for them. The change seemed to come pretty late, though, since I had a good supply of flames that were compatible with the dragon from collecting contemporary sets in my childhood (I started in 2009).

I really like the old LEGO animals and the dragon is very charming. These days, dragons are always brick-built and may only have custom creature sculpts for the heads, or else they're small single pieces. The last dragon to be composed fully of exclusive creature parts was Smaug in 2014 within the licensed The Hobbit trilogy sets.

Now, to the things I built for them.

Willa the Witch's Cauldron Carriage

I designed this one ages ago, shortly after getting Willa in 2015. This was a very simple build, inspired by the real Fright Knights set "Witch's Windship".

Technically, you could interpret the wings here as not part of the dragon at all, making it a useless ornament.

This is a dragon-powered airship built on an octagonal half-dome shell that reminded me a lot of a witch's cauldron, though this imagery was not evidently exploited in this set design. I happened to have this very same piece from the later Agents set "Robo Attack", featuring a robot mech I had long dismantled, so I decided to go for it and make a carriage with a full cauldron shape (also dragon-powered). I was essentially remaking the Windship through a land equivalent!

Forgive the dust in these photos. These models have been together for a while. 

The carriage took the bowl shape and filled in the gaps with black bricks, and I built a slightly higher arc around the back with an attachment for a black rubber LEGO hose to form a curved cauldron handle that resembled a carriage canopy with no fabric. Willa had a crystal ball on the front of both her Windship and the gyrocopter in "Witch's Magic Manor", so I followed suit with this unofficial third vehicle.

"Witch's Magic Manor".

While the dragon and Willa could have been companions who came together from one of these two sets, I don't recall any of the more unusual identifying pieces from either set within the haul bucket, like the black vehicle bowl or horse or rock walls or rotating wall panel or brown airship rigging, making it impossible for me to pin down exactly which sets they were actually originally from. If I had that whole haul bucket intact the way I first bought it again, I might be able to tell from a closer look at its contents, but the parts have long dispersed into my collection and the pieces were already mixed and incomplete the way they were.

The front of my carriage has a spider and the chains which can attach to the dragon, and the piece inside the crystal ball is a printed minifigure head from the Alpha Team theme, which was used to fill the crystal ball to create an "Orb of Ogel" artifact from the theme's villain Ogel ("LEGO" backwards). The Orbs of Ogel had red/blue printing that certain red lenses on the hero vehicles would be able to see through, removing the red print to reveal the blue designs through the lenses. I thought the spider design suited Willa.

The carriage is offset so the wagon wheels stick forward, and the undercarriage has a skull on it!

The interior is lined with red plates to make it look plush, and the sides have potion bottles on hand, as well as a spell book.

While I am not the most advanced LEGO builder or inventor and often things are simpler because that's my limitation, the simplicity of this build is deliberate to make it feel period-accurate to the Fright Knights theme and Willa's era of LEGO. There are pieces from later eras (most crucially, the hose of the cauldron "handle") but the look is deliberately humble. 

It's one of those concepts that just feels so obvious, like, of course a witch would have a cauldron carriage! 

Willa's House

While the carriage was successfully built back in 2015, shortly after getting Willa, and hasn't changed since, the house was a much longer journey. I started trying around the same time, but completed it in 2022 after several years of stagnation with the first attempt. No pictures because I lost them. 

From the beginning, I wanted to give her a Baba Yaga cottage due to my love for the fairy tale and it being one of the only facets of national pride I have for my birth country. However, early attempts flopped. Back then, I tried making a brown cottage with a dark red roof composed of asymmetrical roof slopes, and it looked quirky and fun, but there were problems--I didn't have the arch over the door in brown, so I colored it with marker (abominable), the bricks I used were varied in texture in a style I don't favor because I didn't have enough normal brown pieces, the roof was way too heavy and over-engineered, and there was absolutely no way to put the piece on legs successfully. I was going for yellow bird legs, but my available parts didn't have the core strength or attachment strength to the house to make things viable. I was still fond enough of the model to keep the house part assembled long enough to be transported through a move of houses and time sitting around for a couple of years. In 2022, I got back into LEGO building for a spell and revised the concept. I liked the floor plan of the house, but I redid everything in a Fright Knights black, red, and grey color scheme, and I cleaned off that arch brick to restore its grey color. Since black bricks were tight, I swapped a few for grey to give a very simplistic retro-LEGO brick texture to the look, and also did the eaves in grey framed by black. I built a tree growing out of the side of the house, as if the place uprooted a tree that had grown into it once it got up and walked somewhere new, and I slightly shuffled the interior, but kept the fixtures I'd had. For the front, I textured the doorway and added a castle turret to create a medieval "bay window" effect. The roof changed to an angled assembly of plates resting over the house to reduce the weight. 

The biggest challenge was engineering the legs, and after trying multiple methods, I learned they couldn't be articulated if they were to be strong enough to hold the house up. I changed them to a straight symmetrical design. That's more retro-LEGO, anyway. The legs needed uses of cross-shaped axles and bricks that accommodated them so they wouldn't break apart, and that helped make the connection to the house stronger. The feet can rotate on pins, and they were built extra long to give the house a big enough footprint that it couldn't topple over. It still wobbles and wants to fall backward a lot, but it stays up and that's good enough for me. The house is full of weak connections that don't hold up to LEGO's play standard, but it doesn't have to.

Spiders adorn the roof and front door, and a ladder hangs from the landing to let people in.

Here's the side with the tree growing out. The window has a bucket on a chain for hauling things up from the ground level.

I really like the dangling tree roots.

The plates of the roof are actually aligned with the top of the tree so it slots together. The side with the leaf on it will work this way, but the other side of the roof is a different pattern of plates that won't fit together.

The back of the house has the projecting chimney and a window, which we'll see is actually attached to the bed inside, not the wall.

Because I ran out of black slope bricks, I completed the rear eave of the house with its own pattern of bricks.

You'll notice some of the grey pieces look brown--that was the older dark grey tone before LEGO switched to the modern bluish one.

Here's the roof off--it's all built on the grey bracket plates which allow you to create a 90-degree angle.

And the interior. The roof corner rests on those grey bricks at the top with the bars projecting inside to stay aligned.

And you can see the top of the tree which one of the roof plates rests aligned to.

Inside the cottage, there's a fireplace which is actually recessed a little to sell the chimney better. A skeleton arm holds a cauldron over the fire.

Willa's bed is a little run-down with broken finials, but the red-and-yellow quilt is comfortable. Ignore the black mark on the "pillow" slope. The bed's window headboard doubles as a house window.

I built the surface of the bed to be slightly recessed so the edge's of Willa's slope brick slotted into it and fit her more securely into the bed. She's completed for sleep with a modern hairpiece that suits her printed hair-- Ninjago Cole's.

Of course, the giant spiderweb really completes the wall. 

Toward the front, Willa has a little table and chair ready for tea and meals. A crate for her wand and broom is behind it.

The teapot and cup are modern LEGO pieces, but there was no way she wasn't getting them.

The "bay window" piece is hollow but has no studs inside.

Willa sees a ghost there from time to time. They seem very shy despite all of Willa's invitations to join her as a guest.

By the door, Willa has her potioning shelf with all the bottles and ingredients she could want.

The back of the house also has a small hitch so the carriage can be pulled by the cottage!

The house had gotten some changes since the photograph I showed in my last LEGO post.

The big thing was reworking the foliage. The tree was dark grey here, but I thought brown fit my reinterpretation of Willa better and read best as a tree. The very concept of a Baba Yaga hut is inherently more pastoral, anyway, so going for the colder villainous aesthetic wasn't right. My Willa is her own character. I also made the leaves more extensive and textured. It's more detailed than old LEGO, but I think it's fine. The house has enough else modern about its build to make that work. The hitch may also have been absent.

I found a good section of the garden to frame the house in, though finding the right position to stand it level was tricky!

When Willa makes a pot of tea, she pours herself a cup, then the rest goes out the window to the dragon!

The dragon doesn't have a name. Willa thinks if he did, he'd tell her.

And Willa's dearest friend the Bat Lord comes to visit often...or whenever he can find her house! 

He's more up with the times than her (being a modern remake minifigure and all). 

"Basil, dearie, I recommend taking off the helmet to drink."
"My dear lady, this is how all of the menacing overlords do it these days!"

Willa's cottage is so small that she doesn't have spare bed space to offer, so Basil is the only person who ever stays over!

This makes the build compromise for the back eave worth it!

And maybe, one enchanted spooky night, he'll call for an outing...

Willa's using the body of the Disney Queen of Hearts, and Basil has her hair.

"As echoes richochet, I have located you again!"
"Oh my, now I feel underdressed!"
"Nonsense. None could match your witchiness."

"Where are we even going tonight?"
"We go to the night itself! Onward, Willa's dragon!"

"You are haunting beneath this moon, my friend."
"And frankly, you terrify me."
"Always."

Well, that was a fun feature to fill the time with. Most of the work being done was also a bonus! I love Willa the Witch and I'll always treasure her, but making things for her was also very rewarding.

I'll go nuts if LEGO does a modern remake of her like they did for Basil, but it'd be very hard not to prefer the original all the same. She's a magical part of my collection.