Some of you might pass by Connor Heuthorst in the halls, thinking of him as being just a normal high school student. While that might be true for the most part, Huethorst, under the name of Cukoo4legos, has a hidden secret talent for stop-motion videos, using legos as the playground for his imagination.
The passion started when Heuthorst got his first ever Lego set from his parents when he was five. Four years later, his YouTube channel started. While many parents might be concerned about the fact that their child is publishing videos online, his had a different mindset. Heuthorst shares, “My parents were supportive and thought it was cool how I wanted to post my Lego videos. Their only condition was that I remain anonymous because I was so young.”
While this passion and creativity have been in the making for many years, Heuthorst first grew interested in Lego stop motion after watching the well-known and loved movie, The LEGO Movie. “It inspired me to take my LEGO journey to the next level…seeing the minifigures move on the screen with top-level precision inspired me to try stop-motion animation,” he shared when asked what inspires him.
The creation for the different Lego builds came easily to him, so taking on the videography aspect was the next challenge in his Lego stop-motion career. For the 2022-23 school year, Heuthorst took a Video Production class offered at the Waterloo Career Center where he learned the important skills of filming and editing. He applied what he learned to his own projects.
Moving forward, Heuthorst began to slowly post more videos to his account with a personal goal of at least one video every two weeks. After years of creating and posting, he has gained traction on his YouTube account where he is now creating storylines with the little character friends. His most popular video is “Lego Splatoon 2” with over 19,000 views. He shares, “When I created the film, it was my most ambitious project.” While the filming hasn’t been the most consistent over the years, each video has at least 100 views or more.
Heuthorst plans, films and edits the videos all by himself before publishing. It is a long tedious process. Keeping a list of ideas on his phone, Heuthorst decides which idea to come to life by which one excites him the most. He then begins to gather and build the Legos he would need for the production before filming. “Filming takes up the bulk of my time. I like to split filming up into multiple days where film a set number of scenes each day.” Because he is filming these videos on his phone, it allows him to use the editing tool CapCut to finish up his videos.While the majority of his passion is published on YouTube, he also applies his skills and talents to extracurricular activities that he is involved in. Heuthorst has been a part of the theater program offered at West High. While being a part of this, he had the opportunity to submit a video for a Large Group Speech competition.
Heuthorst’s short film “Hero’s Trolly” has been published on YouTube after having been used for his Large Group theater performance. He submitted this project in the short film. This two-minute 58-second project performed well at districts moving further to perform well at the state. Heuthorst shares, ¨Without Large Group Speech and Theater, Hero’s Trolley and future videos would not exist.¨
School counselor and an advisor of Heuthorst, Ben Hirdler, helped him along the way. Heuthorsort had come to Hirdler with the video idea and the two, including Theater director William Dawson, worked to find a spot for the film. “When he showed me the video I was very impressed, it was really cool work that he was doing.” Compared to the other work that Large Group does, this stop motion animation video took a different take than what West High students regularly choose when participating.
You might be awed at all that Heuthorst has achieved, but there is still more to come. There is a bright future ahead for Cukoo4Legos and all of the endless creativity and projects to come. You can find all of his work on YouTube under the username Cukoo4Legos. Along with his channel, you can find him on Instagram @cukoo4legos and TikTok @cukoo4legos_yt.
