By: Scott Jones
Anything built out of LEGO usually fascinates us to the point of involuntary drooling. Seriously, you could build something completely boring out of LEGO, like say a book or Larry King, and we'd still gape in utter wonder.

A VS Suit made entirely out of LEGO was unveiled last night at Capcom's Lost Planet launch event in San Francisco. LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya, known for his LEGO-ifications of Han Solo Frozen In Carbonite and the Statue of Liberty wielding a light sabre, built the VS Suit in his studio in New York City.

I spoke with Sawaya at the Concourse Exhibition Center Thursday afternoon as he assessed the inevitable bumps and bruises his sculpture had suffered during its cross-country journey via UPS. "This project was unique in that I was trying to produce something that I really hadn't seen before," he said. "I had some screenshots and a little action figure, but that was all I really had to go on."

The VS Suit sculpture is actually much larger than it appears in pics—and much larger than Sawaya originally intended on making it. "The plan was to make it three feet tall," he said. "But as I started working on it, I realized the scale was getting bigger. By the time I finished the legs, I realized this thing was going to be huge. Right now, it's almost five feet tall."

The suit was built over a series of late nights—nights that usually spilled over into early mornings. "I don't think I went to bed before 3 a.m. on this project," he said. "I saw more than a few nights that ended at 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning. I lived and breathed this thing for about five days."

It wasn't Red Bull or J-Pop that inspired Sawaya to keep clicking bricks. His drug of choice? Candy. "This one was almost all Twizzlers and M & Ms," he said. "And I watched the entire first and second seasons of Grey's Anatomy while building this."

Eating candy while building a LEGO robot while watching a soap opera set in a hospital? "Yes, it's all true," he admitted.

When we left Sawaya, the VS Suit was still in several large LEGO chunks scattered around the floor on the Exhibition Center carpet. (His sculptures always have to be disassembled during traveling.) But he assured us that the Suit would be up and running by 8 o'clock sharp tonight.

Sawaya is no stranger to gaming, and has a bad case of Wii Wrist-itis to prove it. "Too much [Wii Sports] bowling and boxing over the holidays," he said.

In true videogame fashion, Sawaya even included a small Easter Egg in his sculpture. Look for a very small switch on the back of the VS Suit. Click it, and a light on the chest of the Suit will light up.

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