TTGames Lead Animator, Simon James, talks to us here at Family Gamer TV about his role in the development of Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. A lot more goes into the development of Lego games than you might assume, with characters having to be built by hand before they can even be considered for the game.
Lego themselves have to provide a sign off on each character model before they can be taken from the physical form into the digital realm, where Simon and his team can work their magic.

Once the physical model is approved the first step is to create a digital skeleton of the character, which gives the animators the freedom to be able to manipulate them in any way they need, pushing, pulling and transforming them to fit the requirements of the character. However, it still takes a sprinkling a magic to inject those characters with life and make each one feel like a special gameplay experience.