Designer insight: Mark Stafford
Posted by Huwbot,
Many LEGO set designers use our BrickLists feature to maintain a list of the sets they've worked on and often provide interesting insights about their involvement.
Once a week we publish an entry from one of their lists on the home page to increase awareness of this information and to encourage more designers to create them.
Mark Stafford wrote this about their work on 76269 Avengers Tower:
Joint designed with Justin Ramsden, with Quinjet and Leviathan by Junya Suzuki, graphics by Mark Tranter and a sprinkling of input from pretty much every other LEGO designer who wanted to help figure out how to build the curves on this thing. Kinda based on a sketch Justin and Marcos Bessa built back when Age of Ultron came out, but I pretty much reworked the entire build in the first couple of weeks. We spent six months or so on this, Justin polished the final model and did all the hard work as I caught COVID and slept though the final approval bits and pieces. Very happy with this one!
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19 comments on this article
Looked at the thumbnail and thought Hulk was naked for a split second :o
This is an impressive model, but I do think it’s a bit underwhelming. Its interior space doesn’t feel like it’s been put to particularly effective use, and I’m glad I haven’t fallen down this particular rabbit hole as a result. It does make me wish we’d gotten a full-scale Avengers Tower at a cheaper price point, though.
I just finished building this yesterday after a few weeks of working on it. Hopefully I can get my review of it published soon. It's not a 100% perfect model, but it definitely is very well constructed and makes an imposing impression to any LEGO city skyline.
Oh look, it's the UNIT HQ from Doctor Who! (Hmm...)
Always nice to see the legend show up here.
@Mister_Jonny said: "Looked at the thumbnail and thought Hulk was naked for a split second :o"
Can't unsee!
@Ridgeheart said:
"I've never heard of this "Mark Stafford"-fellow before, but he seems like a promising new designer. I shall follow his career with great interest."
He was involved in designing Exoforce and Power Miner sets, so he's probably quite senior.
@Samurai_BriX said:
" @Ridgeheart said:
"I've never heard of this "Mark Stafford"-fellow before, but he seems like a promising new designer. I shall follow his career with great interest."
He was involved in designing Exoforce and Power Miner sets, so he's probably quite senior. "
You forgot Legends of Chima! Seriously...
@EtudeTheBadger said:
" @Samurai_BriX said:
" @Ridgeheart said:
"I've never heard of this "Mark Stafford"-fellow before, but he seems like a promising new designer. I shall follow his career with great interest."
He was involved in designing Exoforce and Power Miner sets, so he's probably quite senior. "
You forgot Legends of Chima! Seriously..."
He also murdered teal back in the day.
@Joefish said:
"Oh look, it's the UNIT HQ from Doctor Who! (Hmm...)"
I like the way you think!
@Murdoch17 said:
" @EtudeTheBadger said:
" @Samurai_BriX said:
" @Ridgeheart said:
"I've never heard of this "Mark Stafford"-fellow before, but he seems like a promising new designer. I shall follow his career with great interest."
He was involved in designing Exoforce and Power Miner sets, so he's probably quite senior. "
You forgot Legends of Chima! Seriously..."
He also murdered teal back in the day."
And designd my all time favorite LEGO set 75936 Jurassic Park: T. rex Rampage
Top 3, in no particular order beside chronological :
70315 : Clay's Rumble Blade - Best Nexo set of wave 1
70323 : Jestro's Volcano Lair - Best Nexo set of wave 2
70357 : Knighton Castle - Best Nexo set of wave 4
Agents, Mars Mission, Power Miners, Space Police... designer of my childhood.
Dang, sketch model back for Age of Ultron? I can't help but think about the ideas that must have come to the designer's minds between the sketch and release, and what they've thought of adding or removed from the list.
I still believe this set should have had Agent Colson and Happy Hogan instead of Wong and Wasp as they were never seen near the tower
@LegoMaster2006 said:
"I still believe this set should have had Agent Colson and Happy Hogan instead of Wong and Wasp as they were never seen near the tower"
Happy Hogan and agents Coulson, Rumlow, and Sitwell would’ve been better than Kevin Feige, Wong, and Wasp.
I realised yesterday that I own the top 4 sets in the poll along with 21344, 76269, and 76252 - https://brickset.com/article/102794/2023-press-release-poll-analysis. This is my favourite build and set of the year. Sure, there could be improvements made, but this is one of my three favourite sets of all time, the other two being the Sanctum and Daily Bugle modulars.
LEGO, please keeping more of these. Us superhero fans love them.
@LegoMaster2006 said:
"I still believe this set should have had Agent Colson and Happy Hogan instead of Wong and Wasp as they were never seen near the tower"
In their defense, Wong tends to appear out of nowhere and Wasp is quite difficult to see from any distance.
@LegoMaster2006 said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
" @EtudeTheBadger said:
" @Samurai_BriX said:
" @Ridgeheart said:
"I've never heard of this "Mark Stafford"-fellow before, but he seems like a promising new designer. I shall follow his career with great interest."
He was involved in designing Exoforce and Power Miner sets, so he's probably quite senior. "
You forgot Legends of Chima! Seriously..."
He also murdered teal back in the day."
And designd my all time favorite LEGO set 75936 Jurassic Park: T. rex Rampage "
He also designed my favorite Ninjago Mech and probably the top 3 mech of all time: 9448 Samurai Mech.
Completely ruined with utterly unnecessary stickers. There was a time that Ideas sets never came with stickers.
I guess a billion dollar multinational like Lego needs to make savings where they can...
...greedy buggers!!!
@kingalbino said:
"Completely ruined with utterly unnecessary stickers. There was a time that Ideas sets never came with stickers.
I guess a billion dollar multinational like Lego needs to make savings where they can...
...greedy buggers!!!"
...I think you meant to post that on the Polaroid camera set thread.