Ideas competition winner announced!
Posted by TheBrickPal,
Urban Face Sketcher by ArchGian7 has been announced as the grand prize winner of the City Life Creations – Design a Street Vendor challenge! Their submission will be developed into a gift-with-purchase set, available either later this year or sometime in 2027.
You can read more on the LEGO Ideas blog, and view images after the break.
Does this concept excite you?
93 likes
40 comments on this article
Nice little vignette, I like it!
Too bad sets like this always end up as GWP....
High marks for creativity.
Unsure how well it will do.
I’ve seen some people saying the portraits on the Urban set are AI. I see it for some more than for others, like the top left one looks pretty legit, however, the one right beside that one looks quite dodgy, and I’d wager to say at least a couple of these are AI. It could just be a random art style, though.
I love this and need it NOW. I recently took a trip to France and visited an area of Paris where this is done, and had there been time to wait we would've sat for a painting! This would make an amazing memento.
Love it.
Going to be very useful for a MOC of a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie where people post pictures of the missing on the walls.
This one wasn't my favorite, there were many other entries with more substantial builds and interesting designs. Anyway, congrats to the designer, hope the portraits are prints instead of stickers but something tells me there is a 99.9% chance that's not going to be the case.
@Bagelwolf said:
"I love this and need it NOW. I recently took a trip to France and visited an area of Paris where this is done, and had there been time to wait we would've sat for a painting! This would make an amazing memento."
Aargh!! Would that have been Artists Square? Just below Sacre Coeur ;-)
Went there as a kid and I just remember the silhouette artist who used scissors to perfectly create your own profile. Incredible :-)
Another display set and clearly a 250- 270€ euro GWP most people wont get.
That's a great one! A lot of other good ones too!
I like it, it would fit straight into a park I'm planning in front of 910002 Studgate train station... when I eventually have the time and space to build it!
Using AI art for a submission depicting creating art... Yikes. Not a fan of this one, which is a shame because the build is quite nice.
The value of this set will completely come down to if the pitcures are printed, much like the airfix set will come down to what spaceman parts we get.
Great set, a rare sighting of something original
@LuccaTalksYT said:
"I’ve seen some people saying the portraits on the Urban set are AI. I see it for some more than for others, like the top left one looks pretty legit, however, the one right beside that one looks quite dodgy, and I’d wager to say at least a couple of these are AI. It could just be a random art style, though."
It’s the necks sometimes being continuous with the torso and sometimes not, and the hairstyles not being real lego styles that gives it away. Disappointing.
"Does this concept excite you?"
No, it doesn't.
But I like it.
This gives me very strong Mary Poppins vibes for some reason.
I want to know how he's cleaning his brush between colours.....
Congrats to the winner, a lovely little set that I hope to add to my collection when it becomes available :)
It's a nice set and very cool. But at this point pretty tired of the smaller more affordable neat sets like this being "gifts with purchase" - and those purchases tending to need to be in excess of hundreds of dollars. So it's not really 'accessible'... and these are things that are slowly making me walk away again but now thankfully there are better alternatives than before...
The artist appears to be very skilled at painting hair and clothes but the faces & body shapes all look very similar.
:-)
@Bricklunch said:
"The artist appears to be very skilled at painting hair and clothes but the faces & body shapes all look very similar.
:-)"
I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh, what a thing to do
And it was all yellow
"Haha, can you draw me like a LEGO minifigure?!"
"Lady, let's not start."
@Belboz said:
"I want to know how he's cleaning his brush between colours....."
First, remember to use odorless paint thinner.
Shake off the excess.
And then beat the devil out of it!
:-)
@SMC said:
"The value of this set will completely come down to if the pitcures are printed, much like the airfix set will come down to what spaceman parts we get."
The chance that the pictures are printed is very low is my guess.
I like this a lot, very original, good parts usage (portrait tiles hopefully printed) and would look great on one of my wide sidewalks in my city...
Congrats to the winner, a love this set. It's going to be a very special set, especially if the portraits aren't stickers. If the portraits are screen-printed, they'll be legendary pieces for any collector to own.
@WizardOfOss said:
"Nice little vignette, I like it!
Too bad sets like this always end up as GWP...."
To be fair, it was always pretty clear the winner of the Design A GWP competition was going to end up as a GWP. This is a nice vignette though, and more interesting than I expected.
Would be nice if they'd slip a Johnny Thunder portrait into the finished GWP.
Seems to be a marmite set judging from the comments so far.
I like it, I just hope there is a set left on my list that meets the threshold, it's looking pretty extreme at the moment, reasonably affordable or outrageously expensive. And I'm not talking about pokemon.
It would be cool if they could make the portraits circles so they look like the character icons from the lego video games
@Kynareth said:
" @WizardOfOss said:
"Nice little vignette, I like it!
Too bad sets like this always end up as GWP...."
To be fair, it was always pretty clear the winner of the Design A GWP competition was going to end up as a GWP. This is a nice vignette though, and more interesting than I expected."
Pretty sure the name of the competition was "City Life Creations – Design a Vendor Cart!", not "City Life Creations – Design a GWP!".
And yes, it undoubtedly was stated in the terms, but that just makes me question why so many of those competions are for either GWPs or an Insider Reward, not just a regular set. But maybe it's just me for not liking nice small sets being behind a huge paywall....
@LegoMike said:
" @Bagelwolf said:
"I love this and need it NOW. I recently took a trip to France and visited an area of Paris where this is done, and had there been time to wait we would've sat for a painting! This would make an amazing memento."
Aargh!! Would that have been Artists Square? Just below Sacre Coeur ;-)
Went there as a kid and I just remember the silhouette artist who used scissors to perfectly create your own profile. Incredible :-)"
Sacre bleu! I too recently went to Paris: the Square, the Left Bank, Shakespeare & Co., Notre Dame, Eiffel on Bastille Day, and saw the crown jewels before they were pilfered. I cheered Le Tour and cried in a football pub with despondent Parisians when PSG blew it! What a time.
Nice was also nice, but a bit hot away from the water. ;)
What kind of lousy caricature artist is this guy? Those look like actual minifigs!
@WizardOfOss said:
"Nice little vignette, I like it!
Too bad sets like this always end up as GWP...."
That’s the nature of the game when they run a contest to design a GWP. As for why they run them that way, best guess is someone figured out that the small stuff rarely makes it to 10k, and almost never clears review. By creating a contest with much smaller piece count limits, they make it guaranteed that at least a few small projects will get approved.
@AustinPowers said:
" @Belboz said:
"I want to know how he's cleaning his brush between colours....."
First, remember to use odorless paint thinner.
Shake off the excess.
And then beat the devil out of it!
:-) "
Pretty sure the accepted method is to soak it in paint thinner for a week and then throw it in the trash.
I liked this one but thought it was a very loose interpretation of a street Vendor. I didn't vote for it because you know all those portraits are going to be stickers. I'll likely get it when it becomes available.
@MisterBrickster said:
" @LuccaTalksYT said:
"I’ve seen some people saying the portraits on the Urban set are AI. I see it for some more than for others, like the top left one looks pretty legit, however, the one right beside that one looks quite dodgy, and I’d wager to say at least a couple of these are AI. It could just be a random art style, though."
It’s the necks sometimes being continuous with the torso and sometimes not, and the hairstyles not being real lego styles that gives it away. Disappointing."
What? Are you referencing images not in the article? Because all of the hairstyles in the portraits shown here are legit LEGO designs. A few are just predominantly in Friends/minidoll sets, I believe. The biggest liberty is taken with the bottom right corner of the 3 x 3 arrangement, and that's just because it's been made to look slightly messy/shaggy.
I'm not going to argue whether or not they're AI generated, because I just don't know right now, but I don't think the choice of hairstyles is valid evidence.
@PurpleDave said:
"What kind of lousy caricature artist is this guy? Those look like actual minifigs!
@WizardOfOss said:
"Nice little vignette, I like it!
Too bad sets like this always end up as GWP...."
That’s the nature of the game when they run a contest to design a GWP. As for why they run them that way, best guess is someone figured out that the small stuff rarely makes it to 10k, and almost never clears review. By creating a contest with much smaller piece count limits, they make it guaranteed that at least a few small projects will get approved."
Well, they set the rules for the contest, I still fail to see why they can only make a contest with such limitations for a GWP, not for a regularly available set?
I agree that the regular Ideas program heavily favors huge impressive builds, but contests like this shouldn't have that problem.
Partner Anon asked me to post this:
“As a digital artist and illustrator of over 30 years experience, I believe it's probably not AI.
The steps I would use to create the portraits are these.
1. Use Build a Minifigure or Lego Studio to render and screenshot the character.
2. Use a colour reduction technique known as Posterize.
3. Redraw over the top with a Vector illustration program for clean lines and solid colours (one of my own areas of professional expertise)
4. (Optional) Make a torso and head Vector template as an overlay, to keep shine, shade and outline areas consistent over subsequent portraits. Also make a Lego specific palette.
FWIW I suspect this is the method they use for making some frames in the official Lego comics.
While the designer of this piece may have done things slightly differently their method was likely similar to mine. There are automated (but not AI) methods to achieve this result, and posterize is automated, but it's down to the artist to choose what works best. Typically automated processes need so much tweaking that's it's often just quicker to draw it myself. And that's something any artist with even a modicum of skill can do.
Now that the designer of the Ideas kit has placed the idea of Lego Portraits into my head, I'll have a go at making Hiratha and myself as minifig portraits. Seems like a fun exercise.”
And as for myself I can say I recognise every element as a legitimate Lego part I have personally seen in official sets, none of them look invented to me. Neither of us are fans of Gen-AI and we resent its proliferation over the internet. But I’ve seen enough people get it wrong at this point that I’m wary of calling it out without being sure.
@PurpleDave said:
" @AustinPowers said:
" @Belboz said:
"I want to know how he's cleaning his brush between colours....."
First, remember to use odorless paint thinner.
Shake off the excess.
And then beat the devil out of it!
:-) "
Pretty sure the accepted method is to soak it in paint thinner for a week and then throw it in the trash."
Don't let Bob hear that ;-)
From the distance it looks so much like those memorials with the photos of missing or murdered persons.
@mafon2 said:
"From the distance it looks so much like those memorials with the photos of missing or murdered persons."
It'd be an easy mod. And given how flower pieces are always among the extra pieces in sets that have them, you wouldn't even have to raid other sets to make some bouquets.