Interview with the designers of the new botanical sets
Posted by Huw,
Yesterday I had the opportunity to ask Milan Madge, designer of 10313 Wildflower Bouquet, and Chris McVeigh, designer of 10314 Dried Flower Centrepiece, questions about the sets and the design process.
Read on to find out how they approached the design, what challenges they faced, and why there are pirate hats in the flower bouquet.
Brickset: How do you approach the design of the individual flowers? Do you start with a specific one in mind, or come up with a technique, then find a flower that it would suit?
Milan: It's a little bit of both. Sometimes there is a perfect element that comes along that just works for a specific type of flower, and then we build the flower around it. Other times we're looking to create a specific flower, we go and see what elements we have that can make it really work and stand out, like the pirate's hat.
Chris: I certainly had that with the dried flower centrepiece. With the rose, I started with the mud guards, and I really liked that technique. But I was looking for an element that could curve nicely over that. I went through quite a few expressions and none of them felt right. Then I found this great new shell element and it just made everything come together. It literally clicked, I guess! So yes, it's a bit of finding an element that you can turn into a great flower and a bit of finding the elements that already exist then building the flower that you want to build.
Did you encounter any challenges when designing these sets?
Milan: A huge headache when you're designing botanical sets is they don't have an orientation. Most Lego models are built on a baseplate or chassis, right? But with a lot of these flowers, they kind of just exist in the 3D space, so it's not necessarily obvious where to start!
Have you been surprised by any non-botanical parts that have worked particularly well in the botanical sets?
Milan: What spring to mind is the crown element that was made for The LEGO Movie 2 sets. That's one that we've used it in four colours across these two new sets. So that one seems to be a real winner!
LEGO pieces generally have a square shape, so the challenge is how can we find parts that will capture the organic forms of flowers, they're kind of like polar opposite things, right? The square blockiness of LEGO bricks and the organic shapes of flowers! So, it's finding those special pieces that bridge that gap. That's where things like the pirate hats come in, and the shell pieces on the roses and the poppies, they break the form a little bit so that you have to double take and say, Oh, that is that really made out of LEGO?
Chris: It can be fun to just have the freedom to let an element inspire you!
Milan: A great example of that is how we have used Technic gears as millet stalks. I'm sure when we first designed that piece we never expected that it was going to be in a flower!
Do you have a favourite building technique in the sets?
Chris: As I've already mentioned, the rose was something I had been looking to do with the mud guards for a long time, and then the shell element came along, it just made everything work out. I also like the orange cosmos using the epaulettes. It's very small build, but I just love the way it comes together.
Milan: I agree with Chris. One of the things that I get most enjoyment out of when designing LEGO sets is how efficiency I can use the pieces. That little orange cosmos: four or five elements, and you have a perfect little flower!
Have you found that the botanical range has appealed to those that might not have bought LEGO previously?
Milan: Yes, I think we're seeing a lot of people who've never built with LEGO bricks before, some people who maybe haven't built with LEGO bricks in several years and are coming back to it because they're seeing something in the botanical collection that they didn't see in many of our other LEGO products.
But one of the things that's really surprised us about the botanical sets is that a lot of people are giving them as gifts. People wanting to share their love of the LEGO hobby with friends and family.
The first bouquet had a subdued colour palette: sand green and nougat roses, for example. The new one is much more vibrant, with green stems and brightly coloured blooms. Was there a conscious decision to change the palette for this one?
Milan: It was a really interesting balance that we wanted to strike because we wanted to pick colours that would complement the previous bouquet, because the intent was to allow people to be able to customise and mix and match these flower, so that's why we have a lot of blue in the new bouquet, to complement some of the paler pink tones in the previous one.
But I think we also really wanted to evoke a different feeling with this one. We've done a very cultivated bouquet in the first one, and for this one we started thinking about how can we how can we do it differently? What kind of flowers can we look at, to replicate the biodiversity of nature?
We landed on the idea of spring and the kind of fresh colours that you see then: the really nice juicy stems on the flowers that you might see in a field, for example. The flower heads are colourful because of course a lot of the flowers that you'll see out in nature are really vibrant because they're all competing for the attention of various pollinators.
So, we were trying to complement the last bouquet, but also trying to bring in a fresh spring vibe.
How did the colour palette of the dried flowers come about?
Chris: The colour palette for it evolved over time. The model went through several different concepts before landing on this one. Once we decided on it being a centrepiece it just felt that an autumnal colour palette was the right choice for it. We enjoyed the way that the colours complemented each other, so we went forward with it.
Thank you!
126 likes
12 comments on this article
What to take from all this: they used what they had available and it ended up creating two stunning sets with fantastic parts diversity.
Brilliant Lego designers.
Sculpting with all these existing elements to create beautiful bouquets.
Love ‘em!
I hate how much I love both of these sets. I don't need more Lego, not even a little. But man oh man do I want it.
I’ve been a Chris McVeigh fan for several years. I built several of his MOCs from his website from before he started working for LEGO. I’ve always loved his techniques and unique use of parts. Great interviews from both.
I don’t like the botanicals personally but they are very well done
Both the sets look really good. We only have the orchid, but tempted to get more. I think we’ll end up getting the wildflower bouquet.
Btw those designer photos in the top of the article look so 70s/early 80s. Neat!
Great NPU and detail in all the sets, but not for me.
Chris McVeigh is great. His pre-LEGO employment Christmas ornaments adorn my house and those of friends and family. LEGO really needs to offer something along those lines for the holidays. Great job on the fried flower display.
They both did a great job with these sets !
There is something mentioned above that is no longer true. Of the 12666 parts now available on Pab/BnP at the moment (and Lego designers have much more choice) at most, only half are "square" shaped. There are now lots of parts that are rounded, wedged and/or somewhat organic in shape.
That does not remove anything to the designers who did a fine job (better than the original IMO). Fine sets - I don't want them for myself but I'm considering gifting them - and there will never be anything wrong with Lego parts recolour!
Love the vintage look of the designers' pictures.
I used to have respect for these Designers. Now they downgraded to plastic flowers like hippies. Others have switched to Friends or Disney this year. What is happening in Billund? :(