Designer insight: Ryan Van Woerkom

Posted by ,
Red Son's Inferno Jet

Red Son's Inferno Jet

©2021 LEGO Group

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.

Ryan Van Woerkom wrote this about their work on 80019 Red Son's Inferno Jet:

The Inferno Jet began as a fairly normal plane but morphed into a hand-held blaster after an awesome sketch model by Niek van Slagmaat that fired two disc shooters with the pull of a trigger. I made a version that spewed multiple shots from tandem stud shooters like a flame thrower before arriving at the final double-shot spring shooter design. Graphic design by Paul Turcanu and Xiaodong Wen and the creative lead was Simon Lucas.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Joel Baker

Posted by ,
Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

©2022 LEGO Group

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.

Joel Baker wrote this about their work on 10307 Eiffel Tower:

Final design done by the clever architect turned designer Rok Kobe. I am very impressed with the way Rok was able to make it feasible as a set and minimie the use of technic for the structure, I had doubts that it was even possible.

Nico Vas and I built this in one week and had a great time working on it. We had a few late nights, barely made our deadline, and if not for Alice Geiger jumping in to help out, we might not have finished on time. We had to carefully carry the original sketch model a long ways to present it. In the middle of that walk, we realized that we hadn't taken a single photo yet and if anything went wrong we would have to rebuild from memory. Thankfully it arrived safely and Rok took care of the rest.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Michael Svane Knap

Posted by ,
Temple of the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon

Temple of the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon

©2017 LEGO Group

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.

Michael Svane Knap wrote this about their work on 70617 Temple of the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon:

The Temple went through several stages before settling on the final design. Because the temple does not appear before the final act of the movie it made the development of the set very hard.

In the end the aim was to make a set that was loaded with small traps and play features but at the same time would look great on the shelf.

As a small side note, the golden pieces in the chest was originally thought as the Ultimate Ultimate weapon. When I designed the set the story of the movie was that Wu would reveal that if was Cornflakes in the temple that they would use as weapon. I put in the golden flower element with the intention to make them look like cornflakes, however there was an chance that they will be written out and they did, so now they are just fancy golden flowers in a crate.

The design of the dogs came together as a collaboration of the hole team, and i took the best parts and put it in to the two guards.

There are a couple of small Easter eggs hidden in the set, the most obius one is the statue, it have a name tag that goes with it, on the name tag it says "Master Knap". Another fun fact is that in the set there is skeleton parts scatted all over the building, if you take the hands from the hanging prison, the torso from the basement, the skeleton foot under the pillars and the head from the sword room you will be able to assemble a full skeleton.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: George Gilliatt

Posted by ,
12 Grimmauld Place

12 Grimmauld Place

©2022 LEGO Group

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.

George Gilliatt wrote this about their work on 76408 12 Grimmauld Place:

My first LEGO Harry Potter set that I worked on as designer! Nico Vas was supposed to design this set, and I was supposed to design 11022 Space Mission for Classic, but we decided to swap products to experience new design challenges :)
FUN FACTS:
- Near the end of the development of this model, I had the opportunity to visit the real filming location for Grimmauld Place in London! No images of the street online showed the chimneys or TV antennas of the building, so I was super pleased that seeing them in real-life allowed me to accurately represent them on this model.
- The minifigures and graphics were designed beautifully by Peter Kjaergaard, who had lots of fun drawing all the tiny faces of the Black family tree, and creating the first ever minifigure version of Kreacher the House Elf!

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Laura Perron

Posted by ,
Extra DOTS - Series 3

Extra DOTS - Series 3

©2021 LEGO Group

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.

Laura Perron wrote this about their work on 41921 Extra DOTS - Series 3:

This pack is different from the previous 2 in the series, because it brings in two new elements. The first is a round tile (light lavender) with a raised star (transparent pink) in the center. The second is a square tile (dark blue) with a raised diamond (clear opalescent). These raised tiles add a great shimmer effect to your LEGO builds! Credit for the amazing graphic design goes to Diego Lopez Sancho.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Rok Zgalin Kobe

Posted by ,
Colosseum

Colosseum

©2020 LEGO Group

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.

Rok Zgalin Kobe wrote this about their work on 10276 Colosseum:

I knew I would be designing the Colosseum eventually! I set the scale of the model to the original façade. I felt that the LEGO model should convey a special architectural feature of the original – the rows of columns in different styles, flanking the arches. I went on building just the outer wall of the Colosseum, and that is how it was presented at our internal selection event; two freestanding curved walls on a board. Its scale has remained completely unchanged since. But it managed to capture the imagination, and the model was greenlighted to the second stage selection process. At this point, the model changed hands for a while; our master designer Mike Psiaki built the 2nd concept model and played a crucial part in devising the connection principle using ball cups. His model on a hexagonal baseplate made it through another selection funnel, `after it was again entrusted to me for finalization.

Together with Charlotte Neidhardt we started on a challenge of making such a model buildable from the instructions, where our Building Instruction experience specialist Martin Højen Holm Buk always fund an elegant solution to even the trickiest assemblies and co-created the journey of the building experience. But the work isn’t over when we have the completed model; we began elevating the overall experience together with Petur Ellefsen, Art Director with a passion for beauty and style. There is a lot of complexity involved in various processes across the organization, you can imagine that a lot of my colleagues had to work extra hard – from creating a monster bill of material to solving the record number of bags in packaging.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Mark Stafford

Posted by ,
Avengers Tower

Avengers Tower

©2023 LEGO Group

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!

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Atticus

Posted by ,
Jake & Neytiri's First Banshee Flight

Jake & Neytiri's First Banshee Flight

©2022 LEGO Group

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.

Atticus wrote this about their work on 75572 Jake & Neytiri's First Banshee Flight:

With this being my favorite scene of the movie and creature of Pandora, getting to design this set was a blast. I went through a lot of iterations to find the most solid way to depict the slender form of the Ikran as well as wing frame shape to best display the amazing graphic design work.

A primary goal of the Avatar line was to create disPLAYable sets, hence why every set comes with an environment build and why this set depicts a portion of the Floating Mountains. It was a nice, spatial challenge finding the composition that can support two flying creatures.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Michael Svane Knap

Posted by ,
Tournament of Elements

Tournament of Elements

©2021 LEGO Group

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.

Michael Svane Knap wrote this about their work on 71735 Tournament of Elements:

The Tournament of Elements is one of my personal favorite seasons. With this set, I wanted to mimic a bit of the same style of a set that I did with the gamers market where it's a figure pack with a smaller build to it.

However, I wanted to beef up the build a bit more and keep it as close to the reference of the interior in Master Chen's palace as possible. The build itself is made so you have the opportunity to connect more together and create a full circle, in that way you could create the iconic scene where the elemental masters have to find one of the first Jade blades. The intention was to throw in as many references to the individual story beets as possible within the restraints of the size of the set.

The centerpiece is inspired by the Jade-blade holder in Chen's palace. The Book is a reference to Claus's spell book with the page that he uses to transform into Anakondrai. The small crate has a pair of rollerblades as a reference to the Ninja Roll episode. The tree to the side is a reference to Gravis's fight against Turner, I had it in pink for a long time but changed it to green to fit better with the colors in the set.

The Two Asian vases on the second level are a reference to the fight Jakob and Skylor have, the idea is that you can hide the Jade-blade in one of the vases and have one guessing which one it's in to play out the fight your self. From minifigure side, we planed quite early to have unique characters in the set with the opportunity to put in the remaining elemental masters. Because of production issues, we could not fit Camille in the set.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: George Gilliatt

Posted by ,
German Shepherd

German Shepherd

©2021 LEGO Group

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.

George Gilliatt wrote this about their work on 30578 German Shepherd:

I was tasked to design a polybag dog that also offered a 3in1 experience - hard to achieve with so few pieces! With so many joints, as well as the nougat and black colours, it was obvious the B and C models should be a spider and snake, which also each of the three animals has a different number of legs!

FUN FACT:
- The dog comes with a frisbee, not only because it is a fun accessory, but because I needed a 4x4 base to build the spider off. I chose orange because this blended best with the nougat colour.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Woon Tze Chee

Posted by ,
Brick-built Minions and their Lair

Brick-built Minions and their Lair

©2020 LEGO Group

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.

Woon Tze Chee wrote this about their work on 75551 Brick-built Minions and their Lair:

27 April 2020 Release

When we started the concept phase, our Marketing Lead Helene Desprets shared her idea of a brick build Minion that will also function as a playset so that children will be able to bring it with them and have fun anywhere they go. The next day I showed her Kevin and she was elated, saying "this is exactly what I had in mind". The following day I added Stuart and Bob, our design lead liked what he saw and the model stayed pretty much they way it was with some adjustment for stability.

As much as we tried, we could not find any existing element that is suitable to be used as Stuart's monocle since it is slightly larger than Kevin's and Bob's. We ended up making a new 5x5 round element for it. We also made the new 3x3 1/4 circle with cutout to help build the model with better stability. There is also the new 4x4 round brick for Kevin's and Bob's goggles to keep consistency and to better resemble the reference material. There should be quite a few existing elements now available in blue or yellow where they previously were not.

I manage to bring the model to quite a late stage before I was needed in a different project. The model then landed in the good hands of Justin Ramsden and he made it even better by adding more features such as the rotating eyes and finalizing the interior fittings. This is why I absolutely love working in LEGO, teamwork that aims to deliver the best possible toy.

This was definitely a fun build for me, and to be able to hit the mark so early in the project is extremely motivating.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Rok Zgalin Kobe

Posted by ,
Marina Bay Sands

Marina Bay Sands

©2013 LEGO Group

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.

Rok Zgalin Kobe wrote this about their work on 21021 Marina Bay Sands:

The LEGO reproduction of Marina Bay Sands’ complex forms - a design with hardly any straight lines - required a solution beyond the single perpendicular grid floor plan usually favored in LEGO building, with two additional rotated grids on the sides. While it is challenging to create architecture of such enormous size, the opposite is true when designing in LEGO elements - the smaller the scale the bigger the challenge.
And I wish I had an extra box for everytime somebody asks me if I have an extra box to spare!

Continue reading »

Designer insight: George Gilliatt

Posted by ,
Cyber Drone

Cyber Drone

©2021 LEGO Group

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.

George Gilliatt wrote this about their work on 31111 Cyber Drone:

The first model I designed by myself since being hired as a full-time designer! This set sees the successor to the classic Spyrius Droid and Ann Droid minifigures with the introduction of Cyber Droid! I got a brand new face decoration for this figure, which was drawn up beautifully by Graphic Designer Matt Parsons.

FUN FACTS:
- This model borrows its Orange and Sand Blue colour scheme from the 2004 Creator set 4508 Titan XP.
- The B model Cyber Mech was inspired by the 2006 Exo Force set 7701 Grand Titan, featuring a laser arm and a claw arm.
- Element 30602 appears here in Sand Blue for the first time since the 2002 Attack of the Clones set 7103 Jedi Duel!

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Rok Zgalin Kobe

Posted by ,
Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

©2022 LEGO Group

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.

Rok Zgalin Kobe wrote this about their work on 10307 Eiffel Tower:

Just like how the original tower wasn’t designed by Gustave Eiffel, but initially conceived by three of his employees - the initial sketches and calculations of the proposed tower were made by office manager Emile Nouguier and engineer Maurice Koechlin in collaboration with architect Stephen Sauvestre; the initial LEGO concept model at this scale was designed by extremely talented LEGO designers, Nicolaas Vás and Joel Baker, with help from Alice Geiger. Nicolaas, Joel and Alice managed to find a perfect LEGO scale, that captured the tower in all its glory, but more importantly, helped convince all the relevant stakeholders that such a LEGO model would be incredibly attractive.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Woon Tze Chee

Posted by ,
Carnotaurus Dinosaur Chase

Carnotaurus Dinosaur Chase

©2021 LEGO Group

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.

Woon Tze Chee wrote this about their work on 76941 Carnotaurus Dinosaur Chase:

1st September 2021 Release

This LEGO Jurassic World series is loosely based on the animated show. I am a fan of the show, me and my children are always looking forward to the next season. I think the characters are well developed, the animation style looks interesting and the story is engaging. The diversity and inclusion direction of the show is also very much aligned with our brand values.

I like the look of the 6-wheeler from the show so it was fun working on it. The excitement when my children saw the characters from the show as a minifigure is very rewarding, even better when they are able to call out the dinosaurs by their show name Toro, Bumpy and Grim.

Graphic design by Casper Glahder.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: George Gilliatt

Posted by ,
High-Speed Train

High-Speed Train

©2022 LEGO Group

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.

George Gilliatt wrote this about their work on 40518 High-Speed Train:

As a big fan of trains all my life, it was a great pleasure to design my first official LEGO Train product! This model was created to offer a train-building experience at a much lower price-point than what is typically seen in the LEGO portfolio, resulting in a train that is very close in scale to H0/00 model trains.
FUN FACT:
- As a very train-obsessed child, I would be frustrated with high-speed train toys that only had one-directional connectors on the back, meaning you couldn't accurately connect two train "heads" back-to-back for reverse travel. Consequently, I made sure to include an additional connector that can be swapped out (as well as extra carriage number stickers!) so that builders can create a full 4 car trainset with reversed heads :)

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Joel Baker

Posted by ,
Pop-Up Party Bus

Pop-Up Party Bus

©2019 LEGO Group

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.

Joel Baker wrote this about their work on 70828 Pop-Up Party Bus:

One of my favorite sets that I've had the opportunity to design. It had a very challenging deadline and ridiculous and fun concept to work from.
There is a ton of 353 Vibrant Coral packed into this set, nearly 37% of all Coral parts in LEGO sets at the time.
Originally it used part 6002 (the big clear one from Ship In A Bottle) but the artist in Holly Wood wasn't sure how I'd connected it, so they sent back an idea with the big Slave 1 canopy- and it worked much better!

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Michael Svane Knap

Posted by ,
Oni Titan

Oni Titan

©2018 LEGO Group

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.

Michael Svane Knap wrote this about their work on 70658 Oni Titan:

This was my first "mech" I build. I wanted to play with odd proportions to give a sense off scale in the model. In the show, this is a giant stone colossus and the challenge was how to capture that in the product.
the model was created in parallel with the writers finishing up the story for the season finale where it appears. This gave an opportunity to have a close collaboration with the writers of how they were seeing it and how they want to use it. we went through many different looks, somewhere closer to the Oni silhouette with giant horns and somewhere more human-like.

Continue reading »

Designer insight: James May

Posted by ,
Tuk Tuk

Tuk Tuk

©2021 LEGO Group

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.

James May wrote this about their work on 40469 Tuk Tuk:

My first set designed after returning to LEGO as a designer!

Had a lot of fun designing this. A lot of work was put in to picking the cool colour scheme to be as funky as possible but still looking cohesive. It was great putting in all the little details like the fire extinguisher on the back, the tassels in the back seat area and tiffin lunch boxes on the roof - this guy is out for delivery!

I'm particularly proud of the building technique where the front window is propped open by the slope elements to get the glass to match the angle of the side wing plates.

Since I hear a lot of people discuss it, the model isn't designed for minifigures BUT that shouldn't stop you from putting them in anyway... ;)

Continue reading »

Designer insight: Jme Wheeler

Posted by ,
Battle of Endor Heroes

Battle of Endor Heroes

©2023 LEGO Group

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.

Jme Wheeler wrote this about their work on 40623 Battle of Endor Heroes:

Ah, Brickheadz! These are always really fun to do. It was an enjoyable challenge to convert R2 into the Brickheadz shape language. It would have been tricky enough if he had been a standard size, but only being able to work within a 3x3 grid added a lot of extra problem solving. Thankfully we've gotten some new elements in the last few years that were a great help. Wicket was likewise challenging and fun to work on. MOC builders out there will note (and hopefully appreciate) the paired left and right angle plates in both Wicket and Leia. Lando's hair was another highlight for me. It has a unique texture when compared to other Brickheadz models, which I enjoyed working out.

Continue reading »