It was a team decision We looked at what made sense from a product matrix standpoint, what makes sense from an IP standpoint and so on. We decided to take these four forward. Over the course of two days I built some up, I don’t have anything here with me, I came over here from Canada without any of my LEGO at all, so I built some up and presented them… it wasn’t long after that that I found out that we were going to proceed with them. That was a really exciting thing to happen to me, I was blown away by it because when you are fresh you kind of get this impression that things like this are not something that happen every day, things like this are long shots, so I feel incredibly fortunate that we decided to move forward with these products. Of course now we have many more wedge plates with different angles, so they open up so many more possibilities: you can give so much more nuance to characters thanks to them. For example, if you look at the Joker's eyes, the way they're done with the 2x2 wedges next to each other was not something that was possible until recently. This year's virtual Fan Media days are over so we now have some great content to share with you over the coming weeks. One of the themes throughout these conversations, was what can we do promote our brand? What can we do to help give content? At the time the internet, and marketing on the internet, was just blooming. A lot of the other artists in this group who were much better than me at hand drawn stuff started doing what they call ‘marker sketches’. Three key people who I knew quite well, Crystal Fontan, Karen Hallion and Megan Lara, would start doing these hand drawn little card sized things with different characters from pop culture.

The character selection had to do with what the people in the team felt were strong and also what worked for licensing because that’s naturally an issue. Also what fit into the broader assortment, so not just LEL but across the entire company. All those considerations were taken in when deciding which four ones to go with. I had done Vision from The Avengers outside the company, but the eyes were a sandwich of overlapping wedge plates so were far too deep. I managed to make it work, I think. But that’s an example of how I was under constraints before.But, it was amazing. It's my first product launch so it’s such an exciting time! Seeing the reaction, which is very positive, and people being very encouraging is great! The final Iron Man is instantly recognizable and effective. At this point, his dark red and yellow helmet has become as iconic as any superhero’s mask or cowl. Little details like the way his eyes are sandwiched between blue plates convey a sense of energy and life. Miles is also effective, although a touch less accurate. The eyes of Miles’ mask are usually outlined in red, as an inverse of Peter’s mask colors. That outline isn’t present here, and there would be a danger of him looking a touch too much like the spider-foe Venom if not for the hoodie that frames his head. Dark red is used on the inside to create a sense of shadow within the hood, and two rounded 1×2 plates hang down like the ends of drawstrings to really sell the look. BB-8 is a bit different to the others because his head is constructed separately in a different plane to the rest of the build. That's necessary, of course, to give it its distinctive curved appearance and stripes. A combination of plates, tiles and curved slopes on their sides are used to form the distinctive shape of the Tony Stark's helmet and the end result looks spectacular.

Released on 1 April 2022, Miles Morales (set number: 40536) is based on the fictional Marvel Comics superhero, Miles Morales. It consists of 214 pieces and can be displayed standing up on desks or hung by its built-in hook on a wall. [13] [19] [22] See also [ edit ]In the end there was no single version I can point to as my inspiration, but it's certainly influenced by his depiction in 1970s Batman comics, with a bit of grittiness from more modern interpretations. Once I settled on that general direction for him things went quite smoothly, but I had a lot of fun experimentations: bigger hair, bare teeth, other things that were interesting to experiment with but which didn't feel right for the character or the product. So, I had the most fun developing The Joker, and he was definitely the most challenging. What's more, they are practically the same as the originals in terms of size, frame, and styling, such as the 'cut corners' of colour and the occasional small detail poking out the top. I guess you can't improve on perfection, so there was no need to fiddle with them. Faces are always a challenge. The Joker was one that went through the most revisions. There are so many takes on The Joker, so many different versions of him. Creative Boost is a bit like a science fair. You set your product idea out, put a placard up, and then the leadership team takes a look round and decides which ones to progress. I was very fortunate that these were selected to be developed and taken forward to become a product. It was just an incredible surprise to me that this happened! I'm told by our resident Marvel expert that the design is generic, and not based on any particular version of the helmet, and that the yellow colour is inspired by the superhero's comics appearances rather than the films.

Honestly I don’t think it has quite sunk in yet, I am sure the interviews today are going to help. I guess it’s one of these things you do, then you put it away for a while, then suddenly it’s happening because the product’s being released. This is my first product release and obviously I am really excited about it. It’s also worth noting that you may be thrown off in your Iron Man build thanks to a mistake in LEGO’s instructions. Between steps 48 and 49, Iron Man suddenly gains a mysterious wedge plate on his chin, which is gone again on step 50. But don’t worry, the final steps of the manual show the correct way to complete the chin as intended. So, that is the reason why Batman was up-sized compared to my original. The fun thing about upsizing Batman is that got to use new and different parts for it and do things that I couldn't do outside the company. So that was fun for me.Helmets are the perfect subject for this building style and I can't really fault this one at all. It's interesting to compare it to Chris McVeigh's earlier work of Captain Phasma's helmet: It's almost identical other than the colour. The portraits are the same size as before, 12x16 studs, but more layers of pieces have been used to create the fine details and shape of the heads The pens were used as a framing device in my original photos, but I never considered them to be part of the sketch itself. We had a very brief discussion about the pens early on but agreed to move forward without them.

When I was outside the company, I had started developing my own custom products so that got me in the mindset of how to design things for consumers, so it wasn't vastly different. Released on 1 June 2020, The Joker (set number: 40428) is based on the fictional DC Comics supervillain, The Joker. It consists of 170 pieces and can be displayed standing up on desks or hung by its built-in hook on a wall. [10] [11] [14] [15] [17] In August 2021, The Lego Group announced The Joker (set number: 40428) was retired on 31 December 2021. [16] BB-8 [ edit ] They came about as a result of something we have internally called Creative Boost. It’s an opportunity where we as designers can propose our own product ideas, themes and whatnot, to see if they get any traction.It’s difficult to say.It all depends on the complexity of the character. And of course, it depended upon whether or not I was starting fresh, like I did with The Joker, or if I was upscaling an existing design. I can't give you a specific time frame for those just because I wasn’t sitting at my desk doing nothing but working on them. But I can tell you that outside the company when I was doing the sketches some of them I could do in two days, and some I would revisit and perfect over a month or more. It really depends!