Here's why some LEGO Ideas sets change more than others

LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan Scott shared the process of evolving from fan design to final set, sharing why some change more than others.

Some LEGO Ideas sets go through more changes than others, with some fan-designed projects getting translated with very few changes, some with other very obvious changes, and others with changes that you might not notice but are there to improve quality and stability.

While speaking to LEGO Fan Media at a recent roundtable, LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan Scott walked through the process that every set goes through. Every fan designer has a different process for designing a set, so the materials provided to the Ideas design team when they start work on an approved set vary from project to project.

"We get everything from A to Z [from fan designers]," explained Jordan. "Some fan designers I have seen recently have provided a PDF of instructions. That doesn't necessarily mean it's actually buildable, it just means that they've provided some form of instructions that we could potentially make it, but it might fall apart or something along those lines.

"Some are entirely digital, and maybe they haven't been built yet, so there's no gravity. On some models, when the designer started building it, they realised that some parts are cutting through the other bricks, and it's completely just illegal building and doesn't work in space. They've done it quickly just to get the idea up, and that's fine because we will then take that and try to make it work.

"We get varying stages. Some are built physically, so we don't always get a file and we have to rely on images. Godzilla, which we revealed a couple of months back, is just a photo. We need to extrapolate all the details from that big model and reverse engineer. That's why you see differentiation between the fan submission and the final LEGO products."

In the case of 21361 Gizmo that Jordan was discussing at this roundtable, fan designer Fuma Terai built it physically at first, but didn't have the right parts and colours for everything, so also finished it digitally.

"That's why digital is typically preferred among the fan community, because if they don't have the parts, then they can just colour change it and it looks right. That's how we get different files. We will build them if they're in a good place, to see what level they're at and how much detail there is. Sometimes, we get inspired by them too."

At the end of the day, the LEGO Ideas team are only looking for that: Ideas. The build itself doesn't need to be perfect or even possible – if the central idea is good, the LEGO design team will work their magic to bring it to life. Jordan's insights into the different ways they work on sets also offer some idea of why some fan-designed builds change more than others, as much as the community might want a direct recreation of the original idea.

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