That’s right, it’s a new contest, over at classic-space.com. The challenge, put your brick where your mouth is. People love to talk about how they could do a better job designing a LEGO set than the folks at LEGO do. So here’s the challenge, DO IT! Build a great space set! Mark Stafford, a designer at LEGO, has graciously offered to serve as a judge for this contest, but it is NOT an official LEGO contest. LEGO didn’t put me up to this, and they won’t be taking any of your ideas and turning them into sets. There will be prizes, though, thanks to Steve Witt. Each size category winner will receive a space set of that size.
More details are here.
I read the first sentence and thought, “Well, this is one that Mr. Stafford is going to win hands down.” Then I read the rest of the post and I was like, “Oh, well, I guess I wasn’t being that funny anyway.”
Personally, I’m not sure I would want to design Lego sets. The restrictions must be maddening at times. What I think would be cool though is a book/magazine/catalogue that showcases what those guys do in-house. There must be dozens of sets and ideas that they can’t share on their own, but to see the process of a theme from start to finish with commentary would be pretty cool…for an information junkie like myself. There must be pages of scratch drawings and doodles that the company owns the rights to. Would love to see some of it get published, I would buy it.
Anyway, good luck to everyone who enters this contest!
^ @gigahound – I think an “Art Of LEGO” series of books (similar in concept to the ‘Art of Star Wars’ series) would be a great idea … I’m pretty sure that others have suggested it to them before ;-). There’s a small production-run specialist art book industry that seems to be reasonably successful, although the books tend to be expensive, so I think it would be viable. But I think it’s unlikely that Lego would go for it; for obvious reasons they seem to be very protective of their developmental materials – I guess they don’t want them getting into competitors hands.
Cool competition. Steve W really is awesome.
I want to know who agreed to chew on a 2×4 and get a closeup of their face taken. Brave, brave man.
I’ve been helping to get as much preliminary work and sketch models as possible out into the wider LEGO world; we have been doing this through Brick Journal!
So far (thanks to Megan Rothrock and myself) there have been extensive interviews on the creation of models or whole themes from: Exo-Force (issue 1), Mars Mission (issue 3), Classic Space (issue 8), Classic Castle (issue 9), Power Miners (issue 4 or 5), The Emerald Knight, Space Police (issue 8), Toy Story (issue 10) and coming next Atlantis (issue11).
I also now have a 1 page column in every issue where I showcase some of the table scraps and MOCs that the designers have on their desks as well as a historic picture from way back in the LEGO development archives. (Seatron and Gangsters so far.)
We’ve got plans for articles on more Atlantis, Racers, LEGO Universe,[secret] :P, and a few more over the next year too!
Brick Journal is now available through S@H in North America! (The rest of the world should call S@H and ask why it is not available yet!)
Thanks for the heads up, Mark! I don’t follow Brickjournal (although some of the drama has been captivating) but maybe I’ll look at it a little more closely.
^ What drama?