Deciding exactly where I was going to take my inspiration from was very difficult. Do I go movie joker? Do I go classic comic joker? Do I do modern comic joker? Do I go Batman animated series classic Mark Hamill style joker? 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. 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 ]

Second, and partially apparent from this photo, is that many of the pieces within the layers of the helmet are tiles rather than plates which solves the problem, I'm sure we've all encountered, of trying to firmly press plates down on top of other plates, by reducing the number of studs holding them together.

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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 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! 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. How did it differ designing them to be LEGO sets compared to designing them before you joined the company?

In the evening, with just a single desk lamp illuminating the room to side of them, they take on a completely different look when their profiles can be more clearly seen and appreciated, the Joker in particular. 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. This year's virtual Fan Media days are over so we now have some great content to share with you over the coming weeks. 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. 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.

Summary

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.

Naturally, when you're doing product design in LEGO, you want to give people the best building experience. You want people to enjoy it, to avoid frustration: we really want people to come away from these products feeling happy and fulfilled and enjoy what they've built. So there was more focus on that aspect of the designs.

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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.