The secrets of LEGO® Group 3-in-1 Creator sets: Designer Aaron Newman on building Wild Safari Animals…

Aaron, thanks for making time. You’re a LEGO designer! For which sets might people know you?
That’s right, and it’s the coolest job in the world! I’ve been at the LEGO® Group since late 2021. Some of the products I’ve worked on with my team include 76251 LEGO Super Heroes Star-Lord’s Helmet, 60430 LEGO City Interstellar Spaceship, 31154 LEGO Creator Forest Animals: Red Fox, 31165 LEGO Creator Wild Animals: Panda Family, 31161 LEGO Creator Medieval Dragon, and 31150 LEGO Creator Wild Safari Animals.

Wow! That’s quite a diverse range. And the Wild Safari Animals set is of particular interest to me… I’m daunted just at the idea of creating one of these 3-in-1 Creator sets. How you go about designing them?
It’s a great question, and one I’m sure a lot of people want to know more about. Before I started working on the LEGO Creator team, I also felt daunted at the prospect of designing a 3-in-1 product! It seemed like such a complex puzzle to tackle as you have to fit three sets into one!

Quite so! And with that set in particular, I can’t see how one would start… All three executions are amazing.
Thank you! The nice thing is that 3-in-1 sets begin like any other set: with an awesome, iconic main model. In LEGO Creator, we always strive to make products that match kids’ passion points and interests, so that’s a great starting point for our team when choosing which models to create. In this case, we found that kids love beautiful, realistic animals – especially giraffes – so we strove to build the best giraffe possible.

And what’s the process after you have your first model? Do you take it apart, stare at the pieces and ask yourself how you can make a second model?
This is where things get interesting! Generally speaking, it’s a lot of iteration and re-iteration. Let’s say we’ve got a version of the giraffe we felt pretty good about, maybe at something like 70-80% fidelity to the finished product. The next step in our process is to take all the bricks we’ve used to make that draft of the giraffe, put them on the table, and see what else we can build from the pile.

But are you doing that with a specific second animal in mind? Or seeing what the bricks suggest?
Sometimes we go into the rebuilding exercise with specific alternate models in mind… At other times, we let the bricks guide us to the best fit. In the case of the Wild Safari Animals, we knew we wanted to do other safari animals. But almost always, from my experience, there are a few LEGO bricks that are ‘missing’ from the main model draft – bricks that could make the alternate models just perfect. So then, once we figure out a wish list of these missing pieces, the design process becomes about integrating those elements back into the main model.

Wow. Like balancing an equation… Out of interest, can you give us an example of that?
A great example in the giraffe is an extra pair of printed eyes. Two of these elements appear in the flamingo, which you can see easily in the main build. But we needed four of them to enable the mother and baby gazelle alternate build. So, we had to find a spot inside of the giraffe to hide two eye elements!

Oftentimes it takes several loops of this back-and-forth process to arrive the end product. Not to mention juggling that puzzle alongside the changes that come about as a result of the normal quality testing we do to ensure that LEGO sets give kids a good building experience.

This is absolutely fascinating to me, Aaron. And it sounds quite hands-on… Do you ever use a computer program to do some of the lifting?
We’re always working on a combination of physical and digital platforms. We build by hand, and we build on the computer too. Different designers have different preferences for how they like to work. Personally, I tend to prefer working physically when possible, since I find it’s easier to sculpt organic shapes that way.

Great. You mentioned the giraffe’s eyes just now – but I was particularly delighted to find the eyes of the lion are the horns of the giraffe…
Thanks for noticing – the lion’s eyes are some of my favourite details of the set as well!

Well, you’re welcome. Lovely detail. I suppose my question is this: is such a creative repurposing of pieces like that due to learned skill, trial and error or a eureka moment?!
In the case of that particular parts usage, it was sort of a ‘eureka moment’. But that definitely can’t happen without a really robust understanding of the LEGO System in Play! Our team of designers on the LEGO Creator project are super experienced with reusing LEGO pieces in creative ways, which I think is inherent in the rebuilding aspect of our models. And we’re always collaborating and giving each other ideas of how we could repurpose bricks creatively.

What was the biggest challenge with the Wild Safari Animals set?
This was the first 3-in-1 set I ever worked on for LEGO Creator, so that was its own learning experience. But if I had to say something else, I think the biggest challenge on the set was around making it posable…

Oh? How so?
Since giraffes are very tall, skinny creatures, it was critical for us to focus on engineering movement and poses from the get-go. We had to ensure that our giraffe could stand on its feet and enable kids to play. But we also wanted to make sure that the joints we included weren’t too obvious, to maintain an organic look, rather than something ‘robotic’.

We also had a very specific pose we wanted the giraffe to be able to do, which added an additional layer of complexity: the iconic drinking pose. This meant that the giraffe’s legs had to all be able to splay out to the sides, as well as pivot front to back, and that the neck had to have a huge range of motion.

Crikey, yes! I see that being a challenge. How did you overcome it?
Trial and error, and a whole lot of time! Ha!

Ha!
Actually, I’m especially proud of the solution we found in the base of the neck, which is a really smooth, strong, and well-masked joint.

Just an amazing set. What’s your background, Aaron? How did you come to be working at LEGO?
I’ve been a lifelong fan of the LEGO brand, which means it’s pretty much always been my dream to work at the LEGO Group. Like many of my fellow designers, I’m one of those kids who just never stopped building creatively. Other designers come to the role with a formal design education, but in my case I applied to LEGO DESIGN with a robust portfolio of LEGO built models, entrepreneurial self-employment experience, and a huge amount of passion.

Great, thank you. Final question! What’s the most interesting object in your office or on your desk?
A lot of us designers love to display LEGO models that we have worked on at our desks. One of my favourites on my desk is the final draft of 76251 LEGO Super Heroes Star-Lord’s Helmet. It’s a functional display piece, because I use its hollow shape as a pencil cup!

Brilliant. Thank you, Aaron, for making time for us. Can’t wait to speak again.

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