Learn more about the process of translating a LEGO Ideas project into an official LEGO set with the creatives behind 21366 Floating Sea Otters…
LEGO Ideas is all about the fans — fan builders submit their creations; fans vote on their favourite builds; then fans are the ones who ultimately buy the finished products. Maximilian Lambrecht’s original design for 21366 Floating Sea Otters is what gets all the credit for being unique enough to reach the needed 10,000 supporters and pass the official LEGO Ideas review, but the LEGO Ideas team diligently worked on Max’s model to make it just right for an official release.
21366 Floating Sea Otters is coming on March 1, uses 1,234 elements and is priced at £99.99 / $119.99 / €109.99.
“I developed a process over the past few years that I’ve been at the LEGO Group, a way to translate realistic objects and creatures into brick-built creations,” Model Designer Chris McVeigh begins. “These are things that carry over as far back as when I designed 10306 Atari 2600 and 21060 Himeji Castle, and then when I was assigned to 21349 Tuxedo Cat, I started to look at things the same way.
“One part of the process, which I don’t always do, but I actually really enjoyed this part of the process with the sea otter, was that I did a lot of hand drawing, like drawings of otters, to make sure that I understood the shape of the face and the shape of different aspects of the fully body, especially the way it bobs in and out of the water. It was really helpful to figure out the shape of the contours and how that had to work.”
Upgrade your LEGO hobby! If you take out a subscription to Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine, you’ll get each issue first and at a discount, plus other perks including a free digital subscription and the chance to win LEGO prizes every month.
Both Chris and Jordan have ample experience working on realistic creature designs. Chris was behind both LEGO Ideas cat sets (21349 Tuxedo Cat and the recently announced 21376 Orange Cat) and Jordan worked on 21342 The Insect Collection, all of which influenced the approach to 21366 Floating Sea Otters.
“21342 The Insect Collection had part of the habitat around it, so that obviously had an impact on how we see the sea otter,” says Jordan. “And then having done two cats, we found that the eyes are one of the most crucial things to get right, because if you get it wrong, the model looks very creepy. I think we had like 300 eye decorations on the cat at one point, testing dilation on the pupils and things. It was a little different on the otter, since the eyes are much smaller, but the facial expressions are a window into making a successful creature build.”
The head is probably the one aspect of the otter that changed the most from the original fan design to the final product, and this was a very intentional decision by Chris and Jordan.
“When we took on this model, we loved how creative and expressive it was,” says Chris. “And we really wanted to capture that. But we also felt as though LEGO Ideas has been doing models that were a little less cartoony and a little bit more realistic. We also felt there might be some overlap between Max’s model and what you see coming out of Creator 3-in-1. So that led to the decision then. I started sketching a lot of sea otters to understand the shape. And I went through my normal process to get the shaping as accurate as possible.”
“We’ve done several animals now in LEGO Ideas,” Jordan adds. “And then there’s others in Icons that we’re trying to capture a realistic expression, but in a beautiful display way. And so I think that led to the decision to go as realistic as we can get out of LEGO bricks, but of course it still has to have that cute factor to it, which otters naturally do. So that was a bit of a differences from Max’s one, but I think they both have that really cute expression, just done in different ways.”
Beyond the otter itself, a major aspect of the set is the base, which is designed to look like water for the otter to be floating in. And getting the look of the water and overall base right was no small task.
“We decided early on that we wanted to have a measure of depth to the water, which meant that we wanted to have an outline of the otter’s submerged body underneath the water layer. So we carefully designed an outline that we laid the transparent blue tiles over so that if you look at it, you can see a little bit more of the otter’s body underneath the water itself,” Chris explains.
“I think you built five or six different 8×8 plates in different colours, then layered different transparent pieces on top to see how the colour would look for the water,” Jordan laughs. “Because when you look at sea otters, they’re in this kind of cerulean water that’s got a unique colour to it. It’s not like bright blue or anything. So we spent a lot of time working on the colour of that.”
“Actually, it was more like ten samples of different layers of transparent tiles on different green and blue bases,” Chris jumps in. “And we ultimately landed on the teal as the base colour with the transparent blue on top. And I think it does really well to capture that cerulean sea colour. We could’ve gone many different directions for this, but we also thought that, from a contrast perspective, it really provided some nice contrast and balance to the reddish brown used for the fur.”
Deciding on the colour of the water wasn’t the end of the challenges in creating the base, though. With so many layers of plates needed to get the colour just right, and the submerged parts of the otter added in to boot, the base ended up having to be enlarged compared to Max’s design.
“We increased the depth,” Chris says. “It’s six, maybe seven plates deep. Max’s was three. So it started to look like the otter was in a tub. This was something that we wanted to make sure felt like it was out in the wild, that this was out in the sea. Little contextual things, like the rocky outcropping, the seaweed, that type of thing were really important.
“But we still found that when we had rounded the corners to give it a more organic shape, it still felt a little bit like the otter’s just in a tub. So we looked for ways to break the frame in a way, to make it feel a little bit more like it was a scene, something pulled right out of a photo taken in the wild, not a very ornate bathtub.”
The end result is a model that looks like it was plucked right out of the sea, with a mother otter and her pup enjoying a relaxing float through the water.
You can learn more about the process of adding the pup and making it so the otters can hold hands, or about Max’s journey from conceptualising the original project to seeing the final design.
A huge slate of fan-designed sets have been announced for the next two years, including Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, Downton Abbey, Ramen, Vintage Sewing Machine, E.T. The Extra-terrestrial, Smurf Village and La Catrina. Another 75 product ideas are currently under consideration.
If you’re interested in purchasing 21366 Floating Sea Otters, please consider doing so via our affiliate links to help support the work we do here at Blocks, online and in print.
And if you want to find out when new LEGO sets are announced, sign up to our free newsletter. Of course, if you really want to upgrade your LEGO hobby for the true insider experience, take out a subscription to Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine for fans.