As minerals form different shapes and levels of transparency, LEGO Ideas Creative Lead Jordan Scott needed to employ a slew of new pieces and colours to bring every crystal to life in 21362 Mineral Collection.
There’s a new fan-inspired set in the LEGO Ideas theme – 21362 Mineral Collection. The calming and colourful model was conceived by Dario Del Frate and then adapted by the professional LEGO design team. it’s available to preorder now at LEGO.com ahead of its October 1 release.
Crystals form all sorts of shapes and sizes as molecules bind together through various chemical bonds. They are usually transparent because of an internal structure that is free of impurities and with the molecules arranged in a specific order that light can pass through easily. It’s complex chemistry, though not every crystal is perfectly transparent. Onyx, lapis lazuli and turquoise are examples of opaque crystals with solid, bold colours.
So if creating the natural forms of crystals wasn’t challenging enough, almost all of those in 21362 Mineral Collection are the transparent variety, which posed a unique set of challenges for LEGO Ideas Creative Lead Jordan Scott.
“I was building this digitally quite a lot, because we didn’t have those transparent pieces in stock,” explains Jordan. “But when you work digitally, transparent colours don’t show up on the digital tool we have. You can’t see how the transparent colours will layer together. So for the watermelon tourmaline and the fluorite, trying to figure out what was the right level of greens and pinks to layer underneath the transparent elements was very challenging. We spent a lot of time discussing colours, but I think we ended on a nice balance for the fluorite and the tourmaline.”
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Quite a few new elements were required to achieve the correct shapes and colours, which is why Jordan had to work digitally until the final bricks were physically produced. “So you have the top of the quartz, which is the new transparent 1×2 pyramid. Then when we were building the tourmaline, we found it very difficult to build on all sides, with the color gradient and everything,” he says, eagerly pointing out each new piece throughout the model. “We actually made a new piece that’s kind of like a half BrickHeadz element for inside the tourmaline. We did that in two different colours, so you can build in multiple directions, and that was key to making the tourmaline.
“Then we’ve got a lot of recolours,” continues Jordan. “The grille tile is transparent clear for the first time. Then the cheese slope in transparent purple is making a reappearance. But I think the most fun one is the pyrite! I really hope people can figure out the element that was used for the pyrite.” The square blocks of pyrite are actually a reference to LEGO Minecraft, as the elements for the cows, most recently seen 21270 The Mooshroom House, are recoloured in chrome gold.
However, things weren’t all golden with the pyrite and Dario wanted to ensure that the fool’s gold was as cuboid as possible. This is to specifically imitate pyrite from Navajun, Spain, which is the only place in the world where it forms in almost perfect cubes. “The pyrite was the one that probably gave me the most headaches because it’s just so small,” says Jordan, who agreed with Dario about adding an extra cube. “I wanted to make sure that all the squares kind of lined up and there were no overlaps. But why not add another cube? Sure, that’s going to be easy!”
Even with all the challenges posed by the angles and transparency, Jordan still enjoyed the process of translating crystals into miniature LEGO recreations. “I think the tourmaline is my favourite because it was tricky to get it right because of the colour gradient. Our transparent yellow is very yellow and our transparent green is incredibly green. So I needed something in between them, which is why it was a lot of fun to layer different colours together to get that transition. And it was kind of up until the last minute, where the whole core of it was changing color just to make sure that transparency came through. And I was holding it up to lights and really trying to get it to shine through! But I also really like how the amethyst comes together. With each of them I tried to make all of the techniques somewhat different, so the pyrite is very different to how you build the quartz and things like that.”
If you’re looking to delve into the wonders of geology when 21362 Mineral Collection releases on October 1, 2025, then consider preordering it via our affiliate links to help support the work we do at Blocks.
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