LEGO Disney Senior Model Designer Ryan Van Woerkom reveals eight fascinating things about the thinking behind his latest set, 43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle.
43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle is a towering 2,916 piece LEGO Disney set based on the beloved movie from 1991. It depicts the exterior of Beast’s castle, then turns around to reveal interior rooms that replicate many iconic settings from the animated feature including the ball room, dining room and library.
Blocks heard from LEGO Disney Senior Model Designer Ryan Van Woerkom, who shares eight fun facts about his work on the model…
43222 Disney Castle inspired the design
“It’s always fun getting to work on diverse products. I enjoy the mix up of some adult products and some products being more focused on kids. I feel like with each new product, I learn and discover something new.
“There are definitely techniques that carry over from one build to the other. I think the one that comes to mind with 43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle is definitely the technique for building up the large round turrets that are the most iconic part of the facade. That was definitely something that came from the big 43222 Disney Castle. I spent a lot of time working out how to create rounded turrets to have the impression of brickwork using a mix of slopes and bow elements to give it a lot of texture. And doing so in a way that allows us to have kind of a two-tone colour – with the big Disney Castle, we chose sand blue and like bluish grey, and with this one we have lavender and bluish grey to give you that effective masonry. So that’s definitely a technique that carried over.”
The grey stuff is delicious
“I think one of my favourite recolours of this set has to be the grey stuff, which is the poo or ice cream element, recoloured to bluish grey. It’s such a small piece, but we had to have it, and so I was really pleased to be able to include that.”
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Not all of the furniture is alive
“One of the things I always enjoy is trying different techniques, and some of the things that bring me the most joy building is just like the furniture. So there’s a little green sofa where Belle and Beast sit together in the library.
“It’s not an incredibly wild technique, but I just think it comes together in a charming way and brings a lot to the room. But I think in the Disney team we are often focused on making things that appear complex but are incredibly difficult to build, because we recognise that a lot of people coming to us are Disney fans first, and might be new LEGO fans, so we try to make things that appear detailed, but are not particularly difficult to build.”
Ryan loves splat gears
“I must really like spinning things, because the splat gear makes its way into a lot of my sets. I realised that 43222 Disney Castle had that, I think 75683 Glinda & Elphaba’s Dormitory had that as well. Just something about spinning that I just like, it’s my go to – I like the dancing sequences. What I like about it the most is it’s an easy thing to add without compromising a lot of space in your structure. You can do it within one brick layer, so it can just be sandwiched within the structure of the castle, you don’t have to add in a technical gearing that would add more height and kind of empty space to the structure.”
Build a miniature version of LEGO Disney 43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle!
Cinderella’s Castle is somewhere in the set
“The one that my graphic designer Camilla [Thorsted Cording] spent a lot of time on, and we were just agonising over, was the painting that’s in the library above the fireplace. It’s a beautiful sticker that she’s done and it appears to be the silhouette of the classic Disney Castle.
“If you go back and look at the Beauty and the Beast film, you get a pretty good shot of it when Belle and the Beast are in the library, I think reading together. But then you zoom in and there’s a tree in the foreground that almost looks like a palm tree. And so in an early iteration of the sticker that she designed, she did make an accurate looking palm tree in the foreground, but it looked off and it was confusing, so she kept the silhouette that kind of looks like the Disney Castle.
Every character is expressive
“I think the most delightful parts of this set are just the expressions on all the characters. And I think Camilla did a really amazing job capturing the likenesses of all of the characters. Like for me, I think LeFou turned out perfectly. He’s got kind of his dopey, funny expression; and Madame Wardrobe, although it’s a character we’ve done before with some different elements, I think she looks amazing with her new expression and design.”
The snowy garden was considered for a hot second
“Robert [Lehmann], my fellow designer who worked with me on this, actually did a little mock-up of some of the gardens outside of the castle that would represent the frozen winter scene where Belle and Beast have a snowball fight and start beginning to like each other.
“We ultimately had to remove that, partially, just due to how big the set was getting, and because we felt that the more things we added to the side of the castle, it made the castle feel kind of shorter and smaller, and it was all about elongating the silhouette of the castle. I wouldn’t be surprised to see fans customising the roof with white bricks or something to represent snow, because I think it is a castle that looks really good with a bit of snow on it.”
The set will take you back to childhood
“When I think about LEGO fans and Disney fans building this set, if they pick it up and take it home and build it, I hope that they have kind of the same nostalgic journey building it that we had when we were designing it. Because as you physically create these things, it transports me back to being a kid – when you’re holding it and the little characters, it brings the story to life again. So I hope that the Disney fans feel our love for the films and the characters when they’re building because that’s how we feel when we’re designing them. It’s such a privilege to get to translate these amazing stories into LEGO form.”
43263 Beauty and the Beast Castle is available to order at LEGO.com. Get a subscription to Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine for fans, so you’re ready for an exclusive interview about the set in Issue 128 – including a peek at the original digital model that started the whole design process.