Brave reporter Tintin investigates mysteries acound the globe, with his escapades told in 24 comic books that the LEGO design team used as inspiration when crafting Ideas 21367 Tintin Moon Rocket.
There are two stories that focus on Tintin’s space adventures – Destination Moon and Explorer’s On The Moon by Hergé. When it was published in the 1950s, it was very common to represent spacecraft and rockets in a very cylindrical shape, as the creative took inspiration from earlier works such as A Trip To The Moon by George Méliès. Hergé also used real world technology to inspire his art panels, especially the drawings by German scientist Wernher von Braun, who would later go on to help pioneer the NASA space program. All of this attention to detail allowed Hergé to make a rocket that was fantastical yet still rooted in real aerodynamics and technology.
LEGO Ideas 21367 Tintin Moon Rocket easily blasted past the 10,000 votes required to be considered during the official LEGO Ideas review process, fuelled by the love that so many fans still have for this series. It was then up to LEGO Design Master Ellen Bowley to front up mission control, translating fan designer Alexis Dos Santos’s creation into a set, as well as capturing the iconic comic art style.
The upcoming set is available to preorder ahead of its release on April 4. It uses 1,283 pieces and is priced at £139.99 / €159.99 / $159.99.
But working from the reference of comic panels, which have a limited number of angles compared to television or movies, was a new experience for the team. “It was cool. So one of the things about the comics is that no two images are the same colour,” explains Ellen, who used her extensive comic collection to bring this rocket to life. “If you look at the colour of Tintin’s hair or the colour of the rocket, on every single page it’s slightly different. So there’s no true colour. It’s about what looks the best, or feels the best, or is as close to the main reference as possible.
“There are so many angles and pictures of the rocket but you never really see it from underneath – only in the very edge of one shot and that’s where the fire comes from the exhaust. There are some angles that you’re reading tiny little pictures trying to find the most accurate one for what you’re trying to capture. But then there are resin and diecast models that we also used as reference to help fill in any gaps. And for the control room scene, there are a lot of pictures, so we took most of the details from there. You get to sit and read the comic over and over again!”
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As well as getting to enjoy the fun comic adventures, the team also went to visit The Hergé Museum in Belgium that houses more than 80 comic plates and 800 photographs of his work. “We actually went to Brussels to go to the studio and talk to them,” says LEGO Ideas Creative Lead Jordan Scott. “We brought a concept model and prototypes of the minifigures to get their input directly. We got to see how protective they are of Hergé’s work. It’s really admirable that they are so adamant about things like the shape of the rocket. It was obviously very challenging for us because we’re making all these very subtle shapes out of bricks. So it was trying to find that balance of the sleekness of the model within the limitations of bricks.”
That visit also led the prototype needing to be reworked because the chequered pattern didn’t align correctly compared to the art. While the rocket is relatively simple, it’s extremely striking because of the chequered design, which had to be exact. “There was also a really funny bit about the chequered pattern,” Jordan laughs as he points out the seam of the pattern where it meets the base of the fins. “It was very important to them that the white and red fell on either side of the fins. Before they were actually rotated and Ellen didn’t think it was going to be a problem to change that. Then we got back to Billund and she realised that it wasn’t easy, leading her to rebuild the whole core of the model!”
Once the chequered pattern perfectly matched the artwork, the fins could then be refined to more closely capture the rounded curve. “We tried a lot of different techniques to get the angle of the fins correct, and it needed a lot of strength, even with the curvature,” says Ellen, indicating the way the entire model rests on them. “So we ended up with a rounded triangle that allowed it to attach to the rocket and lie flat at the base. There was a lot of development looking into different angles and the simplest solution was the one we decided upon to solve some of these issues.
“I think from start to finish, just the core took twenty or thirty designs to get the six sides correct. Then again, with the fins, probably twenty times. The top cone we tried brick-built versions first before we decided we actually needed to make a new element for that to fit with the rest of the rocket. So there’s many, many, many iterations of it.”
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