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| I survived Mars Mission | ||
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Moderators: SteveR, brentlymills, brickfrenzy, kepplah, ColourSchemer, jaydubya, Inquisitor General, Professor Whateverly
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| Grand Admiral |
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pleh? Mark Sandlin posts: 735 | Hi Everyone, I have finally been given the go-ahead to speak publicly about my experience with the Mars Mission sets. In April of 2006, through the LEGO Ambassadors program, I travelled to Billund to work with the design team on the Mars Mission sets. If you'll forgive the format, I'll walk through my trip chronologically, because it's easier for me to recall it this way. For the short of attention span, here's a direct link to my Flickr thread. Immediately following the FLL event in Atlanta last year, Steve Witt and I flew out of ATL on Saturday night. We changed planes in Frankfurt and flew on a smaller plane directly to Billund. Upon arrival in Billund we went to our lodgings, which were rooms at the "Legoland Village"... a sort of campground with some hotel rooms off the main building. It was spartan but clean. By this time, it was mid-day on Sunday in Billund, and Steve and I were trying to stay awake so we could get some sleep and get ourselves on the proper schedule. We walked across the highway to a restaurant at a hotel there and ate some lunch. Then we decided to walk through the Legoland park. I forget at what point Ben Ellerman joined us. He was in Billund at the same time to work on the Castle 2007 line.  Legoland Billund, similarly to California, and I assume the other parks, is really geared toward kids. That's fine. I mainly was interested in the LEGO structures and sculptures. IMO, LLB needs to update some of their miniland structures. Many of them looked age-worn and were faded. Still, it's always a good time for an AFOL to see Miniland.  By the time we had walked through Miniland the store had finally opened. Being a Sunday, the store in the park didn't open until noon. The coolest thing about the store was the Pick-a-Brick wall, because it contained BRICK in every LEGO color. I'll let the photos do the talking.   After shopping a bit, we decided we couldn't stay awake any longer and went back to the Village to crash. I grabbed a couple hours' sleep and then we met a couple of the model designers for dinner. Let me say that the definition of "pizza" in Denmark is a bit different than it is in the [****].S. The designers drove us around in an official LEGO-mobile and we got a peek at Billund. The town itself is quite small. Really, it's just an airport, Legoland park, and the factory. Many of the people who work there mentioned to me that they live in other nearby towns. Steve is clearly excited about working at LEGO.  After dinner, we returned to the Village and hung out a bit before going to bed. I slept a bit, but ended up waking at about 5 am. Fortunately the main building at the Village had a Nintendo Game Cube set up with LEGO Star Wars, so I was able to kill some time.  After everyone awoke Monday, we set out to walk over to the "GIM" (Global Innovation and Marketing) building, where all the designers work. Before coming to Billund, it was mentioned that the GIM was "a short walk" from the Village. Let me say again, this is where definitions vary. The walk was probably a mile and a half from the Village. To an American, "short walk" means 3 blocks.  I can only show you a photo of the outside of GIM, because photos inside are not allowed. But that's ok, by now a year has passed and all of the sets I got to see when I was there have gone public. Let me tell you it was difficult to keep the UCS Millennium Falcon under my hat.  I met with the Mars Mission team and we discussed their concepts and direction. I know a lot of you have been wondering why it's "Mars Mission" and not something more "Space." Consider that from LEGO's perspective, Life on Mars was a very successful line. It sold well for them. Add to that the thematic competition from not only Star Wars, but Exo Force. LEGO wanted to differentiate this line from both of those, so they decided on Mars Mission. By the time I arrived to work with them, the theme had been decided, and the color scheme was largely decided as well. Black, White, Orange, with trans blue and trans orange highlights. Sort of a "Future-NASA" style to the vehicles. Being an AFOL, and knowing that most AFOLs disliked the old trans neon orange of Ice Planet, I asked them to consider making all the windscreens trans-dark-blue. This was later determined to test well with kids, so the trans-orange stayed. Perhaps you guys will like it anyway. I was also asked if we had a palette of parts we enjoyed using in our Space MOCs, so I tried to come up with a list of pieces we enjoy that they might put into some of the sets. Many of the concepts for vehicle had been sketched, but the designers said I could build a different idea if I had any, just keeping within theme. I decided to go with a "drop-ship" type vehicle that carried a smaller mining car. (Part of the theme was mining for crystals) at a US$30 price point. I took an empty box to the parts room, and let me tell you, it's like LEGO heaven in there. Every piece in current production is in a bin. I must have spent the first 20 minutes just standing with my eyes like dinner plates and drooling. After grabbing handfuls of parts I thought would work well on my MOC, I returned to the design area and sat down to build. This was where the learning came in. It might seem to most of us that LEGO can just design things however they like and use whatever parts they like. I learned a lot of the ins-and-outs of that process. - Parts cost money. Every part has a cost associated with it. Some of the more complicated parts, like the Jack Stone jet engine, for example, are very expensive. Usually because of requiring a multiple-piece mold. The least expensive parts are the simplest ones, obviously... like a basic 2x4 brick. Parts cost can often decide whether a part can be used in a certain set. A couple of times I was told "That piece is a bit expensive for the price point you're building toward." - Box shape impacts set design. Box shapes are decided by demands from retailers. If you have a very horizontal box shape, then the model itself needs to be more horizontal in shape. If you try to put a very vertical-shaped model in a horizontal box, it will appear too small on the packaging and might impact sales. - Play features must be visible. The Mars Mission sets use the air hose system and there are "containers" on many of the vehicles for transporting captured aliens. I rebuilt the rover vehicle for my dropship set 5 times because I had to try to get the container to appear in a visible location so it would be obvious on the box. When the designers revised my set, they moved the container to the dropship and added an extra, so it has one on each side. - Building parts-efficiently is hard. We as AFOLs get spoiled in our building. LEGO is caught between the higher cost of their parts versus the fact that Mega can churn out a bigger set with many more parts for the same price. Because of this, many LEGO sets have to be built so they look bigger, which can make the parts seem more "stretched" or "thin" Because of all these criteria, and the fact that my days were also sprinkled with meetings with the LEGO Factory folks, and a bit of touring the facilities, it took 3 days for me to bring my model to a "finished concept" stage. Fortunately for me, the desginers and design manager liked my dropship concept enough to make it into a set. Unfortunately for me, the set itself bears little resemblance to my design, except perhaps in silhouette and theme. Oh well, that's the design biz. The last couple of days in Billund I worked on a smaller variation on my dropship design that had no smaller vehicle. This was not produced, in favor of my larger design. I have sent a request up the chain to ask if I may be allowed to post a photo of my concept design, so you may compare it to the production model. I got to visit the archives, where I fondled some of the great Classic-Space sets of my youth. It was also fun to be there with some of the kids from the Factory tour because they were being nostalgic for sets that were only a couple of years old.  Later in the week, Ben and I were allowed to join the Inside Tour for the factory portion of their tour. The LEGO factory is really amazing... and quite a lot of it is automated. Again, I wasn't able to take photos of it, but I really enjoyed seeing the molding machines and storage system. I did take the opportunity to make a fool of myself in the waiting area for the Factory tour.  I also got a picture with the Big Guys.  I will take the opportunity to put forth my own personal opinions about the Mars Mission line: - I think the sets look too "thin" because they tried to include both Human and Alien vehicles in almost every set. IMO, this stretches the parts budget too far. - I think the air hoses and Nerf missiles are bucket-filler gimmickry and shouldn't have been included in the sets. This was a concern I and others on the team mentioned at the time, but apparently these "features" tested well. - The aliens suck. There's no way to sugar coat it. At this point, my memory is running out, so I'll try to answer your questions if you have them. [ Edited Tue Apr 24 2007, 11:38AM ] Grand Admiral fleebnork.com | ||
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| cerebruminc |
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 Philip Painter posts: 134 | Thanks for posting this. It's good to hear TLC is enabling the Ambassadorks to participate in things like this. A great experience even if the final line isn't all AFoLs would like it to be. | ||
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| FilmmakerPaul |
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Maker of Films Paul Kanter posts: 656 | I hoped we would hear about the Ambassadors' roles in Mars Mission. I also hope you'll be allowed to show your concept model that the dropship was based on. It sounds cool! | ||
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| xeno |
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| adrian posts: 186 | Interesting, This explains why the Dropship is the best looking set in the series! Seeingly the only signifigant human 'spaceship'; the rest are all moon(mars)rovers, (the rocket on the nerf-base and the tiny set don't really count). I wasn't so sure I wanted it for the price/size; but knowing its made by an Ambassador I feel more inclined to support it. Might help TLG get the message that AFOLs and Ambassadors' opinions really do mean something... | ||
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| Gladius |
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weird kid Lukas W.P. posts: 784 | Wow, that's pretty awesome. I hope the set design wasn't too strenuous, so that you will make more in the future. The way you broke down the instructions for set design is nice though, very eye-opening. -Lukas | ||
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| Blastov |
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Hot like Wasabi Lenny Hoffman posts: 1120 | I'm definately going to buy Mark's set, even if they chopped it down a bit. You can tell that it is different from the others, and it shows Mark's elite skilzz. I also see a bit of Neverwhere in some of the Alien designs, which I like. Anyways, thanks for the run down Mark! Were you able to see the designers designing their sets at all? Could you share how it is that they went about developing their concepts? -Lenny It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms. Material force can only be overthrown by material force; but, theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. -Karl Marx | ||
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| Grand Admiral |
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| pleh? Mark Sandlin posts: 735 | Gladius said ... Wow, that's pretty awesome. I hope the set design wasn't too strenuous, so that you will make more in the future. The way you broke down the instructions for set design is nice though, very eye-opening. Ah, thanks. Well it's not up to me to make more in the future. I have to be invited back. In any case I'd want some of the other guys to have a shot at it too. [ Edited Tue Apr 24 2007, 01:30PM ] Grand Admiral fleebnork.com | ||
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| Grand Admiral |
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| pleh? Mark Sandlin posts: 735 | Blastov said ... Were you able to see the designers designing their sets at all? Could you share how it is that they went about developing their concepts? Well, the items I saw them working on were derived from some concept sketches. Basically the designers were working toward the concepts. There were some other ideas that weren't based on sketches... and actually some I quite liked, but weren't chosen for some of the reasons I wrote about. But anyway, the designers really were fairly free to be creative when they built, and they did try to make things look as good as possible. At the end of the week we had a design review and talked about the strengths or weaknesses of the concept designs. Grand Admiral fleebnork.com | ||
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| kepplah |
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Spiteful God Main Admin Kyle Kepplerposts: 1070 | Awesome. It's great to see some tangible results from the Ambassador program in the Space theme. And it says something when the best looking set in the new theme is an Ambassador creation. KEPPLER INDUSTRIES | ||
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| Red Baron |
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?????????? Brenden Wilson posts: 768 | Interesting read! I think most agree that the shooter gimmicks suck, but if they sell well then I don't think we'll be rid of them any time soon. [Studio Rosso]|[ Masoko Tanga] | ||
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| Don Solo |
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lazy spacer Don R. posts: 132 | Very cool article, I hope they let you post the image of your first draft dropship... | ||
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| Shine |
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 Shine posts: 56 | Interesting...One question though, if Life on Mars sold so well, then why'd they kill it after just a year? | ||
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| Grand Admiral |
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| pleh? Mark Sandlin posts: 735 | I don't know the answer to that. I was only told that Life on Mars performed well. Grand Admiral fleebnork.com | ||
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| jaydubya |
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Somewhere I have never been sometimes I am Contributor Jason Whittenburgposts: 876 | Mark, I think this is the set you prototyped? | ||
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| RocketSeason |
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Rum Runner Matt Forcum posts: 815 | Very cool! I am starting to like this line more and more. I like the trans-orange canopies alot. I think they would look good on black or dark blue ships. -Matt Visit my Website or DIE! | ||
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