LEGO Ideas 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory recreates the magic of the Chocolate Room, using some creative building techniques.
21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is based on one of the most colourful and arguably most magical scenes in the film, packed with creative treats and sights. Recreating those same vivid images in LEGO bricks was certainly always going to be a challenge, and the LEGO designers dug into some of the most unique building techniques that they put to use to make it happen.
Inspired by the fan designers' original ideas from Roberto Ceruti and Jody Padulano, LEGO designer Laura Perron, graphic designer Crisy Dyment, and LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan Scott took the initial concepts and turned them into the final set. Read on for the most creative techniques that went into the upcoming LEGO Ideas set, due for release for LEGO Insiders on September 15 and for everyone else from September 18.
Forced perspective
A nifty piece of LEGO magic that helps give 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory even more depth than it actually has is forced perspective, as seen most clearly in the lamps.
"I like to focus on details and design multiple iterations to narrow down the process and find what works best for the set," explained Laura. "When it came to the lamp posts, I had all the different radar dishes in front of me and I was selecting which size to use.
"The idea came about organically: What if we used forced perspective? Because we know that the Wonka Factory skews your perception of space and time. It's a wild factory, so I thought that that was a really cool way to elongate the space and play with that perception of space."
Thinking of the LEGO set in terms of space perhaps came more naturally to Laura, thanks to her past interest in theatre design.
"Designing theatre sets was my first step into design as a career, because then ultimately I took Industrial Design at university," she said. "But I was seriously considering taking theatre design, so it's really cool to come back and to design this as a LEGO product, when that theatre show made such an impression on my heart.
"What's interesting about theatre design is that you're again trying to create these illusions of space on the stage and doing these tricks to transport the audience into that space. Even though it's on a smaller scale, that's exactly what we're doing with 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. How do we take the LEGO bricks and transport people into that universe and into that world?
"I tried to bring a lot of the same design principles into the set, and that's why the forced perspective clicked with me, because that feels like a theatre design trick."
Shifting angles
In terms of setting the stage, the base of 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory also plays a key role in how the set came together. Rather than leaning into different heights as the original fan design did, the final set works largely with horizontal space, with the back of the set the same height as the waterall, and the bridge keeping almost the same height going along the length of the build.
The base is angled, which had several knock-on effects throughout the build, as explained by Laura: "Pretty early on, we decided to angle it to make it more dynamic.
"Once we angled it, a key feature that we wanted to keep was the bridge, but then there was an empty space in the bridge. That's how the Wonka Tania came into play as well because, if we're going to have this bridge in this negative space, let's bring in the Wonkatania too – and it fits really well."
The colours are far from random
At first glance, 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is one of the most colourful LEGO sets on the market right now – despite the fact that, when you look closely, the dominant colour is different shades of brown. When making a vibrant build, however, it's not just as easy as throwing as many colours at the wall as possible.
"Colour is incredibly difficult to get right," said Jordan. "We spent so much time talking about colour composition in terms of the plants, the trees – so much that we called it curated chaos. That was our mantra for this set.
"It's very easy to use too many colours and for it to look messy, but there's a way to make it look intentional. That's where we landed on the overall set: it had to be intentional, curated chaos."
In practice, this shows up in keeping the colours matched where possible. For example, the two trees on either side use the same palette, the small bushes are largely purple and red, and then the tea cups and smaller plants all use colours that work well together.
That careful selection of colours was chosen to balance against the dominant brown shades. The Chocolate Room naturally needs to have shades of brown, tan, and nougat – but that didn't mean the whole set needed to be brown.
"Roberto and Jody's submission was beautiful because they had a predominantly brown colour palette," commented Laura. "It felt really delicious. A lot of that comes through in the nougat and the dark orange, having these brown-adjacent shades.
"We did have a question at one point, because the reference material of the rocks is closer to dark tan; it's grey-ish, almost. But when I tried that on the model, the dark tan that we have is quite diluted and, to me, felt really flat.
"By combining the nougat with the brown in the rock work, it made it feel really warm and captures that '70s feeling. The richer, higher value browns and the tans work together to bring that warmth to the set, which is what's really important.
"Having other pops of colour really helps too, like having the white and blue boat. It really stands out because you don't have this shade of blue anywhere else in the set, except for the more mechanical structures like the pipes. Brown works really well for this project when you combine it with the right colours."
Teamwork makes the dream work
The LEGO Group often emphasises the importance of teamwork, and it really practices what it preaches in 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, pulling on different designers to put together all the different edible plants.
"We did a mini boost in the team on how to build different plants," explained Jordan. "We printed out all the reference images for all the plants that you see in the movie, and then we gave the design team in LEGO Ideas 20 minutes to try and build some, and we'll see which ones can fit into the model. That was quite fun."
The tiny cherry plants and the lollipops are two examples of brick-built Wonka creations that came about through that exercise.
LEGO Ideas 21360 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory will be available to buy from September 15 for LEGO Insiders and from September 18 for everyone else, retailing at £199.99 in the UK, $219.99 in the US, and from €219.99 in Europe.
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