10K Club Interview: TAYLOR SWIFT - LOVER HOUSE by LUCY33
ABOUT YOURSELF
- Who are you?
Lucy Young.
- Where are you from?
I’m from England.
- How old are you?
23.
- What do you study or do for a living?
I’m currently studying for a Maths and Physics degree at the Open University.
- What hobbies do you have?
Apart from Lego, I love traveling, baking, and anything creative such as drawing, painting, cross-stitching, and photography.
- How and when did your interest in LEGO products come about?
I remember always having LEGO as a kid and would get a new set every Christmas, some of the first sets I had were a Belville dollhouse and a few of the original Harry Potter sets.
- What is the LEGO hobby to you? What does it mean to you? How does it fit in your life? E.g. build, display, meetups, play the games or 'just' watch the cartoons.
I mainly just build LEGO sets, I have also been to LEGO house in Denmark though which was really fun and I’ve also attended BrickFest a few times.
- What is your favourite LEGO theme (current or past)? Why? And has any theme inspired your building style or preference in any particular way?
As a kid, my favourite theme was Harry Potter. My favourite themes now are LEGO Ideas and Creator Expert, I like that the Ideas sets are all unique and the Creator Expert sets always contain tons of detail. I also love to display sets and the sets in these themes are perfect to display too, such as the Lego flowers or the globe.
- What is your favourite official LEGO set ever? Why?
My favourite set to build is the Diagon Alley set, it contains so many details that keep it interesting and I love that it's 4 sets in 1. Also, the Vincent Van Gogh – Starry Night set, I think it’s really creative and again a beautiful set to display.
- What is your favourite LEGO element? Why?
Probably the transparent blue tiles, they’re really effective at creating a nice water texture.
ABOUT YOUR PROJECT
- Where did your interest in this particular model come from?
I’d wanted to design a LEGO set for a while and I played around with different software but wasn’t too sure what I wanted to design. I’m a huge fan of Taylor Swift, so when LEGO replied to a tweet about releasing a LEGO Lover house I thought it would be fun to have a go at designing it.
- How long was the process of making the project, and what did you have to research as well? What kind of prep, research and design phases did you go through to produce your creation?
I spent about 40 hrs designing it over the space of 2 weeks, I watched the Lover music video hundreds of times to try and capture as many details as I could. I also studied some of the modular sets to get the scaling right as I wanted to make sure it was minifigure scale.
- What special challenges did you face creating the model? What was the most difficult part to recreate?
Getting the right scale was difficult, I started designing the bottom floor first and worked my way up but ended up having to redesign it when I reached the 1989 room as the fishbowl didn’t fit. Also creating internal walls that were different colours was challenging, if I used bricks for the walls in the folklore room the staircase wouldn’t fit so I ended up using tiles instead.
- If you could talk to yourself before you started on this project, what would you tell them? What do you know now that you wish you knew then?
To draw out the design before starting to build. It would have been easier to build the framework of the house first and then add details after. Also, check the photo requirements before uploading, it took about a week for my project to get accepted because the photo quality wasn’t high enough or the photos were the wrong size.
- How did it feel when you reached the magic 10,000 votes and how long did it take?
It’s the first set I’ve designed and I wasn’t expecting it to reach 10k so was really excited when it did! It took 4 and a half months to reach it.
- Approximately how many LEGO bricks did you use to create your model?
Just under 2500.
- What is your favourite building technique or part/section that you’ve incorporated into your Product Idea?
I really like the circular window, there aren’t any circular LEGO windows so it was something I had to research how to build but I think it works quite well. I also love the fishbowl too. I love sets that have small details so the ‘I hope you like Taylor Swift’ doormat is one of my favourite parts.
- If you built your model digitally, what software did you use to build and render your model?
I used Bricklink Studio.
ABOUT LEGO IDEAS
- What (if any) methods did you use to advertise and attract support to your Product Idea?
I posted it on social media and it took about a month to reach 1000 supporters, but it ended up going viral on TikTok a few months later which helped it to eventually reach 10k!
https://www.tiktok.com/@liam.xox0/video/7222524386715225390
https://www.tiktok.com/@folk_laurr/video/7209772560014150918
- What is your favourite LEGO Ideas Product Idea (besides your own of course)? Are there any Product Ideas you think have been overlooked?
My favourite set that has been produced is definitely the fishing store. I also loved the Van Gogh's Sunflowers by Brickmaster_85 but sadly it’s expired now.
- What is it about the platform that attracts you? What tips would you give to anyone who is thinking about uploading an idea?
I think the platform is great because it's available to anyone and lets you see other people’s creations all in one place.
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