Interview: Designing Atlantis

Many of you may know Peter Reid (Legoloverman) as one of the masters of Neo-Classic Space, and also the creator of many other great microspace models. Well, he's had a hand in the design process of the new Atlantis sets. I managed to get an exclusive interview with Peter - enjoy!

J: How did you get to work on the Atlantis sets? Were you approached by LEGO, or did you approach them?

PR: They approached me. I got a phone call from Jan Beyer, while holidaying with friends in France. Jan asked if I’d be available to travel to Billund for a week, to work on some new stuff. I said ‘yes’ before he’d finished the question, as any right-minded person would. It is the second time I’ve been on a design workshop in Denmark, and I am honoured to have had the chance to work closely with the company. The opportunity to visit the inner sanctum of LEGO is not something to be passed up.

J: When designing the sets, did you add any pieces simply for LEGO fans?

PR: A lot of the time, I was working with very rough prototype pieces. The original brief for Atlantis featured a war between humans and an evil faction of Mermaids. I’ve seen the film ‘Splash’ quite a few times, and I found this anti-mermaid attitude troubling. I’m glad the baddies morphed into those Octopus people. Mermaids are good guys, surely?

J: Did you have a hand in the overall design of the Atlantis sets, with the red slopes and red-and-lime green colour scheme?

PR: I contributed several concept models, working from a series of highly confidential (and extremely exciting) drawings, given to me by my design lead, Phil. I tried to be as faithful to the design brief as possible, and build things in a child-friendly way. A lot of my trademark moves aren’t the sort of thing you’d find in an official LEGO set, so I had to alter my way of building quite a bit.

The good guy vehicles were all yellow in the early stages. The colour of a model is not a major consideration during the initial phase. From a design point of view, form comes first.

J: It seems that the Atlantis sets are very different to normal LEGO sets, and it's clear that an AFOL has had a hand in their designs. But how much lenience did LEGO have with your designs? Did you have to hand your designs over to a LEGO designer to adapt them afterwards?

PR: You’re giving me too much credit - there isn’t a single move in the Atlantis range that I can lay claim to. I was only present for a week during the initial design phase, and the line looked very different back then. When I left Denmark those models were left in the hands of the real designers, who refined things for a long time after I’d gone. Set design is a very collaborative process, with models being passed around and reworked by various team members over a long period of time.

All the good moves in those sets are from the designers at LEGO. There are some very skilled AFOLs working on the inside now, like Jamie Berard, Mark Stafford and Adam Grabowski. All the cool moves and new pieces came from those guys, and the many other excellent designers in Billund.

Many thanks to Peter for answering my questions, and also checking out with The LEGO Group that he was actually allowed to answer them!

~John