Here’s how LEGO Minas Tirith’s new elements were created

Two new LEGO elements were specifically created just for 11377 The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith and here’s how those pieces came to be.

LEGO Icons 11377 The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith became the latest set to join the existing line-up of brick-built Middle-earth models earlier this month, recreating the splendour of Gondor’s capital city in all its epic glory. Of the 8,278 pieces used to assemble the massive build, it’s somewhat surprising that only two of those elements had to be specifically created from scratch, although that still proved to be an involved process.

In a new Secrets of our Sets behind-the-scenes video recounting the making of 11377 The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith, LEGO designer Nicola Belfiore has revealed exactly how those exclusive parts came to be.

“Everything we make is supposed to work across our portfolio,” Nicola explained, “and the first element that was made was Aragorn’s wig with the crown. You can see a lot of details on the crown. I think in this case, representing the character was really important, of course.”

That dual-moulded piece makes for a striking addition to 11377 The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith’s Aragorn minifigure, with the heir or Isildur being just one of 10 characters included in the huge LEGO Icons set.

“The second element is the Gondor Guard helmet and it’s in a metallic special effect that we have,” said Nicola. “At this point we were trying to look into a new process to make these elements. We have a platform that is called low volume moulding, which is what we use when we want to scale down the quantity of the elements that we’re going to mould and we try to make it as efficient as possible.”

11377 The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith comes with four Soldiers of Gondor minifigures, each of which has the same unique print on their armoured breastplate, plus an alternate print on their torso underneath, and the same new helmet piece.

“This is a three times scale prototype of the element,” Nicola added, pointing to a large-scale minifigure. “We use this whenever we have a doubt that maybe a surface is curving in a weird way and I need to fix it. We sit down with the engineer and we say, ‘Hey, do you think it’s actually a problem?’ If you can’t see any problem at three times the scale, you basically will not be able to see it.

“Then the other reason why I grabbed this prototype, is just to show the level of abstraction or stylisation of the wings. I wanted to make them look less organic because I still wanted to retain the idea that this is a detail sculpted on a metallic helmet and not actual wings that are attached to the sides.”

11377 The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith is currently on back order in the UK and Europe, and temporarily out of stock in the US, so you’ll need to wait a little while longer if you’re hoping to secure your own copy of the LEGO Icons set and its new elements.

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