Have you ever wished to be a Lego designer? Now’s your likelihood — if you create an original Lego set starting February 1st, 2023, you’ll be able to compete to be one among as much as 5 unofficial units that Lego will formally produce. Up to twenty,000 of your set will probably be bought to followers around the globe, and also you’ll even receives a commission — designers get 5 p.c of the proceeds.

They gained’t are available in a standard Lego field, thoughts you, and so they gained’t be bought in shops. They’ll solely be a part of the web “BrickLink Designer Program,” the place the containers seem like this:

But make no mistake — these are sanctioned, bought, produced, and shipped by Lego itself, which bought BrickLink again in 2019.

Last month, Lego introduced that the BrickLink Designer Program (BDP) will now be a everlasting competitors, nevertheless it’s truthfully fairly a bit totally different (and maybe simpler!) than this system we instructed you about in 2021 and 2022. Not any fan may compete — the earlier BDP was about giving the designers of rejected Lego Ideas units a second likelihood to promote builds that wouldn’t promote or play nicely sufficient to justify Lego producing them in mass portions.

Now, any Lego fan can design a set, so long as they design it within the BrickLink Studio software program, use a restricted “palette” of 8,500 components, and comply with specific submission guidelines like “parts shouldn’t break, collapse or fall off under normal building pressure” and “don’t insert a stud into a Technic pinhole.”

While Lego / BrickLink would be the ones to in the end decide which 5 units make it to the crowdfunding stage, any fan will be capable of vote on their favorites in an earlier spherical tentatively scheduled for February, and the judges will take these votes into consideration. That means you might wish to get your creation in early slightly than ready until the February twenty eighth deadline.

Once BrickLink has chosen 5 designs, any set that reaches 3,000 preorders will get manufactured by Lego, tentatively beginning in September. Each set will probably be a restricted version of 20,000 or fewer, although that’s twice as many as the ten,000 cap in earlier BDP rounds. While Lego’s solely providing 5 p.c of the proceeds this time as a substitute of 10 p.c, it may even out now that you could promote twice as many units.

Lego can even personal the rights to your design, however solely in the course of the competitors except you comply with let Lego produce your set. “If your design is not chosen, all rights to the design will revert to you,” writes BrickLink.

There’s a huge FAQ page with more details, however a very powerful remaining tip might be this: in contrast to Lego Ideas, this isn’t a spot to foyer for Lego to go get the rights to provide units primarily based on Legend of Zelda or The Office or what have you ever. You have to avoid unique mental properties, and Lego additionally doesn’t need units which might be an excessive amount of like what it’s already promoting.

“We are trying to avoid a perception that your design is a part of an official collection of sets, such as a specific Castle series, or a Modular building, for example,” writes BrickLink, whereas noting that “It is fine to create a model based on a classic LEGO genre or theme such as Space or Castle.”