LEGO The Hobbit sets took inspiration from the books, too

One of the designers behind the LEGO The Hobbit sets has revealed that the builds took inspiration from the books in places, in lieu of available source material from the movies.

Brick Fanatics recently chatted with designer Jordan Scott, currently leading the LEGO Ideas design team, to discuss his most iconic sets, including some from LEGO The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. As part of this walkthrough of his brick history, Scott revealed that he needed to use the books as reference for the sets as much as the movies – because they were still being worked on.

“What we didn’t really have was the reference, because the movie was in progress,” Scott explains. “They were working on it while we were making these sets so the reference I had was the books.”

Discussing 79001 Escape from Mirkwood Spiders specifically, Scott continued: “I was reading through the books and highlighting all these things like the eyes were glowing, so that’s why the spiders had glow-in-the-dark eyes and things, so it was just a lot of fun to pick out those details in that set.” 

It’s not uncommon for studios to offer LEGO designers limited source material regarding upcoming films for future sets, but in the case of The Hobbit, the designers at least had the books to fall back on, according to what Scott tells us.

You can watch our full video with Scott by clicking here or hitting play above, which offers insight into many more of his most iconic models. 

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