See how the LEGO Marvel Iron Man Bust progresses through BTS builds

Peek behind the veil to see how LEGO Marvel 76327 Iron Man MK4 Bust made it from the early concepts to the final set that will make it onto shelves.

LEGO designers build several versions of a set to get it from the initial concept to the final build, and the newly-revealed 76327 Iron Man MK4 Bust is no different. LEGO Senior Designer Mark Stafford and the designer of the set in question, Petra Persson, walked LEGO YouTuber Duck Bricks through several iterations of the brick-built bust.

Each one seems to offer different learnings, with the second picture below documenting the head variant that the team ended up going with, while there are various different extents to which the shoulders and body feature, from not at all to in much more detail.

“It’s interesting to see how the body evolves over time,” noted Petra. “Some models show quite a lot of the body, while others are very slimmed down. We were trying to find the balance of what works and how much of the shoulders should be shown.”

There’s even a light brick which didn’t make it into the final set, with 76327 Iron Man MK4 Bust preferring instead to use a translucent blue element to give the effect of the arc reactor without an actual light brick.

It also highlighted a little-known way for LEGO designers to test out possible recolours, with some elements being spray-painted if it doesn’t exist in that colour yet. For 76327 Iron Man MK4 Bust, there were a fair few parts that didn’t yet exist in his iconic red that the designers wanted to try out in different ways – so off to the spray room they went.

“There are a lot of pieces here that are spray-painted,” points out Mark. “That’s fairly common. We have a room full of paints at LEGO, the spray room, and they are specifically mixed by a paint company to match the colours of the LEGO bricks.”

Getting to peek behind the curtain to see just what goes into new LEGO sets highlights how literally every piece is carefully considered. LEGO Marvel 76327 Iron Man MK4 Bust and 76326 Iron Spider-Man Bust will debut on June 1 and August 1 respectively, retailing for £54.99 / $59.99 / €59.99 apiece. You can pre-order both sets from LEGO.com now.

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