RLFM Days 2022: LEGO UCS Razor Crest designer reveal and insights

October 2, 2022 | 2

Fresh from my return from Billund, Denmark for RLFM Days 2022 (Recognised LEGO Fan Media), I’m beginning to go through the ton of content that I’ve captured from my 4 days in Denmark!

On Day 1 at RLFM Days, we were treated to a live reveal of the 75331 UCS Razor Crest, with a presentation and in-person reveal of the set, which is due to be released exclusively on LEGO.com / LEGO stores on 3 October 2022.

If you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall, here’s your chance as I was able to record and share video of the presentation, by set designer César Soares, and LEGO Star Wars Creative Director Jens Kronvold Frederiksen.

The angle and focus is a little fuzzy as I didn’t have front-row seats, but hope you enjoy this snippet. Unfortunately, my camera battery died near the end, but I did capture most of the presentation!

Here are some choice quotes and insights from the LEGO Star Wars Design team, if you don’t want to watch the entire video.

Learning to love the Razor Crest

César is a big fan of The Mandalorian but the first time he saw references to the ship, he didn’t like it as it looked bulky and awkward, but as he got to know it better, it’s just a fantastic model. After seeing the show, it was just incredible to see it flying and pretty much every episode would have something new and fantastic to to look at.

No toilet breaks

We had a tough decision to to to make when designing this – we didn’t have room for the bathroom and sleeping quarters, so we had to decide and at the end, we kind of thought that the sleeping quarters offered more play value.

Favourite UCS Razor Crest Easter Egg

There are about four or five Easter Eggs in the set, but César’s favourite is the Child On Board sticker in Aurebesh.

Scale of the UCS Razor Crest

We decorated the cockpit element, and this was the element that decided the scale of the model. It’s fairly close to minifigure scale, but what is minifigure scale? It’s very hard to define minifigure-scale but it’s very close, if anything it’s a little bigger than minifig scale.

If you place the ship on top of the reference image, the proportions are very, very close. The size of the engines, the shape of the back, all the angles, everything is very close to the real thing.

What enabled us to do that was actually the cockpit element. You can see that it fits almost perfectly and from there, everything just flew.

Super-sized Engines

The scale also introduced complications with designing the engines because of their size. Each engine alone is about 800 elements, and in the first iteration, they were weak, so the central structure would have to be really strong to hold the whole thing together

Exclusive minifigures in UCS sets are here to stay

Jens: This was something we’ve changed based on input from fans. It was something we changed because we know that when you buy a big set, it’s nice to get something unique, something special and that’s what we want to provide.

We had a case and that was with the UCS Republic Gunship where people were not super happy about the minifigures because they were not unique, and honestly, we’ve taken that feedback in.

Frog Lady was in consideration

We thought about everything and wanted to base this model in Season One, that’s why we have the Mythrol and Kuiil. We considered all kinds of minifigures but these were just the ones that made most sense, first of all, because of the carbonite.

Secondly, we wanted to make the Blurrg, we it would be natural to have Kuiil in there, plus he’s such a super cute guy.

The design process was midway when the Razor Crest blew up on-screen

I was already designing it when the episode happened and it exploded. We were surprised and we had a discussion about it, but I don’t remember exactly when it was that.

But I started working on this model, maybe March, April of the year before. I couldn’t remember which phase I was at the design but I was already deep into it and we decided by that time that we were going to do it. It was a bit of a shock, but at the same time, let’s keep going because Yeah. So, yeah. And then I remember clearly I was I don’t remember exactly in what phase I was at the design, but I was already deep into it. And we decided by the time that we were going to do it. So it was a bit of a shock, but at the same time like, yeah, let’s keep going.

Jens: At that time the information that we got from Disney was something… could happen to the ship.

UCS Plaques will be printed in the future

This one’s self explanatory, but following sets like the 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3, which has printed information plaques, the team did confirm that future UCS plaques would be printed. Yay!

What is RLFM Days?

RLFM Days is an annual event organised by the LEGO Ambassador Network, where it hosts LEGO Fan Media (news sites, blogs, Youtuber channels, Instagram channels, Podcasters, Streamers etc) from across the world in Billund, Denmark.

This event offers unprecedented access to interview and hear from different teams/designers from The LEGO Group, as well as sneak previews of major upcoming launches, as well as being a networking event for Fan Media to get to know each other and collaborate.

Thanks for reading/watching! Hope you found this sneak peek into what goes on at RLFM Days insightful and interesting. Stay tuned for more content to be shared… there is a LOT of cool stuff coming in the coming weeks and months that I can’t wait to share!

75331 UCS Razor Crest will be available on 3 October for LEGO VIPs, and 7 October for a general release, and will be available from LEGO.com or your local LEGO store.

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