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LEGO Dungeons & Dragons designer walkthrough: Szass Tam and Mindflayer

Chris Wharfe 105 Views 0 Comments

From subtle printed details to a surprise bonus feature, the LEGO Minifigures designers reveal everything you need to know about two of 71047 Dungeons & Dragons’ most villainous characters.

Rounding out our deep dive into 71047 Dungeons & Dragons with LEGO Minifigures Creative Lead Esa Petteri Nousiainen and LEGO graphic designer Tore Magelund Harmark-Alexandersen are two of its biggest baddies, Szass Tam and the enigmatic Mindflayer. Each one serves up interesting new elements with fun details – and one of them can be used in a way that you maybe weren’t expecting…

If you haven’t already, be sure to download Brick Search to aid in your own quest to find these minifigures on shelves. Find out more about how the minifigure scanner works here, and keep reading to the end of this story for links to the rest of our designer interviews for this series.

Szass Tam

As we’ve heard already throughout these interviews, there was a clear divide in 71047 Dungeons & Dragons between those minifigures that acted as a blank canvas on which the designers could paint their own interpretations of the tropes and lore of this universe, and those anchored to specific named characters. Szass Tam, leader of the Red Wizards of Thay, is a classic example of the latter.

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“Again, here, there was quite a lot of good reference [material],” Tore says. “We compiled a few things, but it was pretty much a given. On the back of his head, he doesn’t have an extra face because he doesn’t have any headgear over it, but he has these markings that he also has in the reference.”

Szass may look like one of the simpler minifigures in 71047 Dungeons & Dragons – he doesn’t have any new moulded elements, and instead relies on fresh prints – he still required careful thought and attention to detail from the design team. His torso is a strong example of where a subtle approach can do more than its fair share of heavy lifting.

“I based it on one of the skeleton elements – I think it was developed from NINJAGO to begin with,” Tore explains. “Normally we don’t emphasise too much depth on a decoration because it is a flat element, and we should embrace that. But here there’s clearly some depth going on underneath that opening in his cloth, so the rib cage is decorated with light sand and another little shadow of dark sand around the edge of the red, so it gives that depth. And I’m just so pleased with the results.”

You’d be forgiven for overlooking the minute details in Szass Tam’s torso in favour of the object he’s holding in his hand, though. Alongside a firebolt to represent his magical powers, the lich wizard clutches a trans-red LEGO minifigure head, printed with the retro skull design first seen on the O.G. LEGO skeletons back in the ‘90s.

“Necromancy is his thing, so we wanted to include a skull that could come from the Red Wizards of Thay, like a transparent red crystal skull, to add a little bit of the themes from this character,” Esa says.

“It would have been so much fun to create something that looked more realistic as a print, but I thought it was so fun to take the classic LEGO skull and print it on,” Tore adds. “Now we just need a transparent skeleton body…”

Mindflayer

The Mindflayer is arguably unique in 71047 Dungeons & Dragons as the only villain worth amassing in greater numbers. It’s a named character of sorts with specific reference material, but one that represents a generic monster with appearances across multiple incarnations of D&D lore. And when it came time to settle on the line-up for this series, the Mindflayer was high on the list. 

“This was one of the characters that we immediately knew needed to be included,” Esa says. “It’s such an iconic character and enemy type from Dungeons & Dragons, and of course most recently in the Baldur’s Gate 3 game, and it provides a really cool opportunity for a cool sculpt. It’s kind of like an octopus head with tentacles.”

“It’s in the territory of named characters,” Tore adds. “It’s not just referencing different artists’ takes on different heroes, which can vary; this is exactly what it is – so it was looking at as much material we could find and then homing in on [certain elements].”

The role of the rest of the minifigure was then to complement rather than distract from that unique moulded headpiece, and where some characters in this series feature incredible amounts of detail, the designers had to show some restraint with the Mindflayer.

“The feel we get with these is that they often have this metallic armour, but it looks otherworldly and almost organic in a way, and it has this weird shine to it,” Tore explains. “We printed it with gunmetal grey and this pink metallic colour in little lines to give it that weird feeling, so that it’s not just a classic armour, but it’s something otherworldly.

“On a rendered painting of a single character, there will be loads of details, but we tried keeping it low so that it would act as this generally very dark, simple character with this octopus head.”

Fortunately, there was still room in the design budget here for another new element – and it’s effectively a second monster in the same box, in the form of what Esa calls a ‘brain dog’ (before noting it’s officially known as an Intellect Devourer).

“The funny thing about this is the element designer came up with the idea that we could actually hollow it out inside in the shape of a minifigure head,” Esa says. “Then you can basically place it on a minifigure, and it leaves the mouth visible.” He demonstrates by taking the Intellect Devourer and placing it on top of one of the customisable heroes’ happier heads.

“It’s a smiling face,” Tore laughs. “They’re friends now forever.”

Download Brick Search on iOS or Android now to bypass perception checks and scan for specific 71047 Dungeons & Dragons minifigures next time you’re at your local toy store. And in the meantime, don’t forget to check out all our walkthroughs of these characters with Esa and Tore.

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Author Profile

Chris Wharfe
I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

Chris Wharfe

I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

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