31212 The Milky Way Galaxy shows just how far LEGO Art has come since 2020

LEGO Art continues to evolve in interesting and unexpected ways and there is no finer example from 2024 than the magnificent 31212 The Milky Way Galaxy.

Since debuting as a theme back in 2020 with a series of four mosaic-style builds, LEGO Art has come a long way. Indeed, for such a short space of time, this theme has experimented and evolved so far forward and so quickly that there’s a strong case for this being the most creative theme on the LEGO Group’s books now, as much as anything for the simple fact that even if you know what’s coming next from the team, until you see it you’ll have little idea as to how it’ll be delivered. And few other LEGO themes can keep us guessing as good as this.

Indeed, those early offerings seem a distant memory now, and so humble in retrospect. From 2021, 31203 World Map took scale to a new level, at the same time as branching out the sort of subject matter open to LEGO Art, whilst in the consecutive years that followed 31206 The Rolling Stones and 31209 The Amazing Spider-Man demonstrated that the frame is only a rough guideline, not a hard border. The same can be said even more so for 31210 Modern Art.

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Last year’s 31208 Hokusai – The Great Wave and this year’s 31213 Mona Lisa further developed the idea of what LEGO Art can be by taking classic icons of the art world and recreating them with some of the most creative uses of the LEGO medium, with pieces you wouldn’t expect used to create effects that breathe new life into their subject matter and open your eyes as to what LEGO as a building tool is really capable of.

Which all leads us to 2024’s 31212 The Milky Way Galaxy, which feels like a culmination of a lot of these creative paths. As with most of what we’ve seen from LEGO Art so far this set takes globally iconic imagery from popular culture as inspiration for a big build. In this case, that’s an illustration of the Milky Way, the barred spiral galaxy that contains 100 to 400 billion stars and the same number of planets, as well as our Solar System.

It’s a visually stunning piece of imagery for the colours and artistry that it contains and just as significant to behold for the sheer vastness of time and space that it represents. With 2024 being the year of Space for the LEGO Group, what better image to embrace in LEGO Art? And, for what we’ve experienced with this theme up to this point, it is a subject matter that has been interpreted in brick form in an unconventional, inspired way.

Where the likes of 31209 The Amazing Spider-Man and 31208 Hokusai – The Great Wave began LEGO Art’s experimentation with turning 2D into 3D, 31212 The Milky Way Galaxy fully embraces the concept and weaves it into the very identity of this set, choosing to build only the background space of the Milky Way image with standard single layers of plates or tiles. The rest, though, is anything but standard, offering up an exploration of colour and parts usage the likes of which we’ve not seen before in a LEGO set.

Those parts and colours feel quite randomised as you work through each of 31212 The Milky Way Galaxy's 16x16 grids, but they are anything but, with each representing a part of the many billions of stars and planets within the galaxy – as well as containing a few Easter eggs along the way. The sections also get taller and taller the more you work through the model from left to right, to the extent that by the end it feels more like a mini sci-fi city being built than a galaxy of stars.

Not just mirroring what we’ve seen in the likes of 31209 The Amazing Spider-Man and 31208 Hokusai – The Great Wave but asking how much further out from the canvas a LEGO Art set can be, it is this 3D build approach that makes 31212 The Milky Way Galaxy one of the most compelling sets from the theme to build so far, as well as one of the most interesting final models to take in too. Going 3D to this extent adds a literal depth to the image that allows for the different colours to even more effectively merge together and for the various subtle changes in piece design to account for any sort of detail you can imagine the galaxy to hold.

All those little details built into the model come together to create this fantastic, swirling collage of a final image that moves closer to you as you pan from top left to bottom right of the frame, ingeniously emphasising the shape of the galaxy. And it is those details too that pull you in closer to little sections and curiosities here and there. It’s a Where’s Wally? of star systems.

For how it has been designed like this, and for as unconventional an approach as it may seem, the end result of this 3D collage build is an image as beautiful as the subject matter it represents, and one just as compelling and rewarding to build and continually come back to. 31212 The Milky Way Galaxy offers up a unique LEGO experience to put together, and then delivers no two experiences the same when you come to look at it once complete. And that’s LEGO Art having evolved to a new level we’ve not yet seen from the theme and one we cannot wait to see bettered in future releases.