To be fair, we don’t actually have photos of the Milky Way from this outside perspective. Any representation of it we’ve seen is an artist’s impression - much like this one.

If overthinking things had a video on KZfaq…. This would be it.

I think the set clearly conveys what it aims to represent and that at any resolution, the magnitude of a single galaxy can never be truly communicated. The « you are here » sign is something I’ve seen in other representations of our galaxy and communicates how we are minuscule in the vastness of space. More importantly, this set highlights how parts can be used for entirely different purposes than the initial intent…and it’s LEGO itself that has done it. Of course it’s not the first time that pieces are used differently, and not the first time that greebling techniques are used, but i think this is the first set where greebling is the primary technique used to convey something. I think this set nailed it to inspire creativity.

Perhaps you're over thinking it. It's a classic milkyway visual redone with Lego. I think it's fantastic and look forward to picking it up. Nice job Lego!

It's a bit all over the place with all the different lego pieces, isn't it? It's also bold and colourful, thus I like it for that. If you put led lights in this Milky Way set and make them twinkle, you can add a new dimension IMO.

I’m so hyped for this set. Rare day one buy for me maybe. I love the colour, the 3D effect, and cool usage of unique parts

Look... if a person is going to want ONLY realism from Lego, then they'd better stick with the geometric designs like building and cars and such, because natural/organic design is very difficult, and the gets MORE difficult the more you scale down. That's just the limitation of Lego. But Lego gets a LOT of it's charm from HOW they deal with their limitations while challenging themselves. I LOVE when someone looks at my "Starry Night", says "Ooh... that's cool..." and then does the double-take of "IS THAT LEGO?!?" Some of us like the limitation of bricks. I do. And looking at them brings up a sense of joy in me. It won't for everyone. And that's cool, too. If you want realism from Lego, stick to things like cars, the Atari 2600, the typewriter, etc. But is you want things that AREN'T straight lines, sharp corners, and gentle curves, you HAVE to compromise a little and love the beauty of how they solved problems.

Couldn’t one just empty their drawers & make their own?

Personally, I'm a fan. Having built my share of the Art sets, I can definitely say I like the direction the designers are going with them. It's not perfect for sure, but I definitely think it works.

This is one set where there is a grey area of viewing. Up close, it’s an amalgamation of random parts. Far away, it’s an artist’s rendering of the Milky Way. The grey area is in between those two, where it looks like a blend of the two.

I loved building this kit including making some mods. I added Sag A* using a life preserver and a hot dog to mimic the Event Horizon Telescope visualization. I substituted a full crab for the hermit crab to represent M1 the Crab Nebula" and relocated it to a location based on star maps. Then to evoke our tendency to find constellations I added a lamb, pig, rabbit, and fish along with a beehive and a few other fun pieces. I also found out that the pieces in color Vibrant Coral seem to flouresce in blue light. I moved some of those pieces to enhance the effect. Everyone to whom I've shown this instantly recognizes this as a galaxy. It is highly successful as a piece in the Impressionist tradition. This is hands down fabulous. That said, there are elaborate maps of the galaxy from top down that would have been sources for more verisimilitude. My biggest complaint: Build book 4 focuses on Sag A* and LEGO opted to omit that from the design. But, per above, easily fixed.

I’m sure it’d be cost prohibitive and there are other technical reasons this couldn’t work buuuut… I think one way they could’ve improved this set is to use (at least some) “sparkle”-coated parts. Those would add a sense of scale and “twinkle” that might offset the fact that the scale of parts to cosmic bodies within the frame breaks the illusion for at least some of us. Agreed that Hokusai is probably the platonic ideal of the Art series (though I love the Starry Night as well). I think the Orrery may itself be a current benchmark for astronomy. For me, the key point is that I love that Lego is testing their creative reach. Yeah, sometimes our reach exceeds our grasp… but we get better at grasping the more we flex our reach. This set doesn’t grasp but it’s one small step for a brick-based system…

The disastrous Mona Lisa set shows trying for absolute accuracy and failing leads to far worse results than the Milky Way more creative approach

I love the look of this set and I love the texture that they’re used. Really looking forward to building it.

I wish LEGO had gone with a version of the photo of the Milky Way shown in this video - what we see from Earth - with the dust lanes and glow of the central bulge as seen edge on. And including the two Magellanic clouds (satellite galaxies). I will build the forthcoming kit but, frankly, it looks much more like Andromeda. PS: I may modify to include SagA* at the core (a super massive black hole).

I loved this video. Thank you for this kind of discussion and food for thought! ❤️

Thanks for the video. Very well put. It sure looks like a lovely piece. I see it as a somewhat abstract version of the Milky Way. I'll probably get it and would make a nice decorative piece for the observatory.

I think from the perspective in the lego set, you couln‘t also recognise that it‘s the milky way in a high quality picture. And from the milky way, there exists no photo in this perspective. I think lego has done it very great, you can defenitly recognise that it’s a galaxy, and with the you are here brick, it must be the milky way.

I'm getting it. I think the appeal is - as you said - the aestetic aspect of it. The pleasing colors, the beautiful shape, and how it would fit on many people's wall and look nice. I don't think it detracts from the set that it doesn't super accurately represent the milky way, because I don't think it's marketed toward space affectionados. It's more a general non-LEGO market I think. A bit like the botanicals. On a side note, it seems to me there's a lot of interesting parts being used in interesting colors, so again, a bit like botanicals.

Lighten up, Francis. Christ on a Triscuit.

I think it's a brilliant set, with great colors and sense of depth

Wanted to get this, didn't know it was on a flimsy background like that.

love how it looks, but it looks like such a horrible build experience

Its a pretty neat parts pack too

You mean the Milky Way set is not 1:1 scale? that's appalling!

Like your analysis of Lego. Subscribed.

I ordered it because I thought it will look awesome. It is on back order and it told me the wait would be about 60 days

I think it looks amazing, will definitely get it. I have great wave and starry night, both are fantastic builds.

I am hopeful of price range similar to the Wave and Van Gogh as despite it not looking EXACTLY like the Milky Way- u know what it is when u see it and I think it looks beautiful! I love @TheIronWafffle’s idea of sparkly or glittery bricks just as a nice little cherry or maybe glow in the dark elements- I’ve been waiting for a new Art Lego piece and it will definitely be this (£££🤞🤞🤞!)

Hey Matthew, thanks for the video. I really enjoyed your precis of this set and the discussion around it, very insightful and thought provoking. I initially didn't like the set when I saw it was announced, but I actually like it more after watching your video! I'm still not convinced enough to buy it, mostly due to the price, though I would be tempted by a deep discount!!

I like the scale of the world map.. not so sure about the smaller scale used on this set... I am still deciding, but in general I appreciate this framed art sets.

We have no photos of the Milky Way as we are in it and the voyager probes have barely left the solar system. So any “photos” of the Milky Way are essentially art. But that’s ok. I just think they missed the reason it’s called Milky Way. Got Milk? I am not going to say it’s terrible like modern art which was complete garbage. I will say I don’t like it. But I’m not mad they made it

$200 would buy a really nice framed print with plenty to spare. I don't think it translates well to LEGO at all, but to each their own.

not sure how much I like it as a representation of the Milky Way, BUT ... I will get one for sure. It will look so GREAT next to my super awesome non SW space sets from 2024

On this scale even Voyager 1 hasn't traveled one lego brick!

Not sure anything manmade has left the Milky Way yet, so views of other similar Galaxies are the best we can do, which I think this set does represent.

The Wave is and will be the best lego art set. I look at the world map and starry night every day in my office and you need some depth but not too much. The Milky way went way too crazy with the griebling.

I'd love to be able to afford this! I have the Great Wave, but I'd love this and Stary Night. Dust is the main downside for me, but this is a tiny drawback. Oh - have these sets been designed to hold up to UV light from the sun that streams into my house?

I work with a lot of engineers, the correlation I can see between this guy and those engineers, is they overanalyze and overly complicate EVERYTHING

sorry friend, mind isn't changed. there's a lot to unpack here, but what i always keep in mind is something i learned from the master builders academy, and that is scale and imagination. although i may be biased being that one of my favorite things in lego is the micro build. it's not so much that they are 'cheating' with printed details etc, but depending on the size and scale of the final product depends on how much they want to 'cheat' and how much can be filled in with the imagination. which, is part of the point of creating with lego anyway. take a 2x1 inverted brown slope and put it on a tan tile and say 'look, it's the sand crawler from star wars'. of course if you wanted to make it out of 100,000 lego bricks and 5 ft tall, yes, you could make all kinds of details that could be brick built. that's one reason i don't like large scale models. because it's easier to make the details and, in my opinion, doesn't really take that much creativity. but in making this set an appropriate size for a wall hanging, some of the details are left up to your imagination. you could easily make it bigger or smaller and add more/less detail but it wouldn't be appropriate for the size, and you can easily look at this and know what it's supposed to be. the other thing is, and i'm super surprised that i haven't seen it yet is....people are posting videos of this with lighting kits....but not ONE person has put this under a black light, and i'm assuming with the color palette that's been chosen, that's more than likely what it was meant to be viewed under and would look quite a bit more like what it's supposed to represent. just my 2 cents, excellent take and enjoyed the video!

They should do something like this as a micro city of like New York and build it into a table.

It's a lovely set and I do plan to get it. I understand your issue of the resolution, but often in art the work works by representing something, not recreating it. Maybe it'd be more to your liking it was the size of the World Map. I did find your use of Earth view pics of the Milky Way distracting and counterproductive. Lego wasn't trying to create such a view. It's an entirely different visual with an entirely different level of detail.

i would like to see, a set for Lego, using landscaping to create things the national parks. Utah's national park being an arch, would be the easiest. i see spin art, looking at the milky way as a Lego art set.

I like it a lot. I love the art sets

incredibly well thought out video, i totally agree . also, i personally love this and cant wait to build!

Ive found that if you squint REALLY hard, or look at it from afar, this set actually looks immaculate and captures the look of the Milky Way quite well. I'm not even being sarcastic about that, doing the whole "if you squint hard enough, it looks great" line. Its as though you are looking at a mosaic, where if you look at it very closely, you can see all the little images that make up the larger picture, but in order to really appreciate that larger picture, you need to look at it from afar or squint to allow those tiny details to blend together. That being said, I likely wont be getting this set, especially with the Artemis I launching (pun intended) at the same time. Maybe one of these days, if discounted, ill pick this one up.

I love the Wave and Starry Night. The Milky Way might grow on me, but my initial thought is that it's ugly. I pretty much agree with everything you've said.

One set I was really looking forward to being an amateur astronomer. After seeing it there is no way I'll be buying it even with a massive discount. Should have the same format as the world map. Cudos for the designers trying though....can't see this selling well unless you have a 100 ft living room!!

If there was a famous art piece (painting) that this set was closely based on - like The Great Wave or The Starry Night - then I think there'd be a lot of love for the set. I always felt worried that the revealed set wouldn't work. That said, the set is an art piece in itself, so objective opinions are not a thing. I appreciate it as an art piece. Not sure I'll pick it up myself, but.. displayed above the Space CMF series could really make it work. Hmm, I think that's my take.. I couldn't have it as a stand-alone piece.. but in a display besides the other Art sets, or amongst some Space-themed sets, it could definitely look great.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Not brickbuilt beholder.🤠

One appeal to me is not needing a table to display the LEGO art - bring able to display it on a wall is awesome. I have the Great Wave and Starry Night, but haven't built them yet. I love the combination of the pieces and abstract imagery in the Milky Way set. I even want the Batman skyline because of the multidimensional & interactive art that it is

I'm very much with you! The color scheme is just soo good and pretty, and I love the 2D but actually 3Dish building technique used on this. It would be FANTASTIC... if only it was. It really doesn't do it for me for what it's supposed to be, ie The Milky Way -- or any galaxy at all for that matter. I don't necessarily agree that the issue is scale/resolution, you can make 64x64 galaxy pixel art that's more "true" to what it's supposed to be. I think it's just the artistic direction taken for it to look how it looks, and I respect it anyway, I just don't like it myself ☺

It's certainly a Lego set that works best from a few steps away.. but I like it. It's certainly not perfect, but I like the motif and think it will form a nice backdrop to the NASA sets I have.

It looks better laying flat on a table. Kinda looks like a micro scale city

My thoughts: The entire set is backwards. When viewing the Milky Way from above the Galactic plane, the spin is counterclockwise. All solar systems so far, also move counterclockwise. But it is not backwards if the view this Lego set depicts is from below the Galactic Plane.

I totally agree with the sentiment that the art team is often pushing against the limitations of the medium, but I don't think this is actually a factor for this set, namely because I'm entirely convinced that their intention with this piece is not recreating any particular image. This piece looks fairly standard, dare I say pretty boring when looked at straight on, but the moment you turn and get off angle the piece starts to shine, and I think that's entirely because it's not trying to turn the Lego pieces into a representation of a real thing, they want you to see the individual parts. In that sense it's honestly a really abstract piece, and personally more interesting than just a high resolution painting of a galaxy. It's more of a representation of chaos in Lego form.

This set is great, while the price per part ratio is great, it should be cheaper IMO I like it as a space art set, not as being accurate If they did a nebula it would probably work better, maybe there could be an alternate build of one The SLS set is awesome

I’ve got to really want about art set to fork out $ for it. Looks a bit tedious to build.

The Milky Way set destroys the World map set. I personally think it's the best art set they have made so far.

The way I see it, a lego brick is what it is, and you can build whatever you want, and it's going to look like you've used lego bricks to build it, and it's subjective if you like it or not. It's also a beautiful parts pack so can use it to build your own image that "works better". My personal concern is the amount of dust that will get permanently stuck in this build... it is literally a 200$ dust collector.

Womp womp it’s still cool

I have mixed feelings over this set. It is a beautiful set, that is undeniable. But I'm not sure if I would hang it on my wall. I am not sure if it is immediately recognizable, probably because of what is said on the video about the size of the Lego brick and the size of a celestial body in a picture of the galaxy. From an experimentation standpoint, I think it's worth it. Period. It is different, they will expand from it somehow in the future and will probably hit something undeniably relatable with other people in the future. Summarizing, the more I look, the more uncertain I am. But I like it because that's the purpose of art: to make people think and feel things they are not used to.

It’s funny: I see so many people holding up the Lego Hokusai as the best of the art sets, and I just don’t see it. I absolutely _love_ the original, so I was really excited when the Lego set was announced, but when it was actually revealed I just didn’t think it was a very good representation. It’s…fine, I guess. But to me it was a huge letdown compared to the amazing job TLG did with Starry Night. This Lego Milky Way, however, has me really interested. Might not be able to fit it in the budget, but I’ll definitely get it if I can afford to.

To me, if it inspires, it's art.

I may be a rare one here, but I'm not a fan of the 3D art sets. I love the studs only art sets!

It is possible to represent more detail. I used tiles with glitter to represent the multitude of stars in a recent spiral galaxy I created ⭐️🌟⭐️✨⭐️

I was excited for this art piece. I love my "Great Wave" picture and hoped this one would look great on the wall also. However, now that they have released the pictures, I am disappointed and will no longer be buying it. I don't mind the colors or that it is somewhat 3D, I dislike all the random parts. "The Great Wave" has some 3D to it, but used great parts for that representation not what feels like random pieces like a hairbrush. I appreciate what they tried to do, but the end result is just not for my anymore.

😴🥱

Yep, the Milky Way in Lego form is terrible. What were they thinking.

I don't like Lego 'art' sets in general. Their aesthetic just doesn't vibe with me for whatever reason. Maybe some day they'll release something I'll like, but for now my money is staying firmly in my pocket when it comes to these types of sets.

The horse head nebula would make more sense, just looks like a cluster of colors. It is a nice attempt at a galaxy.

It looks absolutely terrible. My point of view is adult space sets. Lego while it can be seems to be for every reason a very poor medium for pure visual arts. Its like using food for art like the guy from the 80's. If you want to conceptualise lego as non lego.. to me its more "minatures". Also there's something about art thats universal to art, aesthetics as they say in lego masters... and that one completely fails. Hideous. Further, the milky way is also profound in itself.. and i think the analogy you want is when they sell cheap souvenirs of the uk queen? That set does to the milky way the same.

Looks terrible. Just a mess.

It's a bit disappointing to see you criticize the design for not being able to replicate the images that we all know... while showing different images of the milky way and avoiding one of the many spiral depictions that this is clearly based on.