The Potter-Heads have spoken! For a while now we have heard from LEGO Harry Potter fans all over, that they have our Whomping Willow Light Kit and our Great Hall Light Kit, they need to complete the trilogy with a Clock Tower Light Kit!
Well, ask and you shall receive! We’re beyond excited to announce the release of our official LEGO Hogwarts Clock Tower Light Kit! The next instalment of the Hogwarts themed series. LEGO’s announcement of several awesome new Harry Potter sets in June kicked off a fierce discussion in the Light My Bricks headquarters as to what to design next. Do we design one of these awesome new sets like Attack On The Burrows or 4 Privet Drive? Or do we complete the trilogy and light up the Clock Tower?
We took the question to social media and the amazing Light My Bricks fans shouted in chorus “we want the Clock Tower!” That settled the matter, we got to work faster than you can say Lumos!
The set itself is comprised of a respectable 922 pieces and is suitable for ages 9 and up. We find that these Harry Potter sets are very popular with both younger LEGO builders and adult fans alike.
The build was really enjoyable and a lot less complicated than some of the recent sets we’ve worked on. No major difficulties or problem areas, while LEGO has managed to still pile in a huge amount of detail here. The set includes a ton of fan favourite scenes from the films, including Professor Moody’s Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, the Hospital Wing, Dumbledore’s Office complete with Pensieve (now that will look great lit up!) the Goblet Of Fire is here as well as many nods to the Yule Ball, including an actual rotating dance floor (doesn’t look like Ron will be busting any moves though) and of course the awesome and impressive time-turning Clock Tower itself!
The minifigs are a crackup this time around, the whole Hogwarts crew are decked out in their ball gear, Dumbledore looks ready to show Madame Maxime around the nicely lit school grounds. We forgot how bad Ron’s formal robe was!
Once we’d completed the build we couldn’t help but pull out both the Great Hall and Whomping Willow sets to see how they all fit together and to get some inspiration from these previous lighting projects. The result doesn’t disappoint, we really have to take our LMB caps off to LEGO on how they’ve designed each of these sets with both modular and stand-alone functionality.
After taking the lighting of the Great Hall and Whomping Willow into consideration it was time for the Clock Tower to join the club (not the Slug Club) and get its own lighting system. This is where the real magic begins! Accio bit lights! An interesting approach we took with this set, was diving into all the awesome photos that some more advanced Light My Bricks fans had sent through of their DIY designed Clock Tower designs. These more experienced fans couldn’t wait for us to release our official Clock Tower light kit and utilised our DIY store to produce their own. One of these particularly ingenious techniques included using a clear 1 x 1 triangular wedge to light the exterior of the tower. Another angling two-bit lights to point downward to really simulate lamp lighting in the Hospital Wing. Clever stuff!
Of course, the Yule Ball wouldn’t be complete without a Christmas Tree with lights! This was the final piece to complete, using a number of flashing micro bit lights for a realistically festive look. Even without casting the shrinking charm Reducio, these guys fit inside almost anything and their extra thin wires prevent any difficulty in rebuilding the tree.
