The only other real “sculpture” (at least according to Rebrickable) after the Minifig and Dragon is the Statue of Liberty – so here we go! It’s nearly 3000 parts and almost exclusively sand-green (which… according to Studio and my color-blindness is nearly identical to light bluish gray… sigh)

I started learning / creating more shortcuts in Studio to help with this. I got into a decent pattern of creating a layer off to the side, dragging it on top of the previous layer, and then Invert-Hide-Select-NewStep (I-L-V-N) to hide the 2nd-oldest layer and add a new step to the instructions. Then, assembling the bricks for each step became a bit of seek-n-find as I methodically went from largest to smallest, making sure I had enough of each brick in each step. You’d think it’d be easy to find where all the 2×3 bricks in a simple image go… but sometimes they can be sneaky little devils.

For being 90% bricks, I thought this set turned out remarkably well. From the main photo at the top right of this post, you can see a ton of the detail from the flame to arm muscles, face and crown, and robes. Yes, it absolutely looks blocky – but that’s the Lego style!

Just look at this as compared to the recent “architecture” series model-a 1685-piece set from 2018 which I decided to build afterwards. The new model certainly has a much “curvier” appearance, but it still looks like Lego … and – as been lamented by much more talented reviewers than I – possesses a frighteningly blank face (not to mention an eery-long neck)! While the new model certainly provided some building challenges in Studio (as opposed to simple layer-by-layer of the old model), I have to say I quite like the original the best!

While we’re picking on the new model, one especially strange outcome was the visibility of yellow and blue inside the pedestal. Normally Lego will use vibrant or otherwise unsightly (but perhaps cheaper) colors on the interior of models, but usually they are always completely covered up. Not so here. You can just make out these bricks from the right angle. Never having been to New York, I suppose maybe there is actually some infrastructure on the inside that looks like this, but it was certainly a weird surprise when I was finished building this. Also – speaking of color – Lego, why did you have to use 8x light bluish gray 1×3 plates with the 31 sand-green?! I could barely tell which went where! Fortunately with Studio it’s easy to swap the color of a part, even if it’s buried underneath many others!

At least Studio contains the proper tile to label this set!!