If you only follow the news of the Bricklink Designer Program from afar , which in its 2021 edition highlights the rescue of projects that had in the past reached 10.000 supporters on the LEGO IDEAS platform and which had then been rejected during the review phase, know that the rules of the operation have evolved in recent days with a spreading over several months of the so-called crowdfunding phase.
Initially, this crowdfunding phase was scheduled between June and August 2021 and it was supposed to make it possible to decide between the 26 projects remaining in the race to retain only 13.
This phase will now be broken down into three distinct stages during which 8 to 10 projects will seek buyers. At the end of each of the three crowdfunding stages, the five best-funded projects will go into production for a total of 15 creations that will be marketed at the end of the process.
The good news: this new segmentation of the crowdfunding phase will allow those who wanted to acquire several of these creations to spread the financial burden over several months. The bad news: if the project you are interested in is in the funding phase scheduled for September or December 2021, you will have to wait long months before you can finally enjoy your favorite set.
As an indication, know that the first of these three phases of crowdfunding will take place from July 1 to August 11, 2021 and it will be followed by the passage into production of the five sets selected in September 2021. I will let you estimate the delay that will result from this new schedule for the next two phases.
Note that since the launch of the 2021 edition, five projects have been withdrawn from the initial selection of 31 projects: the three proposals from RobenAnne who collaborates with the German company Blue Brixx, the Temple of Hermit project by Brickfornia due to the complexity of adapting it to the program standards and the Japanese Old Style Architecture project by TAXON55 which the designer had to withdraw due to "other obligations" without it being known whether this is an agreement with a third-party manufacturer.
