(Written by HP)
Just a couple of weeks ago we discussed a really fun LEGO project, the LEGO Architecture Studio 30-Day Challenge (follow link for details). Today I would like to share with you a similar challenge my local LEGO Users Group put together here in the Philippines (PhLUG), called MOCtober. This LEGO event was awesome, with 25 challenging categories to enter. My entire LUG participated in it – that’s over a hundred members! Below I will share with you the challenges, and maybe you can use them (or parts of it) in your own LUG, or even with your friends and family, for some great LEGO fun! 🙂
LEGO MOCTOBER CHALLENGE CATEGORIES:
- YOUR PROFESSION – Use customized minifigs, or build something related to your profession out of LEGO elements.
- 4X4X4 VIGNETTE – Build a small LEGO vignette within these dimensions.
- CMS MECHA – Build a mecha for a LEGO Collectible Minifigures character.
- HALLOWEEN IN SPACE – What is it like?
- PROUD TO BE PINOY – Build anything pinoy (pinoy refers to Filipino people); landmarks, animals, people, food, etc.
- LORD OF THE RING/HOBBIT – Recreate a scene from J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece.
- STAR WARS – Recreate a scene from any of the 6 episodes of George Lucas’ masterpiece.
- ANIMALS ON THE GO – Build a vehicle for any of the LEGO animals; planes, cars, mecha, boat, etc.
- HOUSE – Build a LEGO house in micro, midi, minifig, or Miniland scale.
- FRIENDS OF THE TREES – Build a tree and link it back to the real tree that inspired you.
- MEDIEVAL SHOWDOWN – Build a battle-scene between knights. Is it going to be good vs. evil? A joust match? Armies in battle? Your call!
- ANIME/MANGA – Build anything related to anime or manga.
- IT FLOATS! – Build something that floats. LEGO boat-moulds are not allowed!
- LEGOLIZE – Take any everyday object and build it out of LEGO.
- MINI LANDMARKS – Build a micro version of any famous landmark from around the world.
- CREATURE FEATURE – Build an animal out of LEGO.
- GARDEN – Show us what’s in your garden. Flowers? Vegetables? Worms? Bones?
- NPU! – Seed-part: minifig legs and/or orange brick-separator – incorporate minifig legs and/or the orange brick-separator in your LEGO creation.
- COMICS – Create a comic-strip from LEGO with a minimum of four scenes.
- RE-IMAGINATION – Re-imagine your favorite LEGO set. Change the color-scheme, make it bigger, smaller, etc. – your imagination is your only limit. Make sure to include a picture of the original LEGO set.
- MONO-COLOR – Build something with only one LEGO color.
- 25 PIECES – Build something with exactly 25 LEGO pieces.
- ALTERNATE MODEL – Take any LEGO set and build an alternate model using only the pieces from that set.
- GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT – Build food out of LEGO that looks good enough to eat!
- SCHOOL PRIDE! – Build something that represents your school.
That’s 25 categories in total! My first thought was; could I do it all? Well, I decided to at least give it a try. Now, what started as a joke – whoever would be able to do all 25 categories would get a special zombie award – became a real thing, as I strived to do all 25 categories. I eventually accomplished my goal, and you can see my entries to the contest throughout this article.
The experience was actually really crazy, as I spent all my free time thinking and building for the contest – sometimes not even eating lunch. I also had to dig out my entire LEGO collection (which led me to rediscover my LEGO Bionicle sets that I pretty much forgot about). The biggest problem, you may ask? The aftermath of the process. My entire room is now a mess! 🙄
As far as getting things ready for the contest, thankfully there were a couple of days without classes due to holidays, which kept me at home with my LEGO collection. Slowly but surely I was able to make entries for some of the categories and was about half way ready, but then I had to leave for boy-scout camp at Mt. Makiling. This meant that there were four days I was disconnected from my LEGO collection, and the world too! So I rushed myself and built entry after entry before leaving, until finally only three categories remained to build after getting back.
As soon as I came back from camp, I quickly started working again on two of the last three categories; CMS Mecha and Re-Imagination. After I was done with those I had to face the greatest challenge for me in all of MOCtober; the Comics category. I, for one, don’t make comics – which made it even harder to come up with comics out of LEGO. But I needed to get that zombie award – I desperately wanted it. So for a whole afternoon I was just staring at my LEGO collection to get some inspiration – and that’s when I found Hulk. From that point on I knew what I was going to do; the infamous “I have an army.” “We have a Hulk.” scene from the Avengers.
I also ran into some problems with the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars categories though, mainly because I don’t collect those themes. So I had to improvise somehow – luckily I had one of the rings from the theme (don’t ask me how I got it, I don’t know either). For the Star Wars category, my brother bought me the #7672 LEGO Star Wars Rogue Shadow awhile back, which, until now, has been my only LEGO Star Wars set. For the Star Wars contest I tried to recreate the scene where Luke removes his father’s mask. For the Lord of the Rings one I just did the scene where Bilbo looks at the ring after Gollum drops it. At this point I didn’t really care if it was ugly, as long as I had an entry for that category.
Overall, this LEGO challenge was really fun. Our LUG highly encourages MOC building, which was a big change for me, as I normally just collect LEGO sets and follow the instructions. I have never really been a MOC-er, so this was a great start for me. And, as of October 31, 8:48 PM, I’m officially the first person and TFOL to complete all 25 categories! Yay! The sense of achievement is awesome, especially after getting congratulatory comments from everyone, including our LEGO Ambassador. 😀
How about you? Are you a member of a local LEGO Users Group? Do you have events like this in your club? If you do, I would love to hear about it, so please share in the comment section below! Also, if you decide to use this list to create your own LEGO challenge, let me know how it goes! 😉
And you might also like to check out the following related articles:
That toothbrush looks really realistic! HP
There is no LUGs where I’m at 🙁 I’ve looked all over the Internet.
No LUG in a western country? Outrageous! Implausible!
I know! I thought somebody just took a picture of the toothbrush and I thought “okay… what’s with the toothbrush?” then I saw how it was LEGO and I thought “ingenious!”
The toothbrush is also one of my favorites, sadly when compared to the real thing, the size is real off.
it is? well the toothbrush seems pretty big to me and that’s all that matters! besides it looking realistic… of course. and stuff
Maybe it’s a baby toothbrush. 😀
Admin, these are the kind of posts that is rather slightly time-bound. Also, I would be a master at conjuring up something for that CMS challenge-Maybe a, a, Yeti Bot? Cyclops? Chicken? Gingerbread Man!
Alternate model also seems to be something else that interests me, since pretty much all my Robots are “alternate models”, or “combiner models”. I’m quite interested to see AFOL creations for the Manga/Anime category.
I haven’t been hearing much from you, HP. What’s wrong? Did Typhoon Haiyan struck your area? I sure hope not…
By the way, Admin, do you have a post ready for Hero Factory 2014? Now with pictures in full view, I think it’s a great time for me to do one…
Ad you’re really getting the hang of making LEGOLAND Figures, are you? Well I’m not…
No, thankfully the typhoon didnt hit manila. I’m pretty addicted to minilanders right now. 😛 maybe its nostalgia?
Glad to hear from you! I was also worried about that typhoon going after ya! Love your contest entries! My favorite is actually the LOTR one. What you did there is ingenious! 😀
The typhoon is long gone, but then again, typhoon Zoraida is coming but our country is still in a State of Calamity 🙁 . Its nice to see my LUG auctioning some rare sets plus those LEGO store opening sets and offer the sales as donations to their charity. 😉
I actually liked the build when i was conceptualizing it, but thought i could have executed it better after building it, maybe thats why i didn’t like it that much… I wouldn’t say its the worst in the 25 though, i think Santa’s Sleigh the cart thingy in red is the worst. I’m emailing better photos of my creations to you fikko. 😉
EDIT: now i remember the MOC i most disliked, it was so ugly for me, i didn’t consider adding it to the collage. Its for the mini landmarks category.
Fikko, if you would like to do a write-up on the upcoming Hero Factory sets, the project is yours. 😉
-I haven’t been hearing much from you, HP. What’s wrong? Did Typhoon Haiyan struck your area? I sure hope not… –
Ditto….
I had some problems with the alternate build category too, since most of the build were alternate build from a couple creator sets, but i decided to use them in a different category after weighing the risks and all
This was my first mech, so it was sorta hard, but after seeing the ideas of others, i got an idea of what i wanted to build.
how about instead of a yeti-bot, I chicken bot that shoots out eggs! now that, would be egg all over right there! 🙄
I like how he used that potion bottle for that drink glass, and the Star Wars one is cool too. What I would give to get that rogue shadow set….
Also, I’ve noticed the amount of posts to the site has slowed considerably. May I ask why?
I’m not sure what you mean. We post now 7 days a week, whereas in the past it was 3-5 days a week, so there are actually a lot more posts. 😉
I’m pretty sure its still the same, one post a day. Upload times are what i’m not sure of, i remember posts being posted every 10 PM our local time (phil. Standard time) but recently i think it gets posted during midnight. Curious?
Weird. For me it said the last post before this one on the brick bulletin was on the 7th. I use this site on my iPhone so it may be glitchy like that.
I always thought it was posted at 9.00 P.M., WIB (Waktu Indonesia Barat/West Indonesia Time.) Which is 7 hours ahead of GMT. (Greenwich Mean Time.) I’m not sure what American clock are you running on Admin, but I’m pretty sure you once said it’s posted every 10.A.M. HP runs on Philippine time, which is +8 GMT…However, recently, I’ve been seeing posts only coming out at about 10. P.M., My time. So what is the clear time, in the standardized GMT, preferably?
Fikko, all posts are published at 10 AM USA EST. What that is in GMT I have no idea. I was never good with these time-zone calculations. But I’m sure there is some map or calculator somewhere online that can tell you. We also have Daylight Saving Time in the summer, but we just switched back to normal time on the 3rd of this month (probably that’s why you see the one hour difference in your local time). Also, please note that TBB has a cache software installed to help with the traffic flow. If you know that there should have been a new post already and you don’t see it, you may just need to refresh the homepage. 😉
It’s 3pm GMT by the way 😉
Oh, I see what you mean! No, new posts are not posted in every single category. That would be like 70 posts a day, LOL! You need to check the homepage for latests news, available under the first tab on top of the page titled LATEST NEWS, or just by going to brickblogger.com, instead of a specific category. 😉
So…any sure-fire posting time?
Hm… I already answered that question just above. 😕
Did someone enter with a regular palm tree?
(I’ve been busy with other things, btw, and haven’t commented on anything for a while…)
Yes Hakan, someone did, and that person is me… Although its not a regular palm tree because i didn’t have those old palm tree pieces so i used 2×2 round bricks and gave them a curved angle a bit 🙂
Ah, I see. Some more building involved then. I seem to have lost my own palm tree, somehow…
Those blocky figs and the mech are rather cool, though…
Those blocky figs are LEGOLAND Figs. I’ll cover them, also how HP gets the knack to make them (and I don’t.) in the next BYW post. Or the next, or the next, depending on how many parts will “Part 3” be split up to…
These Minilanders aren’t cheap either, i spent around 300 php each for their parts. what an expensive hobby, but that what i said about LEGO in general 😛
Ah, no wonder you’re able to do it…You bought loose bricks. If I buy loose bricks, I probably could make some of my own Minilanders…But then again, I’m much better at making Cube Dudes!
Still cheaper than golf. 🙄