theBrickBlogger.com — Sharing the Passion of the LEGO Hobby!

The great LEGO challenge – MOCtober

by Thita (admin) on November 13, 2013

(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:

{ 37 comments }

Building with LEGO – micro-scale building

by Thita (admin) on November 12, 2013

in Building Techniques

(Written by Geneva – gid617)

In this series we are going over a few basic LEGO techniques and ideas for building a good LEGO MOC (My-Own-Creation). I’ll be taking examples from several LEGO builders to give you a good idea of different styles and possibilities of the techniques covered, though unless otherwise specified, the examples are mine. We’ve already covered LEGO Bases & Borders, LEGO Landscaping, Customizing Your Minifigures, LEGO Buildings & Vehicles and Picture Perfect Scenes, so now let’s take a stab at LEGO micro-building – something smaller than minifig-scale! 🙂

➡ LEGO MICRO-SCALE SIZING: Usually building in micro-scale with LEGO is a bit more challenging than building minifigure-scale; because of the small size, it’s hard to incorporate lots of details. However if you are up to the challenge, the first thing to do is to choose your scale; micro-builds can be built for the LEGO microfigures (as the one above), at an even smaller scale of two plates equals the height of a (hypothetical) person, or anything in between! Once you’ve chosen your scale – either by picking something you are already familiar with (like microfigure-scale or the scale of the #10230 LEGO Mini-Modular Buildings – as in the example below), or by starting off the build and seeing which direction it’s going – be sure to stick with it! It can be easy to have slightly varying sizes if you’re not careful, and thereby creating a confusing end result. At certain scales, person-sized details are not even close to possible, but at slightly larger scales, they can be added in some very clever ways! Below is an example of a very nice LEGO Mini-Modular building by moctown called the Town House.

One of the nicest things about LEGO micro-building is that it doesn’t require a particularly large LEGO collection. While it is possible to build a huge micro-scale display, most LEGO micro creations are very small (naturally!), but still look good. Micro-building is often more about the time you put into it than the amount of bricks. One of my favorite things about micro-building is that you can put a lot of thought into each piece, something that usually isn’t feasible at a larger size.

➡ LEGO MICRO-SCALE DETAILING: Adding details is where the rubber hits the road with LEGO micro-building. How do you get such tiny little details using LEGO bricks? One of the keys is to use the smallest bricks and other elements you have available for these sections. Another trick is to use connectionless LEGO techniques – balance pieces where necessary! I find I have to do this fairly often; in the example above, neither of the front two wheels are attached. And in the waterwheel below, a slight push will send the wheel flying! 🙄

Techniques and styles used for larger scale LEGO builds can also be used here. Rockwork and greenery have much the same style as for larger LEGO creations, but trees need to be much smaller! LEGO headlight-bricks are very useful, as are cheese-slopes and small odd-shaped bricks and pieces. Notice the careful piece use and the holes in the towers, made to look like window-slits, in the example below; Avell Castle by Toltomeja.

It’s also helpful to look at normal LEGO pieces in a different way. A simple white road-sign can become a full sail for a tiny ship, green spikes can become giant trees, and teddy bears become life-size beasts! Below is a unique example of a very cute Treasure Box Castle by Dodge.

Posing microfigures (or other figures used) is something of an art in itself in such a small scale. Since microfigures have no hands, getting them to hold anything requires the use of a rubber-band or something of that sort. Rinaci Castle by Brother Steven is a good example of this technique.

LEGO Micro Scale Castle by Brother Stephen

➡ SOURCES FOR LEGO MICRO- BUILDING: The now retired (but still available) LEGO Games line is a good source of LEGO microfigures and small parts, and the LEGO Minecraft sets have a great selection of useful parts for micro-building. Also, the second set of the #20216 LEGO Master Builder Academy has a full section on LEGO micro-building with tons of tips and techniques. And the #10230 LEGO Mini Modular Buildings is also a great way to start out with ideas. You can find all of them at the Online LEGO Shop, just click on the links.

I hope the above examples give you some inspiration to try out LEGO micro-scale building. What do you think? Do you like the challenge of building in such a small scale? Are there any techniques you really like? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below! 😉

And you might also like to check out the following related posts:

{ 6 comments }

Next Posts Previous Posts

The great LEGO challenge – MOCtober

Building with LEGO – micro-scale building

Get new posts by email: