“The Conversation Piece” is a monthly BrickNerd series about creativity and building with LEGO authored by our friends over at the Builder Improvement Initiative (BII), a Discord-based community that helps LEGO builders of all levels get better at their craft through knowledge-sharing and constructive feedback.
Have a question you’d like us to consider for a future article? You can submit it here. Enjoy!
How to Begin Building
Anonymous asks: “I’m really interested in making my own creations, but I have absolutely no idea how to start. I’ve only ever bought sets and followed the instructions, but have never really been able to make anything from scratch. I love building with LEGO and love being able to assemble/create things, but I’ve no idea how to see something and have a good shot at trying to build it. Is there any advice you could provide to get me started with a MOC for the first time?”
Getting into building MOCs (My Own Creations) can be overwhelming, to say the least. Between deciding where and how to start, settling on your design style, and picking up community jargon, the learning curve is steep but rewarding. Oftentimes, this process can lead to discouragement and frustration. But we have good news; you aren’t special!
… Alright, perhaps that was rather poor wording. What we mean to say is that the same frustrations you may experience when you start to design MOCs are felt by even the most experienced of builders! It’s important to remember that every builder has to start somewhere, and even the most talented MOC designers were in your shoes once. Take Aaron Newman, for example. While his early builds were on the rougher side, he has gone on to become a fully-fledged LEGO designer known for his beloved Creator animals, such as the Red Fox and Panda Family.
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Aaron Newman circa 2012 vs. Aaron Newman circa 2021.
Naturally, starting to build MOCs will be a different process for each individual. To tackle the various challenges that come with beginning your MOC-ing journey, we brought together members of the BII team and the wider community to cover a range of approaches. In the first half of this article, we will take an overview look of the process itself, from inspiration to refinement. In the second half, we will go into more general tips and words of encouragement.
This article, like most of the series, will focus more on the conceptual aspects of designing MOCs than on the technical aspects. We’ve tried our best to include some tips to hone your technical skills, but developing techniques is a lot harder to teach and comes naturally with practice. This will be one of our longer articles, so grab a bowl of popcorn and kick your feet up. Given the breadth of the topic, we’ve tried to cover as many scenarios as we could think of where a new builder could get caught up. Of course, feel free to cherry-pick the sections that best suit your situation!
Understand The Build Process
Persistence is one of the most important skills to learn when getting into the MOC-building sphere. While every once in a while a build undergoes little change from inception to completion, most tend to go through several iterations during the process, where it can feel like a game of Telephone—your starting concept is entirely different from the finished product. Understanding a typical build process can help you plan out and ease into building your first MOCs.
Finding Inspiration: Every build starts somewhere; from IPs to others’ MOCs, there are plenty of ideas to go around!
Getting Started: Once you’ve got an idea, the build process starts! While one of the shorter steps, it’s a critical one where even experienced builders can find themselves struggling from time to time. There are several methods to get the bricks clicking, including scale-setting and finding Nice Parts Usage (NPU).
Building Your First Draft: With the wheels rolling, it’s time to keep the momentum going! This can be one of the longer steps of the process and thus has plenty of pitfalls throughout.
Refinement: The process to take your “first draft” to a final product can vary significantly from MOC to MOC, but typically involves refining parts of your build at a time. Getting an outside perspective through feedback in groups, such as LUGs or online, can also provide valuable insight to develop your build!
For the majority of this article, we will take a deep dive into each of these four steps, giving a glimpse into the general mindsets of each, the frustrations that can arise, and how to work with and around these obstacles. Keep in mind these are merely suggestions, too. If you feel like you can skip a step or revisit an earlier one, don’t hesitate! Our intention is to present a general guide to the process, rather than strict rules to be followed.
Finding Your Inspiration
While deciding on a concept for a build can be easy for some, others may find it harder to figure out. For those struggling, this section will visit some options that can give you a leg up. While we’ve written previously on how to find sources of inspiration, it wasn’t necessarily written with budding MOC-ists in mind. So, consider this the abridged version, better tailored to suit newcomers to the MOC-ing sphere.
Original ideas can make the build process a bit easier than working off of existing material, but they also can be hard to develop if they don’t come naturally. Looking at concept art, creative photos, and real objects can be a great way to ideate a MOC, even if you don’t plan to recreate the source material. An illustration of a cat in a spacesuit, a photo of a man holding balloons, or that old cup of coffee growing a borderline-ecosystem can cultivate your own ideas. Pirate cats or coffee cup forests, anyone?
Drawing inspiration from your other hobbies or favorite IPs is another excellent way of getting the engine revving. Star Wars is one of the most overwhelmingly popular themes for builders, and for good reason. With such a massive encyclopedia of characters, factions, planets, and vehicles, there is always something to build. Building something that aligns with your other passions can help give you a bit of an extra motivation boost. It can also reduce the sense that you are outside of your comfort zone; you may still be unsure about the best way to put the pieces together, but you’ve rewatched Clone Wars enough times to have a good idea of what Geonosis should look like!
You don’t have to be inspired by pop culture, either; from gamers to car enthusiasts, there is something bound to give you an extra spark. Even if you don’t see yourself building in these niches in the long term, allowing yourself some familiarity while you explore techniques, parts, and inspiration can go a long way in preparing you for a deeper dive into the hobby.
Miscellanabuilds’ Builder Advice: Depending on your mindset, building based on the things you enjoy can also cause further frustration later in the process if you feel it isn’t doing the reference justice. I’m a huge fan of the Horizon: Zero Dawn franchise and tried my hand at building a custom Aloy MOC in late 2023. Over five months, I changed the scale several times and got nowhere near a finished first draft. It became obvious that it wasn’t working out, so I decided to put the build away and revisit it when I felt better equipped and motivated. It’s always perfectly valid to set a build aside and begin another project!
Another great way to find inspiration is to look to other MOC builders. While controversial, recreating a MOC that has inspired you is a great learning tool. It forces you to look much more closely at a build and try to understand why the builder chose certain parts, colors, and details. You can also try changing up a few things to fit your collection better, such as the shape of a roof or the color of a door. Of course, while most will be flattered that you find their work that impactful, make sure you credit the builder if you’re posting it online. No one likes a shameless copycat!
Ryouji Ikuse’s “Call for Spring” uses pieces solely from set 21342 The Insect Collection.
Using actual sets as inspiration is also a fantastic method of starting out, and may be the easiest for those who have up until now been solely collectors and displayers. Modifying sets you already own with extra parts can be an easy segue into the MOC-building world. Detailing the interior of a building or adding engines to a spaceship set can help you learn techniques without feeling overwhelmed with how or where to start.
Similarly, alternate builds are a common challenge in the community where builders use the parts of a specific set to create a new build. This gives you a limited selection of parts to work with, which can be helpful for those overwhelmed by the massive catalog of parts. Simultaneously, it can help build up your knowledge of the catalog and understand the various connection points of parts. With the limited options, you may find yourself looking for more obscure connection options that LEGO sets typically stay away from (such as illegal techniques, which cause stress on the parts).
Start Building!
With an idea more or less decided upon, it’s time for the daunting step: starting to build. But before you start, there are a few critical decisions to make. For one, you should settle on a rough sense of scale. If you are one to get hyper-passionate about an idea, this can be a bit tricky, but it is good to start out with some small-to-medium scale MOCs rather than jumping into large immersive scenes or complex sprawling castles.
A large-scale MOC can be daunting, even for experienced builders. If you still aren’t comfortable with MOC building, this can lead to frustration if you are struggling to fulfill your vision. Secondly, building smaller lets you go through the whole build process much quicker, letting you practice new skills, techniques, and styles more frequently than if you devoted months to a single project. Besides, who said small or simple MOCs can’t be awesome? Sadie’s “dreamers” is a great example of MOC that uses a few relatively basic pieces to create something memorable.
Sadie’s “dreamers” uses basic slopes, bricks, and leaves to create an iconic sleepy duo!
You should also identify some defining features to give you some direction to start with. This helps you focus on setting yourself up for success when it comes to scaling the build. If building off of a reference, this may be a key feature of the source material: the face of a character, the windshield of a car, or the door of a building. Sometimes, this can be the result of a piece that has just the right shape. Other times, the best solution may need many pieces to create the shape yourself.
For example, writer Levi decided to build the cab side profile of his Volvo FH 16 first, noting how it is one of the most defining features of the truck. Likewise, if you have an original idea, choose a core trait of your concept to set the scale of the rest of the build. While it’s not necessary to go this route, it reduces headaches and frustration further down the line, where you may find yourself needing to make compromises on key features for the sake of scaling.
Levi’s Volvo FH 16 uses a combination of slopes, wedge plates, and SNOT techniques to recreate the unique look of the source material.
Building Your First Draft
Once you’ve made a start on a model, it’s time to cruise forward! Different builders can approach the rest of the process in various ways, even when working on a single MOC. In some cases, you may find the best way to keep the build process moving is to accept that the first iteration of your MOC won’t be perfect. Fixating on small details early on can slow you down. You’ll have plenty of time later on to go back and refine aspects you’re not fully content with, so instead keep your momentum to reach a stage where your MOC is a complete ‘draft’.
Don’t be afraid to make modifications if you feel the need to shorten an arm by a stud or change the degree of a slope, but try to avoid devoting lots of time to getting every detail perfect. Often, builders find themselves “scrapping” entire sections of builds by the end of their first draft, a decision that gets harder to accept once you’ve spent time perfecting the details.
Mountain Hobbit’s “The Peaceful Pagoda” is an iconic build with an 8-month long building process!
While maintaining pace to avoid losing your enthusiasm for a project is important, sometimes you’ll inevitably grind to a halt. It might be that you simply don’t know what you need to do to achieve the finished product you envisioned, or you find yourself limited by parts. If you do find yourself getting hung up on the details of a build or get stuck at some point in the building process, don’t panic! It may be that you simply need a break. You can return to your build refreshed, pick up where you left off, or take a different approach. If that doesn’t help, BII has you covered – we discussed a range of other ways to renew building motivation when struggling to bring a project to the finish line in The Conversation Piece #1. Who knows, maybe that MOC could be your next big hit!
Brickstig’s Builder Advice: Don’t be afraid to shelve a model because you didn’t feel engaged in building it. You can always come back to it later. Or not, that’s fine too. At any given time, I have six or seven builds in various stages of completion. I like to switch between them when I get stuck or demotivated on one. At the time of writing, I’m building a Ferrari and a crab—a nice balance.
Refinement
Once you feel that you have reached a point where you have a mostly “complete” build, you’ve finished your first draft! Now it’s time to try to refine your build. Take “refine” rather loosely, however—this phase can be just as long if not longer than your First Draft phase, and in reality, you will often find yourself constantly bouncing between the two.
It’s best to take a holistic look as objectively as you can when refining your MOC. During this phase, outside input is most helpful (more on this later!). Other builders will be able to provide new insight into things that do and don’t work, and if you’ve found the right kind of community, they won’t be afraid to tell you so! Even if you think that your MOC is perfect, try to take a break for a day or so before coming back to it. Often, you’ll find some opportunity for improvement.
Miscellanabuild’s Builder Advice: Don’t be afraid to scrap parts of a MOC, or go through the entire process again! My first draft of “Florence, the Botanist” was totally different from the final version, but I ended up with something I’m happy with. I can always reuse those other ideas in a future build anyways! And speaking of thinking your MOC is perfect, this is an example of one where I see improvements I should have made before posting (e.g., the exposed tan SNOT piece on the waist and the incomplete hair design). I’m pretty sure I’ve thought every MOC I’ve built was awesome somewhere in the process only to cringe later in realizing just how bad it was; and that’s okay!
Early draft of Florence versus the final version.
To quote DaVinci, however, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” The same is painfully true for MOCs. As we’ve said throughout this article, don’t be afraid to decide that something is complete. At some point in your MOC-ing journey, you will naturally find yourself losing motivation to refine further. Don’t be afraid to listen to that voice—again, you can always revisit the MOC at a later point if you want to! Pushing yourself too far can lead to frustration and even start to sour a MOC for you.
General Tips and Encouragement
Join Communities
As mentioned briefly in the previous section, having others review your MOCs is a great way to refine your builds. More generally, however, it is one of the best ways to improve your skills. Being around fellow builders, both equally and more experienced, exposes you to other MOCs, builders, and techniques. Discord is a great platform as you can chat in real time, but even a quick Instagram message to a favorite builder of yours can lead to lasting relationships with fellow builders. LEGO clubs (LUGs), fan conventions, or even local second-hand LEGO shops can provide opportunities for builders to gather. Even joining a single community can be sufficient, and you’ll often find yourself learning about new communities through it!
Know Your Toolbox
A large portion of the challenges new builders face comes from the overwhelmingly expansive LEGO catalog. Even if you’ve grown up with sets, you may not have thought of parts the same way a MOC-ist would look at them. Brickstig offers some insight into the benefits of a better understanding of the tools at your disposal:
“Knowing the parts you have at your disposal might sound obvious, but it can drastically speed up the build process, especially for digital builders. Constructing models in your head is a lot faster than doing it by hand, so being able to imagine how a few parts fit together before actually searching for them physically is important. If you’re unfamiliar with the bracket and side-studded brick system, I’d highly recommend just getting a bunch of those parts together and experimenting with how they fit together to create offsets and overhangs. I’d also recommend trying out digital builders like Stud.io if you have limited access to parts. It takes a little while to pick up, but it’s well worth the time.”
Stud.io is a great tool to get to know the LEGO catalog while building. It also gives you a much larger collection to work with than you may have when starting.
Just Keep Building
While we’ve been hinting at this throughout the article, the best way to truly understand the build process and become proficient on a technical level is just to build. Every MOC (or even set!) you build, you are learning new things. Whether it be new SNOT methods, a strange connection point, or an obscure piece, you will find something you can apply in future builds. If you find yourself in a creative rut caused by a stagnated project, set it aside and try something else! Modify a set to your liking or combine different sets into something new! Skills often develop with experience, and while there have been a select few prodigies in the community, most times builders see improvement over years, not months. The learning is never done!
It’s Okay Not To Build
Piggybacking off the previous point, it is also okay to have lulls in building. Many popular builders post infrequently, sometimes going years without a new MOC. While most don’t go quite that extreme, it’s perfectly natural to have periods where you don’t feel motivated to build. Don’t be afraid of that feeling. Trying to force yourself can be helpful to get you through it, but sometimes, it can lead to further frustration. Inspiration can strike even during our building ruts!
The Bad Feelings Never Truly Go Away
Honestly, this may be considerably more depressing than helpful, and if so… sorry. However, it can be encouraging to know that even if you do feel frustrated or underqualified, it’s completely normal! Even experienced builders feel down from time to time. These feelings are not indicative of any failing of yourself, but are rather a natural byproduct of the human condition. Joining a positive community can be helpful to combat this, as feedback from other builders can reinvigorate your building aspirations and provide a fresh perspective to build from.
Conclusion (And One Last Tip)
If you haven’t figured it out yet, the build process is not unlike the Scientific Method. While there is a general sequence of events, you’ll often find yourself returning to old steps until you’re happy with your build, or even tired of it! With practice, the build process will become second-nature.
Like the good writers we are, we’ve saved the best, most helpful tip for last: have fun. All of the tips we’ve included exist solely for this higher purpose. While many consider LEGO to be an art form in of itself (writers included!), it exists first and foremost as a source of fun. If you aren’t having fun with a MOC, set it aside! If you find making custom decals, figures, or even pieces fun, then mix those media! However you want to build will always be the right way.
The only wrong way to build is to build without joy.
Written by Eann McCurdy, Levi (Lever Builds), and Oshi White in collaboration with Brickstig.
Have a question for a future article in The Conversation Piece? Let us know in the comments below!
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