Every December—well, let’s be honest, sometimes early January—for thirteen years now, I’ve set aside a little time to scroll through my photostream, pull my favorite builds, layer them neatly in GIMP, and then write “<a href=” a hundred times as I code the Flickr description for my annual year-end MOC recap collage. I’m not alone in my HTML struggles; many builders post MOC collages about this time of year, and there’s even a dedicated Flickr group just for these yearly posts. It’s such a great trend that even with the recent migrations within the LEGO community as a lot of contests and builder interactions have moved from Flickr to Discord, MOC collages still roll out in force at the turn of the year, and builders take the time to comment on each other’s favorite creations or highlight interactions.

Yet there aren’t so many builders posting collages that I wouldn’t welcome a few more. So if you’ve just started building lately, be warned, I’m going to try to convince you to jump in—HTML and all. Join me as we look back at MOC collages from years past and chat with a few of the builders who have contributed to this fifteen-year tradition.

The Basics Behind a Collage

MOC collages can be traced back to 2010—credit to Nannan Zhang for this discovery—and fundamentally, they’re the same now as they were back then. Just grab the pictures of your MOCs during the year, dump them into the photo-editing software of your choice, spread them around as desired, and you have yourself a collage. But like a recipe book that recommends a pinch of this, a dash of that, and salt to taste, there are lots of ways to give a collage its own individual flavor.

There are as many different ways to style a collage as there are builders. Simple, elegant, detailed, bold—your MOC collage reflects your building style, your personality, and maybe your photo-editing software. If this is something you’re going to do every year, it’s worth spending a bit of time to find your style; though nearly every builder with 10+ MOC collages to their credit also records a style change at some point!

At 15 collages, Red Spacecat probably has the longest streak.

I absolutely ripped off Markus’s collage design.

One of the most impressively organized collages I’ve ever seen. Simon will never forget what he did in 2020!

Simple and square, Ivan’s collage packs a full year of builds into a tight space.

Guillaume goes for an artistic design with angled photos.

Obviously, the basic thing to include in a MOC collage is MOCs, but there’s room for lots more in the description. Popular things to mention include:

Conventions attended during the year.
Blog posts or other features.
Collaborations with other builders.
Flickr stats (favorites, followers, etc.).
Shoutouts to other builders whose advice/comments were particularly valuable.
Contest participation (especially if you can boast of a win).

Really, anything that’s LEGO adjacent is fair game. It may feel like bragging, but only folks who are interested in what you’ve accomplished during the year are going to take the time to read your description anyway, so go ahead and list it all! It’ll be surprisingly helpful later on when you want to remember which year it was that you won CCC Master Builder. (I strongly recommend taking the time to include all relevant links. If you ever need or want to revisit any of your achievements, linking to them now while you remember where to find things will make it so much easier later.)

Even non-LEGO life news on a broad scale is worth mentioning too. I always include a paragraph capturing some of the fun things I’ve done during the year—mostly for my own sake, it helps me keep my years straight when I’m trying to remember when something happened!

The Because Behind a Collage

I jumped onto the collage bandwagon in 2012, frankly, because everyone else was doing it, but it’s something I’ve never regretted. Without being very old really (my siblings would beg to disagree), I still feel like the years blur together anymore, and without a strong written record of what happened I would barely even remember winning the Simon Games, let alone which Brickworld that was. So that is:

Reason 1: A collage helps you remember.

Not only does it help me remember which year something happened, but there are things and MOCs that I would have totally forgotten if they weren’t in a collage recap.

Reason 2: A collage helps you evaluate.

Unlike many builders, I have never once included all my builds in a year’s collage. With 50+ my first year, including them all felt wildly impractical. That was a number I consistently matched until 2016, when I realized I was building too much, too quickly. Since then, I’ve intentionally tried to build fewer MOCs and spend more time on each one—a resolution that came directly from what I was seeing when I looked back at my yearly output every time I made a collage.

Another thing I noticed thanks to my collages was my need for a more interesting use of color. Seeing a lot of your own builds next to each other helps you spot trends and notice weak points, whether that be themes you haven’t tried or colors you’ve never used.

Reason 3: A collage helps you measure progress.

There’s nothing like walking through thirteen collages to put a smile on my face; for one thing, the sheer quantity of what I’ve built in my lifetime is appalling and impressive; and then how I build has gotten a lot better, and it’s wild to think what I could be building in another thirteen years. It’s equally inspiring, humbling, and encouraging to look back over a body of work like this, and yearly collages are the landmarks that bring it all into perspective.

Reason 4: A collage helps you set goals.

Writing a description for my collage every year gives me a place to jot down some of the things I hope to try in the next year. Just the fact that I’ve written it in black and white—and posted it online for all the world to see—pushes me to stick with my resolution and as a result I’ve posted time-lapse videos on YouTube, added lights and fog to my creations, and… well, I consistently keep saying that I plan to motorize some builds “next year,” but that hasn’t materialized… yet. Big plans for 2026, you bet!

The Builders Behind a Collage

I asked four other builders three questions: Why do you create MOC collages every year? What do you think is important to include in your collage? How does it help you improve or enjoy the hobby better? Here are their replies:

Syrdarian: In one of Nerdforge videos—a YouTube channel I watch while building to instantly get the creative vibe—Martina is repainting one of her old paintings to see all her artistic progress over the years. I’ve always thought seeing how you’ve improved is a wonderful way to regain motivation to do art.

I feel the same with end-of-year collages. Not only are they a way to rewind each MOC you’ve built in the year, which can motivate you in the coming year to build more or just to keep building, but you can also compare them with the previous recaps and see all your progress!

I highly encourage every builder to do one. I recommend including some of your least favorite MOCs of the year, too, even the ones you’d like to hide from the world, because it’s part of the process; we’ve all gone through that!

Christian Rau: I generally enjoy organizing stuff into broader collections and themes if possible, as well as being somewhat neat about my Flickr portfolio. The curation aspect is just part of the fun for me, and I guess these end-of-year collages figure into this desire, too. I try to include almost everything I built over the year as well as group it into somewhat coherent themes.

They’re also a nice way to recapitulate and summarize the passing year. Since I otherwise don't have a blog, the collages are a good place to ramble a little about the past building year, at least in short snippets. And last but not least, like many other community events and contests, they are also just nice to follow from others so I can see what they’ve been up to. That’s also why I often invite users into the corresponding Flickr group when I come across these.

Andreas Lenander: I enjoy the collages as sort of a summary or reminder of what challenges I’ve participated in and what I had fun building. Also it’s a fun way to say thanks to all the people that followed me and faved or commented on my pictures. Plus I enjoyed seeing everyone else’s collages when I first got into the hobby, so I figured I might as well do one myself. And finally it’s fun to see the progression over the years.

Isaac Snyder: I started posting end-of-year recaps back in 2013, it looks like. It was a community trend back then that I just followed along with.

Then I kept doing it for a variety of reasons:

It’s a great reference point to see how the year went for you LEGO-wise.
Collecting and compiling all your builds from that year lets you easily evaluate development, style shifts, or broader trends (theme changes, activity levels, etc.).
It helps you remember fun events you participated in and recommend them to others.
It creates a clear delineation between years; if you stick around the hobby long enough, everything starts blending together. So it’s fun going back to recap posts and realizing, “No way, XYZ all happened in 2016?!”
Not the main purpose for me, but a fun perk can be getting some feedback on your collection of work, rather than specific models.

I include any model I feel is significant or I’m happy with. Nowadays, I also include LEGO products I worked on. And I always add a bit of write-up as well—contextualizing what I built and why. Highlighting anything particularly noteworthy. Giving brief life updates—nothing too personal. I enjoy getting a glimpse into the lives of people I've come to consider friends, and imagine they feel the same. So it’s a “where I’m at” sort of post, and potentially includes some glimpses into upcoming plans.

Since I started building more in the past couple of years, I like to make an overview of all my builds, not only to reflect on them, but also to see how I am improving, or doing things differently when comparing the year-over-year overviews. It’s also a nice time to think about what to build next, and where to improve upon/focus on.

Ids de Jong: For my collage, I try to include at least one photo of each build I finished that year. (Sometimes you have a bit of overlap when you started building it the year before, but I like to treat the finished date as the date.) Getting them all neatly aligned or featured on the collage is sometimes a bit of work, but it’s quite worth it to have such easily shareable pictures with all your builds of that year.

Getting comments from fellow builders is also always great, and it’s just fun to see the things you have been building the past year in one overview.

Let’s see how many builds I’ll have to fit on this year’s collage, as there is still time to build some more!

Wrapping Up

A MOC collage is worth every minute it takes to make. Life isn’t meant to be rushed through, but to be remembered and enjoyed, and the end of the year is the perfect time to set up a milestone where you can hang memories to revisit later. (It’s also a great time to check out other builders’ collages and get to know them a little—leave a comment and let them know what impressed you about their year.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a collage to make.

Do you post yearly MOC collages? How has the habit helped you grow as a builder? Let us know in the comments!

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