Today, we unveil “The Conversation Piece,” a new BrickNerd series 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 feedback.

This will be a place for you to ask all of your trickier questions about creativity and building out of LEGO bricks. Have a question you'd like us to consider for a future article? You can submit it here. Enjoy!

How to Finish Your MOC

Anonymous asks, "I often find myself getting stuck halfway when building a MOC, wondering what to add or take away. Sometimes I even scrap the whole thing. What helps in those situations?"

Like all creative ventures, working with LEGO is rarely a straightforward journey. You might be familiar with Damien Newman’s evocative Squiggle (image below), which is a visual representation of the process of design—an inherently messy trajectory with a substantial dose of indecision and setbacks, slowly turning into a straight line as a project’s direction becomes clear. We are all equal in the face of the Squiggle, regardless of experience or skill—the only difference is how clever one gets at tidying up and giving the impression that they knew exactly where they were going all along.

The Process of Design Squiggle by Damien Newman, 2002. Image via *thedesignsquiggle.com*

These obstacles, while at times exciting, can also quickly become a source of discouragement. You might have lost interest in an ongoing project, or perhaps you’ve strayed just a little too far from your original concept and aren’t sure what to do next. Alternatively, you might have come down with a serious case of the notorious “builder’s block.” To address this, our team came together to present a range of solutions that have worked for us in the past and that we hope will help you out too.

Find New Ways to View Your Work

Let’s start with the essentials. Your brain, just like any other part of your body, requires the occasional breather in order to function properly. Feeling stuck is more often than not a sign that you need to take a step back and give yourself a break. Work on another building project, make dinner, go talk to your neighbor… Not only will these activities allow you to return to the issue with a fresher mind, but they’ll also invite you to look at things from a different angle and, with a bit of luck, help you find a solution you hadn’t considered previously—just like when you’re looking for a LEGO piece in a bin but instead find one you were looking for an hour ago.

BrickNerd has a comprehensive list of collabs, contests and standards

But sometimes, it’s the feeling of having too many options that can generate a sense of discouragement: if everything is on the table, then where should one begin? In those situations, contests, challenges and other similar events can be a great way to rule out certain options and get closer to finishing your build. Not only do they provide you with a strict time frame for building (one must submit their entry before the deadline to compete), but they also usually come with a range of restrictions that are specifically designed to get your creative juices flowing (a prompt you must follow, colors you must or must not use, a mechanism or a special element you must incorporate, and so on).

By taking one or more of those restrictions into account when brainstorming for ways to continue a build, your field of possibilities will be much narrower, thus making it much easier for you to settle on one option and get back to building. Conveniently enough, BrickNerd publishes a list of ongoing LEGO contests every month. It might be worth checking out!

Another solution that has worked well for us is rebuilding. The first few steps of building a LEGO creation are usually taken up by a simple question: what do I want to build? By rebuilding, you are switching from a mindset where you are composing a new object to one where you are reworking or even optimizing an object that already exists. That switch can help you look at your build with a different set of eyes and, from there, find new ways to push it forward. If you’re working on larger builds, focus on a small section like an engine, a window, or a patch of greenery.

In a similar vein, getting an external point of view to weigh in on how your build is advancing is another great way to break the mold and see things in a different light. Share pictures with friends and fellow builders and ask them for feedback, all while making sure you’re being clear about the problem you’re trying to solve: the more precise you are, the better.

Two ways of requesting feedback… Whereas the first message is very vague, the second encourages people to focus on something specific, which ensures the replies you’ll receive will be more precise and immediately useful to you.

Even in cases where you don’t really like what is being suggested to you, hearing other people’s ideas and understanding what you don’t like about them could very well help you in narrowing your options and locking in on the right solution. And if you don’t know who to turn to for feedback, don’t fret! The Builder Improvement Initiative (that’s us!) is a great place to share your progress and gather constructive feedback, and it’s open for all to join. For those who prefer constraction (a combination of regular LEGO elements and other building systems such as Hero Factory and Bionicle), The Build Zone is a good alternative.

The Value of Imperfection

Trying to incorporate too many points of view into your build or constantly waiting for the “perfect idea” to hatch aren’t necessarily the healthiest of habits. Remember, “exceptional” is the exception, not the rule. And sometimes, not knowing what to add or take away means that it’s time to call it done.

If you ever find yourself in such a situation, it can be helpful to shift your goals for the project toward something that is quickly attainable. Treat your build as a learning opportunity—a study of sorts, meant as a space for experimentation rather than a fully finalized product. Is there a specific part of your WIP that you finished and really like the look of? Get rid of the rest, build a small plinth for the section you’re keeping, take a picture if you wish to do so, and move on to your next project.

Not only is forcing yourself to work on a project you don’t see yourself finishing or have lost interest in rarely an enjoyable experience, but putting yourself at ease with the idea of imperfection is an important step in any creative journey, as that is what will give you room to grow: however imperfect, more builds mean more experience… and more experience usually heralds better builds.

A note in this image’s Flickr description discreetly ushers the viewer toward images of the finished build. And yet, far from being obsolete, this progress shot still retains all of its value and ability to captivate an audience. Image via Blake Foster

Besides, there is a specific evocativeness that is unique to unfinished works, which, when used smartly, holds great potential for beauty. An example of this can be found in one of Blake Foster’s spaceships, the Ugly Duckling, and the numerous WIP pictures like the one above that were posted on Flickr from 2015 to 2019 to illustrate the project’s progression. They are only glimpses of something even greater and yet solicit wonder, both due to the technical virtuosity they showcase and the fact that they leave more room than usual for the viewer to interpret the partly-rendered shapes and imagine the rest.

On a smaller scale, extremely compelling examples of a completely different type can be found in Ido’s gallery, where a carefully cultivated idea of the unfinished emerges from meticulous juxtapositions of unusual shapes and elements. A great sense of humility shines through in these compositions, and yet each one of them borders on the artistic.

Incomplete visions or carefully subtractive compositions? These builds, which are both entirely made out of LEGO elements, raise more questions than they give answers. Space Genie and Spring at the Lord’s Manor by Ido (2023). Images via Ido.

Learn to Trust Your Own Judgment

The ideas and builds we’ve highlighted here show that there is no single path to finishing a build. Remember the Squiggle? One could reframe it as a series of choices: creating is the act of figuring out what works and what doesn’t through a process of trial and error. And ultimately, the metric to decide what “works” is yours to set. Despite all the external influences you might be subject to (friends, fellow builders, places, movies…), creating is a journey of self-exploration: by setting out in search of something unique to you, something new, you will be forced to tread waters no one has tread before. And that is, perhaps, what makes that process so daunting: without risk, one can only repeat what has been done before.

In LEGO building, that element of risk hides within every choice, from simple tasks like picking an accessory for a minifigure to much more complex ones like deciding whether or not to take a whole section of your creation apart. While it is sometimes hard to be confident that the immediate result of our actions will be satisfactory, one thing we can all learn to trust is our ability to make the best out of that outcome. Such trust is earned through practice and self-awareness—that is, knowing yourself and your skills, but also by keeping in mind that missteps are inevitable yet amendable. Don’t be afraid to give ideas a go. If something does not work out, you can always take it apart and try again.

Even when you find yourself in a situation where backtracking or destroying seems like your best option, that is neither a sign of defeat nor of lost time. By ruling out an option, you’ve come closer to understanding what you don’t want and, by extension, what you do want, both in the short and the long term. This shows that figuring things out doesn’t need to be a purely cerebral process: the best answers sometimes come from simply jumping in and giving it a go. For at its heart, creating is an affirmation of trust—trust placed in yourself. That is what, in our opinion, makes creating LEGO MOCs so exciting: there are no “one-size-fits-all” solutions, but if you listen to yourself and keep an open mind, chances are you will find one that will do just fine.

Have a question for a future article inThe Conversation Piece? Let us know in the comments below!

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