Representative MOCs

[Obsessionist]

What MOCs do you think best represent the ingenuity and diversity of the MOCing community?  That is, what MOCs would you use to introduce the uninitiated to the world of custom creations?

 

I'm trying to figure out what two to four MOCs best represent the breadth and quality of MOCs the community can produce.

 

For me, the list would go something like this:

• Something artistic.  Nathan Sawaya's "Yellow" comes to mind, but something less professional is preferable.  Maybe Schflo's dragon sculpture, I've always liked that one.
• Something robotic.  A rubik's cube solver is classic, but Mindstorms Chess is perhaps more impressive in scale.
• Something brilliant in parts use and smaller-scale.  This StarCraft diorama represents that type of building and represents collaborative builds.

[Dallior]

Something Bionicle would be great... probably Akuthan, Roa McToa's winning BFTGM entry.

[Ghidora131]

Something Bionicle would be great... probably Akuthan, Roa McToa's winning BFTGM entry.

I think you mean "anything Roa McToa's ever made".

[Aanchir]

I think another category that could be good to include is something that's meant to be like a real hypothetical set or theme. Like Nuju Metru's Dragon Lands. Otherwise, you risk giving people the impression that a measure of a MOC's quality is how unlike official sets it can be, whether that be in terms of size, level of detail, or functionality. When really there's a lot of beautiful things that can be done while creating something that still looks like it could be packaged and sold as a toy for kids.

 

Another good category to include would be "alternate builds". A lot of the most artistic, mechanically advanced, or NPU-intensive can give the impression that MOCing is limited to people who have oodles of highly specific parts at their disposal (or a lot of friends to collaborate with). But really, sometimes all it takes is one set to create something brilliant. Some stunning alternate builds I saw recently on Facebook are The Mystery Roadster and They Mystery Flying Machine by Peter Szabo, which were both built exclusively with parts from 75902 The Mystery Machine, a $30 set. If you included a category like this, you could arguably even exclude the previously mentioned category, because a model built with parts from actual sets is obviously limited to set-like parts constraints, and many of them are playable toys in their own right.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Aanchir

[Obsessionist]

I think another category that could be good to include is something that's meant to be like a real hypothetical set or theme. Like Nuju Metru's Dragon Lands. Otherwise, you risk giving people the impression that a measure of a MOC's quality is how unlike official sets it can be, whether that be in terms of size, level of detail, or functionality. When really there's a lot of beautiful things that can be done while creating something that still looks like it could be packaged and sold as a toy for kids.

 

Another good category to include would be "alternate builds". A lot of the most artistic, mechanically advanced, or NPU-intensive can give the impression that MOCing is limited to people who have oodles of highly specific parts at their disposal (or a lot of friends to collaborate with). But really, sometimes all it takes is one set to create something brilliant. Some stunning alternate builds I saw recently on Facebook are The Mystery Roadster and They Mystery Flying Machine by Peter Szabo, which were both built exclusively with parts from 75902 The Mystery Machine, a $30 set. If you included a category like this, you could arguably even exclude the previously mentioned category, because a model built with parts from actual sets is obviously limited to set-like parts constraints, and many of them are playable toys in their own right.

 

As I'll be using a couple of these example in a paper exploring how the LEGO system has allowed TLG to take advantage of AFOLs in co-creation, these are some particularly important MOC genres.  Thanks a ton.