Today i was thinking that the reason my mocs are bad are because i don’t put enough time into it how long should i take to make something i only take one day to finish something or more if i’m lazy.
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I imagine that most people would give you this answer, but speaking as a lazy builder myself (
), take only as much time as you want or feel can be put into a creation. The quality of a build does not equate to the amount of time put into it. Some people can create incredibly detailed and complex things in very little time while others can spend days on the same level. Rather, that depends on the pieces available to you and your own ingenuity.
So using my own creations as example, I’ll use my Iron Thief Rahi. Now obviously this is a very simple build, took me less than thirty minutes to create. Could I spend more time on it? Sure. Would it end up being this little, sort-of cute spider thing? Probably not. I could have created a custom torso, I could have made custom limbs with more bendable joints, I could have done a lot of things. I didn’t (mostly due to lack of parts at the time), but also because I was satisfied with it. I completed what I set out to do.
Meanwhile, Bed’N Monsters, while also being fairly simple, I spent a couple days working on it. Estimated hours would probably place it more around 18 in total, just over the course of several days. Because in order to achieve what I wanted, I needed to experiment a lot. I easily built a dozen different frames just to see how I wanted the mattress and then the sheets on top of it. And then when I finally built one I liked, I built many more iterations deciding how I wanted the headboard to look in comparison to the foot one. Believe it or not, but the feet of the bed, that bottom part of the posts of the frame, took just as long (if not longer) than my frame experiments. It just took me a long time to figure out which piece I liked and which ones came in colors that would work. I only stopped when I was finally satisfied with the build.
Are either of them perfect? No. Could they be better? Certainly! Did I achieve what I wanted? With Iron Thief, about 98%, with the bed it was only I say 80% I envisioned. It wasn’t all I wanted or dreamed it to be, but I also know my own limitations. Could I have improved the bed if I spent more time on it? At the time I was building it, no. I put in all I could and I don’t think spending more time or trying to tweak it further would have produced any better results.
If you think you can make it better or do more with it if you just put a little bit more time into it, then feel free to do so. Need a break before continuing? Do so. But if you don’t think more will come out of it if you try to continue, then don’t. Perhaps that’s just the natural course of that build for now. Maybe one day, after more and other builds, you can return to it and make it all the better.
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Diddo. I also work under a time crunch of sorts, I can’t leave the boxes out too long or I have trouble getting to my clothing.
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You’ve got to spend the amount of work the MOC wants you do spend. I mean, just build until you feel you’re satisfied. Sometimes, I finished MOCs, but I wasn’t satisfied enough of them so I just destroyed thwm and built them from all over again. Don’t be lazy and work until you can’t find something that’s not good enough for you.
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I think you just need to spend however much time you want to spend.
It really depends on the Moc itself, too.
Something small and simple? I’d spend no more than an hour working on it.
A larger diorama, maybe with multiple minifigures? Two or three.
A bionicle moc? A minimum of two.
I think a decent average is about 2-3 hours.
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If you really want to improve your MOCs, get some good feedback on the MOC in progress. I usually send someone a WIP picture at the end of every day, and usually they notice something I either overlooked or thought was a better compromise than it is.
As for the question of “how long”, do it for as long as you feel inspired for. When I built the base versions for my current Toa team (they’ve been updated since) I spent between two weeks to a month on each one, continuing to improve until I was ready to move on to the next one. Note that I was a full time student at the time so it would have been a few hours building each day at best. You can always take a break, get feedback, and improve it again later.
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