I’ve been in a massive MOC-block for months now, I’ve made some revamps of old MOCs and characters, but that didn’t require a whole lot of new ideas.
You may have seen my self-MOC, Kasai, the guardian of fire. Or any of my other MOCs that I’ve posted here on the boards or on BioTube (there are more than just these of course)
Sadly I’ve been drained of pretty much most of my creativity for so long now. I wanted to make this post to get some advice from other members of the community, people who may be more skilled than I, or have been in similar situations to my own. And hopefully this post could help others who have also been struggling with their creativity.
As I mentioned, I’ve done revamps of characters and MOCs since the moc-block started, but it rarely satisfies the want for new and interesting characters.
I’ve tried, but it’s been hard for me to translate that into an actual MOC
This may not work for everyone, but sometimes I get inspiration by writing. I come up with a character, a backstory, then I try and make something of it.
If you need designs, here’s an idea. What I do is I just think of some designs, and start building. And if it looks good, I either change it to look better, or use it. If it looks bad, then I scrap it and build another design.
For ideas, I would watch a movie, play a video game, or even look at some MOCs. This usually helps me get ideas.
Sometimes what I’ll do, if I am at a completely unfixable block, is I just start slapping strange pieces (strange as in not very commonly-used) together, whether with actual connections or just putting them up to each other and wondering “how could I connect these,” and taking inspiration from that.
Other than that, I can’t say anything different from what’s already been said.
I’m not the best MOCer by any mans, but I would probably say:
Try taking a character who is weak in terms of…well…character, and give them some in a physical form via MOCing (Examples include Jovan, Spirah, Tuyet, Perditus, etc.)
Take a character whom you’ve always despised and just revamp 'em; it will probably encourage you to broaden your horizon on the certain character and may even get you to see the pros in his or her personality.
-If official characters aren’t your thing, then I would recommend what @SammySpartan stated: Create a backstory for the character and try to derive a mental image of what he or she would look like. This would, essentially, build up hype for the character and encourage you to get building!
-Lastly, try coming up with a unique color scheme first, and then base the backstory, name, personality, and around that; colors can make a big difference! - dark colors can make a SuPR EDgY MOC, white light colors may lead to a more angelic look.
Welp, that’s my advice! Hope it helps, in any capacity!
I generally tend to moc when I have some kind of specific character trait in mind, then the rest of the figure ends up just coming together around that idea. For instance, last year I had been tossing around the idea of making a Toa that utilizes orange and light azure in their colorscheme- after some thought on what in the real world that parallels I realized that it ends up looking rather like oxidized copper, hence a loose idea became my Toa of Rust.
My advice to you is this; come up with just one design element that you’d find cool in a character and just let it flow from there. Would a character who wields hooks swords that combine into one big battleaxe be neat? How about an agile character whose feet look like those curvy jump shoes? Perhaps there’s an obscure periodic element that might make for an interesting power set? It could be anything, so long as you’re personally interested in seeing what it would look like. You don’t need to plan out every detail ahead of time, all you need is to get yourself building something that you want to see made.
well how I got over my few MOC blocks was either returning to a previous character and try to add a new gimmick or cool idea to them that would fit. Or I the other times I just tried something really different, just a basic idea can take you really far.
Uuuugghhh…MOC-blocks are the worst, as a rather creative person…losing that kinda feels like being less of a person. I crave ideas and constantly executing them, so I’ll have to give some advice.
Look around for something that previously kickstarted your creative system: Maybe it was artwork, a piece of media, or another MOC. Something out there has helped you before, try to harness whatever has helped you in the past.
Search for inspiration in something else you enjoy: Pretty self explanatory here, I personally look into a ton of different Gundam designs or something whenever I need that creative pep, getting those gears and appreciation for good design going.
Revamp a old MOC or set" Once again, pretty self explanatory. Try to bring a old set or MOC up to your new standards while following the established ideas for the original verson.
Maybe you just need a break/breather: Sometimes you just need time, maybe you have strained your creative systems a bit too far. Perhaps something else is clouding your creative vision and needs to be resolved. Just take it slow, maybe your brain will piece something together in the downtime.
I spent a lot of last year with brutal growing pains as far as MOCing is concerned. One of the hardest things with MOCing is the fact you have to constantly one-up yourself, which left a lot of MOCs on the cutting room floor (or…bedroom floor in my case) last year.
its actually quite easy, dont moc. You cant force creativity, so why try? Enjoy life, and maybe in a few weeks, months or years you will look at your lego pieces and say: “I got it.”
Honestly I live in a prepetual state of art blocks of every variation, be it drawing, lego, writing even. Every now and then I just go and force myself to do something and I sometimes end up with a design or something I like, then I expand on it. Other times I actually get an idea and try to execute it though I typically let mocs build themselves instead of relying heavily on a plan. Half the time I get something out of it and only half of those times I’m actually satisfied with the result; but I like mocing so I guess that’s the best it’s gonna get.
I’m not really easily inspired by shows or other artwork but occasionally an underlying idea finds it’s way into my stuff.
Revamps are a good thing if you want to moc but just don’t have ideas. As someone who’s ideas are so few and far between but enjoys being creative I find it somewhat funny that I don’t attempt them more.
I get this a lot. All I do is just pick up a few pieces and try to connect them in weird ways, and all of a sudden I’m like… “Hey, that could be a leg”.
As someone who’s been in this game for 7.5 years I’ve had my share of mocblocks and the only way I found out of them was when an old friend, Lord Oblivion/Toni, pretty much forced me to make a moc in 30 minutes straight.
The stress put on my mind back there more or less jumpstarted the part that is used for moccing and that’s how I prefer to combat it.
