Because the circumstances surrounding these three MOCs and their relation to my psyche are perhaps more interesting than the MOCs themselves.
I left my first “big boy” job last year, moved back to my home state, and was unemployed for about six months while I tried to figure out how to recover from the mental health nightmare I had ended up in. During that time, I tended to MOC a lot; finding it an easy way to be creative with limited amounts of stress, compared to other pursuits such as music I tend to be more exacting on. My preexisting LEGO collection is currently in storage, so I amassed a small collection that would be easy to MOC with, assuming I built at the same speed as I bought, until I gained a bunch of new sets as Christmas presents around the time I became less interested in MOCing.
Over the last six months I’ve started a new job, made some new friends, and finished and released the EP I’ve been working on the prior three years. I’m generally in a happier place, but the trade-off has been that I’m less inspired to create in the way I used to. Yet I still felt a compulsion to create something out of LEGO, if for no other reason than to make use of what I chose to buy. As of the last two MOCs I found a potential direction in building MOCs based around using a particular color; thereby storing that color away so that I could use it if I had a particular design that needed it. However, while those MOCs I was able to find a new creative space with, that didn’t feel present here, making them a big of a slog, but a slog that for some reason I decided to work through until I accomplished my objective. Herein lie a duo of specifically subpar MOCs, as well as one that started out good and ended up subpar.
Starting with dark blue, a color that I got some because it’s something I would want to use when I felt inspired, mixed with warm gold, perhaps my least favorite LEGO color. Probably due to its oversaturation from Ninjago and the BIONICLE reboot. The blades and wing pieces drove the concept here, and the end result looks rather Ninjago-esque to some degree. Might keep this around until I have some more blade pieces, and then, whatever happens with the dark blue, the warm gold can go toward some multi-bladed monstrosity.
I picked the tan on the bottom for two reasons: one is that I have an excessive amount of tan pieces with studs on two sides from the chess set that I want to disperse across different MOCs, and by extension, it would be easier to use tan as a supporting color rather than try to build something with it as the main color (which I don’t really have the pieces for anyway.) You’ll see tan show up in all three MOCs.
This creature - which I have been calling “Bonkard” had a reasonably inspired design, and I built him when I had a lot of free time - and a lot of mental health issues I wanted distraction from. When I look at this, I see the original plan, with detailed, shaped feet and waist meant to contrast the super round shoulders, before growing tired of the process, slapping on a number of large armor pieces and calling it a day.
While this MOC did have the goal of using up some white and red, this is a color scheme that I like, and was hoping to create something I was proud of. Out of the three, I think this one I’m most likely to attempt to directly patch up.
The most recent of the three MOCs, this began out of an attempt to use the wheels from the speed champions. I built a chassis and then left it there for about two months, with the concept of building a sleek design on top becoming a mountain in my mind - one I eventually tore down by just greebling dark green pieces. Which worked out but didn’t leave me enough pieces to texture out the firing column.
I suppose I should determine the lessons to learn from this exercise, whether it is complete or if I will find myself continuing it. Sometimes, the desire to create exists in absence of having an artistic vision. Sometimes the results of that are worth sharing not for the sake of being “good” but for relating an experience, or for the closure of having done them and accomplished a particular objective. Or maybe I’m just an insecure artist trying to hide the fact that I made a thing that I want to share but don’t have confidence in.
Comments, critiques, etc. are appreciated, as always.