What are your building principles?

LEGO BIONICLE
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What rules do you follow while MOCing?

Here are my 3 key rules:

  1. A good builder doesn’t complain about the parts he doesn’t have, rather he improvises with the parts he has.

  2. Unless you are stuck on ideas or you really like it, don’t outright use someone elses’ design, rather try to expand upon it, be creative with it, or take it as inspiration to build a design of your own (That’s basically how I learned to create my own torso designs)

  3. No non-purism

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Make no new original content, instead plagiarize each and every piece of content you ever make. This is good life advice, it even gets you through school, trust me./s

I’m not sure about hard and defined rules, but if I had to write it down it’d probably be something like this.

  1. no cutting pieces unless it’s for a minifigure. I’ve made plenty of exceptions to this one. Fight me.

This one stems out of a parts count restriction, but:

  1. Focus on quality over quantity. Would it be nice to have huge, impressive Ben Cossy dioramas? Yes. But that’s unrealistic for me, so sacrifice size for detail.

And this is one I’ve been struggling with a little more recently:

  1. Maintain internal consistency in architecture style, color palette, texturing style, etc in a single MOC.

Idk, I’m a system builder, so I’d be interested to hear how these apply to constraction builders as well.

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My rules are non existent basically. I only try to make it canon compliant. So I just slap my stuff together until I am happy with it. (And I borrow some designs from other people but either dont post them or give credit for it)

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  1. Use legit lego pieces
  2. No illegal connections
  3. Do whatever, as long as they don’t violate rules 1 and 2.
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nuuuuu

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That’s easy:

  1. Plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize! Then use what you learned by plagiarism to build something else.
  2. When in doubt, use more constraction necks.
  3. If you need an idea (which I never do, because I never finish anything), find a cool part, find a way to use it, and build a MOC around it.
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Pretty much that for me too, also add
-Rule of Cool (imo at least)
-Look like it could exist pretty seamlessly amongst canon G1 sets.

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For the most part I have a few rules I use when building, which are roughly as follows:
-Only use parts in existing colors, with the mask as an exception.
-When in doubt, see what other people have done.
-Also when in doubt, use slizer feet.
-For colors, pick a main, a secondary, and one for the eyes.
-Don’t cut parts.
-System is great for filling gaps.
And that’s about it.

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  1. bad articulation = bad moc
  2. canon comes first second
  3. destroy moc if not to standards
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Don’t be afraid to use the same piece over and over.

Especially if you happen to have a ridiculous amount of said piece.

This is how you end up with a shell composed entirely of Nuva chest pieces.

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You sicken me. /s

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Me too.

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If Stud.io doesn’t have the vahki eyestalk, then don’t use Stud.io to build vahki until it does.

In all seriousness, I think good principle for MOCing can be to never use a 2-length axle in a vahki gearbox (after all these years, that puppy still hasn’t come out).

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1 try to build with colours you have
2 all ways keep wips built up, even if you aren’t working on it now you may in the future
3 try not to use illegal techniques
4 never use fake parts

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idk if I really have any for just general MOCing but I do have my part modification rules.

I’m only comfortable with modifying a part if it fits at least one of these criteria:

a) It’s an extremely common piece that LEGO still makes and will probably not stop making any time soon.
b) It’s been broken to the point that it can no longer be used for it’s primary intended purpose (this one is a bit of a case-by-case thing, but generally I mean stuff like weapons with their handles broken off, pieces with unusable joints, etc.)
c) It’s a bootleg or 3D printed part.

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I’ve had the same experience with a 2015 gearbox that belonged to Gali … it hurts

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Whenever I make a Dark Hunter. I always have rules.

  1. Only use pieces from 2001-2005 (possibly 2006)
  2. Must be something that looks like other previous Dark Hunters or in the realm (like canon Dark Hunter MOCs, official sets, or combiners)

And that’s it. I’ve been trying to convince a friend to make his own Dark Hunter under these rules. Rules I follow myself because, well, I love The Shadowed One.

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haha studs not on top system greebles on moc go brrr

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haha pinholes not on side technic greebles on moc go brrr

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the fact that I am not entirely sure what that means makes me assume you are better at moc making than me

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