The Conversation Piece #4: How to Decide What to Build

Welcome back to “The Conversation Piece,” a BrickNerd series authored by our friends over at the Builder Improvement Initiative (BII), a Discord-based community that helps LEGO builders of all levels get better at their craft through knowledge-sharing and feedback.

This will be a place for you to ask all of your trickier questions about creativity and building out of LEGO bricks. Have a question you'd like us to consider for a future article? You can submit it here. Enjoy!

How Do You Decide What to Build?

Anonymous asks: “Do you always have an idea for a certain build? If not, how do you come up with or obtain said idea?”

In any artistic hobby, creativity is a critical skill to have. However, all creative works need to start with an idea. Most of the time, we tend to go into the build process with some inkling of what we want to build. At times, however, you may find yourself stuck at a roadblock, struggling to even begin ideating your next LEGO build.

Image via LEGO

The feeling of being unsure as to what you want to build next is familiar to all builders. These creative blocks can last anywhere from days to weeks, leading to a feeling of frustration. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools and methods to escape the creative rut and begin building again.

Narrowing Down Your Options

When you begin the brainstorming process, the sheer scale of choice can be a challenge. When you put your mind to it, there are endless different things you could choose to make out of LEGO. In light of this, one of the most useful exercises in the early brainstorming stages is to narrow down your options. While it is important not to constrain yourself unnecessarily, it’s essential to be pragmatic about what ideas are and aren’t feasible or interesting to you.

Being realistic with your options often comes down to the parts you have available in your collection. Consider what your collection is tailored to. For instance, if your selection of parts consists mainly of Character and Creature Building System (CCBS) elements, you might decide to make the most of what you have available and attempt a creature build.

On the other hand, you could elect to push yourself to try something different using these same pieces in a different way. Lacking natural inspiration for a build is the perfect chance to experiment with unfamiliar styles and part usages, pushing your collection to the limit (a topic which we explored in further detail in The Conversation Piece #3).

If you still hit a dead end after experimenting with your collection, you might find it more useful to further narrow down your options for what you’d like to build by changing your perspective. Instead of trying to find new ideas, turn your attention instead to old ideas, such as by revisiting table scraps. Every builder occasionally finds themselves working on projects that don’t end in a finished product. Sometimes, returning to an unfinished build can yield surprising results. Oshi Builds’ “Isometric Greeble” started life as a series of abandoned, individual components, but were repurposed by combining them into a single cube as a project-between-projects. 

Oshi’s “Isomettric Greeble” is a tightly packed, textured cube made up of various tablescraps.

Of course, bundling all your table scraps together isn’t the only way to make use of them. If you revisit a project or concept where you hit roadblocks or which you previously gave up on, you’ll have the chance to bring all your new skills and techniques to the table and apply them; perhaps you’ll even be able to achieve the original vision you had in mind!

Concept Art as Inspiration

Concept art may be one of the most popular sources of inspiration for builders in the community when the ideas just aren’t coming. For every niche build genre, there is a plethora of concept art to draw from. Websites such as Pinterest, Artstation, and Deviantart allow you to browse and follow artists as well as save images to galleries for later use. Concept art books, such as 3dtotal Publishing’s Sketching from the Imagination* series, provide a range of styles and genres, and books showing the art behind your favorite games, movies, and shows can inspire you to build from within a beloved universe.

Some approach this through 1-to-1 replicas of the inspiring concept art. Charlie Jones’s “CAT Sloth Walker” is both an outstanding MOC and a faithful rendition of Longque Chen’s “Sloth Walker.” Designing a replica challenges the builder’s ability to mimic shape, scale, and style, lending itself to a more technical approach to building. In Jones’s case, he makes use of a combination of system slopes and wedges with Technic panels and beams to achieve accurate shaping on the walker’s limbs.

Concept art can also serve as a starting point for a completely original build. Wes Talbott’s “The Phthalo Phantom” is based on the StarViper design from the X-Wing board game. While the two share a similar form, Talbott omits curved edges in favor of harsh angles and embraces a vibrant color scheme. While there remains a technical aspect, creativity shines at the center of this approach and can manifest through color, shape, or concept.

Inspiration from Hobbies

At times, you may naturally find yourself more motivated to spend time on other hobbies. When you finally sit down to build some LEGO, it can be frustrating when the ideas just aren’t coming. Sometimes, though, these other hobbies can be the key to getting the creative juices flowing, directly or indirectly.

Hobbies can provide direct inspiration, similar to concept art. Video games can be a solid source of inspiration for a range of builder types. Whether you are a character builder inspired by your favorite indie game, a vehicle builder itching to replicate a Halo ship, or a landscapist eying to copy a cinematic shot from a Ubisoft game, there is inspiration for everyone. Movies and TV shows can provide similar opportunities, and even board games can give you a creative boost!

Marius Herrmann’s set of Watchers wonderfully captures the look of Horizon’s iconic robots.

Jayfa’s “John Silver” is a great character build based on one of Disney’s most underrated films.

The Snyder brothers’ “Everdell Chapel” is a lovely rendition of a card from the worker-placement game Everdell (also writer-approved!).

Dylan Mievis’s “Niko” brings some representation to the indie gaming industry with his rendition of Niko from Oneshot (writer-approved!).

This can also come indirectly. Builder Charlie Jones offers some insight into how his hobbies inspire him: “Besides LEGO, my primary voluntary occupations are hiking and photography, and so often I’m inspired by the natural world. The vast array of landscapes, formations, and lifeforms I can come across either in person, through the lens, or online as I research routes and compositions provides many new ideas. Sometimes I’ll be thinking of an idea while out for a walk, and it can morph into any number of forms by the time I reach the end and regain the opportunity to translate a mental image into the brick.” Embracing your hobbies can give you a different perspective and let you focus more on the concept without feeling you need to be putting bricks together to be productive.

Contests and Challenges as Prompts

It would be remiss not to mention one last method of pinning down an idea for a build: letting others help you decide!

The LEGO community is diverse and caters to a wide range of interests, from Star Wars to automobiles and architecture to the natural world. Within each of these genres, there exists a plethora of contests, challenges, and collaborations in which any willing builder can get involved. Through community hubs such as BrickNerd and BII, it’s not difficult to find contests and challenges that have the potential to spark inspiration. 

For example, the monthly challenges hosted by BII (that’s us!) provide a unique prompt to encourage builders to expand their horizons and experiment with building different things. There are plenty of annual contests, too, such as Rogue Olympics, Summer Joust, and Brickscalibur.

By having the basic premise provided by a third party, you’re spared the effort of scrolling through art platforms or picking a piece of media to base your build on. You might also discover a new genre that you’d like to try building within more. And who knows, maybe along the way, you’ll find yourself the winner of a sweet trophy or set!

Breaking Through the Roadblock

While creative blocks can be frustrating, they are also an opportunity to try to learn new approaches to building. Reference material, whether it be concept art or pop culture, can let you “skip” over the brainstorming phase and get right into clicking bricks. Revisiting past WIPs and table scraps can also give you a place to start from; plus, you can finally free up some desk space again!

Image via LEGO

Sometimes, though, it doesn’t hurt to take a break. If you are struggling to find a project that excites you, don’t be afraid to step away for a bit. You never know when a source of inspiration will strike. Whether it be from another hobby, an interesting contest category, or a collaboration opportunity, the beginnings of your next LEGO masterpiece may be just around the corner.

Have a question for a future article in The Conversation Piece? Let us know in the comments below!

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