A new month is upon us which means more competitive building! Are you ready? Here’s the latest bunch of LEGO contests and challenges from all around the AFOL community for December 2024 to help you find some inspiration and motivation to build! There’s nothing quite like a theme or a prompt to take you out of your comfort zone and give you something new to try. Besides, contests are the perfect place to interact with other contestants and judges and get to know your fellow builders. And if you’re like me, a deadline helps make sure you actually finish! We’ve listed them in order of deadline so you can plan your building time to the best advantage. Make sure to check the LEGO activity calendar for local challenges and events near you. Here at BrickNerd, some of our fondest memories, greatest building achievements, coolest trophies, and best friendships came from LEGO...

When the beautiful new LEGO Tudor Corner (and GWP Corner Kiosk) set was announced, I could tell that it would become a central display piece in many people’s LEGO modular collections. I could also tell this would be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate how anyone can come up with their own custom lighting solution, especially when set-specific lighting kits do not yet exist. And when LEGO generously offered BrickNerd the Tudor Corner and accompanying GWP Corner Kiosk sets, I knew what I had to do… call dibs! 😋 Looking through past BrickNerd articles on the custom lighting of LEGO, we have certainly covered quite a few topics: reasons for adding lighting to your LEGO MOCs, pioneers of custom lighting solutions, set-specific lighting kits, using miscellaneous lights that you may have on hand, and even advanced DIY techniques for soldering and programming your own lights. What we have not focused on, however,...

In September, I went to Skaerbaek and Billund with a few friends from France. The Skaerbaek Fan Weekend is the world’s biggest gathering of LEGO fans, and I was able to meet and admire the work of a number of creators. It was an opportunity for Quentin Biasotto to exhibit several creations that caused a sensation among the viewing public, and I took the opportunity to have a detailed chat with him and explore his seabed in depth. You can see how special a MOC it is in this brief video. Its absolutely entrancing standing in front of it, see it move. So let’s chat with the builder about this amazing view under the sea. Meet Quentin Sam: Hello Quentin! Welcome to BrickNerd! You're one of the pillars of Puissance Brick, so could you introduce yourself so we can get to know you better? Quentin: Hello everyone! I fell in love...

I mean, we’re all like “perfect MOC builders,” right? We know that if the photography is done right, our LEGO creations are gonna knock people’s socks off. So the first thing we need to produce a banger of an Instagram post is a quality camera. And it just so happens that these days, everyone has professional-level cameras built into their little pocket phone slabs. Great, problem one out of the way. Next, it goes without saying that we know how to artfully frame an eye-catching angle for our aforementioned perfect MOC. Heck, it’s that mental image we were building the darn thing to achieve. So what’s left? Ok lighting: I think this is actually the worst typical offender in MOC photography, but for the sake of the carefully crafted scenario which is the premise of this article, we shall assume we have top-tier lighting capability to equal Ed Harris’s god-like environment manipulation in The Truman Show....

Now that Black Friday has taken all our money, it’s time to kick back and enjoy our monthly LEGO community round-up! While November traditionally is a jungle of sales (and set) announcements, we were once again treated with a smörgåsbord of insightful articles, interesting features and deep drives from all across the LEGO community. We are lucky to have this many outlets and channels that keep creating incredible content, and these are the best of the month. Here at BrickNerd, we celebrated Nerdvember! We learned all about the Endurance and her voyage, how to become a better builder and how to organize a collaboration. We fixed crooked tables, looked into flying with LEGO, rebuilt the galaxy, and took a stroll past Billund’s buildings. We even compiled all LEGO standards, theme months, and contests and had a Wicked time on Broadway. And we spotted LEGO birds, built a GBC module out of...