2 years in Lego
I’ve been thinking about coming back from what adult fans of Lego (AFOLs) call the “dark age” (the period since you stop building with Lego and when you start again) for years, while watching amazing videos on Youtube of incredibly talented MOCers (AFOLs who build their own creations — “My Own Creation”), until I found the spark to buy my first adult set: the 42078 Mack Anthem, which I found the perfect mix of Technic (my favourite theme) and classic bricks, in late December 2019.
It was the worst and the best period to finally found myself an hobby and a passion to detach from the work-sleep-work-sleep-work routine: the worst because my son was 1 year old and my wife was expecting my second baby, the best because I was exiting a two-years blackout where I faced a serious life-and-work crisis, struggling to find my dimension. Basically I forced myself to get into something that would have eased my mind.
The pandemic for sure has been just gasoline on fire, giving me one reason more to relax and keep my mind occupied, but the main boost to this journey back to Lego was for sure the discovery of what the AFOLs world truly is.
An incredibly strong, passionate and honest community
I’m an entrepreneur, as I work in/for the company I created with some great fellows, but basically I am a web developer. I hate the developer community. At least in Italy it seems that the only objective for developers is to show how better and smarter they are than others, with a ridiculous level of arrogance and contempt for their colleagues. Enough said that the main Facebook group for developers where I’m subscribed is called “Il programmatore di merda” (“the shitty developer”), where the only purpose is to make fun of the errors and the “bad code” of other developers. Everyone seem to have in their hands the solution for everything, all the other developers are worse developers.
The Lego community is exactly the opposite.
I’m now subscribed to multiple Lego groups on Facebook, from generic ones — “AFOLs of Facebook” to specialised ones — “Technic MOC world”, and in all of them there is maximum respect for everyone, from the most talented MOCer to the last one arrived that has built for the first time in his life his first <200 pieces set. Everybody deserves the same attention, the same return, the same kindness. There is confront, dialogue and support. The Lego communities gave me hope that humanity can still be saved, and we aren’t all condemned to quarrel behind a keyboard and talk about conspiracy theories.
You can find a grumpy Texan in his fifties who as second hobby has shooting in his backyard while drinking beer answer super-kindly at a 20-years-old taiwanese about it’s problems with a missing piece in his new set.
You can post a picture of your naive-poorly-designed creation and get a like and an encouraging comment of a Lego designer with +1000 sold MOCs instructions.
It’s amazing.
It’s not just buying sets and building them
Yes, that’s the core of what Lego hobby is about, but when you start living the community you discover a universe of collateral websites, applications, third-party products, softwares.
There are websites (reductive term) like BrickLink or Rebrickable, that store the entire catalogue of sets, parts and minifigures produced by Lego since the 70s, along with incredible algorithms capable of calculating in moments the best combination of resellers to buy your parts’ wanted list from or to suggest you what you could build with the spare parts you own, also with colour replacements. From a developer point of view — it’s pornography.
There is Stud.io, an incredible 3D software developed by the guys behind BrickLink (that btw has been acquired recently by the Lego Company) that allows you to virtually build your creations, with collisions tests, a rendering engine and an incredible instructions builder, to export detailed PDFs like the ones from Lego and sell them online (on Rebrickable or on your own website).
There are start-ups and small companies that produce custom parts like powerful batteries and RC modules (like Buwizz or SBrick) that are perfect complementaries to Lego MOCs and official sets; independent developers that in their spare time released free apps that are way better than the official ones (like BrickController2 or the Android apps by Sariel); designers that help MOCers create and print their custom stickers, or 3D-print their custom parts fantasies.
And this is just what I discovered because related to what I’m into (Creator and Technic themes) but there are a lot of other currents, groups and sub-cultures that you can feel overwhelmed: there are the robotics fans, the micro-builders, the 6-studs vehicle experts and the 8-studs vehicle experts, the social challenges (like the “Tensegrity challenge” — how nerdy). There is the “Great Ball Contraption”: a collective whose goal is to build modular contraptions to connect to each other at fairs in a crazy long closed path to make travel small football and basket balls in an infinite loop (yes.).
My MOCs so far
So, what these two years led to? Here is the current list of my official MOCs, findable on Rebrickable. The common objective of all my creations, and what I find fun and engaging, is to pack in the smallest scale possible the highest number of functionalities, best if RC.
Compact Baja Truck
My latest creation, a remote controlled Trophy/Baja truck. It is fully RC (but I developed also a manual version recently) and is powered by a Buwizz 2, a Lego Buggy Motor (the most powerful in its history, but out of production, very rare and expensive — an icon) and a PF Servo. It features also a PF Medium Motor to make the fake V6 engine and the radiator fans on the back work.
MG Metro Computervision
My reproduction of one of the iconic participants of the infamous Rally Group B era. It is fully RC, it features all Lego components but it’s controlled by a PS4 joypad thanks to the BrickController2 app. It has a super-compact flat 2-speed remote controlled gearbox, for a low/hi switch. Everything in a really compact scale. I designed and printed all the stickers, from photos of the real car.
Jet Ski
Simply a Jet Ski but built almost with parts from the Corvette ZR1 official Lego model (95% a C-Model then). It features steering and an inline-4 engine connected to an hidden wheel.
Compact Rally Car
My first MOC when back from my dark age. It’s a simple RC rally car, with no reference to any real vehicle, but in a very small scale and with 2 PF L Motors powering it, so quite fast and funny to use. It features also a boxer 6 cylinder engine connected to the drivetrain.
