Today, we welcome 3-time-member MOCingbird and their fantastic THE WORLD OF CIVIL ENGINEERING: TYPES OF BRIDGES. Born of a desire to pay tribute to the brilliant feats achieved by civil engineering across the world, this creation is a most fitting tribute. Show your support for this creation in the comments.
ABOUT YOURSELF
- Who are you?
MOCingbird.
- Where are you from?
Germany.
- What is your favourite LEGO element? Why?
The newest entry in my list of favourite parts is the 1x5 plate.
- Is there a LEGO designer (official LEGO designer or fan designer) who you are inspired by and look up to? Who and why?
My appreciation usually goes to the creators, not the designers. But I’m constantly trying to avoid getting any inspiration from anyone else’s work, and I hope I have not been inspired by any creator or designer, set or theme in a particular way on any of my builds.
ABOUT YOUR PROJECT
- Where did your interest in this particular model come from?
After my 10K project “Basement & Sewerage” had received a lot of support and positive feedback from civil engineers and water/wastewater professionals, I, at some point, decided to build a kind of “Thank you!” model for each of these groups: Thematically focused IDEAS projects dedicated to the professionals, putting a spotlight on their vital contributions to society which still often go unnoticed.
Without civil engineering, modern society as we know it would not exist, but everybody seems to be paying attention to architecture only. Not just in real life, but in the LEGO world as well. On the one hand, there’s the popular LEGO Architecture theme with more than 50 sets having been released over the years, on the other hand, there’s no LEGO Engineering theme at all. I found this situation to be somewhat striking because of the “natural connection” between LEGO, engineering and STEM, and even more so because I know that a lot of civil engineers had been LEGO fans as kids. Many of them even got interested in their engineering careers through LEGO building. I think a set like my “Types of Bridges” could literally build a bridge for a lot of them and reignite their love for LEGO bricks.
Correspondingly, I received hundreds of comments from actual (civil) engineers and (civil) engineering students on the project page and on social media platforms, telling me how they would like to display this model on their office desks, indicating the engineering community’s huge demand for a set like this. Lots of comments also came from friends and family of active or retired civil engineers who couldn’t wait to get the official set as a present. Overall, I think my decision to go with the idea of a bridge-related display set to represent the importance and beauty of civil engineering has been a good choice. After all, the LEGO community loves bridges as well and has commented very positively about the opportunity of getting a new bridge-related LEGO set soon.
- How long was the process of making the project, and what did you have to research as well? What kind of prep, research and design phases did you go through to produce your creation?
The entire process took more than 100 hours I think. This includes the development and evolution of the idea, research about all the bridge types, building the model, making the renders and writing the project description. As always, many of those work hours went into the creation of alternative test builds and layouts which did not make it into the final project version.
- What special challenges did you face creating the model? What was the most difficult part to recreate?
The biggest challenge was getting the most important details of every bridge type technically right in microscale, whilst making the entirety of the display look visually attractive at the same time.
- How did it feel when you reached the magic 10,000 votes and how long did it take?
It took only 95 days, which is a phenomenal success since a majority of the votes obviously came from supporters outside the existing LEGO fan community. All of them had to create a LEGO IDEAS account first of all to be able to cast their vote – and now all of them are standing by to become new AFOLs because of my project, which feels just as great as reaching 10,000 votes.
- Approximately how many LEGO bricks did you use to create your model?
The total part count is 1,602 including the figures' pieces.
- What is your favourite building technique or part/section that you’ve incorporated into your Product Idea?
For me, the creation of new projects is all about bringing unique ideas to life, and I do whatever is necessary to make everything work in LEGO form as I had imagined it. I’m not incorporating any specific building techniques or “nice part usage” on purpose, they just end up being in the model somewhat automatically if they were necessary. So I don’t really have any favourite building technique.
ABOUT LEGO IDEAS
- What is your favourite LEGO Ideas Product Idea (besides your own of course)? Are there any Product Ideas you think have been overlooked?
I am most appreciative of LEGO models which are true “creations” in the actual sense of the word (I’d say the usual term “MOC” is pretty misleading in this regard). But real creations are very rare and unfortunately, they’re not automatically good product ideas as well.
- Do you have plans to submit any other Product Ideas in the future? If yes, can you give us a hint of what that might be?
Yes, I’m continuing to work on several new projects.
