My LEGO
Story

How It All Began

Triggered by my new drone hobby. I had not touched LEGO much since I was a kid, except when playing with young kids once in a while. In 2015 when I started getting into drones (see My Drones Story), I bought a modern, self-balancing drone from the Parrot company that had a LEGO-type connector which supported flying LEGO minifigures (a.k.a., minifigs - LEGO people figures) around.

New to LEGO minifigs. I realized that I had never gotten into the cool, iconic minifigs that came with the licensed themed sets from LEGO. So, I started by collecting minifigs of all the Sci-Fi/Fantasy characters that I loved (e.g., Superman, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones, Bart Simpson, etc.). Of course, I only flew some of these figures on the drone a few times, and then the collecting/displaying them took on a life of its own!

Minifigs behind cases. As the minifig collection increased, I bought some cool cases to display them against the wall on a floating shelf. But I felt that the coolest minifigs (especially those with specialized molded faces) were not being fully showcased behind the cases, and I started coming up with ways to display them outside the cases.

From minifigs to sets. The first answer arrived by accident. While building my minifig collection, I realized that if the minifig(s) I wanted was in a current set, then it was much cheaper for me to buy the set than buying the individual minifigs on the third-party LEGO market. So, I did just this, and was ending up with some cool licensed themed sets designed for the minifigs I wanted. I decided to start building them, and eventually displaying them - my first real way of getting those characters out from behind the cases. And that is where the strategy started.

Creating Display Scenes

Designing display scenes. For each of the brands (i.e., licensed themes like Marvel, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Jurassic World, etc.), I would create 1 to 3 different scenes, each being originally enclosed in a rectangular cubicle like a diorama. For each scene, I would focus on a concept and find 1 to 4 different licensed themed sets that go well together for that concept. I would then come up with my own design of how the different sets would co-exist in the scene. Eventually these scenes expanded to other locations (on top of cubes, on top of shelving units, on floating shelves, etc.).

Exploring my creative side with custom builds. In the end, to get the look I desire, I do my own customizations (from minor to major) to make it all work. These customizations involve breaking down walls, redesigning the set to function without some sections, modifying sections of the set to fit in the space needed or look different, and/or building my own totally custom creations to bring my specific vision together.

Further Showcasing Minifigs

A train of custom display cars. The scenes could only reach so far, though, since a scene can only hold the figures that belong in it - and the cases along the wall were still full. So I put the next wave on rails. I built a multi-theme train running the walls of the room, where each car is its own custom design devoted to one property: Scooby Doo, Trolls, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Avengers, Jurassic World, and the Star Wars clones and droids. Some cars are totally custom and others are heavily modified sets, but they all exist for the same reason - a train car is a display shelf that happens to have wheels. Running high along the walls, the train shows the characters off from anywhere in the room, and when the cars are parked down in the train yard you can finally get close enough to study them.

Mini-scenes for the big properties. Some casts deserved a setting rather than a shelf, but the official sets for them were either enormous or did not exist. So I started building smaller scenes sized to the figures instead of to the architecture - a Muppet Show theater with the whole cast staged across the front, the back, the orchestra pit and the balcony, and a compact Sanctum Santorum for the Marvel Disney+ heroes. Each one is designed around who stands where and what they are holding, which is the part I care about most.

Designing my own minifig habitats. The last answer came from YouTube, where I saw AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO) building small habitats to show off a handful of figures. I loved the idea, but their standard of an 8x8 stud floor with 8-brick-high walls (plus a tile/plate layer on top) felt fine for the height and way too small for the floor area, so I decided on a 16x16 stud floor for mine. I then picked the casts I most wanted visitors to see outside of their cases, and after weeks of design and parts ordering the first ten were built. The Wizard of Oz was the first of them, it sits up front, and it is still the one my guests react to most.

What earns a habitat. Two things, as it turned out:

• A specially molded head: a sculpted character, not a standard minifig head given a different paint job and hair piece;
• A cast that fits: 16x16 studs gets cramped in a hurry, so a large group usually means nobody stands out - though Space Jam pulled it off by seating a crowd up in the stands.

I found this out the hard way. Riding the success of the first ten, I planned a second ten and had the groups picked out - but most of them had too many figures for the space, and others turned out not to have the special molds at all. So I scrapped the second ten and put those figures back in their cases, which is where they still are.

Fan MOCs and Designing My Own Creations

The added wonder of Fan MOCs. In addition, for brands I like (or just parts of them) that LEGO has not licensed or has just not created a set yet, I also have more than a few Fan MOCs (My Own Creation - designs created by fans using official LEGO pieces) in my collection. When I realized that some fans had created unbelievably cool designs for brands I love (e.g., Bevin's Bricks), I sought out the ones that impressed me the most: The Iron Giant, Alien, Predator, etc. I also customize these somewhat when I see I can fairly easily make improvements.

The joy of My Own Creations. Furthermore, I sometimes get to create my own MOCs as standalone scenes or when customizing a scene with other official sets/Fan MOCs. Actually, aside from building cool sets and seeing the final product, the greater joy for me comes from this getting to use my creativity when designing scenes with customizations -and- MOCs.

	My Avengers Tower: When building on the 2015 then 2020 LEGO Avengers Tower sets, I spent months redesigning the set(s) to more closely match the movie version - to a point where it was so different that it became my own Master MOC!
	My Avengers Quinjet: To complement the tower, I ended up having to build a custom 50%-size Quinjet from scratch!
	My Baby Grand Piano: Not to mention, I also created a truly minifigs-size custom Baby Grand Piano from scratch to class up the tower lobby!
	My Disney Castle Platform: Subsequently, when I felt the awesome LEGO Disney Castle set needed more scope, I spent weeks designing/building a platform MOC that - after lots of photo research - closely matches the water/stage/walkway at Walt Disney World back in 2015 (the time frame of the LEGO Disney Castle).

Types of customizations. In my collection, I consider these key types of customizations:

• My Mod: relatively minor customization that I do to a scene or set (noted under the Mods section of its page);
• Fan MOC: unique creation by some other fan;
• Fan Re-MOC: major customization of an existing LEGO set (or of a Fan MOC) by some other fan;
• My MOC: unique creation by myself;
• My Re-MOC: major customization of an existing LEGO set (or of a Fan MOC) by myself.

Enjoying the Collection

My Collection. See pics and my reviews of the many cool LEGO scenes I created. 🧸 Details