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!

From minifigs to sets. 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. I then became obsessed with how to display them, and came up with a strategy.

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 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.

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.

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 (noted under the Mods section of each scene);
• 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. 🧸

My Creations. Check out my original creations, my major modifications to existing sets, and creations from other fans! 🧸

Video Tour. Watch me here explain my LEGO collection in a bit of detail.