First MOC?

[NewRight]

My first MOC when I was a child was a soccer field using all of my green baseplates and soccer players organized by solid color shirts.

My first MOC that is available on the web is...

Police Car:

[Capn Frank]

In October 2006, my first MOC on the internet is a MODed UCS ISD and a couple of ships to scale.

(don't tell anybody from the Pirate forum )

I just couldn't stand this set without a docking bay or ionization reactor.

The corellian corvette has a blaster turret on the bottom too.

(Pics are a link to B-S folder)

I didn't even have my own B-S folder at the time and used my friends account.

I did have a MOCpages account though. It wasn't possible to load pics onto MOCpages when i joined.

MOCPages link

[Brickthus]

My first MOC was probably a wall or a house, from Basic set 10, Christmas 1975, aged 2. My favourite vehicle in my youngest years was the 6-wheeled lorry from Ideas Book 222. I couldn't make much more at the time.

I remember taking MOCs to show at junior school. Imagine in about 1980 building a TIE fighter and Snow Speeder with just space ship 924, two green 24x32 plates (TIE fighter wings) and some basic bricks. It attracted derision from kids whose parents could afford the proper Star Wars models, but special stars from teachers.

My favourite MOC aged 8 was an 0-8-0 steam engine built with 8 40-tooth cogs from sets 851 and 856. It did a reasonable speed from a 107 motor.

Aged 9 I built a crane from 8 82mm wheels and some 10x20 baseplates, still unable to afford an 8860 to which a peer had added a second set of rear wheels. A spares order for the wheels and plates included some 4x4 turntables - my first ideas about 4-wheel drive, using the turntable holes and bevel gears!

My MOCs really took off once I started buying my own LEGO aged 13. In losing parental finance for the hobby I gained determination and focus in my purchases. Better Technic trucks were a regular theme - sharper steering, suspension etc...

I built a 4-whel drive car with two 8856 helicopter rotor parts. The wheels fell off, which is why the parts were later redesigned for the VX4 supercar.

I started seeing the bigger picture after finishing at Uni. A LEGO robot was my final year project for my electronics degree. Once I started work I had real engineering to add to LEGO modelling. This Pneumatic Robot from 1996 is one of my best completed MOCs, certainly in Technic.

It was also in 1996 that I decided real trains were a bit wider than 6 studs in the track scale. I took the decision to build to 8mm:1ft scale and since then building and exhibiting trains has been great fun. This Model has to be the one that was judged best in the opinion of the model railway community, since it won a prize at a model railway show as "The best modern image (diesel) exhibit". The assistant editor of Model Rail thought ours was the "best non-standard layout" at the Warley NEC show in December 2003 and Rail Express published pictures of my diesels, saying we were "holding up the modern image end", given that most diesels on other layouts were green or blue from the 1950s-1970s.

At present I have to wonder what is the limit on the size of a MOC because I'm rebuilding the railway layout in modules totalling 16ft x 12ft and a maximum of at least 100 plates high. I recently connected up 20 layout modules together. Is each module a MOC or do we have to wait for the whole layout to be finished before it becomes a MOC?

It all depends what we call a "MOC". Is it only something, complete in itself, that the builder feels is sufficiently good to be shown to others, after it is honed to perfection? In which case the "first MOC" could be really good. Otherwise it is unlikely that anyone's first MOC looks as good as a set (set mods excluded), unless they are a trained artist, engineer, or both beforehand!

Mark