Building v.s. Storytelling

[Kumpelkante]

Hey Guys,

i want to take a short break from building for the CCCIX and share and discuss some observations i made on building in general, while browsing through other AFOLs MOCs. Most of you might have noticed, that the amount of details in recent MOCs is insane. (i can say this at least for castle, dunno about other themes). But as the amount of details increases i more and more the sense of adventure.

Take for example the castle theme: when i started to come out of my dark age in late 2005 a lot of castlemocs included some kind of conflict, or there where at least in knights in armour around or there was something exciting happening or about to happen. Nowadays you have highly detailed MOCs with lifelike buildings and landscapes, but there are just some lonely farmers walking or not even that, doing nothing. they are just standing around only giving a sense of scale and doing nothing else.

But this shall be no rant. I noticed that there are two styles of MOCs. (well two, i want to discuss here).

1: Highly detailed scenery, but no events are happening. the figs are just "a tool, to measure the scale" or a detail like furniture. The effort goes clearly into developing or trying new building techniques. Yes i appreciate the skill of the builder, but i miss some kind of story arc. Extreme examples for this kind of MOCsare found in Castle the last years and CCCIX in particularly (dunno about city and other themes)

2. Lot of Minifigs in the foreground. Exaggerated poses. Some kind o conflict beetween different factions. But on the other hand the building techniques itself are rather basic and there is not much detail in the periphery (like greenery and such). I love to see storys/ events something exciting happening, but for me it only works, when the background /scenery is somewhat believable and creates the right atmosphere. Extreme examples for this are war or battlescenerios and of course brikwars-sessions.

Hmmm im sure most builders do not consciously plan to build in one of that two styles.

but this shall not be a monologue. Lets talk about building witt legos in general:

Did you make the same observation the last years?

Do think you tend to build more in one of the two "styles" or somewhere inbetween?

Do you think im completely wrong and this is more a matter of the basic building techniques of the past and the more sophisticated present (and hopefully the future)?

or do you think its more a matter of taste and castle-builders or Afols in general are more attracted by peaceful harmonic scenes than epic adventures? (btw. i personally think too peaceful gets boring fast )

Btw. this does not mean that one way of building is wrong or that is better than the other. I think that a truly great Moc (at least in minifigscale) needs enough details for a believable atmosphere but also some kind of event that is exciting to give it some kind of meaning (maybe i edit this, when i find a better word in english)

[Aanchir]

Interesting observations. I personally prefer building MOCs for the structure rather than the story. There can be the foundations for a story in my MOCs, such as in Rise of the Dread Colossus, but that more involves including features and functions that suit the characters than depicting a complete scene. I like making many of my MOCs as setlike as possible, and a good set lets people tell a story the way they want to.

[davee123]

FWIW, I think it used to be a LOT more pronounced. Back in, say, 1999-2002 or so, castle fans were inspired to effectively illustrate very serious attempts at story-writing with LEGO images. Probably the best known being Anthony Sava's Ikros (mostly because it was actually completed, and had a large scope).

At the time, I found myself wanting to do the same thing (I think there's a general tendency towards this in young-adults-- by which I mean teenage up through the early 20's). However, I quickly learned that building and photographing a detailed MOC is ludicrously difficult. Hence, illustrating a full story is even harder, because you have to create each and every scene, no matter how inconsequential (if you don't, you frequently bore your audience).

Effectively, if you want to do something well, it takes a LOT of effort. Most people aren't willing to take that effort. So if they want to tell a story, they'll often skimp on photography, level of MOC detail, good HTML formatting, or ... something. Often many of them. And meanwhile, the people who primarily want to make a high-quality MOC aren't terribly inclined to spend much time writing a great story. They'll often try to tell the story within the images of the MOC, "caught in the act" of whatever story is playing out.

Also, there are some builders and some story tellers who are simply not skilled at both. You might be a fantastic MOC builder, but not a very good writer-- so you may be less inclined to show an A+ MOC alongside a C- story. Or, visa versa, of course.

In the end, I agree it'd be great to have both, but I think it's unlikely that we'll see it happen much. I'd encourage you to be happy with the positive things in the existing MOCs and stories.

DaveE

[Peppermint_M]

I build a MOC and a story. They both develop at the same time. Then again I mostly build things, not buildings and scenes. My planes are all part of a wider conflict, my other MOCs are tiny examples of a whole universe I write. My only attmepts at scenery story telling are not the best, in fact they are a little more on the terrible side...