It doesn't have to look pretty....
By Frankie Betonio (Dad)
The beauty of Lego is that you are only limited by your imagination….. and the bricks you have on hand. When I grew up in the 80’s, I only had only a limited amount of brick shapes. One of my first MOCs was the Millenium Falcon. Problem was, I only had square and rectangular bricks. If I were to build it now, I could come fairly close with today’s bricks. Unfortunately, in the early 80’s, it came out looking more like a horseshoe!
I didn’t really care, though. It still made my imaginary Kessel Run. It served it’s purpose. My point being, it doesn’t have to look pretty to serve a purpose. When Alex wanted to show off his first MOC (a GBC Stepper), he was embarrassed that the bricks didn’t match. You see all these insanely cool MOCs on YouTube and Instagram and think “Why can’t mine look like that?” Here’s what you have to realize. The people making these either have a massive brick collection, or more likely, have to go on Bricklink or Lego.com to specifically order those parts in those colors. I told Alex that no one would even notice the multicolor MOC. I was right! People were more interested in watching the ball move up and down than the color of the bricks that were moving it.
Here’s a picture of that actual stepper. No one seemed to care about the color. Now look at the Ferris Wheel (above). It all looks like it matches. It doesn’t. Yes, the wheel has a specific color pattern, but that’s because we had to order those parts. You probably didn’t even notice the base of the wheel (top left picture) made up of a bunch of different colors!
In my opinion, having a multicolor MOC is the purest form of building. You build with the bricks you have. You’re forced to be more creative. It brings me back to a time when I had a big bin of Lego bricks and my imagination. My Millenium Falcon may have looked like a red, blocky horseshoe to everyone else, but to me it was that fastest ship in the fleet and still made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs!