Legos Part 2

Recap

I've loved Legos for most of my life. I got my first Lego set at 4, and have been getting Legos for birthdays and Christmases ever since. As is common with many Lego fans, I was a huge fan for my childhood, lessened as a teenager, dropped off in my early adulthood, and then picked the hobby back up.

I started posting my Lego creations in late February of this year (2025), and worked to post once (but preferably twice) a week. Once my creations were online, people started liking my stuff and my followers grew from zero to over 500. A small percentage of them were my family and friends, but most were other adult Lego fans. It was very satisfying to have other hobbyists comment on technical aspects of my builds.

Progress

So what's happened in the last six months since my initial post?

The first big thing is that Madalyn supported me in getting my childhood Legos from my parents' house. Kyle and Porter brought them back from Idaho when they visited, and I bought some craft bins. I had to spend many hours sorting my bricks by color and shape.

Sorting bricks is very important. If you've ever built anything out of Legos, you'll know that a lot of the time is taken up looking for the right piece. It was a very large time investment to get things sorted. On top of that, whenever I take something apart, I have to spend even more time sorting. However, with all the building I've done over the past several months this effort has more than paid off.

All of these bricks opened up a world of possibilities. Not only can I build bigger things, but more specific things as well. I have so many minifigure characters from growing up that now I can build from tons of different themes. (Think Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc.)

Of course, I live in an apartment right now. The Legos are fun, but as soon as Madalyn and I have a kid, these Legos will have to go away until we get a house. This helps temper my desire to keep buying Legos.

Contests, Challenges, and Crazes

As time went on, I started to notice people hosting and joining Lego contests online. One thing I've learned from doing my Machine Learning competitions is that contests are really good for you. They push you to perform well, get you out of your comfort zone, and help get you exposure. Even if you don't win, a good entry still gets a lot of eyes on your art.

Challenges are lower-stakes versions of contests, where someone will propose a theme and a time frame, and people can share their creations that meet the challenge criteria. These typically don't have prizes, but are still fun. By sharing your creations this way, (maybe by using a challenge-specific hashtag) you get to share with a bunch of other builders.

Crazes are where a bunch of people just decide to build something without any official organization. Often, one person builds a few MOCs on a given theme, and then a couple other people decide to try it out.

Since my last post, I've entered contests, participated in challenges, and gotten caught up in a craze. These were all fun and I'm glad to have tried so many new things.

Crazes

A special limited-edition set came out a couple of months ago, the flying moon car. It was given away as a gift with large Lego purchases, and people loved it. Soon, several people were building fun variations on the moon car. I had to try my hand, and create my own, baby-sized take on the moon car. People loved it! It was shared over 20 times, and is one of my best-performing posts.

Challenges

Many challenges are themed months. I prepared for #timeforcrab (building silly crabs in July), #febrovery (building a moon rover), #frogust (build a frog in August) and others.

I had fun participating in a couple of Habitat Challenges, a monthly event where participants build 'minifigure habitats' (8 stud by 8 stud squares) to display Lego minifigs. The habitats stack, and the challenges were themed (Halloween and Heroes). I used multiple minifigs from my eighth birthday on the halloween challenge.

Contests

I joined two contests since starting the Instagram. One was the Dinosaur Chariot Challenge, where contestants had to create a chariot pulled by dinosaurs. I decided to go a little crazy and made a flying chariot pulled by pteranodons. This was a little different from the others, but the ingenuity seems to have paid off. I ordered the dinosaurs and the minifig from online to be able to make this one and I loved how it turned out. About 16 people joined this contest, and they did a March madness-like bracket to determine who would win. Voting was open, and my family and friends came in clutch, helping me win the contest.

I also joined the Summer Faction Contest at Eurobricks. This was a little bit more official, taking place on an established website with full prize support. I went all out on this one, even going so far as to order a few parts to make sure I could realize my vision for the contest. This also was over a month long, so I had at least a week for each entry.

It clearly all paid off, because I won 3 of the categories and tied for first place on the other.

Features

In time, I also got featured on a few big pages. One was for my October Habitat Challenge entry, and one was for my 'Mummies Bowling' Halloween creation (bottom right). Getting featured by an account with over 55,000 followers was super cool!

Calibration

One thing that has really surprised me over the last year(ish) of building and posting Lego creations is how poorly I am calibrated when it comes to guessing how popular my posts will be. At the time of writing this, my posts tend to get between 40 and 150 likes.

When I build something, I usually have some idea of how good I think it is. Some I really like, some are less good. I'm a firm believer in sharing your successes along with your failures, so I still post creations I don't like as much. However, I've realized that what I like doesn't match up super well with what other people like. Sometimes I'll be super excited about a post and it will not do well at all. Others, I will post one of my 'failures' and it will do spectacularly.

Holidays

One thing that's super fun is that holidays give me a chance to build themed creations. I love mixing classic Lego themes with holiday motifs. I didn't get into this until the end of the year, but after participating in the Halloween habitat challenge, I made some creations for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not only were these fun to build and post, but they also served as decorations in our house for a few weeks.

Gallery

All of my creations are on my instagram @alex_lyman_studios, but I don't expect you to visit another site to see them. It's nice to have the pictures somewhere other than a third-party webpage, anyhow. Here are most of my creations not included in previous blog posts.

It's pretty cool to see these all laid out like this. I can hardly believe all of these came out of my mind.

Conclusion

Working on this Lego account this year was super fun. I have found it very rewarding to get better at building Legos, grow a following, and become part of a community. In my last post about my Lego creations, I said, "I plan on finishing out the calendar year with over 52 posts." Now it's the end of the year, and I have almost 100! I might have underestimated how much I like this hobby. While I'm not planning on keeping up my weekly posting schedule indefinitely, I'm sure that I'll be building and posting (at least sporadically) for years to come.