Building Together: How to Organize a Collaboration

This article was originally a presentation at Brickworld 2024. Enjoy the slides. No one else got to enjoy them much, because the lights were acting up.

Ever wanted to build something that was just too big for one person? Ever wanted to join other builders for a LEGO project and see what their process is like? Or do you want to get a friend or family member interested in building alongside you? Sounds like you might be interested in a collab.

Collaborations come in all shapes and sizes. They’re a big part of the LEGO community and there are groups of LEGO fans collaborating all the time, many of them intentionally making it easy for anyone to jump in and build along. But what if you have your own idea? What if you want to head up a collaboration yourself? Where do you start—and maybe more importantly, how do you push through to the end?

I organized my first collaboration over a decade ago, and since then, I’ve participated in collabs ranging from online flash mobs to convention show-stoppers to family building days. So join me for a walk through some of my experiences, and let’s see if we can find a few tips along the way.

Introduction to Collaborating

There are three types of collaborations and two main ways to collaborate.

Story collaborations share a common narrative. Minifigures are often the same from MOC to MOC. Each MOC presents a new scene, allowing them to be visually distinct.

Theme collaborations rely on similar colors or settings to stay cohesive. You can generally tell that they go together at first glance. Sometimes builders will try to veer towards similar building styles (detailed/clean, chibi/minifigure scale) as well.

Event collaborations generally fall within the story or theme category but are specifically undertaken for a contest or a convention, making deadlines a high priority.

Collaborations can be either online or in person.

Online collaborations usually take place in the context of an RPG, a competition, or a telephone game (they can also be spontaneous, of course). They can be displayed either by posting all photos on the same day, posting photos one by one over a series of days, or in a single collage. (I’ve never done a telephone collaboration; I mention it for the sake of completeness. They tend to be really slow.)

In-person collaborations can involve multiple people working simultaneously on the same build, but more often, builders each build in the comfort of their own homes and then assemble their creations on a convention floor afterward. (Even if you all are in the same house, it’s not super convenient to be literally working on the same MOC at the same time.) Different builders’ contributions can be designed to assemble into one larger MOC, or they can be displayed as a series of independent MOCs.

With that introduction, let’s piece apart some of my own collaborations and see if we can understand where they fall and what I’ve learned from them.

Collaboration Experiences

(and what I’ve learned from them)

Inside Kaliphlin was not only the first collaboration I organized, but it was also the first collaboration I participated in. I think I was fourteen, so… it was probably a case of me just not having any clue how much I was taking on.

At first, it went ridiculously well. I had the advantage of doing it as an RPG collab, which meant that there was already a world to build in and a pool of builders interested in building in it. RPGs, though generally not as active now as they were 10 years ago, are still a great place to start collaborating because builders in an RPG are already interested in that specific theme and/or narrative. In fact, an RPG is basically an extended collaboration.

We posted this collab using what is still my favorite method for a digital collaboration: one build each day. This slow trickle is ideal from the public’s point of view. Releasing a barrage of builds on the same day makes it hard for anyone to take the time to see them all. It’s also ideal from a procrastinating builder’s side: you can keep building after posting has already started. This means it’s ideal for an organizer: once posting starts, the hype starts, and procrastinating builders are more likely to actually finish. It’s easier to make multiple contributions with that extra time, too. Instead of trying to find one posting day that works with everyone’s schedules, folks can claim the day that works well for them.

And at the end, we put together a poster to cash in on the wow factor and show off what all we’d put together.

Fight Through Abercrombie Pass was a straightforward collaboration: two of my brothers and I said “Let’s build a fight,” called dibs on landscape, town, and castle, and went off to build a third each and assemble it later. All things considered, we put together a nice anti-climactic layout. A little more planning would have helped us present a clearer story.

But for ease of assembly and an impressive final size, you can’t beat rectangles.

Antville relied on the rectangle technique again. This was a simple family collaboration (I have a large family). The challenge came with getting everyone to build in the same style. There’s always someone who wants to put a ramshackle saloon behind a community pool. Matching roads also meant a little time spent planning.

One advantage to collaborations is the size/time ratio. Not only do nine people obviously get something done faster than one person, but having other people involved in the same project tends to be motivating. And, hopefully, lots of fun!

The raging headache wasn’t mine by the way. So I had to take all the photos.

Anyways, Contra Oleon was a more complicated version of the in-person assembly rectangle thing. In this case, we were dealing with terrain elevation. Since we were building in the same room, that did make it easier to deal with. Otherwise—watch out for elevation changes in a collaboration. You’ll need to set up clear guidelines and double-check often because it’s surprisingly easy to misunderstand height variations.

With Kaliphlin at Work, I revisited my RPG roots and assembled a similar team of builders to showcase “ordinary life” in our medieval desert-themed faction.

Not only do collaborations motivate builders to build faster, but they also are a big motivation to build better. Everyone wants to put together something impressive for the team. Plus, as you share ideas and WIPs, you’ll get good advice from other builders who are invested in making the collaboration as spectacular as it can be.

Our Ladyhawke collaboration is a prime example of a story-driven collab. It relied on matching minifigures to keep the story moving. That’s something that has to be settled ahead of time, but after you’ve done that, it’s generally anything goes as builders aren’t obligated to stick to the same size or shape for their creations. In fact, you’ll probably want to differentiate some if you have two scenes in the same building, as we did inside the cathedral with one of us building it in tan, the other in white.

This collaboration was also a competition entry. With the deadline looming and only four MOCs, it made sense to drop it all on the same day, in spite of my love for posting in a sequence.

Wayland Terraformers stands out as one of my favorite collabs. I’m probably alone in that sentiment, as my siblings were desperately sick that week (I was also sick, but not desperately), which is why I built about twice as much as most of them. But it’s always fun to go all out like we did here. Color was key for making this feel like a collaboration, and I also designed a pretty simple brick-built logo to take things a step further.

Fun fact—this was a rehash of a failed collaboration the four of us tried to do a few years earlier for DA4. We were all going to do poster shots with our rifles, but I was the only one who actually got to it. So the idea sat on the back burner for a couple of years. Collabs can be hit or miss; just because the group wasn’t ready for it on the first try doesn’t mean it’s a flop.

It’s always fun to find a unique way to bring cohesiveness to a collaboration. For Seasons at the Watermill, Jonah had the idea to present each creation with a brick-built frame. This allowed us to each put our own spin on our MOCs—with different compositions, different seasons, different aspect ratios, and different frame designs—and yet they’re all obviously related.

Space Spheres is not one of the edits I’m proud of. Not my strongest collaboration, either. But it’s a great example of taking advantage of photoshop to make an online collaboration come together in one shot. Outer space is a particularly easy way to do this, but any free floating objects work. InnovaLUG has been traditionally good at doing this, with things like Isles of Aura, Space Spheres, and my next example.

I don’t remember what we called this, but let’s say Pirate Cove. This takes the free floating idea a step farther for an easy way to create a cohesive collaboration with the feel of being almost one MOC, without having to build all the intervening space. I can’t stress how much easier this is to plan, particularly if you have a group that isn’t sure how much it can commit to.

Taking my cues from my Brickworld 2022 experience, I tried to find a similar concept to bring these nine Pilgrim’s Progress creations together. Space is often an enemy in collaborations; if you want to keep a large build from looking too cluttered it often needs lots of relatively empty space, which means tons of bricks and a lot of rather dull landscape building. If the builds are separate MOCs, you can actually put them closer together, kind of the same way that you can edit together game highlights but watching a game of nothing but highlights would feel overwhelming and unrealistic.

In this case, we hit on using round tiles to create a kind of pathway between builds, which also helped to highlight the “journey” nature of the story.

One thing that I have learned organizing collaborations: you should walk in expecting to do 90% of the work. You probably won’t have to, but if that’s your bar, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see how much others pitch in. But if you’re expecting to do about the same amount of work you’d do for a collaboration organized by someone else, you are in for a rude surprise.

I did extensive building for six out of the nine MOCs above, and two of them were entirely my own. I’ve almost always out-built, certainly out-planned, other contributors in collaborations I’ve organized; naturally, because I’m the one organizing. Just be aware that you are letting yourself into a lot of work if you choose to organize!

The Purveyor is one of the most, let’s say, tight-knit collaborations I’ve ever done. I built the brown parts and Josiah built the black, which means that we were working on the same structure at the same time. We had to come up with a fairly detailed plan to start with, and then we also had to be super flexible and adapt to what the other person thought was cool along the way. And in the end, even though we built the same MOC, we really built different MOCs, because I’m pretty sure it flies horizontally but apparently Josiah thinks it hovers vertically.

Similarly to the Purveyor, Port Royal was a close collaboration. Isaiah and I were able to divide sections a little more, but it still has no obvious breaking points and is very much a single MOC. The fun thing about collaborating like this is that you’re actively building in the same room with the other person, so you can be having fun talking and comparing notes. The con with this kind of collaborating is that often you have a short time frame with the other person, so you may have to rush or build for a longer session than you typically would on your own.

This How to Train Your Dragon collab is a different take on the whole matching-colors scheme. You can tell that these creations are meant to be together from a couple different things: the scale and the aspect ratio, for starters, but also the colors. Which is funny, because the colors are very different; but they both feature the same kind of pastel background, which gives them a similar atmosphere.

These three vignettes are from three different quick InnovaLUG collaborations that we did just to keep building together. A collaboration doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking. Especially if you’ve never organized one before, a series of vignettes is a great place to start. All you have to do is choose a theme or story and a size. They’re easy to post on the same day or spread out on a convention table. Plus, they don’t call for a huge time commitment from the builders.

Not all my collaborations make it to the table. At the time of originally giving this presentation, I actually had a failed BW collab sitting on my desk at home… that I failed to take photos of for this slide. So much failure!

I’ve also done online collabs that felt like flops, either because the builds really weren’t all that special or because there wasn’t enough hype for people to get interested or maybe even realize that it was a collaboration. So it is a good idea to build some hype, prepare some teasers, and think about how people will know that what you and participating builders post is all part of one plan. And nothing beats building quality creations to attract attention. But sometimes, the biggest obstacle is just actually finishing. Not every collaboration will cross the finish line, but don’t let that discourage you from the next opportunity or from revisiting it when folks have more time.

Conclusion

Let’s revisit our first slide and see what we’ve learned.

Story collaborations are great if you have a bunch of builders who want to build way different things. Well, of course, they need to be all in the same genre, but the person who wants to build a throne room can build a throne room, and the guy who wants a swamp can do a swamp; you just have to find a story to connect them with. You’ll want to keep an eye out for ways to make the collaboration cohesive; using the same minifigure is a strong one, but think about aspect ratio, building styles, and atmosphere as well.

Theme collaborations rely heavily on color to stay cohesive. Designing a logo can also help sell the collaboration aspect.

If you’re collaborating for an Event, keep an eye on those deadlines! Also, consider how you can bring all the builds together. Matching edge to edge is impressive but gets complex fast, especially if you want to be flexible with builders who don’t know how much they can commit to.

Online collaborations offer some flexibility when it comes to presentation. You can take your time and post once a day over the course of a week or so, which gives viewers something to look forward to and gives procrastinators a little extra time. Or you can go for the wow factor and dump everything within a few hours. In either case, you’ll probably want to put together a collage of some sort to show off the full collaboration. Look for ways to get all the builds in one photo, like editing floating islands onto a sky background or planets into a galaxy.

In-person collabs are especially great if you like to spend time with other builders. Whether you are actually building together or build separately and then bring the creations together to display, you’ll have to think about logistics. For maximum flexibility, look for ways to tie builds together without having MOCs meet edge-to-edge, but if you have a committed team and lots of bricks, bringing together one solid MOC is crazy impressive.

Since putting together these slides, I’ve finished two collaborations and planned another. Collaborating continues to motivate me to build and push myself as a builder and a person. Getting to see how someone else builds is a great way to learn to look at your own MOCs in a new way, and you may also find that you enjoy providing feedback and helping someone else’s build be as great as it can be. Whether you’ve participated in dozens of collabs before and are looking to head up one of your own or whether you’ve never tried it out at all, I’ve only got one thing left to say:

Do you enjoy collaborations with other builders? Let us know in the comments below.

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