There have been a number of great LEGO creations built for the Iron Forge challenge recently. The seed part, or the element that each entry needs to use is the Minifig torso, sans arms, and PaulvilleMOCs makes masterful use of white torsos (one in each fossil).
While the ones on the T-rex and the Triceratops are obviously used for the skulls, trading shoulder sockets for eye sockets, you have to look more closely at the Pterosaur, to find it sprouting wings.
#tbbstopcropping
“When you crop the photo, you tell a lie.”
— Douglas Coupland
Thanks for your concern on this!
The Brothers Brick is an all-volunteer staff. We run TBB in our spare time out of our love for the LEGO community and its amazing builders, and we take great pride in being able to shine a spotlight on cool creations and share them with over 6 million viewers each month. But that also comes with a downside, which is that we have to implement a certain amount of automation, and unfortunately sometimes images get cropped. We try to catch and correct what we can, but as volunteers, we simply don’t have the bandwidth to handcraft each and every Instagram post. We are working on finding a better solution, but in the meantime, if you’re a builder who has experienced this and would prefer instead for TBB to not feature your work, feel free to drop us a note.
We appreciate your patience and understanding, and happy building!
Not a builder so my art has not been cropped but that is what it is art. If you want to share other peoples work that is great but you must do it with respect. To take something the someone spent days or months building, photographing, and editing into great presentation and then just chopping off the sides is extremely disrespectful and insulting to the work the artist did.
I understand you are volunteers, but that does not remove the responsibility of treating an artists work with respect.
Here are some quotes from your Instagram post, all from different users and just in the past few days, but there have been people complaining about you croppingfor months:
“LOL you guys really don’t care anymore do you?”
“Thanks for sharing, it’s an honor. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t crop the sides off though.”
“TBB is getting sloppy on their IG with the cropping.”
“Hard to realize how beautiful this is when 50% is chopped off…”
“C’mon (TBB) do I have to hide the (scissors)?”
“This account is a disgrace to the community.”
“…TBBs cropping doesn’t do justice for these MOCs.”
I believe your current actions has built you a following of casual lego fans, but created a disconnect and animosity between TBB and the active lego community, specifically the builders who’s work you mangle. Some crops are minor, but a lot are nonsensical and make TBB look like amateurs, which is probably not your goal.
I appreciate your opinion on this. Our preference would be, of course, for no cropping at all. But Instagram mandates a specific cropping ratio for their platform that’s beyond our control, and even with a handcrafted approach that’s not always optimal. As I mentioned, we are exploring solutions, but any builder who feels that we have disrespected their work and would prefer to not be featured by TBB is free to reach out to us and let us know. Additionally, if you find it offputting, you are free to unfollow us on that platform.
I have to say these responses are far more aggravating than I expected. I would highly encourage you to be truthful in your responses. The cropping was not an issue until June 15th 2020. Prior to that very few to almost no posts that TBB made cropped down photos. so I would appreciate it if you were honest and did not put the blame on Instagrams aspect ratio (which supports lots of options beyond perfect squares) because clearly you had something that was working in the past. The added white bars is not the optimum option but it is significantly better than what is happening now.
I appreciate that you are looking for solutions but only offering the ability to not post builders work is insulting, nevermind the fact that all you have done is provide excuses, never accepted the blame or offered apologies to the creators of the art you have damaged.
Yes I have the ability to unfollow you on Instagram, but that is hiding or ignoring the issue rather than standing up for what I believe is inappropriate behavior. I’m not trying to start an overarching issue, I was simply trying to point out that TBB’s Instagram is destroying your own credibility. But if you want to offer builders the ultimatum that they can either have their artwork mangled or not shared then that is your decision and I will let you continue on your way.
Sorry I tried to help and offer constructive criticism.