The year 2023 has passed us by, and it was chock-full of exceptional LEGO creations. As is always the case, it’s a mammoth task to pour over 365 days of posts to find the most outstanding one in that span of time. But we narrowed the field down to these five finalists in the running for our 8th annual TBB LEGO Creation of the Year award.
We’ve got our top 5 picks listed below (in no particular order), and we’ll be announce the winner of TBB’s LEGO Creation of the Year 2023 later this week.
Also, be sure to check out the LEGO Creation of the Year announcements for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016 for all of our past winners.
The first LEGO build on our list was a creation popular with the TBB staff as well as all of our readers (#5 in our Top Articles post). Kraken Shadowy by Khang Huynh and Ky Duy Phong showed up on TBB in mid-January, and took our breath away with such realistic brick-built water. The pirate ship is no slouch either, featuring details aplenty and parts from all across the LEGO spectrum. I don’t know if we saw a better fusion of System, Technic, Bionicle, and Duplo parts for the rest of 2023.
The next creation of note from the past year was posted on August 18, 2023, yet references a different day: May 15th, 1988. Builder alex_bricks captures an epic moment in Formula 1 racing with Prost and Senna duking it out in the Monaco Grand Prix. For those unfamiliar, I’ll let Lino tell you all about the race. But you don’t have to be an F1 aficionado to appreciate Alex’s exceptional design. Textures of the smooth asphalt contrast the fluid mix of 1×1 round plates and snowflakes making up the water in the foreground and the rough, blocky cliffs in the back with their exposed studs. Adding all the minifigures everywhere and the scene feels action-packed, just like a race should!
At 200,000 bricks per person, our next entry made for quite the massive collaboration at Brickvention 2023. Joshua Morris, Rod Fiford, Gavin Rich, and Handoko Setyawan graced the pages of TBB back in January with the pirate-themed Cerulean Straits. The details in this construction are so intricate, with little vignettes popping up all over the place. Every time I spool through the photos, another new detail catches my eye. Clearly, even after 11 months, this collab is still stuck in our lemur-loving minds.
So far, we’ve had a bunch of large-scale creations on this list. But being big isn’t everything! And while the Bic Viper by Maxx Davidson may not be made of 800,000 bricks, it’s certainly a tour de force in exceptional parts usage. It even made our Ace Parts Usage top 5! I’ve taken my turn at trying to re-create real-world items with LEGO in a 1:1 scale, and it’s not easy at all! But to do that AND craft a beautiful starfighter at the same time is truly something special.
Finally, the last creation on our shortlist for this year is a work that was born of an internet forum. The RogueBricks collaboration, Rogue Odyssey, had individual pieces peppering the pages of TBB starting in November. But on December 7th, we were able to post the final combined LEGO diorama, bringing together the work of over 30 people into an ode to Ancient Greece. While we’re not able to list out everyone who participated, you can read more on this LEGO-loving crew and what they each contributed on Kevin J. Walter‘s Flick post.
Thank you for perusing our top picks in LEGO works for 2023, all deserving of being shortlisted as the best of the year. We’ll have the follow-up, our announcement of TBB’s LEGO Creation of the Year 2023, later this week.
Weee you not very impressed by New Hashima?
This is the first year that I can not find one that I am interested in voting for.
Too many are too similar.. Need more options
Why are you not able to list all the participants for Rouge Odyssey?
This is really disappointing, New Hashima swept all the awards at Brickworld, the largest lego show in the world (best in show, best large collab, best lighting), at Brickfair won best large collab, and at Bricking Bavaria came in second for best of show.
Dave,
We try to give equal column space to all the nominees. As Kevin had a great list already on his Flickr post, with details on what each participant did, I opted to refer to that instead.
Meredith and Joel,
I can understand the disappointment from New Hashima builders/fans, however we didn’t consider it a singular creation for the sake of this contest for a number of reasons. Instead, with appearances at multiple conventions in multiple forms over multiple years, New Hashima has historically behaved far more like an interlocking theme than an isolated construction. Rogue Odyssey and Cerulean Straits were both better able to meet the benchmarks of a singular creation while still being collabs. In no way does this diminish the accomplishments of the massive Cyberpunk city this year, and it’s worthy of all the recognition it’s received.
TBB is so actually very good at blogging constraction MOCs but somehow (very very well done) generic system builds end up on this list year after year and interesting boundary-pushing builds from that side of the hobby never do.
Kyle,
I guess you can use whatever criteria you like, but IMO the Chicago display was the canonical version of New Hashima. The appearance of smaller sections at other conventions shouldn’t diminish that. If parts of the Rogue Odyssey or Cerulean Straits collabs were displayed at other shows, would they also be disqualified?
If you want to look just at a single creation, Blake Foster’s NH train would be on my personal shortlist. But Kraken Shadowy and Rouge Odyssey are amazing and would also be on my list. It’s also nice to see a smaller build like the Bic Viper recognized, although I’m not sure how you’d judge something like that against a huge collab.
Kyle,
It is disappointing to me that the language used in the article states that you were not able to list the individual participants. Your comment makes it clear that you are intentionally leaving out those who contributed. What a shame, but par for the course on this site that has historically done this time and again on large collaborative builds.
Hey there,
thanks a lot for including our Rogue Odyssey collab here, what an honor!
Also, as our community’s ambassador and one of the planners of our collab I want to affirm we are totally okay with referring to Kevin‘s Flickr post for the participants list. Mentioning them all would probably be a bit too extensive in this article compared to the other great builds here.