Today we’re excited to present a special feature from accomplished film editor and LEGO modeler Nick Lever. Nick was a finalist in season 4 of LEGO Masters Australia and has had his work displayed in LEGO House in Billund. In this guest post, Nick shares his experience working with LEGO’s Middle East division to celebrate Innovation and Creativity Day. Nick, the floor is yours!

This wasn’t the build I set out to make…

In fact, if you’d told me a year ago that I’d end up spending day engineering cybernetic camel legs, I probably would’ve said, “Why?” Then I’d have paused and whispered, “…but go on.”

This whole build began when LEGO Middle East reached out and asked if I’d be interested in creating an animated MOC for Innovation and Creativity Day. It was part of a region-specific campaign celebrating future-focused thinking—exactly the kind of prompt I love. They’d seen my LEGO animation work online (video editing is my day job), and wanted something they could feature on their social channels.

Now, not to go full inside baseball, but here’s how this stuff usually works: LEGO as a global brand doesn’t really run all of its own social media. Instead, it delegates that work to local digital agencies in each regional market. Those agencies then manage the Instagram, TikTok, YouTube content, etc., based on what works in their part of the world.

Here’s the bonus for AFOLs: those agencies are almost always looking for content. They’re often under-resourced, over-scheduled, and deeply appreciative when a community creator pitches them a well-formed idea. If you’re a builder with solid creative instincts, I’d say don’t be afraid to reach out with ideas.

(My first references and sketches. Try pitching a camel mech build while living out of a backpack.)

For me, the process of working with LEGO Middle East was genuinely collaborative—and slightly chaotic, in the best way. I was travelling through Europe at the time, visiting my model on display at the LEGO House in Billund, bouncing between countries and time zones, and fielding Zoom calls from hotel rooms and airport lounges. With no access to bricks, no studio, and only a phone full of PDFs and sketch apps, I spent two full weeks just planning. I pitched the concept, illustrated rough visuals, and workshopped the story across a string of calls. The brief was clear but refreshingly open-ended—they knew the tone they wanted, but left plenty of space for me to bring my own voice.

(Keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun as a builder.)

Camels are weird. They’re defiant. Expressive. Capable. And they have this slightly judgy energy I love. I started imagining a lone rider, trudging across a harsh future desert with the last precious seedling—on a mission of survival, or maybe redemption. Or maybe just looking for a place to plant it.

The rider wasn’t a hero. He was trying to be one. And that’s always the more interesting story.

When I finally got home and opened my parts bins, I still didn’t know what scale I was working in. But I knew I needed to get the camel’s face right. Joss @jayfa_mocs (fellow LEGO Masters alum) once told me: “Figure out the face. Spend twice as long on it as everything else.”

I found a brilliant trick in the LEGO Safari set using microphone pieces for eyes. And because I was still in airport mode, I’d spent a lot of time reading LEGO manuals like bedtime stories. Caleb @caleb_created (also from LEGO Masters) always said: Pay attention to how LEGO does things. Sometimes they’ve already solved it better than you ever could.

That advice saved me a lot of time. Thanks, team.

(What’s the essence of your story? The most economical way to tell it?)

In this story, the rider and the camel are the similar characters. They’re both wanderers. Survivors. Holding themselves together with tech and sheer willpower. That idea helped unify the design—I used matching parts, grey piping, overlapping textures. They’re not polished. They’re patched. Cyborgs not for fashion, but for function.

The camel is built on a foundation of Brick, Modified 2/3 with Studs on Side (22885). Why? Because I grabbed about 40 of them from the Pick & Build wall on a whim and then spent the next two months justifying that decision. They became the perfect internal skeleton—lightweight, strong, and studdy in all the right places. That kind of “use what you’ve got” thinking was behind a lot of the build.

The boots? Palm tree trunk elements (2536e) capped with fur collars from minifig neckwear (78127). The headset features an Infinity Stone (36451a) just because I had one laying around. A Ninjago Skull Helmet (18962) suggests the bleached bones of a deceased creature and the  elbow joint? A cannon (x110c01), taken apart and emotionally repurposed.

You get the idea. It’s not about flashy parts—it’s about the weird kind of alchemy that happens when you mash your loose inventory with late-night reference photos and an overly ambitious moodboard.

I used Technic, Brick with Pin Hole and Rotation Joints (48172) to make the model posable – and ball joints for the rider, as his pose had to match the camel’s. Leaning forward, alert. Alert to danger. Or opportunity. Or whatever you see when you’re lost in the dunes with a storage rack full of future tech.

I reused one of my old minilander-scale characters—because he already sat nicely. Originally built for another model, I dusted him off, plonked him on the camel, and said, “Yep, good enough.” When you’re up against a deadline, those little shortcuts are not just OK—they’re essential. You need wins. You need momentum top get over the hump (aha). You need someone to sit in that saddle while you go stress-eat crackers.

Its head is angled just slightly off-centre, eyes scanning the horizon, like it’s daring you to ask where it’s going. I worked hard to get the body language right—click hinges, elbow joints, rubber bands (used liberally, as camel tack often is), and the illusion of motion through posture and balance.

(Fabric is flexible. Capes, sails, flags—anything that flutters can bring still models to life. Use it everywhere.)

The rider? Worn cloak, binoculars, bent knee, windswept scarf—looking not at you, but beyond you. Like maybe he’s hoping you’re not the last person he’ll ever meet.

(Let LEGO be LEGO. I’ve started embracing visible studs again. Smooth is cool, but sometimes the bumps tell a better story.)

This wasn’t the build I expected to make. But I think that’s kind of the point.

The best ideas often live outside your comfort zone. And camels—odd, majestic, gloriously weird camels—taught me more about character, posture, and design than I ever expected.

If you’d like to see more behind-the-scenes chaos, you can find me at @clicklever. I promise: fewer camels next time. Probably.