Season 7, Round 8 of the prestigious Iron Builder competition with the seed part of flower bell in light blue has come to a close. In the building battle between defending champion Eann “Miscellanabuilds” McCurdy and challenger Drew “CRCT Productions” Cazenave-Tapie, the judges were split 2-1 in favor of Eann. Even though only one builder can claim the Iron Builder title this round, both participants shared incredible creations. In addition to sharing all of the entries from this round, we spoke with both builders about their experience.
Drew Cazenave-Tapie (CRCT Productions)
TBB: First of all, congratulations on completing 6 incredible builds. You must be exhausted!
After a quiet couple of years, you re-entered the scene in a big way this year with an incredible SHIP, awesome vignweek builds, and now you’re vying for the Iron Builder title. You seem to be at the top of your game. Care to comment?
Drew: LEGO has always been one of my happy places, and while the past couple years I was a little too busy with other things, I’m more than happy to be back now that I’ve found back some time. It’s been good to get back to building and finish older builds such as my last couple of ships that had been on hold for years, and competitions like vignweek and Iron Builder have definitely helped me refamiliarize myself with my arts inventory and pushed me to get back in the game faster.
TBB: Your opponent Eann crushed it in his last Iron Builder competition. Were you intimidated going up against a challenger with such creative range?
Drew: Eann is an incredibly talented builder, and I’ve known him pretty much since he joined the community, so I’ve seen him grow and improve as a builder over the years to rise to where he is now. However, while it would be foolish not to feel a little intimidated by him, he remains above all a friend and LUG-mate of mine, so I’ve approached this IB round more as a fun challenge, a friendly competition.
TBB: Speaking of range, your past mocs have skewed heavily towards sci-fi and industrial builds. Your six builds brought in styles and subjects that we haven’t seen from you before. How did it feel to try out these other inspirations?
Drew: It is true that I typically stick to more industrial sci-fi builds or ships, but that’s simply because it’s what I know the best, it’s where I started and it’s even somewhat related to my field of work. However, I’ve always had plenty of ideas for other kinds of builds in different themes. Usually what has stopped me from actually going through with those ideas is either too much overthinking before getting started, or a lack of confidence in my parts selection. Since my part and minifig collections are quite tailored for sci-fi, they can feel very limiting for building other things. This is exactly why competitions like Iron Builder or Vignweek are the perfect occasion to force yourself out of your comfort zone and get past those obstacles. Because of the limited time, it forces you to get started without overthinking as otherwise you’re out, and it forces you to make things work with what you have in-hand in that moment.
TBB: Let’s talk about the seed part – the bell/flower in light blue. Is it a piece you’d encountered before the competition? What was the experience like working with it? Any particular challenges?
Drew: As mentioned before, I had been a bit out of the loop the last couple years and there’s plenty of new parts I missed in that time. This part was one of them, I was unaware of its existence until the start of the competition. Beyond that, in 10 years of building MOCs, I hadn’t used any flower parts in any of them other than gray 1×1 plate flowers for greebling on ships and such, so from the get-go it was going to be very challenging. The rare colour also didn’t help much as I barely had any bright light blue pieces in my collection, and the limited connection points made it very difficult to start. For the most part, my approach was to start by finding parts that could connect to the smaller hole or something the shape of the seed-part reminded me of. Then, once I had the initial idea for each build, put it in context and try to add the piece wherever I can without it looking out of place. All things considered, I’d say it went fairly well for the most part.
TBB: Is there a novel use of the piece across your builds that you’re most proud of?
Drew: My favourite uses I found were the thrusters on the fighter jet and the floor pattern for the market. The floor pattern is something I thought of from the very beginning when I found the connection with the cardan cross-shaft, the LBG-BLB colour combo immediately made me think of Central Asian architecture, and I think it would work very well in a larger scale build. For the thrusters, the flower fits well in a technic driving ring extension that is often used for thrusters, and because of the bell shape of the piece it is perfect for the exit thrust from Bell shaped nozzles typically seen in rocket engines at high altitude.
TBB: Your opponent produced some exceptional models. Is there one that you’re especially impressed by?
Drew: All his builds were excellent, and he had some very creative ideas for the seed part, but I’d say the build of his that impressed me the most was the last one, Coral City. It was impressive to see how even after 6 other builds, at the very end of the competition he was still able to pack 6 new uses of the piece in. The roof idea was excellent, but my favourite of the bunch is the tentacles of the octopus’ server in the ramen shop.
TBB: How did completing your first Iron Builder contest change you as a builder? What will you take away from this experience?
Drew: Overall, it was very intense, but a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. As mentioned before, it has opened the door to building new things whether it’s something I had thought of but hadn’t gotten around to doing it, or entirely new things that had never crossed my mind. It has shown me that if I put my mind to it, I can definitely build in those themes or styles as well despite whatever I might think, and thus I’ll definitely be experimenting a bit more with the stuff I build. Besides that, it also reminded me how much fun it is to take one piece and try to find fun new ways to use it, which is something I hadn’t really done in a long time. Regardless of what the results may be, I’ll be happy to compete again if the opportunity arises.
Eann McCurdy )(Miscellanabuilds)
TBB: First of all, congratulations on completing 7 incredible builds and your second win!
Eann: Thank you for inviting me to chat about the round! Thankfully the sleep deprivation levels are back to normal at this point.
TBB: Immersive scenes, character builds, minifig vignettes, lifesize props and even a LEGO parody – your variety this round was off the charts. Is it tough switching between such different styles between builds?
Eann: To some extent, yes. While character building is my passion, I’ve never let a singular genre define myself; after all, the “miscellana” in my username has to come from somewhere! Switching styles comes to me naturally, and it’s relatively easy for me to pivot between builds on the macro level.
That being said, I often lack experience in some of the styles I dabbled in this round. This usually leads to a bit of frustration during the build process, as well as “wasted” time. “Mrs Cheeseman’s Sanctuary” was the first build of the round for me but one of the biggest culprits of this. The tree was originally rock work (with trees growing above ground), and the MC was going to be crossing over a bridge through an enchanted forest. Building nature, however, is not my forte, and I struggled to get a good composition or design going until I pivoted to making a full tree design, instead. Had I started with that concept or been able to run with the original ideas I believe I would have had more time to flesh the build out a bit better.
TBB: As the returning champion, this was your second Iron Builder competition. Was the experience any easier the second time? Did you feel the pressure to retain the title?
Eann: Having competed before, it was definitely a lot easier to switch from a mindset where I was barely building throughout the week to one where I’m building at breakneck speed. Process wise, however, I felt this round was a little more challenging: specifically in the brainstorming phase. I’ll talk more about the seed part later on, but the size differences between the parts changed a lot more in this aspect than I realized it would.
Last year’s part was the Cauldron piece in red. Due to the size of the part, each build really only utilized the part in two or three unique ways per build on, with 5 uses being the most. Rarely were those pieces used in quantity, either. While it made finding uses slightly more challenging, as it was important to control the size of the build, it was relatively easy to keep a steady stream of ideas going. By the end of the round, the seed part was only used about 50 times (excluding a jar of candy in the last build).
With the smaller part, however, you are sort of forced to use the part more significantly: either with a higher variety of uses per build or a higher quantity of parts used. If you don’t, the seed part gets lost in the build, and the “relevancy” of the part is diminished. By the end of this round, the seed part was used around 180 times. In practice, I had a bit harder of a time coming up with ideas that satisfied those requirements throughout the round and found myself falling behind pace rather quickly. Thankfully, I was able to get a couple of quick builds out towards the middle, but they also felt like weaker builds.
TBB: Regarding the bell/flower in light blue, is it a piece you’d encountered before the competition? What was the experience like working with it? Any particular challenges aside from the sze that you mentioned?
Eann: As many are, I am a huge fan of the Botanical line. I’ve had this part sitting around in both white and light blue for a little bit now from a few parted-out sets and had wanted to try to find some uses for it, but never got around to actually messing around with it. Imagine my surprise during the seed part reveal!
The seed part was quite enjoyable to work with, to be honest. My builds are often organic, and frills, curves, and circles are featured prominently in my portfolio. This part checks all three of those boxes, so it lent itself well to my style. It was a much better experience to work with this part than the Red Cauldron from last year’s round, as its significantly less clunky and much more in-system.
Still, there were a few challenges. For one, there are only so many orientations you can use the part for. The main profile is a unique shape, but you can only rehash the “cylinder with fillets” so many times before you have to ask yourself if its really any different from a previous use. The top gives you a circle with a round hole, but given the amount of parts that can achieve this, I didn’t find it all that inspiring. The bottom provided the most interesting uses to me; few parts have such a shape/texture, especially at such a small size. Frogs and leaf plates are some of my favorite pieces for the same reason, so having a new part to add to that niche is fantastic! Now I just need LEGO to release the part in more colors…
TBB: Is there a novel use of the piece across your builds that you’re most proud of?
There were a few minor uses that I was very satisfied with. Mushrooms are a common motif in my portfolio, so I was glad to find use in the seed part to create the fantastical blue shrooms in “Mrs. Cheeseman’s Sanctuary.” The pencil cap eraser in “Live Iron Builder Reaction” was also a fun use – plus it brought some random childhood memories.
My absolute favorite use though is definitely the coral in the titular “Farewell, Coral City.” I felt the underside texture of the seed part captured the iconic look of coral quite well. It’s definitely a design I’d use again if I ever need to use some coral in another build!
TBB: Your sink moc seems like a sly reference to the Creator 3-in-1 sets like the typewriter with flowers. What are the alternate builds for your sink?
Eann: Oh gosh. This build was a victim of a style-switch-roadblock like I mentioned earlier. I had been struggling to get a good sink build done that wasn’t going to be nigh-impossible to photograph or incredibly time and part intensive to build: neither of which I had. Alternate builds would definitely need a redesign to work well, but I can see a universe where you can also build a toilet and a washing machine!
TBB: Your opponent produced some exceptional models. Is there one that you’re especially impressed by?
Oh definitely! Half of the anxiety I felt during the round was waiting to see what Andrew’s next build was going to be. Going into the round, I expected that build quality would be one of his biggest strengths and advantages over me. What I didn’t expect was just how fast he can build. His “LEGO Fighter Jet” is a great example of this. The shaping on the jet is absolutely immacculate, and the fact that he only built it over a couple of days is incredibly impressive.
In terms of seed part usage, I’m a big fan of “Lab Tools.” The build is seriously packed with fantastic seed part usage. The flower looks absolutely perfect as a rubber squeeze bottle tip. The feet on the scale are also a great use.