And the winners are...
Posted by Huw,
The results are in for our first MOC competition! We've had such a great response and some fantastic entries so I can assure you that it won't be the last.
The four judges looked at all 300+ entries over the weekend and sent me a list of their top ten. I then collated the lists and produced a shortlist of ten.
Today, we each picked our top five from the shortlist and ranked them 1-5. I then tallied the scores to give the top 5 overall.
So without further ado, here are the results...
1st: 16 points: Electrobeast by Aidan Fitzgerald
Winner of 4000010 LEGO House.
Huw: "Aidan's beast oozes character and personality and looks to be scared of being photographed."
DrDave: "I love the Gruffalo thing it's got going on."
Caperberry: "Really glad Aidan won - both his entries were superb and deserve attention! This little guy is well proportioned and has more character than the original Mixels! Reminds me of Sully from Monsters Inc."
2nd: 11 points: Moustached Mixel by iso3200
Winner of 31025 Mountain Hut.
Huw: "iso3200 submitted some great entries but this one was the judge's favourite. It's a great, clean, symmetrical build that also oozes character. He looks to be the wise old man of the Electroids tribe. I love his bushy beard and eyebrows. The photography is also top-notch."
3rd: 8 points: Gorockenrilla by sweetfennel
Winner of 31022 Turbo Quad.
Huw: "Its well-proportioned face and gorilla-like appearance make this an excellent model that really stood out."
Caperberry: "Great sculpting - I especially liked how the large black teeth go around the nose. A scary but characterful chap."
4th: 7 points: WildfireMax by bbchai
Winner of 31019 Forest Animals.
Huw: "It looks like a fierce dog on fire!"
5th: 5 points: Flopsy Maxel by Garey Conley
Winner of a boxful of polybags.
Huw: "A well proportioned biped. He doesn't look too scary but I love his floppy ears!"
Caperberry: "Such a goofy mouth! Nice to see the grey parts 'framed' to make a striped pattern - not easy in a small model where the parts are needed for functionality."
Honorable mentions, just outside the top 5, both with 4 points: SpiderMurper by TheOneVeyronian and Infernites Max by churgrim.
SirKevBags says "Fantastic effort from everyone taking part, judging so many wonderful entries wasn't an easy task with the wide variety of techniques on show. Ultimately for me it was the charm in the models that won my votes, being able to see the personality of each creation. Oh, and I also have a slight tendency to favour things with a beard."
Winners, if you could get in touch (huw @ brickset.com) with your snail-mail address, I'll get the prizes posted out to you.
Congratulations to the winners, thank you to everyone who entered, to the judges and to the LEGO CEE team for the prizes. It's been great fun. We'll do it again when Mixels series 2 comes out!
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45 comments on this article
very deserving winners, well done everyone
The first one (regardless of its color) looks like Sulley from Monsters, Inc.
Congratulations to Aidan Fitzgerald on this very well-deserved win, as well as iso3200, bbchai, and Garey Conley on their excellent builds! It's an honor to be in this group!
Thank you very much to the judges! Originally, I was only interested in the Mixels for the parts; this contest got me into the new theme, hook, line, and sinker. For sparking that interest and for awarding me third place, a big thank you to the judges!
Well played, all.
See you for Series2,
Dave (Flickr's sweetfennel)
^^ Interesting, I was reminded of a friendlier than usual Gamorrean Guard from Star Wars.
Well done to you all!
Congratulations. All the creatures has very nice personalities.
I think for the next contest there should be a Mix (or 2 Mixels of different tribes) contest, and a separate Max contest (3 Mixels of the same tribe), each with their own prize band since the winners all seem to be Maxes.
I also think you could have done with more prizes, there were so many more excellent entries than just the ones mentioned I believe (I'm not talking about mine either :-P ) I still can't believe you managed to narrow 300 down to 5!
But I'm interested to know, how was each of the original criterion mentioned in the original post weighted?
But well done to the winners anyway (but frustrating I came so close but no glory, but oh well :-P )
I'm curious, but could you please tell us what was the list of 10 that each judge gave you (or at least the final 10)? I want to know if I came close to winning :P
What a fun competition! :-) Congratulations to the winners and indeed everyone who entered - a fantastic display of creativity all round.
Really looking forward to series 2 now...
Congratulations to the winners & well done to everyone who took part
Congratulations to the winners!
Edit: I really am ecstatic for all the winners but I'd like to echo TheOneVeyronian and Joefish's concerns.
I agree with the winner for the character, and I like WildfireMax, but - call me bitter if you like - they all seem a bit of a 'safe' choice; not one of the winners comes from the option of combining two Mixels from different tribes, which I thought was half the competition. If you pick two from the same tribe, what's the difference between doing that or just using all three?
Congratulations to all winners! It was fun to see all the unique and cool creations shared by all participants. The Mixels sets have many useful brick parts for MOC and I like the "eyes" pieces the most.
Thank you very much to the judges for awarding me the fourth place in the competition. Thanks so much for the great effort and time spent on looking into all the design!
Looking forward for more to come...cheers
Eric (Bbchai in flickr)
I also echo TheOneVeyronian's comment, but I would like to point that the winner's entry was a Mix. Can't wait for the S2 rematch! :)
Oh dear, I should have added "The judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into" to the rules, shouldn't I :-)
@TheOneVeyronian, I wish I had a LEGO House to send everyone who made the top 10, because they were all great.
As for "how was each of the original criterion mentioned in the original post weighted?" and @joefish's question, I would say that "the appearance of the monster" was the main criteria the judges used to evaluate them.
It does seem that no 'mix/2 tribe' models were chosen but that was not a conscious decision by anyone, it's just the way it turned out. I like the idea of separate 'mix' and 'max' competitions although for that to be fair we'd need two equal 1st prizes which wasn't the case this time.
^ Another thing to consider is that probably only 35ish% of entries were Mixes (and probably would have been 20% if it wasn't for me (: )
^^ I do recognise that was just concidence, I should also say that the honourable mention that I got was for a Mix of 2 different tribes (what I was originally inferring anyway), so I can say I got the top 2-colour Mix I guess. I'm relatively happy with that :-)
My problem may have been me focusing too much on complex building techniques though! At least I learned how to do obtuse angle googly eye placement using one hinge plate and some clips! (c.f. Rockermax) :-P
Seriously, it was just some thoughts I actually had well before the contest ended for the next competition. I don't think anyone thought Brickset's first MOC competition would be the success it has been. The only problem will be finding a top prize as good as the LEGO House for round 2! :-)
This competition was so much fun! Thanks for organising and congrats to the winners. I'll be looking forward to the next context and hope that I receive my Mixels earlier than one day before the end of the contest so I can create some more. :)
It was a fun competition and I'm really surprised that I was able to come in fifth. When I first heard of this line, I wasn't all that interested but the little mixels really grow on you. Thanks for a great contest.
@TheOneVeyronian, you are absolutely right to be happy about getting the "top 2-colour Mix", that's a huge achievement.
Congrats to all of the winners! I did not get to enter this time due to being busy with a lot of things. Perhaps next time...
Love them! this to me is the joy of lego :D Congrats winners!
These are neat. I can picture small Ents made with these. Those will be so cute.
@caperberry, thankyou, your words put a huge smile on my face :-)
All of these are incredible.
super cool but could u make instructs i want to build them both
Awesome all of them I think the one in second is my favorite
This was a fantastic contest we should all be grateful to Huw et al for running.
Four of the five winners were among my own favorites, so the judges can't have been far wrong. (he said, without apparent irony)
That being said, I wonder how the choices reflect the stated judging criteria... in particular,
"the number of available parts that have been used (so using more of the available parts is better).
interesting building techniques and use of parts."
I would say four of the five winners are built very conventionally (for Mixels), and there does not seem to be any indication that parts count was factored in either (nothing is mentioned about part usage for, i.e., Gorockenrilla or Wildfire Max, and I venture to guess that neither stretched the parts usage much, even though they are both wonderful and adorable). And IMHO, the only NPU among the five is the mustache... which, again, is to take nothing away from how well-crafted and charming and worthy they all are.
Also, it is obvious that symmetry was a major determining factor; it would have been good to know that in advance. Personally, I find symmetrical building dull (to do, not necessarily to look at), because it halves the number of possibilities to explore.
And finally, this was my mistake, but the LEGO examples give the strong impression that a Mix is always between two different tribes... even though the contest rules define it as "any two."
So, kudos on a great contest in terms of soliciting creativity from the fanbase, but my feedback is, if Brickset hosts future contests, that more thought be put into either the judging guidelines initially to reflect what the judges actually value, or into how the judging conforms to the guidelines. I would have built very differently if someone had told me that 80% of the winners would be quite basic builds, and 100% would be symmetrical builds, and there was no need to make an effort to use most of the pieces. Even though I am subjectively very glad I built the ones I did build!
I hope this comes across as constructive criticism rather than sour grapes. It was a wonderful contest bringing out the best of old-skool and new-skool LEGO building, and I hope Brickset sees fit to do more of them (how about ChiMixels combining the Legend Beast sets?) But I think there is always room for improvement, and when it comes to contests people do like to feel that the rules were clearly stated and fairly applied.
^I almost wrote a similar post but you made a wonderful statement I couldn't've:
"...I am subjectively very glad I built the ones I did build!"
Of course I thought mine was great, because I built the model that appealed to my (subjective) aesthetic!
Hopefully participants like me who were heartbroken at the results can take solace in the attention from like-minded builders. Members like Sweetfennel and ninjagoyo, I have to thank you, your compliments were what made this experience worthwhile for me.
I also think it's worth pointing out how infinitely better most of the contest entries (not just the winners) are than the "official" mixes and maxes on the LEGO site. I'm sure they had a very narrow brief with limited recourse to advanced SNOT magic (I know mine were stuffed with illegal and fragile connections), but still... the collective creative horsepower of FOLdom is awesome to behold.
Hi, any possibility to get building instruction for the winner?
@ninjagoyo, excellent feedback, thank you. We're learning as we go here so we'll take it on board when we run the next one.
Great winners Mixels.
I was entring the contest to but I never knew if i was in or not.
If i viewed the list of Mixels without log in to Flickr i did not see my Mixel.
If i log on then it was there. So that why i suspect i was out of the competition. I tried to aak for help but no answer.
congratulations to all the winner! you all deserve that. :D
I personally loved this competition, I didn't enter but it's been really wonderful seeing all the great designs.
As to future building contests (which by the way you must run at least one a month :-)!), my personal opinion is that less rules are better. Keep it simple - eg 'the best looking MOC according to me wins'.
I am sad that I didn't win but totally unsurprised; with a single entry that wasn't overly beautiful, I didn't have a chance against the winners, whose entries were really good. Better luck next time?
@ninjagoyo I couldn't have said it better myself, those were exactly the same concerns that I had looking at the winners, especially with regard to building techniques and NPU's which I admit plagued many of my entries :-)
That said, the winners are cute and characterful and not in any way scary. Like the official Mixels I guess :-)
And if it wasn't for this competition, my 9 Mixel combo Tyrannosaurus Mix (on my flickr) would never had materialised, so all hail Brickset for the birth of a dinosaur :-)
The point of the competition was to demonstrate how cool Mixels are, to get you building rather than just collecting, to help you discover new building techniques and above all to have fun.
It sounds to me as if it's been successful...
I will say that the contest was pretty successful, I have not had that much fun putting Legos together and taking them apart in a long time. my wife always gets on me that i just put them together and put them on a shelf. She has stated (on more than one ocassion) that I need to use Kragle, which only makes me love her more. She seemed really interested in these and I think that the competition was helpful in that.
I think it's definitely fair to say that this contest was a success, look at all those entries, very high standard across the board. I personally had no real interest in the mixels theme but bought some for the competition and actually found it quite fun.
My one little niggle with the way it was run was the 2 photos rule. I have nothing against the rule i think its perfectly fine to have that as a rule, but it wasn't enforced. I haven't looked to see who posted how many pics of each entry (because I don't really care that much) but I think if you have a rule you should really enforce it, even if all enforcing it means doing is saying that if people submit more than two you will leave the first two and delete any other so it would be in peoples interest to choose their best two pics rather than posting 4 and getting away with it.
@jonmdudley- My wife really likes the Mixels as well. She insisted on building half of them herself. We had a great time of it.
Glad to hear this was a success. Had I had the mixels sooner I would have entered. Maybe for the next contest(once the rest of the series come out) Just round it off to a pick one, two, or three competition. Pick ANY 1/2/3 Mixels sets and create the best character you can.
It was great to finally start to start to mix Mixels The contest was the reason for me to try to do my first mix. I hope it will be more contests.
@TheOneVeyronian This wasn't the first MOC competition - maybe I should revive the old Monthly Builder's Challenges (done in late 2012) for those in the Forum.
http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/6910/october-2012-monthly-builder-s-challenge-food/p1
http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/7449/november-2012-monthly-builders-challenge-mustache
Message me @morkman to let me know if we should start it back up again...
^ @CapnRex101 is about to do so, I believe.
Great contest! Very fun! My 7 year old loved entering and competing. I think fewer submissions should have been allowed per person but it made for some interesting browsing through all of the entries. Next time maybe limit it to the top 3 entries per contestant or something like that. 20+ entries for one person seems overkill for a contest of this type. Pick one or three and go with it.
Congrats to all of the winners and we'll see you next time. :)