Ideas Test Lab - Announcing the winners of the Fourth Build Challenge!
Posted by FlagsNZ,
Earlier in March, the Ideas Test Lab team announced the ten finalists in the Fourth Build Challenge.
The challenge was simple: can you design a 4th build for one of four LEGO Creator 3in1 sets? The four sets used in the challenge were:
- 31042 3in1 Super Soarer,
- 31056 3in1 Green Cruiser,
- 31057 3in1 Air Blazer, and
- 31058 3in1 Mighty Dinosaurs.
Overnight, the winners were announced. Read on to see the ten finalists and find out which projects won the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places, and which project won the Brick Vote.
There are just over 3000 members registered with the Ideas Test Lab, so it is likely that many of you have not seen any of these projects. One of the significant differences with the Ideas Test Lab over the Ideas theme is all participants must be registered before being able to see any of the designs.
The competition started eight weeks ago, when members were asked to build 4th models for four LEGO Creator 3-in-1 sets. There were 572 submissions!
In alphabetical order (by project name), here are the ten finalists:
Aquatic bird by James Zhan
ChameLéon by Madhok
Dino Island Recon Plane by jjrailton
Locust / Grasshopper by autoreverse
Mighty Dinosaurs - Green Ankylosaurus by Lord_Mithrandir
Mighty Dragonfly by BuildFiend
Mountain Goats and Vulture by JKBrickworks
Parrot by TMunz
Scary Scorpion! by rjhanson36
Waterside Animals by deviltanaka
And the winners are:
3rd Place and a Brick Vote of 386:
Mighty Dinosaurs - Green Ankylosaurus by Lord_Mithrandir
2nd Place and a Brick Vote of 832:
Dino Island Recon Plane by jjrailton
1st Place and a Brick Vote of 1004:
Brick Vote Award with a Brick Vote of 995
Locust / Grasshopper by autoreverse
Scary Scorpion also won the Brick Vote but the 1st place Kids Vote winner has a bigger prize package than the Brick Vote. The Ideas Test Lab team honored the kids' wishes and awarded Scary Scorpion first place.
In order to give the prizes to more participants, for the Brick Vote they chose the entry that received the next highest bricks that was not one of the Kids Vote winners.
Congratulations
Congratulations to the winners of the Ideas Test Lab prizes and all the other ten finalists. All these designs show some clever and creative techniques.
Interestingly, the ten finalists were picked from Fourth Build projects for only two of the four Creator 3in1 sets available in the competition, and all the winners were designed using the parts from the 31058 3in1 Mighty Dinosaurs set.
At 174 pieces, this set was the largest set of the four with nearly a third more parts to choose from than the other three options.
Keeping the Fourth Build spirit alive
The LEGO Ideas Test Lab has posed a question to Test Lab members.
As the Challenge winds to a close, the Ideas Test Lab would like to know what ideas people have for how LEGO fans around the world can keep the Fourth Build spirit alive? How could clubs, fan events, and LUGs challenge guests to create their own Fourth Build models?
Competitions, such as the Ideas Test Lab, also creates a reason for continued support of LEGO Digital Designer.
In the comments below, I would be interested in what other Brickset members think about this Ideas Test Lab and how the Fourth Build could be developed in the future.
What do you think of the four winners when viewing all of the ten finalists?
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27 comments on this article
Congrats to the winners! I'm quite surprised JKBrickworks' design hadn't been chosen for 1, but LEGO always surprises us! Looking forward to the next challenge :)
@101Dalek, glad you liked my design! A lot of great entries in this challenge. My favourite of the top 10 was the Dino Island Recon Plane. It was refreshing to see a non-animal build, and it has some great design elements.
It is a shame some of the sets weren't represented in the top 10. I'm sure the Ideas team has learned a lot. It is a Test Lab after all!
Jollygood show! I am very happy that Dino Recon plane got 2nd, shame it did not get first.
Very good.
That was fun :)
As an idea for future competitions: they could run it like a Battle Of The Bands competition, "Battle of the Bricks".
Where each LUG has a competition, with a prize for the winner who then goes on to the next round for a larger prize. And so on, until "There can be only one" :-)
I think the results didn't go as expected, but it was also kind of fun.
They were all good, but the ones I disliked most happened to get 3rd and 2nd. Still, the scorpion was deserving of its award.
I agree with Baby Yoda, I would also have picked other entries for 2nd and 3rd prize.
If you can imagine it, you can build it...just with Lego, of course. This people is amazing!! Congratulations!!!
The amount of ideas in this contest was really impressive. Shame they are more or less hidden on a website that requires registration, so casual web surfers will not find them. The ideas test lab team should encourage the participants to upload their models to rebrickable or websites alike. Imagine brickset could be listing 100+ alternate models for a single set in the "Alt. Builds" tab!
This just goes to show that Mighty Dinosaurs is the best Creator Set.
Mighty Dinosaurs is an early contender for best set of the year, honestly. Certainly for it's price range. Not only does it come with three great models, there's also an official fourth build (search for it on LEGO's instructions site) and as this competition clearly shows, there's so much more potential with it to make other great-looking models.
That was a cool challenge.
Wow, these builds are all great! My personal favorites are the goats and the grasshopper. I'm surprised how many of the finalists used Mighty Dinosaurs as the set to build from. I probably would have used the helicopter if I was doing this. I hope Lego does more of these contests.
Is it possible to get directions for how to build the finalists? For example, I do see the mountain goat and vultures listed on this site as an alt build for 31058, but I'd be interested in Mighty Dinosaurs - Green Ankylosaurus by Lord_Mithrandir; and ChameLéon by Madhok; and others.
I WANT THAT SCORPION!!!!!
Part of the prize is that LEGO will create digital instructions for the winning sets and these will be published in the LEGO Life App so you'll be able to build these.
Thanks @LegoloverJoe ! ( I'm rjhanson36 who created the scorpion model ) You just need the 3in1 Dino set for the parts - you can probably work out the build if you check out all the extra photos on the Test Lab pages if you can't wait for the digital instructions.
Interesting that the kid's vote that LEGO organised picked those three, which came out 1st, 7th and 10th (out of 10!) as rated by the participating builders.
Also agree it's a shame the other three sets got progressivly shut out with each round.
There was never a definition of what criteria would (or should) be used in judging any of it though.
P.S. I strongly recommend registering, then altering the view to see the top 40 models from the earlier round of voting - there's some great ones in there too, before they were cut down to the last 10.
9 out of 10 builds are animals!
some nice builds, disappointing lack of variety. it seems the choice of sets was pretty poor.
@Nequmodiva
@HUW
"Imagine brickset could be listing 100+ alternate models for a single set in the "Alt. Builds" tab!"
I think you might be on to something!
HUW, do you think there might be a possibility that perhaps one day, brickset can have brickset user submitted LDD alternate builds show up under alternate builds tab? It's just an idea, but I think a darn good idea. Perhaps LEGO Ideas test lab is not going to share, but rebrickable might, and even if they too won't share, there is nothing saying that a future version of this site cannot have an upload feature for ldd files so that a brickset user can simply upload their alternate build for a set by simply clicking the upload button. I hope you will consider it for the next round of changes to the site :). Thanks for the idea Nequmodiva.
@CathyVT
One of the not finalists already shared instructions for his model, also an Ankylosaurus, and imho it's a little bit better than the one that came 3rd place.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byew5kEG_tAHVXNPNF9RYzFyQ0k/view?usp=sharing
@ggfile
But that's how it's done already, everybody can upload alternates to rebrickable and they will be shown here in the "Alt. Builds" tab.
My comment was that it's a pity that most contest participants probably will not take the time to do that, or don't know about it. So Lego should at least hint them on this possibility.
But Rebrickable isn't designed to let you easily find alternate builds for a single set. It does all sorts of complicated look-ups for parts, but doesn't have a simple index of alternate builds of single sets.
I'm impressed with the aquatic bird made from a transport set. Like others, hope that many of these models will end up one click away via the alt builds tab in brickset.
They should make an alternate model competition for Nexo Knights so LDD gets updated...
Wow, that heron was really outstanding. I'm curious as to the top scorers from the other two sets.
@Joefish
Searching "MOCs" with a set number @ Rebrickable is as easy as it gets
Which is also what "alt.buids" does here in Brickset, as Nequmodiva said... though this particular tab may easily be overlooked.
Perhaps the Brickset team could find a way to make it stand out a little more ?
I will add my alternates shortly, and hope many other participants also will.
So many inventive builds there, and even a few pictures would do the trick...
By the way, congrats again for your plane, such a clever design and fun build !
@JK Brickworks
Sorry your goats and vulture didn't make it... they were in my top 3 too ;)
@autoreverse
But this is all part of the problem. You have to pick your set first, then go looking for rebuilds of specifically that set. And chances are there are ZERO results for that particular set.
Where's the ability to browse the single-set alternate models? For example, by most recent, or by theme or year of the original set? Or for sets you've listed in your own collection?