Short version: I uploaded my Minotaur design to a Lego-compatible brick Crowdfunding site called Brickery. Check it out!
Long version:
My Lego-compatiable brick hobby has been an excellent creative outlet the last year or so and I have been designing MOCs, using brick built creations for tabletop RPGs with my kids, and trying out photography/animation.
However, I am also interested in the businesses that exist in the Lego-compatible brick ecosystem. There are dozens of websites to purchase high quality instructions (e.g. Rebrickable), several manufacturers that sell impressively creative Lego-compatible sets (e.g. DECOOL KS001), thousands of social media content creators, and hundreds of small shops making custom parts, prints, and stickers. And that is without mentioning the hugely popular ecosystem of Lego IDEAS design ecosystem.
Why crowdfunding?
Something that surprised me about the brick community is the lack of a site to directly crowdfund set designs. I think it is suprising for a handful of reasons:
- There is an existing market of instruction designers
- There are many brick manufacturers
- It can often be difficult to source all parts for instructions in one go
For example, I have a few of my MOCs uploaded to Webrick, a site to order Lego-compatible bricks, and three of them have parts that are out of stock.
For a non-sophisticated user just wanting to buy a unique set there are a lot of steps to jump through now:
- Buy/find instructions from Rebrickable
- Upload part list to Bricklink/Brickowl/Webrick/etc
- Wait or mix/match parts until you can complete your build
It seems that a crowdfunding model with a low threshold of required buyers would make buying designs more approachable for the average person. But, I could be wrong.
More Minotaur Photos
I bought an extension tube for my Fuji camera/lens which has enabled me to start playing with some macro photography.
