Author: Andrew

Overview

Are you a botany buff? Does the Venus flytrap fascinate you? Do you really like Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors? Whatever your answer is, our 2024 theme is the theme for you!

Build something to plant in the Horror Garden and bring it to a convention or send it on the BZP Convention Circuit to participate! MOCs will be put on display at multiple conventions and perks will be given to those who participate in the collab, including free sets and raffle entries! (Note: in order to receive the perks, you will have to ensure you sign up for the circuit.)

Theme

The Horror Garden is pretty self-explanatory: it’s a garden full of scary plants! Flowers with teeth, trees with claws, the possibilities are endless!

Typically, plants consist of roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits. Use any plant-like features and horror components fuel your creative process and build something terrifyingly beautiful. Useful examples include:

• The world outside your front door
• Carnivorous plants
• Horror movies involving plants
• Spooky gardens
• Aiden.builds’ photostream

Our garden will also need to be populated with structures and tourists! Archways, fences, benches, and pathways will all help the garden appear more robust. Tourists (and victims) should remain on the smaller side, to help give the plants a sense of threatening scale.

Sizing

• Tourists should be no larger than a Voya-Nui Matoran.
• Plant builds should be (at minimum) of comparable mass/density as 10281 Bonsai Tree.
• Fencing should be capable of surrounding the area of a 32×32-stud baseplate.
• Garden furniture and structures should be capable of accommodating a Voya-Nui Matoran.

Also, these MOCs will need to be shipped and displayed so, while not required, please take into consideration stability and durability when making your MOCs. It makes it easier on everyone involved!

Overview: Who isn’t a sucker for high fantasy? Elegant elves trained over centuries in fine bows and nimble blades. Dwarven craftsmen and warriors clad in heavy armor and heavier weaponry. Dragons, orcs, undead, the whole shebang. Maybe throw in a monster or two; Beholder, Gelatinous cube, Displacer Beast.

Build something in the high fantasy genre and bring it to a convention or send it on the BZP Convention Circuit to participate! MOCs will be put on display at multiple conventions and perks will be given to those who participate in the collab, including  free sets and raffle entries! (Note: in order to receive the perks, you will have to ensure you sign up for the circuit.)

What is a High Fantasy: High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional (“secondary”) world, rather than the “real” or “primary” world. This secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set on Earth, the primary or real world, or a rational and familiar fictional world with the inclusion of magical elements. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy)

Some notable examples include:

• Terry Brooks’ Shannara
• Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth
• Robert Jordan’s and Brandon Sanderson’s The Wheel of Time
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea
• C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia
• George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones)
• Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
• R. A. Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms and The DemonWars Saga
• J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

Additional Requirements: All MOCs should be scaled to the Toa Metru (7 to 8”) – humans and elves should be about that size, dwarves and halflings should be a bit shorter, and monsters and enemies bigger or smaller as appropriate.

Other Considerations: This is high fantasy, and while there can be some overlap with other genres such as Gothic fiction, dark fantasy, and steampunk, try to stick with the classic high fantasy heroes and villains.

You can certainly build a MOC based on your favorite high fantasy media, like Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, or you can make it more generic. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s high fantasy!

Scenery: Heroes and monsters are pretty awesome on their own, but they look even better when they have a fantasy world to live in! We’re looking for people to make buildings and other scenery to spread around the display to give it some scale. The good thing is, since they’re not the main focal point, they don’t have to be super-detailed or even look finished. Some things we’d like to see:

• Buildings scaled roughly to 10 bricks per floor – they don’t need to have windows or even four sides, but they should be free-standing. Think castles, towers, thatched-roof inns, that sort of thing.
• Other objects like trees, siege machines, barricades, and the like are more than welcome too!

Also, these MOCs will need to be shipped and displayed so, while not required, please take into consideration stability and durability when making your MOCs. It makes it easier on everyone involved!

Overview: Build either a Mecha or a Kaiju and send it on the BZP Convention Circuit to participate! MOCs will be put on display fighting at multiple conventions and perks will be given to those who participate in the collab including  free sets and raffle entries! (Note: in order to receive the perks, you will have to ensure you sign up for the circuit.)

What is a Mecha/Kaiju: Mecha are giant piloted robots popularized in anime (like Gundam) and movies (like Pacific Rim). Kaiju are giant monsters popularized in movies (like Godzilla and Pacific Rim) and television (like Kamen Rider or Power Rangers). Build your coolest mechs and beasts so they can fight it out across North America!

Additional Requirements: All MOCs should be scaled to the Hero Factory Invasion From Below (HF IFB) series minifigs. Those minifigs’ dimensions are approx. 7x4x2 studs (tall x wide x deep) as shown in picture below:

MOCs are not required to have a figure, but it would be cool for some of them to be piloted by the HF figs! To keep MOCs in this scale and to scale with one another, please follow the below height rubric:

Other Considerations: As more of a general guideline, Mecha should be more angular and mechanical while Kaiju should be more organic in nature. Kaiju are giant monsters, after all, so they should have some sort of claws/fangs/spikes. Mecha should have more mechanical detailing and armoring as well as weaponry. They have to fight the Kaiju somehow, but how they can fight is up to you.

Scenery: Mecha and Kaiju are pretty awesome on their own, but they look even better when they’re laying waste to a city! In addition to building awesome robots and monsters, we’re looking for people to make buildings and other scenery to spread around the display to give it some scale. The good thing is, since they’re not the main focal point and they’re there to be destroyed, they don’t have to be super-detailed or even look finished. Some things we’d like to see:

• Buildings scaled roughly to 10 bricks per floor – they don’t need to have windows or even four sides, but they should be free-standing
• The preferred color scheme is light-grey to allow the mecha and kaiju to stand out from the scenery, but you can use your discretion
• Other minifig-scaled objects like vehicles for the mecha and kaiju to stomp on

Also, these MOCs will need to be shipped and displayed so, while not required, please take into consideration stability and durability when making your MOCs. It makes it easier on everyone involved!