Humans, as we know, are herd animals. We do many things better when we’re in group: from hunting mammoths to building pyramids. Sure, you can survive alone on a desert island or in an endless forest, but who would you share the experiences with later? With the herd.

Seriously, we’re not made for recluse living — the more the merrier!

The Build

It is no different with bricks. It’s fun to build the set yourself, but it’s even more fun to share this pleasure with others.

So far, we’ve been sharing bags of LEGO sets with our older daughter, while the younger one has assembled all the minifigures. Now we share the bags with both girls, and sometimes my role is just to select the elements for the next step in the manual. They build the whole set.

I, on the other hand, recently (and a bit accidentally, as I write more about here) happened to join the initiative “Polish Legends” by Zbudujmy.to! LUG. It was an MOC collab so there were no instructions here. Okay, there were kind of instructions, because the more experienced colleagues gave some advice: Here it is too even, maybe give more tiles here, your build is missing greenery at the top, this road blends a little with the ground, etc.

As I wrote in the previous post, building MOCs was terra incognita for me, but I didn’t go to this terra alone. The above advice may seem perfunctory, but they were followed by specific knowledge and support in overcoming the difficulties associated with designing and building my own work.

Sure, I was building myself, but around a common theme. And definitely not alone. A very pleasant part of such cooperation is the energy that is generated from the activity of several people; sharing your work progress, advice, but also watching how others build, seeing how their ideas gradually take shape. This is a great added value of collab, not to mention the finale, which is presenting of your work.

The feeling of community, being part of something bigger, is really very rewarding. I recommend it to everyone!

LEGO MOC of Polish legend about ring in the salt mine
The ring in the salt

The Story

I like (though I’m not sure if I can) to tell stories through my toy photography. Therefore, I gladly accepted the invitation sent by our neighbors from Brickcentral to the Collaborative Storytelling initiative, along with my three Polish fellow toy photographers.

It was real teamwork, we had to create a good story after all. It was almost like being in a band! You bring an idea, then watch it take on new shapes, sometimes completely unexpected, during the discussion.

I’m probably repeating myself, but it’s a great feeling to see how individual ideas, filtered by the sensitivity and character of each of the creators, forming a completely new quality — a story that we would not have created in this shape alone. And this is a great opportunity to better get to know the people I only knew from their photos.

This mutual influence, inspiration and feedback is a great advantage of this type of initiative. And it’s great fun!

a group of LEGO astronauts trying to break a stone on the Moon surface
Let’s rock!

The (wild) Hunt

Although the above header directly refers to a video game, it also has a lot in common with the third type of collaboration. And not only because of the subject matter. Because the Witcher collab we do on Instagram is primarily a fight against a monster known as Algorithm. It’s an attention hunt. And it’s easier to fight when you have a team, a common topic and a weapon of mutual tagging!

Beyond this purely practical benefit, such a collab has another advantage: It’s motivating! And when the team sets a deadline for a specific day to publish our photos, such a deadline gives a kick. Of course it’s perfectly justified to use the words: feedback, inspiration and fun in this case. It’s not a collab without these components!

LEGO custom witcher minifigure hunting demogorgon
Come, kitty, kitty!

Doing collabs is a great variation on the adventure that is toy photography, it’s a pretty cool source of energy and motivation, and a great tool for building relationships in and between communities.

I highly recommend it!

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