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2020 has been a challenging year for most of us. I know that my holiday plans look very different than in previous years. For this year's challenge, we'd love to see submissions that explore the great things that are still present in the 2020 holiday season, even in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. Here's a summary prompt:

Capture the joy in the unique 2020 holiday season

Submissions for this year's building competition should meet the following criteria:

  1. Builds must be original content that has not been shared in any venue previously.
  2. Builds may only use genuine LEGO elements.
  3. The model should fit within a 16x16 baseplate. We want this to be a relatively open competition based on creativity, and not an opportunity for you to show off how many bricks you have.
  4. Designs must conform to our community guidelines and must not contain content that a reasonable person would find offensive either to themselves or to a child.
  5. Digital submissions are acceptable.
  6. Multiple submissions per user are allowed.
  7. All submissions must be submitted to this thread before the end of Winter Bash (January 2nd). There are no limits on the number of photos you can share for each submission.

We're offering a 100 EUR LEGO set prize for the winner and one randomly selected user who shared a non-winning submission. The determination of the winner will be influenced community votes, but the final determination of a winner will be at my discretion.

A winner will be selected approximately one week after the end of Winter Bash to allow time for interested users to vote and/or leave comments on submissions.

Good luck, and happy building!

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    Will voting be extended a little after Jan 2nd to give late entries some room? Also, is the number of photos/pictures somehow limited? But great idea anyway!
    – Rauy
    Dec 16, 2020 at 17:30
  • Oh, and is it limited to one submission per user?
    – Rauy
    Dec 16, 2020 at 17:48
  • @ChristianRau Great questions. I've updated the post to allow multiple submissions per user, indicate that unlimited photos may be shared, and give a week after the competition for voting.
    – jncraton Mod
    Dec 16, 2020 at 19:30
  • Thank you. I also came up with another question meanwhile. ;-) Are we allowed to publish the submissions in other venues once the competition is over? I'm sure we are, but I thought I'd ask.
    – Rauy
    Dec 16, 2020 at 19:57
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    @ChristianRau Absolutely. I'd even be happy for you to share your work elsewhere while the competition is active. That rule is only in place to prevent folks from just sharing old MOCs that happen to vaguely meet the criteria for this competition. Submissions should be new creations built for this contest.
    – jncraton Mod
    Dec 17, 2020 at 1:27

3 Answers 3

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With Christmas and New Year both cancelled, a lot of classic Christmas motifs kinda fell flat. I had really liked to build a little micro-scale Christmas market, but that's just not 2020. But there's still a few things we can enjoy over the holidays, like football! So I designed a model of Heinz Field, the stadium of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I wanted to build a model of Heinz Field for a while now, but I intended it to be about 3 times as large and apart from a few rough ideas it never really took shape yet. So this was a great opportunity to try it on a smaller scale first (it's around 1:2000).

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It was quite a challenge on this scale and as you may notice I didn't quite fit it into 16x16 if you include the SNOTed trim of tiles around the border, although I already cut away a small piece from the northwestern parking extension. But the model itself is technically only in a 16x16 (or even 14x16) space. I needed the trim, though, because the base construction is rather complicated as I had to do quite a bit of offsetting by half-plates to get all the seating and facades work out in the way I wanted.

So far it's only a digital design, but I verified that it's all properly buildable with existing LEGO pieces. There's also no parts out of the ordinary and according to Stud.IO it's about 500 parts at ~50€. I plan to build it at some point in reality, even if I might not get my hands on all the parts before the competition is over.

For film enthusiasts, the model can actually be modified rather easily into an homage to one of the best movies filmed at Heinz Field:

enter image description here

Update: I have since refined the design and put it up on Rebrickable.

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    This looks brilliant! Great work!
    – jncraton Mod
    Dec 21, 2020 at 0:48
  • Reall good one 👍
    – Ankit Sharma
    Dec 21, 2020 at 6:19
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So what else can we do during Christmas quarantine? Watch films, of course! But since I already built a model of Nakatomi Plaza recently, I turned to the next best Christmas classic and designed a model of the McCallisters' house from Home Alone. It might make for a nice addition to the minifig scale version we'll likely get on IDEAS next year.

enter image description here

It features the van of the "Wet Bandits" as well as the tree house Kevin escapes to at the end, although the 16x16 limitation meant they're a bit more crammed together. The tile trim around the border wasn't directly necessary, but the whole thing looks a bit nicer this way and the extra height of the base was needed anyway for the basement entrance. The base would even have room for a battery pack or USB connector and the interior of the house has enough room for one or more LEDs, but many of the windows aren't translucent. Whenever I build it for real, I might make the windows more lighting friendly, similar to the SNOTed ones on the side wings.

enter image description here

It is only a digital design so far and I probably won't build it until around next Christmas. But I made sure it's properly buildable using genuine LEGO pieces and according to Stud.IO it's about 450 parts at ~50€. Regarding the parts, you'll notice in the front view that the roof isn't perfect, but for now I just don't know how to get an inside and outside slope corner directly next to each other.

Update: I have since refined the design and put it up on Rebrickable.

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  • This is great! Those printed 1x1 plates makes perfect little windows.
    – jncraton Mod
    Dec 27, 2020 at 3:20
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Winter Hike

Here's my take on a winter hike through the snowy woods:

winter hike 2020

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