The Winner of Our Nerdvember 2022 Contest Is…
/Last month for Nerdvember, we asked you to get EXCEPTIONALLY nerdy along with us and reimagine our mascot Nerdly into something fantastic—and we got almost 30 entries!
To recap, we were looking for high fantasy-themed Nerdlies from everything LOTR to D&D and beyond. Judging this contest was hard! There were so many fantastic interpretations of the theme and so many praiseworthy builds. Each BrickNerd contributor had an equal vote, and the results were very close.
Three key criteria were considered by the judges:
Concept - Is the idea clever, tell a story, and could be classified as high fantasy?
Quality & Presentation - Is the creation built well, feature any NPU, and composed/photographed in a way that enhances the overall creation?
Nerdiness - Does the creation have a balance of Nerdly features that clearly convey the BrickNerd mascot (color, shape, studs, glasses, etc.)?
Honorable Mentions
We’ll start off with our honorable mentions. These are just a few of the stand-out entries that we enjoyed. Each represented a great concept and embodied that fantasy element we were looking for. Congratulations to these six builders who amazed us with their creativity, building skill and nerdiness! We loved the interpretations of Nerdly from a collectible series of mini-Nerdlies to epic quests to the flipside and more.
Third Place: Classic Castle Dragon Nerdly - Care Creations
At the end of the day, this is a contest and we had to choose some winners—as difficult as that was.
Our third-place prize of the LEGOLAND Exclusive 40556 Mythica set goes to Care Creations for their Classic Castle Dragon Nerdly. We loved the simplicity of the build, the color blocking, and how much it exudes LEGO’s classic dragon and Nerdly at the same time. It really tipped the scales and clawed its way into the winner’s circle!
Second Place: The Eye of Nerds - byggi_l
Our second-place prize of the Avatar 75574 Toruk Makto & Tree of Souls set goes to byggi_l for his Eye of Nerds. We loved the concept and it even led to a discussion on whether a Nerdly Eye of Sauron would have one glasses frame or two—we ended up thinking that the traditional pair was the way to go! This scored high for presentation with a wonderful edit, lighting and composition that makes those glasses the focal point of the build. It is quite the spectacle and is framed wonderfully.
First Place: Unlucky Orc - Renaud Petit Lego
Our first-place winner claiming set 10300 Back to the Future Time Machine signed by the designer Sven Franic and a BrickNerd Box with swag and our Golden Nerdly trophy is… Renaud Petit Lego with their Unlucky Orc! Renaud went all-in on fantasy to give us an orc with a bit of a migraine. We loved the humor, the nerdiness, and the deceptive simplicity of the build.
This orc with a splitting headache scored high on all of our criteria and gave us some aweome NPU. The sword’s deceptively simple hilt, the clear color choices, and the expressiveness and shaping of the face all took this build into the fantasy realm and beyond!
Intentional or not, we also enjoyed the well-placed reflection of lighting set-up in the eye of the orc which added a bit of life and even, dare we say it, a tear of sadness. Maybe all he wanted to do was read his book, but no, a wandering adventurer had another half-brained idea that got in the way.
Congratulations to all our winners! We salute your nerdiness!
BrickNerd Contributor Contest
But wait, there’s more! In addition to the public contest, some of our own BrickNerd contributors wanted to join in the fun. Our amazing patrons voted from all the entries and chose Michael J as the winner with his flipped D&D game where the monsters play “Houses & Humans” instead! The gelatinous cube Nerdly hopefully rolled high enough on initiative to avoid doing the dishes!
Check out all the other entries from our BrickNerd contributors below. Dragons were a popular theme (with amazing NPU) as well as really playing with the glasses!
Nerdvember 2022 High Fantasy Gallery
You can see all entries for Nerdvember 2022 High Fantasy contest embedded below or in the official gallery. We’ve linked to each builder’s Flickr or Instagram. There are so many amazing Nerdly builds, we wish we could award more prizes!
Take a moment to browse through the gallery below, read the descriptions and leave a comment. We are grateful for each and every entry, and we LOVED that so many people—both kids and adults—had fun making Nerdly their own. We loved your monsters, creatures, origin stories, wardrobes, fantasies and more!
More Nerdy Contests to Come
Karsten Ingalls - The Magician's Book
The time has come to close our spellbook on Nerdvember 2022. We will be back next year with even more nerdy contests, so keep your glasses ready and be on the lookout because the LEGO nerdiness is only just beginning!
Which fantasy Nerdly build is your favorite? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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