Kit Nugent

KitKat1414

Caleb Schilling

CheeseyStudios

Season 6 – Round 13 of Iron Builder
– starting August 6th!

And the seed part is…

This round’s seed part is the Friends Horse Saddle in dark azure. 

Now our two contestants have 15 days to come up with amazing and inspiring creations featuring this seed part. Wish them luck! They’ll better get cracking!

Who are you rooting for? Who will take it home? Whose builds reign supreme?

Only one way to find out! ALLEZ BRICK!

“Now I’m the King of the Builders …

Have you gibbon up already? While you’ve been monkeying around with wedding anniversaries, I’ve swung fur ahead and finished a build! You’re bananas to think that you will be chimpion. I’m staying on my throne a little longer

Open for Business

Monkeying around, you say? Nonsense. I simply took some time to stop and smell the roses. I know I’m a bit late to the party, but I be-leaf this build might get you shaking on your iron throne. While I wasn’t so sure about this saddle piece at first, I’m clover my doubts now, so best watch out! Thistle be a tight race….

6057: Sea Serpent – Redux

Giving me time to post two entries in a row? Whatever floats your boat!

The Iron Sentinel

Stop pushing my buttons with these speedy builds, you better slow down otherwise you’ll sail off course. I’m taking down the competition with this marvelous monster, who’ll leave you feeling sea sick. You’re going to be in ruins at the end of this, rust in piece!

The Golden Rider

Rein it in with the puns! You’re always trying to stirrup trouble. My attempt at using saddles on this steed to not make a saddle should certainly get you off your high horse. But that’s enough foaling around for me. Time to go to sleep!

From the Desert Comes a Stranger

Our duel has only just begun, Kit! I choose Cad Bane as my champion. I mean, he always wins. Wait, he does always win, right…?

A Minifigures’s House is His Castle

You know what they say: stranger danger! I’d be careful walking the desert alone, that’s a rookie mistake. I’d invite you here – the view is great, that is if you don’t turn blue from the height ore can you withstand this castle in the sky?

Moaning Myrtle

I hate to burst your bubble, Kit, but I found this un-boo-lievable use for our seed part!

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew?

Come on, there’s no need to cry about it. Stop being sharkastic, I feel you’re biting off more you can chew and, once I’m finished, you’ll be swimming with the sharks!

Building Till the Cows Come Home

What were you saying about posting two builds in a row earlier? Because drive already caught up with you. “Fuel win?” I hear you udderwheel just have to wait and see!

From the Jaws of Defeat

You build so fast it should be eellegal! Oh, but I couldn’t let you keep that lead for too long – I’m back from the jaws of defeat. I’ll take my chances with the sharks, but you’ll have to contend with this monster. Do you have what it takes to swing the scales back in your favor?

Morning’s First Snowflake

Ski lifts are notorious for swinging! I’m certainly not needing to contend with monsters now I’m soaring to the stars. This model is going to leave you pisted. Let’s get this snow on the road, I’ll ski you later!

A Fresh Coat of Paint

While you went for the slopes, I decided to spend some time on the beach. Jealous? You’ll just have to teal with it. Rest azured, it wasn’t all fun and games though, since I had to get these posts painted. I mean no of-fence, but sometimes it’s nice to have a bit of new. Like a new Iron Builder perhaps…?

Child’s Play

Doughnut worry, I’m dodging your threats. It’s all fun and games but I’m now driving rings around you, so brace yourself for an emotional rollercoaster because this is going to be a bumpy ride!

The Sapphire Express

At first I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew chew by making a locomotive for my final build, but then I realized I’ve been training the entire competition for this very moment! With this entry, I’m surely back on track for the throne.

I unfortunately won’t be around this weekend, so I want to express how fun it’s been to battle it out with you, Kit. Your continued engine-uity with this crazy seed part has been quite inspiring. I think it would have driven anyone else off the rails, but you just kept chugging along! Excited to see what you might have up your sleeve yet. 🙂

Anyway, I’m out of train puns. Peace, y’all o/

Final Dawn

I paint got time for train puns, because I’m getting my monet’s worth. Time to brush up the competition and gogh, with this drawdropping model. I hope hue aren’t feeling under Escher currently!

Closed for Business

I’ve had enough horsing about round with this seed part. It’s been an absolute pleasure to compete with you Caleb and to be able to hold a candle up to you is something I’ve never even dreamed of

Round 13 is officially over!

It is now up to the judges to saddle who won this round!

Good luck to both our builders!

Cecilie Fritzvold

This has been a delightful round to watch, and throughout the competition I have felt that both builders performed excellently and they were really very well matched overall. But as a judge, I sadly have to put one ahead of the other, even though both definitely have what it takes to be an Iron Builder!

When it comes to build quality, both builders have put out one excellent build after the other, and it's hard to fault them on anything in them. Some stand-out builds for me are Kit's ""Now I'm the King of the Builders"" and Caleb's ""From the Jaws of Defeat"". These both portray some animals that are looking very much alive. Presentation-wise they are also both doing excellently, although I'm not a fan of the wooden backgrounds in either ""Building Till the Cows Come Home"" or ""Sea Serpent - Redux"". The builds most elevated by their presentation are for me Kit's ""Biting off more than you can chew"", with the shark under water and the reflection of the boat, and Caleb's ""The Sapphire Express"", with the smoke and blurred background giving it a sense of motion. In the end, I am going to award this category to Kit, as in general I feel he is putting more complexity into his builds and thus showing off his amazing mastery of the brick that bit much more.

Parts usage is my favourite category and what I always felt was the most important part of an Iron Builder competition. It's all about being creative with the seed piece after all! Caleb did really well at putting the saddle to a prominent use in all of his builds, and it rarely feels forced. Some really notable uses from him include the use as an apron, a flower vase, scales and as the most integral part of an entire train. Kit uses a different strategy, where he's cramming as many uses of the part as he can into his builds, some really good, some more forced, and some uses disappear in the whole of the build, but overall it's impressive how many things he was able to make with a dark azure saddle. I really like the monkey statue head, the mech head, the shark mouth, the little shelf/bookcase and the clever uses in the tractor. And while he does have some uses of the piece that disappear into the whole or don't really work that well, most his builds have at least one really good use of the piece making the other uses work as supporting roles, and that is why I'm awarding this category as well to Kit, for his share amount of ideas on how to use a very clunky piece.

For overall performance, both builders have a varied range of builds, covering different scales, creatures, characters, small scenes and larger builds. And while there are some seed piece uses for the ""Iron Builder bingo card"" (fences, roof shingles, scales, mech parts...), they both make the uses feel fresh and not rehashes of previous Iron Builder rounds. It's also been a lot of fun seeing the puns and back and forth banter between the two, as well as the title of Kit's final build referencing the title of Caleb's first. What tips the scale for me in this category is how Caleb never lets the seed piece drown or play a secondary role, even when he has multiple uses in one build. His only seed piece use that feels a bit forced is on the horse, where it's making the horse look like it's missing some chunks in its belly, but I'll let that slide for the humour in reversing the saddle to use it on a horse without being a saddle. Kit has multiple uses of the piece where he might have been better off leaving them out (like on the staircase in the Final Dawn, or the bottom of the gate in ""A Minifigure's House is his Castle""), or where it takes a while to even notice the best use of the seed piece in the build (like the monkey statue head, where the big monkey is stealing the show, or as what appears to be a micro scale vendor stall in ""Child's Play"", but is completely out of focus, and I didn't even notice it until I was staring at the builds almost with a magnifying glass to try and separate these two). Kit also has some issues with keeping everything connected at properly straight angles it seems, as there are some parts of his builds that probably should be straight but aren't, and I'm guessing this comes from the stress of time in some really complex builds.

But overall, well done both of you, sadly you were put up against each other and only one can emerge victorious.

Nannan Zhang

An impressive round between two talented builders of comparable skill and interests! This was a difficult round to judge as both builders were neck and neck in every category. The horse saddle was a very challenging piece to use with a bizarre shape and texture. It forced the builders to stretch their imaginations on what objects and patterns can be represented with this part.

For parts usage, my rule of thumb for scoring this is whether the piece is a highlight of the MOC and if it’s the best piece for that purpose. The best examples from this round are Calebs’s sea monster and medieval ship. The former uses the saddle for scales and defines the overall look of the creature. The ship uses the saddles as ornate drapes, which are eyecatchings and I couldn’t think of a better part suited for that purpose. I also liked Kit’s use of the saddle in the bumper cars scene, and the rollercoaster in the background is another great example featuring the part in a very believable sense.

For build quality, both builders again came very close. Neither showed clearly better building skills or presentation than the other, so I had to look at each build closely for technical considerations. In that regard Caleb’s builds appeared more solid than Kit’s. A lot of builders like to explore unusual connections to achieve unique textures and shapes, and these examples are really prevalent in castle builds stemming from the Derfel Cadarn style. If done right, they can create elaborate shapes and textures, but with the time constraints of Iron Builder, trying to connect parts in usual ways end up looking rushed. The art museum scene by Kit is ambitious in trying to capture the arches and vault, but the end result appeared flimsy with the staircase and slanted railing.

This is my first time judging the performance category, and while both performers pulled off proportionately peppery puns and had equally diverse builds, the win for this category goes to Kit for drawing first and last blood and for having one more build than Caleb.

New Elementary

Congratulations to both builders for another extremely entertaining round of Iron Builder, but also to the team for picking such a fascinating seed part. Unlike a lot of the other previous seed parts, the Friends Horse Saddle does not have one or two obvious “front” side, I would argue it provides distinctly different opportunities from any side you look at it, as demonstrated masterfully by Kit and Caleb. It also have all these little details and wildly organic lines and shapes already sculpted into the element itself, that the builders must somehow make sense of in their models, or as showcased here, use to their advantage to get that extra detail you don’t always get making things out of LEGO bricks.

For parts usage, I would like to hand it to Caleb. It was a tough call because in my opinion both of you did a fantastic job. In the end of the day, I think Caleb managed to impress me just a little more several occasions by using the less-utilized sides/potentials of the part, like embracing that square underside as the side texture of “The Sapphire Express”, the beautiful pattern created by combining it with other parts on the side of “6057: Sea Serpent – Redux”, and the incredible combo use for that flower pot in “Open for Business”. Extra shout out for the brilliant idea of using the saddles to create a saddle on “The Golden Rider”: it was clever on a conceptual level given what Iron Builder is about, and the execution was just as clever.

For Build Quality, it was another tough call but I have given it to Kit in the end. While both of you have handed in some incredible models, I think Kit manages to put in more fun little details and part usage on his entries beyond the seed part, like the throne in “Now I’m the King of the Builders …”, the mechanical details in “The Iron Sentinel”, the roof in “Building Till the Cows Come Home”, the ski lift in “Morning’s First Snowflake” etc. Caleb’s model on the other hands have a relatively simplistic and clean approach to everything else in the scene outside the use of the seed part. In addition, I also think that overall, Kit has a more striking use of colours and better presentation that really sells the stories for me.

Last but not least, for the overall performance, I have decided to give it to Caleb in the end. Both of you are pretty strong in the game of puns and reparteé, but I think Caleb won my vote with the excessive train puns. On top of that, I also think Caleb has delivered slightly more diverse models when you consider the theme/scale/topics. Once again, kudos to both builders and I can’t wait to see more awesome builds from you guys in the future!

Seed Part Usage:

Build Quality:

Performance:

Kit

Kit

Caleb

Kit

Seed Part Usage:

Build Quality:

Performance:

Caleb

Caleb

Kit

Caleb

Seed Part Usage:

Build Quality:

Performance:

Caleb

Kit

Caleb

Caleb

The round goes to Caleb