Hey everybody,
so unfortunately I’m in the middle of a dark age, but I’ve temporarily emerged to participate in this latest Iron Builder. I find these competitions humbling and awe-inspiring filled with masterpieces I could only dream of creating. This round was especially inspirational with its unusual seed piece and evenly-matched master builders. I’m in awe of the raw building talent, the ideas, and the green element collections of both Legopard and Pate-Keetongu, so let’s get down to business.

Building Skill
It is hard to decide on a decisive victor in this category. Both builders have a above-average LEGO building skill on display. I see a wide variety of subjects that showcase a deep knowledge of techniques, combined with bold experimentation.They both have submitted wonderful microscale landscapes, strong figurative work, and detailed dioramas. The simple elegance of Legopard’s burger is equal to Pate-Keetongu’s paintbrush. There is no clear winner in my book as the builds are clear and well constructed.

“Building Skill” Winner: TIE

MOC Presentation
Both builders did a professional job of presentation and photography. Again, it’s hard to pick a favorite between these two competitors. Pate-Keetongu did an inspired presentation of his paintbrush, but I have to give the slight edge to Legopard, for the use of deep-space elements in the few of the builds.

“MOC Presentation“ Winner: Legopard

Use of Seed Element
For me personally, a strong idea always beats a strong execution. Let’s review the ways that each competitor used the seed element:

Legopard turned the DUPLO grass into:
a miniature Smurf hut roof, a magic carpet, grass (out of focus), videogame cartridge slot, lettuce on a burger, a witch's face, microscale spaceship loading bay, curtains, chair upholstery, greenery in a painting, monster paws, monster mouth, vomit in mid-trajectory and tattered sails.

Pate-Keetongu turned turned the DUPLO grass into:
hospital equipment readout, grass riverbanks, dyed punk rock Mohawk, Hobbit roog, robot T-Rex, grass, wet paintbrush, hair, parrot feathers, NES Duck Hunt swamp grass

Both builders used the grass as grass. I think it’s interesting that both builders utilized the interior of the element for unique builds. Pate-Keetongu’s wet paintbrush? BRILLIANT. But then on the other hand Legopard has a lot of variety. A witch face, chair upholstery monster mouth? Awesome. So, for the sheer variety and general inspired weirdness, I have to give the win in this category to Legopard. From the keen observation of the vomit to the all-DUPLO ship incorporating the grass as tattered sails, Legopard pulls ahead in this category.

“Use of Seed Element” Winner: Legopard

I think this final category is where the separation between the two competitors lies. With the building skill and presentation being equal, I have to say it all comes down to the ideas. I’ve been asked to choose a winner, so I have to say Legopard gets the title. I like both of these builders and have been following their work for a while. Lurking on Flickr streams, I have quietly been inspired by BOTH of these masters and look forward to their work for years to come. Thanks for including me in this process.

Overall Winner: Legopard

Both of you guys crushed this awful piece! The numbers came out ridiculously close.

Legopard (Jonas Kramm):
Carpet Out of Control, Black witch, and Green room were the amazing highlights of your arsenal.

Building skill: Your building style is very mathematical. You are very aware of when snot pieces don't align and as a result you present great Mocs like Root Kingdom where parts line up impeccably. These are things judges look at. You had very few points where we spotted misconnected pieces showing a very professional level skill.
If there is one thing we'd suggest for improvement, it's choosing to do builds that can highlight your skill. You fluctuated between 18 and 20 on build skill in our scoring. It's not that any bit of your skill needs to improve, it's the choice to do Mocs which don't give as much opportunity to show your skill. But you capitalized on perfect presentation and parts usage on the few builds we thought didn't showcase your skill as well.

Presentation: Your presentation was flawless. We loved how you showed a range with brick built backgrounds, editing, or even choosing to sacrifice certain build parts by forcibly blurring them out of the focus for the benefit of the whole. (Carpet out of control)

Parts Usage: You utilized and combined multiple uses of the seed part into several builds, as well as coming up with uses no one would have ever gotten. The black witch is a perfect example of this.

Building Skill: 19
Presentation: 20
Parts Usage: 19.5
Total: 58.5

Pate-Keetongu
Palutena and Bird of Paradise were amazing. Definitely your best pieces. The subtle parts usage in the bird was brilliant. Usually a key piece that is so buried loses its impact, but in this case it was your best work.

Building Skill: You have a strong organic building ability which is complimented by accessories and pieces in the environment. Your best strength is your high consistency of building skill.
Presentation: Your greatest presentation strength is the positioning of your Mocs. You assemble them with artistic balance and position them with great camera angles and focus. If we could offer one note of encouragement for improvement, it would be for your presentation. The black poster board worked very well at a specific depth, like Palutena. But often in others the visible creases and blemishes in the sheet detracted from your art.
Parts Usage: You did a great job not only incorporating NPU for the seed part but also and importantly other pieces sprinkled throughout your Mocs as well. Things that stand out are bits like the subtle inclusion of the patients hand and finger monitor.

Pate-Keetongu (Eero Okkonen)
Building Skill: 19.5
Presentation: 19
Parts Usage: 19
Total: 57.5

Legopard
Your use of the piece was outstanding. You used the piece in incredibly different ways. In each build, it looked like you selected the piece for the build, rather than building a model around the piece, which often happens in iron builder with such hard to use pieces as duplo grass. The presentation was also fantastic. My favorite builds were The Root Kingdom and the Carpet Outta Control. Really top notch work.

Skill 19/20
Presentation 19/20
Use 19/20
Total 57/60

Pate-keetongu
Skill 19/20
Presentation 18/20
Use 17/20

Total 54/60

While you had one of the most creative uses of the piece for the EKG machine, you also used the grass piece as grass in three different builds. That said, the part was very appropriate for each of those builds. Your skill really showed in all of your builds. We often see builds that seem to get slapped together but all of your builds look like you spent the right amount of time to make them the best that they could be. I really loved the originality of the robot dinosaur though. One of my favorite builds from this round.