Wonky TIEs are what got me to where I am today. Broke but with so much Lego. Lol. I built this Scuba TIE fighter by TJ's Lego Room  last week. I love it, the perfect mixture of cool and funny that I love in Lego designs. Kind of reminds me of those weird Batman action figures from the 90s with all the scuba gear. Like why? But also, cool! The TIE Convor by ScruffyBrickHerder was the design that got me into this whole Rebrickable/Bricklink aspect of the hobby. I've loved Lego for years but just kept to the official sets. Occasionally I would get it in my head to build stuff out of spare parts which was fine when I had the parts, but when I didn't I just shrugged and moved on with my life. But with BrickLink (and now my friend's second-hand store The Edmonton Brickyard) you can get any parts you're missing. Now entire universes open up to you!

But let's talk a little about reinventing the wheel. There are tons of TIE fighter variants on Rebrickable. Lego has produced a bench of versions. The eyeball cockpit is kind of the common denominator for most of them. Does that mean TJ or Scruffy or you have to design their own cockpit to MOC up a new TIE? Not at all (though I think sometimes they do, either improving or tweaking previous versions). It would be perfectly acceptable to take the eyeball from 75211 and build whatever wings you want or add a shark fin or whatever. (Please add a shark fin to a TIE fighter!)

I say this because I want my MOC contest to be accessible to everyone, not just people who can design a thousand-piece model with motors and hidden gears, you know? So, for example, I saw this awesome little bear at the Brickyard, and a few minutes googling tells me it is from this set, 31052. You don't even have to own the set, you can just look at the instructions for free and build one with parts you have. And that would be totally fine if you were making a diorama, say, based on a Homie Bear poem from The Ursus Verses. Homie and the Witch, or The F.A.F.A.F. which stands for The First Annual Forest Animal Forum, which is fun to say out loud. That's what I mean by you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can say "This is my diorama of Homie Bear and the Wizard Bear from Homie and the Witch, and I used the bear from that Creator set". Perfectly acceptable! 

On the other hand, though, if you wanted to depict the ancient abomination from Again, the Abomination, it would be unacceptable to make this amazing MOC and say you designed it. Right? Makes sense, I think. OF course, any questions, just ask. Or advice, help, whatever. The important thing is to have fun! Hopefully disaster won't befall you like it did to this Scuba TIE that was tragically shot down just doing a routine patrol: