Presenting one of my newest MOC redesigns, the Hidden Oasis! 

There's kind of a longish story behind this one. I started building something that was kind of similar to it for a LEGO Ideas entry way back in the day, in 2019-2020 ish. I've always been fascinated by Egyptian architecture and Ancient history themes, and I also have this weird thing where I tend to choose a single piece and see if I can build something around it. The teal flower petal was the factor for this MOC. I saw it and was thinking about ancient Egyptian hypostyle columns and the stylized lotus capitals and thought "ooh, maybe I can build a column around it!" 

 

I ended up building the hall around the columns, and then expanding to include a base with kind of a musty ancient tomb atmosphere. I also have a fondness for trying to replicate water features in my MOCs, so I included a garden area in front of the temple with date palms, lotus blooms and papyrus. The original iteration of this MOC was actually larger than what this final model turned out to be. It was really ungainly, because I made the pools perpendicular to the temple, rather than horizontal like I ended up with in the final version. So there was this nice compact temple, and then this long mess of plates sticking out the front that made our real brick version impossible to carry around or display properly! So this new version is a bit more stable and a lot more compact, which I like. 

The original version also had this really cool lotus roof structure to the right of the hall. I was inspired by a movie I saw back then that had similar roof styles. I don't have a picture of the older MOC which is a shame, but when I was redesigning it, the roof on the lotus tower was a little too hard to replicate. (I should also mention that we moved in between iterations, and the version I'd created in real bricks was disassembled, placed in a bag, and then I had to reassemble it. Problem was, I only had a couple of pictures and the original digital file was corrupted. Lesson learned, always have backups! Reverse-engineering a MOC from an exterior picture is hard.) 

Another favorite feature of this MOC are the two Anubis statues guarding the staircase. I'm normally not the greatest at creating brick-built things like statues, my brain just doesn't work spatially to create the right angles and curves and things. But I think they're quite cute, especially the little ears! 

The date palms too were really fun to design. They are surprisingly not as unstable as they look. In the real brick model that we have on our shelf at home, they stand up pretty steadily and only break if I really knock it around in transit. (The fez pieces are sturdy, plus there's a bar inside the cone that holds it in place pretty well). 

 

As you can see the real brick counterpart is slightly different. Small differences in pieces and things like that. The digital version is the more spruced up version that I will eventually fully create once I modify the brick version, just have to order a few more pieces. Currently I've been adding more treasures to the interior of this digital design's real brick counterpart, the sarcophagus piece comes in really handy for that. And it makes for a good sort of display for my old Pharaoh's Quest minifigures! 

Good looking Egyptian themed MOC. The colors bring the ancient oasis back to its prime. Throw in a few hieroglyphic panels and we're set.