I've been playing with LEGOs since I was 4, starting with a freestyle bucket, eventually moving up to more and more sophisticated sets as the years progressed. My own creations usually focused on playability and shape over color scheme, the latter of which usually suffered. Eventually, I encountered the work of Dan Jassim on MOCpages, and that changed everything. Sure, I had seen the work of inspired builders in official LEGO books, but seeing space ships with minifigures rather than sculpture was the real motivation for me to improve. Still others made works at minifig scale with such detail and features, using bricks in ways I had never fathomed possible to create exceptional suspension of disbelief.

In 2005, I started building more coordinated creations, and began to formulate a universe for my creations to populate, known as the C Quadrant Defenders. Here's a revised version of what I wrote about them back around 2006:
"The C Quadrant Defenders (CQD) are a space fleet from Earth tasked with protecting the eponymous corner of the galaxy from the faceless invaders known as the Axons. Axon forces seek invade pre-lightspeed planets, harvest their resources, and destroy the civilizations that stand in the way of their conquest. The CQD forces must protect the defenceless star systems therein, and make allies of the disparate worlds threatened by conquest."
Not exactly high-level sci-fi, but it doesn't really need to be any more than what it is.

My collection was packed into storage in 2013, thus beginning what others like to call the LEGO "dark ages". I bought the occasional set here or there, before taking the whole collection out of storage again in late 2022, ending the dark ages and beginning a new LEGO era. My collection is in the process of being formally sorted, and old creations judged anew with the benefit of hindsight. Some old works are being disassembled, others are left as they were (perfect), while the rest are being revised and rebuilt into something better. I've had almost a decade to think about everything I'd like to improve upon, so now the process of realizing that vision is in progress.

I had a number of finished creations put into storage that were never formally photographed. While I once had access to a photo studio and equipment, I currently lack many such facilities, and am having to re-assess my available tools to provide quality photographs of my work (and I'm not about to post cell-phone quality pictures when I can do better than that). I also no longer have the benefit of hosting my work on MOCpages, as it has ceased to exist. That said, I also have the power to create and host my own galleries however I so choose, so I've incorporated the best parts of MOCpages' style with my own abilities.

Enjoy my LEGO creations!
- Z -