A 5-YO sits on the floor on Christmas morning, surrounded by wrapping paper and unopened gifts scattered around. Among the gifts is a blue tub of basic bricks and a strange, mechanical warrior called Toa Tahu from the first wave of Bionicle.
That 5-YO boy was Australian LEGO MOC artist Lewis Meeny, whose brand Built Bricks is now making big waves in the community. And while he still has the blue tub as a relic of the past, the spark it ignited has grown into something much larger.
Bionicle has been huge for him growing up: a massive collection of assorted figures and parts that laid the groundwork for a lifelong obsession. Yet, even among the mechanical heroes of Mata Nui and countless other LEGO themes, the one that captured his heart the most was Star Wars. “It’s probably the theme I still have the most sets and MOCs built in,” the artist says.
Growing up in Australia, Lewis spent his earliest building sessions following a pure, unfiltered stream of consciousness. He’d create whatever happened to pop into his head, building simply for the sheer joy of the process.
As the years rolled by, that instinctive play matured into a fascination with cinematic replication. He began studying vehicles and characters from his favorite movies, trying his hand at iconic machines like the Tumbler from The Dark Knight and the heavy mech suits from Avatar.
Away from the building table, life pulled him toward a rigorous professional path. Lewis graduated from university with a master’s degree in Prosthetics and Orthotics, spending the majority of his working life knee-deep in that clinical industry. But the call of the brick never really faded.
So, alongside his day job, he’s managed to carve out space for commercial projects under his brand Built Bricks, taking on custom building-block commissions for various businesses. Lewis even lent his talents to SMG Studio, an Australian video game developer, helping bring projects like the 2025 release LEGO Party! to life.
Evolving into Life-Sized Replicas and Wearable Cosplays
Lewis believes his drive to build has evolved over the years, more so as he continues to try out new projects. By the early years of the 2020s, his creative compass had found a new direction: recreating life-sized artifacts from pop culture using standard bricks.
The artist wanted to ensure these objects capture as many key details as possible while remaining functional, sturdy, and easy to handle without a sudden structural collapse. He loves designing novel items that are either one-of-a-kind, previously unaffordable to replicate, or not particularly accurate.
“I usually publish instructions for most of my major builds,” Lewis adds. When someone else has already executed a concept to perfection, such as the many existing renditions of Han Solo’s blaster, he feels little desire to tread the same ground.
Over the last couple of years, Lewis’ creative path within Built Bricks has taken another sharp turn. “I’ve pivoted from just pop-culture replica building into making fully wearable LEGO cosplays,” he reveals. It’s an extreme niche only a handful of people have ever attempted. With over a dozen designs under his belt, the artist is confident he’s pursued this path way more than any other brick builder out there.
The design challenges unique to wearable suits forced him to rethink his priorities, moving away from strict one-to-one accuracy toward the overall presentation and feel of the finished piece. Most of his cosplay suits are personal interpretations of characters, blending his favorite parts from various designs into a unified whole.
Artist Lewis Meeny first got into building LEGO MOCs by tweaking existing retail sets, so he could add his own flair to them and bring them closer to the source material. But what really got him hooked was the possibility to design entirely original models from scratch — models LEGO would perhaps never make.
Nonetheless, every now and then, he goes back to following a traditional instruction booklet for the simple joy of it. “There’s something nice and peaceful about following a set of someone else’s instructions and seeing how someone else approaches construction techniques,” he says.
Lewis’ Built Bricks remains grounded in his passion for modification, but building an official set allows him to slow down and watch how another designer solved a structural problem.
Mastering the Virtual Brick
To bridge the gap between imagination and physical reality, Lewis relies heavily on a single piece of software: Bricklink Studio. For him, this free CAD tool changed not only his building style, but his life in many ways, ergo the heartfelt praise.
Bricklink Studio allows users to build digitally with virtual bricks, linking directly to the Bricklink database. Many people give up on it early, complaining that it feels too hard or that physical building is faster.
Lewis believes this frustration usually comes from people who simply haven’t put the time into learning the software properly. Once a builder learns how to leverage submodelling, copying and mirroring, rotational and translational brick control, and keyword searches for specific pieces, the process becomes remarkably fast.
“Digital building lets you explore concepts in minutes or hours that would take days or weeks to try in real life,” he asserts. “Sifting through every single part option, filtering by available colors, and checking average market prices helps a designer know immediately whether a vision is feasible.”
Clicking a part number in the software further leads to the Bricklink website, showing which retail sets contained that piece. This makes it easy to export parts lists and order what’s needed. While he used to build small test segments in person to verify stability for bigger projects before digitizing, Lewis now does everything entirely on screen, fixing minor structural quirks during the final physical assembly phase.
Also, working with unusual color palettes is a common hurdle in cosplay design. For instance, when building his wearable Optimus Prime helmet, Lewis originally wanted a standard blue color scheme. However, after exploring the digital part library, he discovered that the specific shapes and curves he needed only existed in dark blue. The software made that limitation clear before a single dollar was spent on inventory.
Bricklink Studio also offers a powerful rendering feature and step-by-step instruction generator. “If you’re the kind of person who wants to share their designs with the world, particularly with instructions, knowing how to use Studio’s instruction maker is an absolutely necessary skillset to have,” the artist says.
Because Lewis took the time to master the tool, he was able to draft concepts that would have otherwise been impossible to test in real life. That proficiency has opened doors to corporate commissions, where he can rapidly pitch rendered concept pieces without needing to touch an actual brick.
It even smoothed his way into LEGO Party!, where the entire development team used the same software to construct every asset seen in the game. It’s not hard to understand why the MOC artist is totally, wholeheartedly, and irrevocably in love with this digital tool.
Editor’s Note: Expanding your digital building toolkit? Explore our collection of free purpose-built LEGO Tools & Utilities, featuring custom mosaic builders, scale converters, and 3D shape planners.
Studio Habits and Creative Breakthroughs
When it comes to his personal routine in the workshop, Lewis almost always builds with a YouTube series playing in the background. “It’s often stuff I’ve seen before so it’s just ambient noise,” he adds.
His preferred viewing (read listening) list includes old episodes of Funhaus, particularly the Demo Disk segments, along with BroScienceLife and a lengthy video essay by British YouTuber Hbomberguy about the famous Roblox death sound effect (ROBLOX_OOF.mp3), which Meeny treats as a deep rabbit hole worth visiting often.
When asked if there’s a specific theme he finds himself returning to, Lewis mentioned Star Wars. Despite exploring countless genres, this one remains his anchor. He holds a soft spot for every Star Wars-themed build out there, recognizing them as the foundation for his success as an online content creator.
At a micro level, brackets are his absolute favorite LEGO parts. “I couldn’t do what I do without them,” Lewis admits. In all shapes and sizes, these are the key to building stable, wearable structures that hold together when a person moves around. “I always make the point that whatever strength someone can achieve with Technic parts, I can achieve 10x more strength with brackets,” the artist says.
When creative momentum slows down and a mental wall appears, Lewis finds his remedy in distraction. Having a physical activity away from the Built Bricks desk helps clear the head while an idea simmers subconsciously in the background. Weightlifting serves as a reliable outlet for him to burn off excess energy and restore focus.
Lewis also values the collective wisdom of the online LEGO community, noting that posting a photo of a stalled project to ask for a second set of eyes can quickly solve stubborn design problems. Paradoxically, the artist claims he builds best when he’s procrastinating on another project or build.
Observing the wider community excites him. Lewis loves watching people put themselves out there by sharing their creations, inspiring others to push boundaries and find unexpected uses for ordinary elements. He believes social media has its flaws, but it can also be a great source of inspiration and shared knowledge. Expression matters more than polish. “Even the simplest builds still have charm and can inspire,” he states.
Bringing the LEGOlorian Armor to Life
Among Lewis Meeny’s many achievements at Built Bricks, the LEGOlorian Armor stands out as a turning point. The inspiration struck during a comic-con in Sydney in 2023, where he spotted a Mandalorian cosplayer sporting a chest plate built entirely out of LEGO bricks.
Wondering if an entire suit could be made in a similar fashion, Lewis began sketching out a loose timeline spanning a year or two. Yet, within a month of that convention, the first rough prototype was already standing upright. That single project transformed his creative focus and launched a prolific run of wearable costumes.
“My LEGO cosplay journey has just continued from then on as my primary MOC focus. I’ve designed and built over ten cosplays since, with eight of them being on display recently at Brixpo Adelaide,” the artist proudly reveals.
One thing led to another, and documenting the process online caused his presence on Instagram to explode. That visibility led to an unexpected highlight when LEGO Japan invited him to build three wearable costumes for their display booth at Star Wars Celebration 2025.
Lewis then traveled to Japan to work behind the scenes alongside the local team, creating suits for Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and Bo Katan. It’s an experience he holds very close to memory.
The artist, while open to the concept of alternative brands, never uses them in his own work. For his cosplay builds, he uses genuine LEGO bricks for the outer shell, but then incorporates some non-LEGO elements such as fabric straps, buckles, and magnets to secure the heavy armor pieces to his body.
Recently, he began experimenting with custom bricks for his suits, using CAD tools to model and print 2x4 plates featuring strap loops. “It makes it easier to rig up LEGO cosplay pieces to wear,” Lewis says. He even successfully integrated them into the jetpack portion of his LEGOlorian suit, where they perform reliably under physical stress.
When asked about the hours taken to build such a large MOC, Lewis calls it an “almost impossible question to properly answer.” A digital design now takes him between five and ten hours, but the Mandalorian project required a different path.
After building the initial test prototype from whatever scraps were lying around, he digitized the layout to establish a color palette before ordering fresh components for the final build. The first polished version came together between October 2023 and January 2024, just in time for Brickvention that year.
Two years later, he spent another month adding the jetpack, alongside ongoing tweaks like changing the flight suit color from green to gray, detailing the gauntlets, and sewing a neck scarf. In total, the project took roughly three to four months of labor.
For the design process itself, Lewis points to a digital technique as his proudest technical achievement. When he began the sketch build, the Bricklink Studio software introduced a reference image feature. Looking for accurate chest plate proportions right from the start, he took a photograph of himself and paired it with that of the Mando chest plate.
Using Sariel’s Unit Converter for AFOLs to calculate his height in studs, Lewis then imported a life-sized photo of himself into the workspace and scaled the armor image to match his torso. Tracing the outline of the chest plate with wedge plates allowed him to get the correct geometry on the very first try.
While the gauntlets initially seemed like the most intimidating hurdle, the jetpack proved to be the true test of patience. “There’s a reason I didn’t build it until 2 years after the initial suit,” Lewis spills the tea.
It was a deliberate choice. Creating the complex shape while keeping the structure sturdy enough to wear without falling apart required serious problem-solving. Rigging the heavy assembly to sit comfortably on his back gave way to an entirely separate set of mechanical challenges.
Lewis published the Studio design files for his armor template on Rebrickable shortly after finishing it. “I wanted to help people make their own without having to start from scratch,” he says. Seeing other builders take his base template and customize it into personal variations brings him great satisfaction. “I’ve seen some absolutely fantastic uses over the years,” Lewis reveals.
Advice for Aspiring Builders
Beginners often feel overwhelmed when facing an empty table, wondering where to begin. For anyone looking to understand the fundamentals of building MOCs, artist Lewis Meeny’s advice is to visit Rebrickable to find alt-builds designed from existing sets. “This is a great way to find out what’s possible with a specific palette of bricks to work with,” he says.
Indeed, buying a standard set and exploring the alternative builds created by other fans teaches valuable construction logic without requiring a creator to start from scratch. It’s like a safe stepping stone — when you use something that exists as a foundation, you already have something to work with.
Lewis cites multiple examples of this process: adding a second floor to a building, extending the wings of a spaceship or adding another cockpit, or simply mashing a few pre-made kits together to see how the imagination catches up.
The artist further stresses the importance of learning brick math. LEGO bricks are taller than they are wide, operating on a strict 2:5 ratio where two units of stud width equal five units of plate height. “A standard 2x2 plate combined with a 2x2 brick with a 2x2 tile on top forms a perfect cube,” Lewis explains.
Furthermore, brackets measure half a plate in thickness, meaning a bracket paired with two plates equals the exact length of a single stud. While these numbers sound dry on paper, mastering them unlocks the secret to organic shaping and structural strength.
A Journey Built Brick by Brick
From a simple blue tub of bricks on Christmas morning to engineering intricate, wearable pop-culture armor on the international stage, LEGO MOCist Lewis Meeny has come a long way. The evolution of his brand Built Bricks is a testament to where imagination and technical mastery can lead.
Whether he’s drafting digital concepts in Studio, collaborating with video game studios, or sharing his templates with the next generation of builders on Rebrickable, his passion for the brick remains as solid and interlocking as the pieces he loves.
As he continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the LEGO universe, Lewis proves that with a little patience, a deep understanding of brick math, and a good YouTube video playing in the background, the only real limit is your own creativity.
