I’m excited to announce a new online charity event that has just started! The event, called Creations for Charity, sells custom LEGO creations from fan builders to raise money to buy LEGO for underprivileged children. All funds will be used to buy LEGO sets for the charity Toys for Tots. From now until early-December, there will be new creations listed to be auctioned. Come visit the store to see what we have!

If you are interested in contributing a creation, you can read the details here. Happy holidays everyone!

Now in its seventh year, the massive multi-category contest, run annually by Classic-Castle has gone live.

Categories include Technological Advances, Alternate Sets, Medieval Mariner, Outlaw Escape, Eastern Medieval Life, Religous Life, Knight’s Training, Custom Castle Figure, Brick Castles, Fantasy Castles and Misc. The prizes are quite impressive, including vintage Castle sets, new sets, older MISB set, custom accessories and more. So get out there and get medieval!

While (or “whilst,” if I want to be contextually appropriate) BrickCon was the big event on this side of the Atlantic last weekend, builders in the UK geared up quite successfully for The Great Western LEGO Show (Oct 3-4) at the STEAM Museum in Swindon, England. They have a lot to brag about, both individually and collectively, but this sculpture of Bert and Ernie by James Shields (LostCarPark) is what caught my feverish and sentimental eye.

As Ralph Savelsberg said in the comments for the picture “Is anybody our age not a fan of these two?”

Here, the good Doctor manages to avoid Josh’s motorized dragon in a cave, part of a massive LEGO Castle display with a 2,000-minifig battle.

Check out all of Alan’s Doctor Who adventure photos on Flickr.

(And in case you’ve missed it, I’ve updated my BrickCon 2009 wrap-up post with more links.)

Check out the full gallery of Zombie Apocafest 2009 photos in Thanel’s photostream on Flickr.

The display this year was more than double the size of last year’s, with 17 tables covered in all manner of buildings and vehicles, ranging from little mini-tanks to a fig-scale tanker. Once again, we had the organizational genius of LEGOLAND Master Model Maker Gary McIntire laying out the city, with major contributions from other LEGOLAND staffers, including Ryan Wood (Port ChiefLUG) and Joel Baker (awesome zombie head).

As announced before BrickCon, we had four prize categories. Here are the winners:

• Best Original Vehicle: Lino’s Zombie Killin’ Gay Pride Float
• Best Apocafied LEGO Vehicle: Tommy Williamson’s motorized 7636 Combine
• Best Original Building: Abandoned factory by Justin Pratt
• Best Apocafied LEGO Building: Paul Hetherington’s Dark Carousel (hard to believe it’s an undead 10196 Grand Carousel!)

A huge “Thank you!” to BrickArms for their awesome contributor’s weapons packs, and to Valve for a batch of wicked Left 4 Dead 2 T-shirts!

So, how do these things work? What does it take to pull together a collaborative LEGO layout that covers a couple hundred square feet of display space? What have we learned after running a display at a LEGO convention for two years? Off we go…

It’s not as easy as it looks

Soliciting “cornerstone” LEGO creations, recruiting lots of good builders, and working with sponsors and partners is hard work. Similarly, planning for enough space with convention organizers takes time.

Know your audience

Despite my rather chirpy online persona, I have a subversive streak a mile wide. This manifests itself in my political vignettes and the occasional snarky comment. Before BrickCon 2008, a large-scale collaborative display of undead LEGO minifigs overrunning a Cafe Corner city, built by the adults who read The Brothers Brick, seemed like a reasonably subversive idea. I think last year’s display worked so well because that’s precisely what it was.

As cool as I think this year’s display turned out to be, it was a little spread out, and it was rather heavy on the small vehicles with spikes and ladders. The world really needs to be a nicer place than the purely ironic perspective some espouse, but really, some measure of self-referential irony would’ve been welcome.

I’m not a parent, and I don’t judge others’ parenting styles (okay, I do, but only a little bit). But it’s hard for me to imagine encouraging interest in the hyper-violent world of flesh-eating zombies and brain-smashing survivors. The subversive and ironic aspects of a zombie apocalypse built out of LEGO are likely lost on the 11-14 set.

A good idea is better than free stuff

Let’s be honest: The kiddies like the BrickArms, and will do just about anything for prototypes.

We’re big fans of the high-quality custom accessories produced by Will Chapman and his team, and can’t believe how generous they are. Will donated 35 packs of weapons for contributors, including hand-produced cricket bats at our request. Wow.

Nevertheless, we’ve all seen the “wil U trad wit me? kthxby” mentality on display in recent months, and I have to admit that the display this year seemed to attract a bit more interest from the 11-14 set than I’d anticipated.

In fact, there were at least two kids who leaned over the barricades during the public hours, asked to put one minifig on the display and asked for a contributor’s pack. Seriously, kids? The answer to both questions was — and will remain — a firm “No.” (I did let them take a picture of their figs on the display. I’m not a total jerk.)

Overall, I’m happy about how things went with Zombie Apocafest 2009, but it will be the last Zombie Apocafest, and I don’t plan for us to repeat themes from year to year. I’m even happier to report that we’re changing things up for next year. We’ve run our BrickCon 2010 display idea by a few attendees, and we’ll be announcing next year’s theme shortly. Plans are already underway…

In the meantime, please enjoy the photos we’ve all been uploading. I dropped my camera on its lens first thing this morning (Khaaan!), so Thanel has kindly given me permission to upload a few of the photos we took together of the zombie layout.

Thanel acted as The Brothers Brick’s official photographer for the weekend, and has pictures of just about everything.

• Day 1 (setup & socializing)
• Day 2 (opening ceremonies)
• Day 3 (most of the LEGO creation photos)
• Day 4: Wacky Racers
• Day 4: Dwarf Toss

The BrickCon pool on Flickr is the best way to find all our event pics in one place.

As much fun as running the zombie layout was, the highlight of the weekend for me was winning “Best of Microscale” for my micro Battlestar Galactica hangar. My look of surprise was both genuine and absolutely ridiculous.

Here’s a quick roundup of BrickCon follow-ups from around the Web:

• Kevoh kisses and tells
• I’m not famous enough for a photo with Sir Nadroj
• Alex Eylar will never be blogged again
• Patricia Heaton talks to Jimmy Kimmel about BrickCon
• Ochre Jelly gives us hope that the LEGO fan community isn’t all snark and drama
• LAML Radio interviews Bill Ward about BrickCon
• Shannon Young attends Croatia Fest
• Steve Witt chimes in

Andrew, Thanel, Caylin, Dan, and myself are all heading to BrickCon. Therefore, you probably won’t hear us much over the next couple of days, other than brief updates.

Have fun and we will be thinking of you!

Mark Sandlin’s Infothingy has the details:

For the graphically challenged (and to help people find this from the interwebs):

1. Catch the Link Light Rail Connector Bus at Bus Bay 2, near Baggage Carousel 1. It will take you to Tukwila International Blvd. Station. This bus is free.
2. Take the Link Light Rail train into Seattle. ($2.50) Stay on the train until you reach Westlake Station, which is the last stop.
3. Go up the escalation and into the Westlake Center mall. Go to the top floor of the mall to the Seattle Monorail station.
4. Take the Seattle Monorail to Seattle Center. ($2.00)

Be sure to click through the graphic to a great discussion of other useful ways to get to BrickCon for cheap — more money for bricks!

Thanks to the generous folks at BrickArms, we’ll be giving away a bunch of these to those of you who contribute to Zombie Apocafest 2009 at BrickCon 2009 later this week. Each Zombie Defense Pack will include a prototype cricket bat and M1 carbine, along with other great stuff that remains Top Secret.

The cricket bats in particular will be in short supply outside these packs, and there will be a limited number of packs, so be sure to build something awesome.