Yearly Archives: 2007

Pirate Salvage Craft by Tim Zarki

Tim Zarki‘s pirate salvage craft is certainly cool, but I’m a sucker for schematics:

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Church of the Holy Order of Legostino by Gork

Gork has built a rather cool medieval church.

I’m really liking the Sebulba figures over the tomb…

Photo review of 7036 Dwarves’ Mine on BrickZone.net

The newest Castle set, 7036 Dwarves’ Mine, is starting to show up in stores and online. For those of us cursed to live near the end of The LEGO Company’s supply chain, we have the BrickZone.net photo review to make us jealous of the rest of you.

Of particular note is the fact that the two new beard pieces are wrap-arounds with ponytails on the back!

I’m going to be gravely disappointed if I don’t get this for my birthday next week…

Steven Marshall is a guitar god!

Steven Marshall isn’t just a guitar god, he’s also becoming quite the LEGO artist. The only studs visible on this acoustic bass are on the bridge (where the strings meet the body).

Via Klocki.

Axiocersus by Nick Dean

Nick Dean presents the Axiocersus. Asymmetry rules.

News: First high-res box art from 2008 LEGO Indiana Jones sets

StarWars.com has the first high-resolution images of box art from one of the upcoming Indiana Jones LEGO sets, 7620 Motorcycle Chase:

Give me a P! Give me an A! Give me a T!

I can’t possibly spell out Patrick Bosman in the post title, so here are his cheerleaders:

< Insert your own Heroes reference here. >

Alex Eylar goes to Old Hollywood

Alex Eylar‘s “Old Hollywood” evokes the noir detective movies of the 1950s.

Righteous Indeavor by Legohaulic

Righteous indeed, Legohaulic, and thanks for the tip, Mastergongfu!

BrickCon 2007 Day 3 Report

Based on the three I’ve attended, the last day of LEGO conventions primarly seem to involve three activities:

Invasions: Space invades castle, castle invades town, I invade myself…
Group photos: Pictures of fellow builders, secret societies, and mysterious online organizations…
Teardown: Pack it up and haul it (or ship it) home!

People who’ve uploaded photos since Saturday (includes photos through Sunday):

Invasions

Group Photos

Builders’ Lounge:

Castle:

KeithLUG:

Teardown

Nathan Proudlove ships himself back to Manitoba in his Blacktron II box (I get to keep the SHIP):

This is how The Omicron Weekend got home:

I’ll add more stuff tomorrow (interesting news as well as cool LEGO creations). That’s it for tonight!

BrickCon 2007 Day 2 Report

Photos from day 2 are starting to show up from the following people:

Here’s what I did today:

9:00 A.M.
LEGO Store Pick-a-Brick at the event venue included large bins of minifig parts (10 pieces for $5). I picked up several more yellow Slave Leia minifigs, along with torsos from the green Scout Trooper torso, among other cool finds.

9:30 A.M.
Saw prototype of some stuff…

10:30 A.M.
Scrambled to do some last-minute setup of my steampunk, post-apoc, and castle stuff.

11:00 A.M.
Public hours began, and I spent an hour stamping people’s hands and handing them raffle tickets. It was nice to meet Arpy in person as well.

12:00 P.M.
Lunch with Josh. Shop-talk about The Brothers Brick with delicious Greek food.

1:00 P.M.
Bumped into Caylin, so Josh and I went with her for a second lunch. At BrickCon, you learn to injest comestibles when you can…

1:37:50 P.M.
Best princess-themed Moonbase end-cap ever (with proud builder):

3:30 P.M.
Presentation by Bram Lambrecht about software he designed to convert 3D models to studs-out LEGO designs. Download the PDF from Bram’s LEGO site (252 KB PDF).

4:00 P.M.
Public hours end. Official Brothers Brick BrickCon 2007 photo opportunity (with honorary brother Steve Vargo in the background):

4:30 P.M.
Judged Steampunk and Castle creations for awards. Next year, I’ll be accepting bribes. It may not influence my decisions, but I will accept any free LEGO you may want to give me. Here I am (on the right) giving a critical eye to the joust pavilians, with Tom Raffert and Jim Foulds (from the LEGO Universe team):

Here’s Steve Vargo’s winning battle scene:

5:00 P.M.
Official BrickCon 2007 Classic-Castle.com photo shoot (look for better pictures later):

5:15 P.M.
Formal induction into KeithLUG. Rites were performed. Sacrifices were made. Swag was received.

6:30 P.M.
Award ceremonies and presentations. Got excited when Andrew Lee‘s name was announced for winning the microscale category (heard “Andrew B.”). I was surprised, because I thought the other Andrew had built better stuff. Apparently the judges agreed. Fortunately, I didn’t actually get up and embarrass myself…

Jim Foulds from the LEGO Universe project provided some details about the game. You can read what he had up on the screen here.

8:00 P.M.
Hung out with Steve Witt, Andrew Lee, Zach Clapsadle, and many others to build Cafe Corner floors for the Cafe Corner Tower. No instructions at our table, so had to reverse-engineer ours from a prototype (L to R: Andrew, me, and Steve):

9:00 P.M.
Watched the Dirty Brickster (LEGO white elephant game) and distributed chocolate.

10:30 P.M.
Drive home, eat chocolate chip cookies (I love my wife!), upload photos to Flickr (187 photos, 218.11 MB), watch Saturday Night Live (meh), and write this.

1:18 A.M.
Off to bed, with an event I need to be at later this morning at 8:30…

BrickCon 2007 Day 1 Report

First of all, notice that NWBrickCon is now “BrickCon.” Cool.

I actually don’t have a whole lot to report, since the first days at LEGO conventions have become mainly social and acquisitive for me. In other words, I tend to spend most of my time chatting it up with people I haven’t seen in six months, a year, or never (if I only know them from the Web), as well as poring over minifig bins from sellers in the Brick Bazaar. Well, I guess talking with other fans — especially meeting people I’ve gotten to know online — and buying LEGO is pretty much all I end up doing for most of the con, but describing that to all of you out there who can’t be here won’t be especially interesting…

Pictures are a start, though. I’ve just uploaded all of my own photos to Flickr (photoset) and photos from other attendees are starting to show up in the BrickCon group pool.

In terms of LEGO creations I haven’t seen before (at least in person), I’m excited about the Miniland-scale Cafe Corner, a great steampunk section, KeithLUG’s Omicron Weekend, not one but two Mecha-Godzillas, new Moonbase modules, and a fantastic Castle display. I’ll highlight some of the coolest stuff once everything’s been set up and I’ve spent some time taking decent pictures. Of course, you don’t need to wait for my pictures. Check out Lonnon Foster’s photoset or Joe Meno’s setup set for great shots of some really excellent stuff.

Here’s the Miniland Cafe Corner (before complete setup, so still missing the street scene I saw later in the day:

And the afore-mentioned Mecha-Godzilla:

Bruce, yes, I’m excited to report that there’s a great selection of vignettes and microscale this year! Rest assured I’ll photograph both and tag them so you can find them for VignetteBricks and MicroBricks. Looks like you’ve already noticed Shannonia, though. ;-)

I’m off to bed.