Monthly Archives: September 2008

BrickCon 2008: Last-minute logistics (and more free stuff)

Apologies for boring 99% of our readers, but this is still the fastest way to communicate with the fairly large number of TBB readers who are attending BrickCon later this week.

Fill out your MOC cards now

MOC (My Own Creation) cards identify your LEGO creations for fellow attendees and the general public. They also help theme organizers like Josh and me plan for how much space is needed (more on how that relates to the zombie display later in this post).

Fill out your MOC cards on BrickCon.org. A couple quick points:

  • Unless you want to spend the public hours explaining what “SNOT” and “MOC” are to kids and their parents, avoid “AFOL-speak” in your descriptions.
  • Zombie creations go in “Other,” not “Train/Town” (whose organizers I suspect think they’re being invaded at this point; that doesn’t actually happen until Sunday).

Remember, only “registered” LEGO creations (ones with MOC cards) will be eligible for the various awards given out by BrickCon.

Pack your LEGO creations for travel or shipping

Before you stuff your LEGO into your carry-on luggage, consider reading the LUGNET post by Duane Hess and the Classic-Castle.com article by Lenny Hoffman about packing and shipping LEGO.

Wouldn’t you rather spend your time socializing and integrating your pristine creations into the display instead of rebuilding them?

Unload your LEGO at the venue

By now, you should’ve received a message from Daniel Brown with details on when, where, and how to unload your LEGO creations at Seattle Center. The loading dock is only available during the following times:

  • Thursday 8am – noon
  • Thursday 5pm – 9pm
  • Friday 8am – noon
  • Sunday 5pm – midnight

Please only use the loading dock if you have massive amounts to unload. For more details, please see Daniel’s e-mail. If you didn’t get that e-mail, let us know and we’ll post more information here.

(CC-licensed photo of the Space Needle by Chris Blakely.)

Get to and from the airport

I know several of you are looking to share rides between Sea-Tac Airport and the BrickCon venue at Seattle Center (301 Mercer St., Seattle, WA 98109). Transportation options include Shuttle Express, taxis, and rental cars — all available near baggage claim.

If you’d like to share a ride with someone to cut costs, post a comment here with your arrival time, and when two or more of you are interesting in connecting, I’ll put you in touch through e-mail.

Bringing stuff for the draft and Dirty Brickster

Drafting a LEGO set allows you to get parts in large quantities that you might otherwise have to buy individually (from, say, Bricklink). Read more about how the draft works on SEALUG.org. If you want to participate, the draft set for BrickCon 2008 is 7626 Jungle Cutter.

Dirty Brickster is a LEGO “white elephant” gift exchange. Bring something that would be worth $10-20 to the recipient, wrapped.

Help bring some order to the Great Chaos of the Zombie Apocafest

With so many last-minute, “Oh, I’m so there!” contributions (thanks in no small part to BrickArms’ generosity, I’m sure), we don’t have a very good sense of how many zombified LEGO creations to expect for the Zombie Apocafest.

Filling out a MOC card will help, but could we also get a quick roll-call from readers planning on bringing a building? (Vehicles will be easy enough to incorporate into the display.) I’ll be at the venue nearly all day Thursday to help with setup — Castle and the zombie display in particular.

Build your GO MINIMAN GO Photo Contest entries

GO MINIMAN GOIf you haven’t entered our GO MINIMAN GO Photo Contest yet, you can do so right there at BrickCon.

Just swing by The LEGO Group’s table, dig through the bricks, build a vig or dio, have it photographed, and fill out the entry form. Oh, and you get to keep what you build.

Get your Brothers Brick LEGO brick

Last but not least, the first 100 people who come up to Josh, Nannan, or me and say “It’s a brick-built world out there” will get a custom-engraved brick — your choice of “The Brothers Brick” or “Brothers-Brick.com”.

Oh yes, this is gonna be the best BrickCon yet! See everybody in a couple of days!

They arrive...

I have no idea what this scene by Wobnam means, but it’s pretty darn cool. More pics on Brickshelf.

Highly detailed steamer – a guest review

Carl Greatrix Evening Star

In order to get this model posted before the universe ends I asked Matt Hamann to guest review this lovely steamer for me

Carl Greatrix recently finished this lovely addition to his layout, a British Railways 9F 2-10-0 “Evening Star” steam locomotive.The working and prototypical drivers alone make this model stand out to me. The flickering light in the furnace powered via a 9v battery box in the tender is another impressive detail. The model has some inventive parts usage as well. For example, on the tender Carl uses minifig whips to accurately depict the curvature of the ladder. Carl also used 1×3 arch bricks to keep the boiler nice and curved and within the 7-stud wide foot print and tacked on all kinds of steamy-greebles and details.

Matt Hamanns Trains To round off the post I’d like to bring attention to this photo of much of Matt’s train stock. There’s nothing like quantity and repetition to make detailed boxes on wheels look even cooler.

Let us know what you want to see from BrickCon 2008

For those of you who can’t make it to BrickCon 2008, Josh, Nannan, and I will be covering the con starting this Thursday.

We want to know what you’re most interested in seeing from us. By voting in the new poll and leaving a comment here, you can help shape our coverage of BrickCon 2008. Our coverage of BrickCon 2008 is in your hands.

(Photo by Adam Hally.)

So, do you want to get to know some of the people behind the creations featured here on The Brothers Brick? Are you most interested in product announcements from LEGO, BrickArms, and other companies? Maybe you want to see more pictures of people’s creations and group displays. Let us know!

Note: If you see an error when you try to vote, rest assured that your vote is still being counted. It’s a conflict between two WordPress plug-ins.

[poll id=”14″]

Our previous statement suggesting that we would not monitor this chamber was an outright fabrication.

Harrison sends Chell through a series of tests in this vignette inspired by Portal:

Luís and the Argonauts

Note the splashing water around the oars in this lovely little microscale rendition of the legendary Greek ship Argo by Luís Baixinho:

Don’t miss the behind-the-scenes coverage on Luís’s blog.

And now for something completely different — a human cannonball (also by Luís, of course):

Halo Rat’s Nest level in LEGO by Vidgamer838

Vidgamer838 has recreated the Rat’s Nest multiplayer map from Halo 3, complete with the trio of UNSC Marines voiced by Firefly and Serenity cast members — Alan Tudyk (Wash), Nathan Fillion (Mal Reynold), and Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb):

This is an entry for the August-September Contest in the LEGO Halo group on Flickr (click pic below to see entries):

G&K Aeureon MkIII mecha by Jas Nagra

This gorgeous mecha by Jas Nagra evokes favorites by Soren Roberts or Izzo.

That’s a big complement, to be sure, but I like Jas’s mecha for what sets it apart from all of those — the knee joints in particular:

BBQ on Volcanic Island

Marcin (Hippotam) cooks up a fresh take on the pirate theme and presents outdoor BBQ with a flavor of, mmm… pirates. Don’t miss out on all the juicy details such as this hilarious shark killer contraption. For a small diorama, Volcanic Island sure packs some zing!

Welt der Steine fan event in Vienna, Austria on October 4-5, 2008 [News]

Austrian LEGO fan group LGOE (not a typo — it stands for LEGO Gemeinschaft Österreich) will be hosting an event next weekend in Vienna.

Here are the details in German (courtesy Verena Schaden):

Die LEGO® Gemeinschaft Österreich lädt euch ein zur
Welt der Steine – taucht ein in das bunte Reich der LEGO® Fans
4. – 5. Oktober, 10 – 17 Uhr
Veranstaltungszentrum Simmering
Simmeringer Hauptstr. 96a, 1110 Wien
Kontakt: info@lgoe.at

And in English:

Name of the show: Welt der Steine (means: World of Stones)
Date: October 4 – 5, 2008
Time: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Location: Veranstaltungszentrum Simmering, Simmeringer Hauptstr. 96a, 1110 Vienna, Austria
Contact: info@lgoe.at

Rubber bumpers on Jerrac’s Unikraft

Jarek (Jerrac) built his latest creation in only 4-5 hours, something which I cannot usually accomplish. He admits that it’s fast, but that doesn’t at all undermine the quality of this cool hovercraft. Check out the use of stretched-out inverted tire pieces for the bumpers on the model.

LEGO Factory adds new bricks, plus cool fan-created stuff you can buy [News]

Chris Doyle sends word that the parts from Custom Car Garage are now available from online Pick A Brick. New parts include the great pilot torso originally from the redesigned Naboo fighter.

RP Cuenco used 2,558 bricks from LEGO Factory to build a case for his Mac (via Gizmodo):


Bricked Mac – Time-Lapse from RP Cuenco on Vimeo.

What’s so cool about LEGO Factory and online Pick A Brick is that you can buy individual parts, as well as sets created by fans using LEGO Digital Designer, ranging from a Mini Stephen Hawking by Ochre Jelly for $1.86 or the aforementioned Bricked Mac for $376.65:


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And for our non-US readers, a direct link to online Pick a Brick: Pick a Brick.