Yearly Archives: 2008

BrickCon 2008: Andrew’s wrap-up

How do I put this? BrickCon 2008 was amazing, but just a little bit more stressful than years past, as I demonstrate in this photo by Adam Hally:

Nevertheless, it was the best LEGO convention I’ve ever been to! Highlights for me included:

Zombie Apocafest 2008
Nannan crashing at my place
10193 Medieval Market Village
A chance to have great one-on-one conversations with guys like Mark Larson, Joe Meno, Jonathan Bender, and Kelly McKiernan
Paul Hetherington’s “Casa Baron” winning “Best of Show” (hey, it was part of the zombie layout; I can be proud)
LEGO Playthemes Creative Director Matt Ashton autographing my 7979 Castle Advent Calendar (photo by Nannan below), which he designed

Various bloggers have posted their observations about the con:

Read more about the Zombie Apocafest on Valve’s Left 4 Dead Blog.
Listen to Wayne Hussey and Daniel Brown on LAML Radio, and hear from Bill Ward about recording for LAML Radio.
Read Hillel’s thoughts on admitting he’s a “LEGO geek” (hurray!) and see tons of great pictures on the Jackson Fish Market blog.
Read about the “Minifig Beauty Pageant” on Model Building Secrets.

I love seeing the looks of wonder and amazement on people’s faces as they find something cool that they never thought could be made from the little plastic bricks they have lying around their house. But I tend to find the public hours a bit overwhelming:

Of course, as attendees get home, they’ve started uploading pictures they took at BrickCon. Abusing the HTML list tag even further, here are a few that I’ve found so far:

And with that, I’m taking a week off. :D But fear not, dear readers! There are plenty of other LEGO blogs to sate your LEGO appetite.

I can’t wait for next year. Until then, build on!

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Mech Bay Zero

Whew, back to normal blogging! We’ve missed highlighting a few non-BrickCon related creations over the weekend, but we’ll get to them.

Aaron Andrews (DARKspawn), who’s normally a castle builder, switches fancy and builds a big mech bay instead. It’s sufficient to say one might say that he’s been up to building mecha all his life, but that’s just because this Aussie builder is incredibly talented. Enjoy the creation before Aaron surprises us with something else!

Life on a different scale

Let the Con roundup begin…

Making its debut at the recent Brickish Association’s (the UK LUG) STEAM event is this fabulous hospital by Yvonne Doyle. The hospital was built as a collaboration with Steven Marshall and Pete Reid (Mr. Doyle) and is scaled to Steven’s ambulance. With a fully decorated interior (check out the wallpaper) and other lovely finishes like the detailing at the side of the windows this model really is a thing of beauty.

Zombie Apocafest 2008: Children, avert your eyes!

Zombie Apocafest 2008 just wrapped up at BrickCon, and I spent about an hour taking pictures.

Front and center in the display was Ryan Wood‘s beautiful watchtower:

Josh, Nannan, and I awarded “Best Zombified Building” to Paul Hetherington‘s “Casa Baron”:

Paul’s building has a full interior, including comfy chairs and a working elevator. We loved the art deco details, many of which incorporate organic shapes:

The similarly unanimous choice for “Best Zombified Vehicle” was Andrew Lee‘s awesome truck:

In addition to the Zombie Defense Weapons Packs donated by BrickArms, the good people at Valve (the studio that brought us Half-Life and Portal) sent along a bunch of Left 4 Dead T-shirts and a great billboard:

Valve even invited a bunch of people to tour the Valve office on Friday night, where Lonnon Foster posed with Gordan Freeman (photo by Don Solo):

The LEGO zombie display wouldn’t have been possible without the organizational genius of LEGOLAND California model maker Gary McIntire — who even spent the plane ride up to Seattle creating custom zombie heads.

At least 35 participants contributed nearly 30 original buildings, dozens of vehicles, and hundreds of minifig zombies and survivors.

LEGO Certified Professional Dan Parker contributed a super-detailed mall, complete with a LEGO Store, baby store, Spencer’s Gifts, and food court:

Will there be a Zombie Apocafest 2009? Undoubtedly.

In the meantime, check out the full Zombie Apocafest 2008 photoset on Flickr.

BrickCon 2008: Saturday, October 4th

Pictures of the third day of BrickCon are now appearing. During the public hours, over 3,200 visitors attended the show, as you can see from the chaotic picture below.

Click the picture to see more from my photostream or see more pictures from the Flickr BrickCon pool.

Updates from Andrew:

During the awards ceremony, Josh and I gave out prizes for the “Best Zombified Building” — which also won “Best in Show” — and “Best Zombified Vehicle” to participants in the zombie layout. We’ll have photos of the whole layout tomorrow (including the prize-winners), but here’s a preview of Zombie Apocafest 2008:

That’s LEGO designer Simon Kent checking out the bombed-out end of Zombietown. The LEGO Group sent four members from product design teams to BrickCon, including Matthew Ashton, Simon, and Nik Groves. Matt designed 7979 Castle Advent Calendar, so he kindly signed one for me. Very cool.

Our schedules have been incredibly full these past three days, so our apologies if our coverage hasn’t quite lived up to your expectations. Those of you who wanted product updates should be overjoyed with 10193 Medieval Market Village, and we’ll have detailed coverage of future BrickArms products in the coming days.

In the meantime, more sources of BrickCon photo and blog goodness include:

Oh, and did we mention that there will be a BrickFest in 2009? Stay tuned for details on that as well.

10193 Medieval Market Village to be released in 2009 [Exclusive]

UPDATE: 10193 Medieval Market Village is now available from the LEGO Shop online!

LEGO Castle fans have wanted more civilians, more women, and more non-equine animals for a very long time — something a little more like this:

Box art for 10193 Medieval Market Village

With the announcement of 10193 Medieval Market Village last night during opening ceremonies at BrickCon 2008, there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that LEGO listens to fans like us.

The Brothers Brick, Classic-Castle.com, and Klocki are proud to bring you exclusive high-resolution pictures of this upcoming set, scheduled for release in January 2009.

Click each photo in this post for full-size, high-res versions:

: Turkey dinner in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Minifigs and accessories in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Box art for 10193 Medieval Market Village

: Tavern in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Blacksmith at work in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Blacksmith’s shop in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Market stall in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Overall shot of 10193 Medieval Market Village.

Here’s the full description (my bolding, for emphasis):

Expand your LEGO® Castle kingdom!
This classic medieval village with marketplace is a perfect match for any LEGO Castle. Full of authentic features, fun accessories and all-new animals to expand and enhance your kingdom; it includes two complete buildings with detailed interiors like a blacksmith’s shop with waterwheel-driven hammer, a food stand, tree, table, cart, cows, horse, chicken, rooster, duck, peasants, knights, rare elements and colors, and more!

Includes 8 minifigures: blacksmith, 2 soldiers, 2 male peasants, 2 female peasants and a boy minifigure!

Play inside! The 2 two-story buildings feature a hinge system that allows you to open and close them as you wish!

The yellow building contains the stables, blacksmiths shop and his home upstairs! Help the blacksmith forge the swords with the working water powered trip hammer! Don’t forget to close the stable gates and feed the horse some carrots!

Blacksmith’s home features pictures on the walls, opening windows, table and fireplace!

The classically European styled blue building features a cozy tavern on the first floor and welcoming bedroom on the top floor!

Lots of authentic touches: fireplaces in the bedrooms, pictures on the walls, dressing tables, working doors and windows and other interior details!

The soldiers and peasants alike shop and eat in the marketplace filled with baskets of fish, apples and flowers. Sit at the table for a meal of ale, cheese and whole turkey but stay out of the way of the soldiers carrying the king’s treasure!

Buildings measure over 7.5″ tall and over 9″ long when open wide!

The set contains 1,601 pieces, and the price varies by country:

Australia: $149.99
Canada: $149.99
United Kingdom: £84.99
United States: $99.99

Reaction by LEGO Castle fans attending BrickCon was ecstatic (click the picture for more 10193 pictures from BrickCon):

A few observations of my own:

New feather/fire piece in red and trans-orange
New table leg/column piece
New fish and cows
Whole turkey (it bears repeating)
New torsos for the three male peasants, blacksmith, and tavern wench
Peasant girl otherwise available only in 7979 Castle Advent Calendar
New faces on the blacksmith and senior-citizen peasant

Finally, one more look at the minifigs and accessories:

Minifigs and accessories in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

Wow. January can’t come fast enough!

Railbricks Issue 4

Jeramy Spurgeon and the team from Railbricks have been providing an excellent service for LEGO train fans for a while now and Issue 4 of Railbricks is no exception.

As with the previous issues the magazine is packed full of interesting articles including information about Brian Williams’ Royal Train, technical ideas, computerisation (DCC) of track, model instructionsm, contests and heaps more.

If you have any interest in LEGO trains, or LEGO in general, I highly recommend checking it out.

BrickCon 2008: Friday, October 3rd

I’ve uploaded a few of my photos from today to Flickr. We’ll fill this post with something more than this later, but first, sleep!

Nannan has also uploaded his photos:

BrickArms.com relaunches with M21, baseball bat, and Lee-Enfield [News]

Recent visitors to the BrickArms Web site will have noticed the intriguing message that they’ll be back soon with new products.

Just in time for BrickCon 2008, the site is now back online with all-new items, including:

We’ll of course have full coverage of other new BrickArms products announced at BrickCon in the coming days.

BrickCon 2008: Thursday October 2nd

Andrew, Josh, and I are at BrickCon this week (the third and last LEGO convention in North America of 2008).

As usual, Thursday is arrival and setup, and from our photo coverage you can see the 20,000 square feet of display area in the process of filling up with marvelous creations. Andrew and I have uploaded a few pictures to our respective Flickr photostreams here and here. We will keep you updated with news of the opening ceremony and other important events happening Friday.

P.S.- this blog entry was written in the comfort of Andrew’s living room. More blog fests from headquarters to come…

EDIT (AB): Lonnon Foster has also begun uploading photos to his Flickr photostream.

We make our kills under the sea

It’s been a while since I built anything I considered remotely worth blogging. I figured this one was fun enough to post as underwater attack craft seem a sadly neglected genre. The LB 13 “Bottlenose” was designed to fill a void (at least in my heart) and was inspired by Tim Zarki’s (spook‘s) SubApoc stuff.

The adventures of Shannon’s little white kitten

One part Alice in Wonderland, one part Super Mario Bros., four parts awesome, Shannon Young places a little white kitten in certain peril.

The door behind the cloud is amazing, and the sun is brilliant.