Niek Geurts built an interpretation of a post-apocalyptic scene that’s different than most for two obvious features. The first feature is the diagonal road, which breaks up the squareness of the diorama. The second feature involves the abundant overgrowth of plant life, which adds a nice color contrast to the classic rubble colors. There’s many more details that are worth a look, you can see them all in the gallery on Flickr.
Working in a theme requires walking a fine line. Repetition of forms and thematic elements is necessary to tie all the creations together, but it’s easy to go overboard and be duplicative. I’m not sure whether I found the right balance with my new tank or not. You can see it below with its big brother.
When I started building this little thing, I intended it to be a comically tiny scout tank, like this. As I worked on it, though, it became clear that this would be too small that it would be too absurd even for this theme. I changed the tank to a remote tank, and that seems to work OK, even if it is a cop-out.
For those builders of post-apoc, military, or realist city, here’s a technique shown on a creation by Marin Stipkovic that shows a nice effect of building decay. The multi-shades of plates mimics the exposed bricks while the gray simulates broken concrete. Looks useful!
Zombie Apocafest 2009 has come and gone. The undead have been blown up, shot up, and mulched to oblivion. The humans stand victorious among the ruins of their civilization. Fortunately, that civilization was, by good fortune, built from LEGO, and it can be rebuilt, brick by little plastic brick.
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:
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…
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.
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.
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…
Why yes, that is a BrickArms Cricket Bat and M1 Carbine.
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.
The same applies to this creation, from Jonathon Derksen. An entry for the 23rd Challenge over at LUGNuts, the red truck is quite unassuming:
But have a look inside and see why you want this truck on YOUR side during the Zombie Apocalypse.
With exactly one month until BrickCon, we’re teaming up with LUGNuts for their 23rd build challenge, Zombie Apocalypse Killfest ’09.
Naturally, we’re hoping that those of you who build something for this challenge will also bring it for the Zombie Apocafest 2009 collaborative display at BrickCon.
As with other LUGNuts challenges, this is sure to generate some truly creative builds. And creativity is key! We won’t be awarding prizes at BrickCon for Biggest Guns, Most Chains, or Best Use of Brown and Gray.
This challenge is about apocafied civilian vehicles, like my S&S Wildland Ultra XT brushfire engine. Note the bright red color and complete lack of chains, though I must admit that the crazy Bionicle spike strip proved irresistible…
So, head on over to the Zombie Apocalypse Killfest ’09 thread on Flickr, read Lino‘s hilarious challenge, and build something awesome!
I’m not entirely sure why there’s so much advanced technology in evidence throughout ApocaLEGO creations. After all, haven’t we learned that even apostrophes are susceptible to nuclear attack? Maybe it’s because advanced technology places the apocalypse somewhere in the distant future, safely beyond our lifetimes.
Or it could be that it’s just cool, like this neat little dio by Martin Latta.
The scene includes a heavily armed VTOL scout fighter, gun emplacement, cyborg, door to an underground bunker, and what appears to be a warning siren — a logical addition to any such scene, though the first I’ve noticed.
Via the ever-vigilant Young Spacers.
Well, everything about it changes. That’s the same thing, right? Geoff Herndon built it, but he was inspired by вrickart!san.
With BrickCon coming, I’m sure many are interested in creating vehicles for the Zombie Apocalypse display. If you like what we’ve featured in the past, you should check out Jordan Neves‘ article on how to make your own unique and original apocafied vehicle.
By the way, I recommend Jordan’s blog as a supplement to foster a well-rounded knowledge of the LEGO community.
Nick Crocco (Steam Pirate) is taking the apocafication of official LEGO sets to great heights.
An armored city bus emerges from 7641 City Corner.
Nick replaces the stickers on the truck in 7733 Truck & Forklift with Space Police III stickers of the same underlying design.
I think it’s awesome that the LEGO designers took an existing LEGO City design and essentially apocafied it themselves for Space Police III. And it was brilliant of Nick to notice.
Of course, it looks like Nick could use some more zombies. Fortunately, we’ll have plenty available at BrickCon.
