The second annual BrickMagic Lego festival is happening in Raleigh on Mother’s Day weekend. This year’s event will have more display space along with a two-day private convention on top of the weekend public expo. Perhaps more exciting is their recent announcement of a $1000 cash prize and LEGOLand annual pass for the best in show creation along with features in BrickJournal magazine for the best creations of each category. Click here to register for BrickMagic 2011.
The 2011 MocAthalon is here! It is an annual competition held on MOCpages where teams of 5 builders make creations from 30 categories. Last year’s MocAthalon brought out 450 entries from 18 teams, which is no small feat. Check out this article by Keith Goldman that nicely recaps the spirit of this contest. Here are the rules and info on how to get involved.
As I mentioned in my last post I spent last weekend (14th to 16th) enjoying myself at Brickvention 2011. This year is was significantly larger than last year with 140 AFOLs attended and 8000 people through the door on public day. In order to deal with an increasing number of attendees (last year there were 3000 through the door) the event had moved to a bigger venue but with a three-fold increase in attendance it simply wasn’t enough. Sadly many people had to wait two hours to get in and some were turned away at the end of the day. The event seems to be approaching the size of some of the smaller European and US fests.
But I suspect our readers aren’t too interested in statistics compared to pictures. After giving attendees a weekend to get their pictures up there are now a bunch of photos up on flickr (check the BV pool and BV 2011 pool or appropriate tags).
My absolute favourites were the steampunk ship Hyperion (top) by Darren Reid and the Sydney club’s Western display (bottom). Much to my chagrin I spent most of the public days building and didn’t get to see many of the smaller models but I did get a quick moment to wander around and check out the bigger models so can also recommend Ross Crawford‘s crane (right), Kevin Hall‘s Drachenberg castle, Ryan McNaught‘s The Love Boat (left) and Hogwart’s school (left) by David Scalone. But there was numerous other great models around the place.
I certainly look forward to Brickvention 2012 whenever and wherever it may be. If you’re in the region this event just gets bigger and better each year so do come along. And many, many, many thanks to the organisers. They put in a lot of effort and ran a very tight ship.
David Cook has posted timelapse photos of the start of public day
Registration is now open for Brickworld 2011! As usual, Brickworld will take place in the third weekend of June in Chicago. It is a four and a half day event featuring a private convention and public expo at the Westin Chicago North Shore. Because of the continuous swelling of participants and visitors each year, Brickworld will now start on Wednesday night, making it one of the most-attended and longest and Lego conventions all around.
The metaphor I use to describe Brickworld is a powerhouse. It’s a very dynamic convention with so much to take in at once. With four display rooms, seeing all the creations in detail is between difficult and impossible. Likewise, we’re closing in on 1,000 registered attendees, so there’s always many new people to meet and old friends to catch up with if you’re returning. Meanwhile, don’t forget that you still have until the end of January to design this year’s event kit.
Fans of the southern states rejoice: a new LEGO convention presented by TexLUG called Brick Fiesta is taking place in Texas this summer. This is a standard 4-day AFOL convention with a weekend public expo. Registration is now open and you can check out the details on the Brick Fiesta website.
For LEGO fans in and around Hong Kong Brick Adventure 2011 is coming very soon to City University. See below for the press release and thanks to John Ho (IcedPlusCoffee) for sending it to me.
Bricks Adventure 2011 is coming to Town
LEGO have been bringing people in the city up with fun and creativity in constructing their own characters, houses, castles, and even city. Bricks Adventure is a city-wide bricks showcase of the year, presented by the War & Adventure Games Society of City University of Hong Kong (CityU), jointly organized by Legend Bricks. Bricks Adventure now comes to its second annual exhibition and will bring you to a miniature of virtual and reality world, showing the varieties of bricks and great imagination of creators.
The main theme of this year Bricks Adventure is “CITY”, different Japanese-style architecture will all come into view. Beside, theme such as “PIRATE” is the first show in the Hong Kong. All minifigures of pirates are in proportion.
Date: 12th – 21st January 2011
Time: 10:30am – 8:30pm (Opening: 12th January 2011, Time: 11am to 5:30pm)
Venue: Multi-Purpose-Room A&B,
4/F, Amenities Building,
City University of Hong Kong,
Kowloon Tong, Hong KongWe think, we build and we share. Bricks Adventure is sharing thoughts and ideas while exchanging more of them through tours and other interactions. Educational and group tours guided by creators of Bricks Adventure 2011 will give you a glance of LEGO creation. Reservation needs to be made on a first-come-first-serve basis. Groups from kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, institutions, organizations are all welcomed to register for guided tours.
Bricks Adventure 2011 and guided tours are free to all. We look forward to seeing you in Bricks Adventure 2011.
For more details, please visit Bricks Adventure 2011 official website, Flickr Page or Facebook Page.
For enquires and reservation, please contact: (852)61082889 (Elaine Yim), (852)60191189 (John Ho)
Email: elaine@legendbricks.com
Creations for Charity took place in the past two months where LEGO fans sold their creations to raise money to donate LEGO to children in need. Here are a few words on the organization and the results of this year’s fundraiser.
The beginning
Creations for Charity began with the idea of giving LEGO to underprivileged children for the holidays. It started with a proposal by Don Wilson to keep a record of LEGO donations made by a group of fans. This inspired me to create a fundraiser where fans use their talent with LEGO to raise money. Although it seemed ridiculous to ask people to give up their personal creations, we got an overwhelming response and raised over $2,000 in 2009. We used the money to purchase and donate almost $3,000 worth of LEGO.
One year later
Drawing on previous experiences, I aimed to raise $3,000 this year. To my amazement, we reached this goal in record time with still a month left before the deadline. We progressed at an average of $1,500 a week from late October to early December, ending on $9,035. We not only surpassed last year’s record, we more than quadrupled it. After buying more than $14,500 worth of LEGO, we still had money left for a $723 check to top off our donation to Toys for Tots.
Good will is contagious
We had the good fortune of having over 60 contributors donate over 150 creations ranging from large-scale creations to custom minifigures. Our highest contributor racked up over $900 through sales of his custom minifigs, and several others donated creations that brought in over $500. People helped in other ways such as by spreading the word about our event. We benefited from mentions by some prominent non-LEGO sites such as Slashgear, Gizmodo, and even Toys for Tots. Others like Sean Kenney invested his time in assembling 60 keychain gifts; Ansgar from Chromebricks donated the gold-plated bricks that adorned them; and Linus Bohman designed an effective splash page for the fundraiser. The Brothers Brick chipped in a lot of money cover the cost of the raffle prizes and the expensive keychains. We even had three builders who donated their contest prizes to the cause. We’re really grateful to have the help of many in making this event successful. You can see all our participants and records here.
Why we do it
Creations for Charity costs both time and money for its participants, so why are we doing it? Consider this: the builders feel good about raising money through their talents, the buyers can own an original creation while helping charity, and the kids receive tons of LEGO. While I can’t speak for everyone, for many of us it’s all too good to pass up.
The big donation
On the day of our donation drop-off, I drove a truckload of LEGO across the metroplex to the Dallas / Fort Worth Toys for Tots distribution warehouse. The marines and volunteers were at work processing toys like Santa’s elves. They wasted no time hauling in the 567 LEGO sets. I stood and watched as half a dozen marines lifted boxes and bags out of the truck. Before I knew it I was already on the highway going home, and that’s when it dawned on me that thousands of dollars worth of LEGO and the fruits of many people’s work had passed out of my hands in just minutes. (Indeed it’s hard for a LEGO fan to give up so much of what he loves). But at the same time, I thought about the countless hours of joy that we will have given the children, and that made everything worth it.
The future
We envision Creations for Charity to continue and grow as an annual event. Starting next year there will be a team of coordinators running the fundraiser. With more help, we plan to expand the distribution of our LEGO donations to cover more cities in the US and possibly other parts of the world. Our contributors reside in a dozen countries, and we want our future donations to reflect that diversity. Next year we look forward to welcoming more participants and to make Creations for Charity a tradition for many LEGO fans.
Last words
Thank you for making Creations for Charity an inspiring success. It reflects the generosity of LEGO fans and spreads our hobby among both children and adults. By now many people will have our creations on display in their homes, and many more children will have a cool LEGO set this Christmas. Happy holidays and we hope you’ll join us for Creations for Charity in 2011!
Brickworld is celebrating its 5th anniversary in 2011, and this year you have the opportunity to design the convention’s event kit. This is a rare chance to have hundreds of people own a creation designed by you, and you don’t even have to be an attendee to submit a design. Check out more details on the Brickworld website.
As was pointed out by some readers we did not manage to cover anything much from the recent and enormous LEGO Fanwelt exhibition in Cologne. This wasn’t by choice but simply that TBB doesn’t have anyone in Europe. Luckily Holger Matthes (HoMa) was in attendence and happy to write us a summary as a guest author. Many thanks to Holger for his help.
LEGO Fanwelt in Cologne (Nov. 18-21st 2010)
The biggest LEGO event in 2010 in Germany was held recently in Cologne – to be more precise in the 12,500 m² large hall 5.1 of the Cologne Expo. Besides LEGO visitors could expore classic model railroading like Märklin and others and another hall was dedicated to handicarft. This concept went well and did not only attract grey-haired modelrailroaders but tons of families. Overall this combined expo hat about 60,000 visitors!
But let’s focus on the bricks: Besides lots of known and unknown individual MOCs by more then 250 exhibitors the Carnival Parade has drawn the most attention amoung the visitors. Cologne is one of the most important cities for Carnival in Germany though the oranisation commitee from the MBFR club organised a fan project where everyone was invited to bring Café Corner style houses (158), walking participants (63) and funny, colourful motive cars (56). The 64,5 m long parade was seen by many many real life LEGO fans and visitors and more then 17,000 minifigures!
Fans and visitors were called to vote for the best motive car. After all the 1875 votes were count, the winning car by Jürgen Bramigk was announced online
Not only the brick related figures were enormous: The exhibitors and organising team ended up in eating more then 100 litres of chilli con carne, 30 kg of french fries, 260 sausages, 35 kg of pasta, 150 schnitzel, gallons of coffee and more … all prepared by Jürgen and his kitchen team.
Special thanks to the MBFR-team around Tretty and all the exhibitors who realised a great expo!
Once again it is Summer and that means it’s time for Brickvention. As Australia Day falls on a Wednesday this year Brickvention breaks from its usual tradition of falling on the long weekend and will be held from the 14th to the 16th of January instead which hopefully means cheaper flights and accomodation.
Registration is now open so if you haven’t already started planning your trip now is a good time. One other notable change is that this year it’s in the all new venue of Melbourne Town Hall due to the enormous crowds at last years event.
In a nutshell:
- What is Brickvention?
Brickvention is the premier convention event for the Australian LEGO® Community.
Brickvention is a 2 day event for AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO®) Like other conventions, it offers workshops, presentations, special events and challenges.
The event celebrates the coming together of the fan community that has evolved as a result of the Internet and exploring and developing the LEGO® hobby.
Brickvention occurs annually on or near the Australia Day weekend in January.
- When is Brickvention?
Brickvention 2011 will be held on Saturday the 15th and Sunday 16th January 2011. The Saturday is for registered attendees and is aimed at Adult fans of LEGO®. Sunday is the Public Day where everyone is welcome.
- Where will Brickvention be held?
Brickvention 2011 will be located at: Melbourne Town Hall, corner of Swanston St and Collins St, Melbourne :
- Who can come?
Saturday the 15th includes sessions intended for AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO®) 18 years of age or older. Younger convention attendees are welcome to come with a registered adult, but keep in mind many of the activities outside of the Public Expo are targeted toward adults.
Sunday the 16th is the Public Expo, allowing the general public of all ages to watch LEGO® builders at work and view LEGO® creations and displays. – registration is not required for the Public Expo.
- How much does it cost to attend?
Convention: Saturday the 15th includes sessions intended for AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO®) to get together and discuss LEGO®, building techniques, models etc. and includes a number of events such as presentations and competitions. – Please register for these competions prior to Brickvention.
$50 for Full registration (over 15)
$25 for under 15 registration. Children under 15 attending the 2-day convention must be accompanied by an adultPublic Expo: Sunday the 16th from 10am – 5pm is the Public Expo, allowing the general public of all ages to watch LEGO® builders at work and view LEGO® creations and displays. Registration is not required for the Public Expo.
Adults – $6
Children – $3
Family – $15 (2 adults and 2 children)
If you’re in the neighbourhood I highly recommend attending. It’s by far the biggest AFOL convention in Australasia. I’m already fully booked.
A new type of LEGO convention is coming to Europe next year, balancing the private convention experience I know I enjoy at US conventions with the public exhibition time that’s been bringing in the masses for years.
AFOLcon will be held between April 28 and May 2, 2011 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
Here’s what the organizers say:
Come to AFOLcon and get the inside track on what is happening in the LEGO world. We have a busy schedule of private, AFOL-only events for you to take part in. Listen to guest speakers from LEGO, TT Games and more. Unless you live in Billund, there’s no way to get closer to to LEGO than at AFOLcon!
Read more about the events and activities on AFOLcon.com.
FBTB announces their second annual charity drive to raise money for Child’s Play. For every $2 donated, you’re entered into a raffle for some heart-stopping prizes. Take a look and help out a great cause.
