Well, this is certainly one way to display your Collectible Minifigs. Daniel Gran (shutinc) has built a gorgeous edifice to house his collection.
Daniel apparently plans to run wiring throughout the building to light it up (note the blue lamp up on the roof). Check out the photoset on Flickr to see the interior.
Karwik has created a beautiful rendition of Drzymała’s wagon with a wonderful backdrop of trees. His use of colour and texture in the otherwise plain wagon is truly masterful and the trees are almost certainly the best I’ve seen. I would be utterly remiss if I didn’t post this.
Not content with bringing us cool LEGO sets, Mark Stafford (lego_nabii) also continues to bring us cool MOCs. Another for the LUGNUTs challenge.
The Martian Polar Pavonis Rally takes place annually (a Martian year is 687 days) between Schmit Ice Base at the Southern pole and the MSA Research station at Pavonis Mons, near the Martian equator. The race is a martian tradition commemorating the emergency transport of oxygen to the base in the first years of settlement.
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
I’ve just returned from Brickvention 2011 where I had an absolutely awesome time. I’m waiting for more photographs to appear on flickr before I give a proper roundup but there were some excellent LEGO models there.
In the interim I’ll write something about what Mike Pianta (scruffulous) and I displayed: a diorama based on the (presently flooded in) town of Ararat in Victoria, Australia as it was in the year 1972.
Mike and I started planning this about three months before the event. Our goals were ‘simple’: keep the level of accuracy and detail high, include a large curved track, and work off the grid as much as possible. Not the easiest set of goals but not impossible. I feel like we did manage to achieve them.
However we had one further problem: Mike lives in Melbourne (where the exhibition is) and I live 1800km away in Brisbane. Which meant my contributions also had to be modular enough to survive a plane trip. This was OK until, just days before I was due to go, my city was flooded leaving me wondering if I’d ever make it out.
To cut a long story short I did make it and I got very lucky with the baggage handlers who helped my models survive largely intact. Phew! Anyway, that’s probably all you want to hear about it here. If you have any further questions ask here or on flickr.
And as for the floods: my friends and family are all fine, my girlfriend got stuck on holidays for an extra three days by a flooded road and the city is a mess. Luckily the loss of life in Brisbane was very low but some nearby towns were destroyed by an ‘inland tsunami’ which killed many. Still, compared to those in Rio state we got off lightly.
A commuter bus seems like a pretty good summary of the last few months of my life, except this working articulated bus by Vibor Cavor (Veeborg) is so much cooler than anything I’ve been riding.
So worth checking out the rest of his photoset of this bus since he goes into such detail about the interior workings. The doors open and everything.
Every so often Peter Norman (swoofty) floods flickr with great train models. While this is great for LEGO train fans it makes life a bit difficult for me in choosing what to blog. This time I decided that the most novel of them all was a heavily weathered old Alco RS-1. Weathering in LEGO is hard enough at a small level but attempting it at this scale is even harder. I think Peter has made an admirable job of it here.
Niek Geurts‘s modernist house is an architectural feat. The builder created this original design inspired by the Dutch architect Willem Dudok. There are quite a few subtle details you may not notice at first glance such as the diagonal tiling of the sidewalk and the construction of the brown walls using plates.
There’s even a complete interior to the house. You can see all the pictures on Flickr.
When I first saw the Crimson Permanent Assurance section of Monty Python’s Meaning of Life when I was a kid it simply blew my mind. This Cafe Corner standard version by gotoAndLego does the same.
It’s a pretty imposing structure and fairly close to the appropriate architectural features for the building. I would find this thing crewed by elderly clerks driven mad quite intimidating if it drifted past my office.
Brickshelf user midnightcat built a detailed kyomachiya townhouse complete with a fully adorned interior. The technique of building the roof with a combination of cylinders and tiles create a good effect.
Brickshelf user legorianer built a minifig scale version of an old train station from the early 20th century. The roof technique is simple and effective. Check out the entire gallery for construction photos.
And while my interest in vehicles waxes and wanes, Peter Blackert (lego911) brings us an extremely steady supply of cars. But I don’t think I’ve seen him make the same car at four scales before. My own bias shows through in my love for his tiniest Bugatti Veyron 16.4.