Matija Grguric takes us back to the Wild West with this fun carnival scene. But the crown jewel of this diorama isn’t the crowded carnival atmosphere, the bank robbers or the western buildings, though all of those are very nice. What really makes it stand out is the fact that it is powered. Who doesn’t like motorized dancing girls?
Summer’s getting hot, and so is the Eurobricks Spaghetti Western Competition. If you’re in the mood of building western themed creations, check out the rules and see how you can enter and claim your share of 450 Euros in prizes. The deadline of this contest is September 10, 2011.
Croatian LEGO fan Matija Grguric has been on a Wild West building spree lately. His most recent diorama captured the look of the American West better than any American builder has (to my knowledge), complete with the banded colors of the Badlands.
Matija is building all of his Western creations — from the Black Cat Saloon to Market Street — for an upcoming Club Kockice exhibit.
That little mesa is worth a closer look:
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.
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
Aaron Amatnieks (akama1_lego) and I were spending a productive day in a LEGO chatroom yesterday when he showed me a tree he’d been working on. I absolutely loved the concept and went off to build one for myself.
I’ve been thinking about gum trees a bit lately so had some ideas to try out showing Azz the pictures and getting his feedback at each stage. We then both went off building and not saying much until resurfacing with much improved gum trees. And gave ourselves a pat on the back.
Today I posted some more refinements and a breakdown and Azz just featured his latest in an amusing diorama (warning! may offend the easily offended). This sharing is one thing I love about the LEGO community. Bouncing ideas from one another to make it all better.
Thus ends my story.
Speaking of well-posed minifigs, 74louloute included lots of great details in this diorama inspired by the video game Red Dead Redemption
From the cow’s skull on the base to the miscreant kneeling on the roof, there’s a lot to love in this western scene.
Multi-theme builder Alex Eylar (Profound Whatever) takes on the Wild West in his latest diorama, named after actor Walter Brennan.
Observe the defenestration of an unruly bordello customer, the prisoner using some dynamite to break out of the sheriff’s jail cell, and many other lovely details.
See more angles on MOCpages and Flickr.
With mini dioramas it’s often hard to select a picture to go on TBB as you inevitably miss out some nice details. Josh Morris’s (I Scream Clone) Rancho Relaxo gave me that problem. I think this photo captures the ‘essence’ best but misses out on the muster yard and other details you can see in the zoomed pictures. And although he’s a fellow Aussie those of you attending BrickWorld 2010 will get to see this in person.
I just can’t get enough of the details and dusty lighting in this old fashioned general store by Alex Eylar (Profound Whatever).
I particularly love the little price signs stuck into and on top of the merchandise. That really makes it.
I like the architectural faithfulness to late 18th to early 20th century mission churches that The Brickster (aka WesternOutlaw) shows in this creation. I particularly like the roof-support posts sticking out of the walls.
It’s also worth checking out the rest of his Old Mexico photoset on flickr, especially the Mexican village.
