lego – Page 55 – Bill Ward's Brickpile

LEGO Luxury Motor Yacht

A few months back I was sorting through bins of LEGO and came across an item that has bugged me since I first bought set 7994, LEGO City Harbor.

The cargo ship hull in that set is just a little too big for any container I own, so it’s been sort of bouncing around my LEGO shelves on its own ever since I took that set apart and sorted the parts into my collection.

So as I was holding this darn hull in my hands yet again trying to figure out where to store it, I was inspired to instead try to build something out of it. As a cargo ship, it’s really way too small for minifig scale. But since it’s about 72 studs long it’s just about perfect for a motor yacht!

I did a quick Google search on 72 foot motor yachts and found the Adagio 72 as a PDF file, complete with floorplans. The hull shape wasn’t quite right, and I couldn’t do anything with the forepeak (the triangular area inside the bow) but I figured I could do a pretty good approximation of the floorplan based on the available space in the LEGO hull and set to work…. the result is my Luxury Motor Yacht (slideshow). Hope you enjoy it.

If you want to see it in person, I plan to bring it to BrickFest in Portland later this month, and will also be showing it at Maker Faire at the end of May as a part of BayLUG‘s exhibit there. Stop by and say hi!

My Coast Guard helicopter featured in YouTube video

A photo of one of my creations was (very) briefly featured in this video:

At the very end, when he does the “you can build anything out of bricks” bit, there’s a brief shot of my Coast Guard helicopter. No, I’m not annoyed that they didn’t give credit, I think it’s cool that it was chosen to represent the helicopter genre.

I guess I need to repost the Coast Guard base pictures on Brickpile — it’s currently only posted on my old site (and occasionally appears on BayLUG‘s layouts).

Seen at Bricley’s Words.

LEGO Ads found via Twitter

A collection of LEGO ads with some very clever pictures. I recently subscribed to the RSS feed (in Google Reader) for a search for “#lego” on Twitter. This is a great technique to follow “hashtags” that I learned on Amy Gharan’s blog.

Anyway, back to the LEGO ads. I don’t think these are real ads, since some of them seem quite out of character for LEGO’s style (especially the sex/drugs/violence ones). They seem more like what a designer might propose to the LEGO company for use in an ad. But anyway, this one was my favorite:

The check’s in the mail

Well, checks that is. Two of them. One to the IRS and one to the California Franchise Tax Board (which oversees California income taxes).

And no, I am not talking about my 2008 income taxes. I am talking about my applications for 501(c)(3) tax exempt, non profit status for a new corporation that I’m forming along with Bruce and Loren from BayLUG/BayLTC: Bricks by the Bay, Inc. The three of us met on Tuesday evening to sign the bylaws and review the paperwork before I sent it in. We’re using the Nolo Press book “How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation in California” to set it up.

Why are we forming a nonprofit? Well, we’re putting on a show! We haven’t made any official announcements yet – we’re waiting for the tax exempt status before the deal can be finalized – but the plan is to have a LEGO conference in the San Francisco bay area in April of 2010. We’re forming a nonprofit to run the conference as well as other local LEGO-related events, including BayLUG/BayLTC exhibits.

We need volunteers! You don’t have to be local, or even come to the show, to help! If you’re interested in helping out in any capacity, please let me know. We have a mailing list and a wiki to help with planning.

For official announcements, visit the Bricks by the Bay Web site. I’ll be blogging here periodically as we continue through the planning process, too.

LEGO, Robert Indiana Style

Inspired by my LEGO version of Robert Indiana’s "LOVE" sculpture, I made another one that spells "LEGO," incorporating different colors for the interior of each letter.

The only hard part design-wise was coming up with a “G” design that matched the other letters, since “LOVE” already provided me with a design for “L,” “E,” and “O.” But structurally, I found it to be much more of a challenge to build the “LEGO” sculpture, largely because the round letters on the bottom didn’t provide nearly as good support for the top letters as the “VE” in “LOVE” did. However, thanks to some very long bricks (1×16 and 2×10) I was able to make it work.

My wife and I discussed the color scheme extensively before we finally decided on the one you see here. I wanted to keep blue and green apart from each other, and I wanted to keep red on the right hand side in case it is displayed next to the “LOVE” sculpture. (Sadly, I don’t have any good photographs of the two together – I didn’t have any place big enough that didn’t have a horrible background – but hopefully I can update later to add one.)

Desert Road Trip

Flickr user jedimasterwagner has made a great little desert diorama, featuring my Shasta Teardrop travel trailer, a Jeep by Mike Psiaki, and a cactus based on an idea that Flickr user brickpoor brought back from BrickWorld.

Found via Lego Diem. Looks like the diorama was created using LDraw and rendered in 3D. I think it came out quite good – and great work on the mosaic billboard!

New Flickr Group: LEGO Antigravity

I had a hare-brained idea the other night, to create a Flickr group for antigravity-based vehicles. You know, Jetsons cars, Blade Runner spinners, Star Wars speeders, stuff like that. I’ve really enjoyed the LugNuts group that Lino runs, but wanted something like that with a more science-fiction bent. So I created the LEGO Antigravity group, and pimped it on the LugNuts and Sci-LUG forums. I added a few of my own aircars to it and invited a few other MOCs that seemed on-topic to join. Check it out!

From Jetsons to Star Wars to Blade Runner, antigravity has always been a fixture in science fiction. This group is for LEGO models of vehicles that levitate, hover, or otherwise defy gravity. Any scale, from nanoscale up to life size, is welcome, but probably most will be minifig scale.

January BayLUG meeting

Each year for the past several years, Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group has been invited to hold a meeting at the home of one of our members, Dave Porter, at his house in Woodside, CA. He has a huge LEGO display in his house every year, and we get to see it in person before he takes it down each February.

At the meeting we had a lot of people bring their latest models for display, bulk LEGO shopping in Dave’s home office, and of course viewing of Dave’s home layout (pictured above). We also held a business meeting to plan for the Bricks by the Bay LEGO convention which we are organizing for April 2010.

MoAH Display Wrapup

We took down the BayLUG exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA, on Sunday, January 11. I finally got around to dumping the camera today and uploaded the pictures to Flickr. Sorry about the delay.

During the teardown phase of any of our train shows, after the crowds are gone, we take down the “sneeze guards” (Plexiglas barriers to keep little hands – and sneezes – off of the LEGO models) and spend about fifteen minutes doing a photo shoot. These pictures are the results of that. I’ve been sick off and on all month so far, and wasn’t feeling too well on that day, so I didn’t get really ambitious with the photography, but hopefully I covered everything.

You can also browse all the pictures from the show or view them as a slideshow.

Our next public event is a meeting at MoAH on Saturday, February 21. Hope to see you there!

BayLUG Exhibit Closes with Record Crowds

We had some great publicity for the exhibit by the Bay Area LEGO Users Group at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA for the last few weekends.
There were television coverage by two different local stations, articles in the newspaper, and lots and lots of word-of-mouth advertising. We got several new members in the club and lots of people signing up for our club mailing lists or taking business cards home.

I was sick for most of the last two weekends, but did go on Sunday (the last day) and shot some video footage. However, a couple of other club members took photos of the crowds and sent them to me with permission to post online, so I have done so in a Flickr photoset. Please check that out by clicking the photo above, or view it as a slideshow. You can also view all my photos from this exhibit (or as a slideshow).

Next year, we’re not sure if we’ll be able to have the exhibit at the museum! The room is just not big enough to accommodate that kind of crowd. However we’ve already started talking about alternatives that would scale better, so don’t worry… we’ll still have an exhibit. We’re also talking to another museum about having an exhibit this summer but haven’t announced any details yet.

The next public event by BayLUG is our meeting at MoAH on Saturday, February 21 (note: originally scheduled for Sunday the 22nd, but the date has been changed due to a schedule conflict). Hope to see you there!