Today’s calendar brings us a snowman (Friends), a kiosk for the ice rink (City), and the Jawa selling the droid from yesterday (Star Wars).
Author: Bill Ward
Advent 2015 Day 3
For the third day of the 2015 Advent Calendars we have a sled for Andrea (the Friends mini doll), ice skates and a tiny rink for our City figure, and either a micro scale tank or a minifigure scale droid for Star Wars. [EDIT: Apparently the Star Wars model is a LIN demolitionmech autonomous minelayer seen briefly in Episode IV, so it is minifigure scale.]
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Advent 2015 Day 2
Today’s City model is a boy with a camera and a pretzel(?!); in Friends, we get a pair of ice skates with a little table; and Star Wars’s model is the Sarlacc Pit to accompany yesterday’s model, which apparently was Jabba the Hutt’s sail barge.
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Advent 2015 Day 1
Each year LEGO produces several advent calendars, featuring 24 mini-models, one for each day of December through Christmas Eve. For the past few years I’ve posted these entries each day on my blog, and as I write this it’s 11:46 PM on December 1st, so I just barely made it before the end of the day…
Day 1 brings us a Friends minidoll in a festive sweater, a micro scale Star Wars ship that I don’t recognize, and a pair of little remote control cars for City.
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BrickCon 2015
Just got back from Seattle where I attended the latest edition of BrickCon, their annual Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL) convention. I had a great time – played some games, won some free LEGO, and got a trophy (Best Sculpture) for my Teddy Bear.
I also gave an updated version of my “Brick Geometry” talk, and a new presentation on “Studs on All Sides” which talks about techniques I’ve used in models such as the Teddy, Easter Bunny, Q*bert, etc. (Which reminds me, I really should do a photo shoot of Teddy Bear and blog about him.) Here are the slides to the talks:
I didn’t take any photos at BrickCon, but plenty of other people did. I’ll post links to them here as I find them:
- BrickCon group (Flickr)
- Todd Lehman (facebook)
- L3-G0 – LEGO R2D2 (Blog post) (winner of Public Choice Award, by Shawn Steele)
- Adafruit (Blog)
- KOMO News / Seattle Refined (TV station)
Silly experiment in head swapping: Scooby Doo & Mini-Doll
When I was building the Scooby-Doo sets, I realized that Scooby’s head/neck connection is the same as that of a mini-doll from Friends or Elves…
Q*bert
I built a little model of the beloved 1980s video game character, Q*bert. It’s basically just a Lowell Sphere but with some SNOT modifications to accommodate the nose and feet. Enjoy!
Use a fry bagger to sort LEGO parts?
Use a fry bagger to put LEGO parts into Ziploc bags!
What a great idea! I saw this today on Facebook, posted by Soyary Sunthorn‎ in the AFOLs of FaceBook group. He got a fry bagger – a tool used in fast food restaurants to put french fries into the bags or other containers they are served in.
Since my storage system is primarily built around plastic bins filled with Ziploc bags, this should be a huge help when sorting and putting away bulk parts. I’m pretty sure this is the fry bagger in the photo, if you want to get one: New Star 37814 Polycarbonate Commercial French Fry Bagger, Right Handle
Full disclaimer: Amazon affiliate link above.
Updated Brick Geometry from BBTB 2015
I gave my Brick Geometry presentation yet again at Bricks by the Bay this year, and here’s the slides. The slides are the same as last year’s BrickCon version, but I’ll be updating it to present at BrickCon this year. You can download a copy of the slides here: brick-geometry-bbtb2015
Bricks by the Bay Just Around the Corner
I’ve been quiet on here recently, and haven’t been building anything in a while, but I wanted to say something about Bricks by the Bay which is coming up in just over a week.
This is our annual Northern California LEGO convention, and I’m the president of the nonprofit that organizes it. It’s coming up at the Santa Clara Convention Center from August 6-9, 2015. We’ve been super busy over the past few months getting all the planning and preparations done, and I haven’t had much time for anything else.
The theme this year is “Monsters” and we’ve got a great event kit which is a dragon designed by Charles Esseltine, and I’m preparing the instructions for building it as we speak. We have a great Guest of Honor this year, Alice Finch from Seattle who is bringing down her collaborative build with ArchLUG, the World of Mouse Guard, and giving a keynote speech. We also have a speech by Megan Rothrock, author of the LEGO Adventure Book series on Thursday night, and one by Tim Courtney of LEGO IDEAS on Saturday.
Convention registration closes this Friday, July 31st, so get your badge now! We will be open to the public on the last day, Sunday, August 9, for a Public Exhibition, so if you can’t make it for the whole weekend at least drop by to see the show.
More information, including convention registration and public day tickets, can be found on our website, http://www.bricksbythebay.com.