LEGO Fan Weekend (Skærbæk) Round-Up

Name of Event: LEGO Fan Weekend 2014

Found at: http://www.fanweekend.dk/

Details: This year's LEGO Fan weekend event in Skærbæk, Denmark was announced to be the last, just weeks before the event. Being both a fairly official event and the last event of its kind, the usual issues of precedent and favoring one event above others didn't apply - so LEGO bigwigs Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and Jorgen Vig Knudstorp were able to meet with some of the 350 exhibitors (from 24 different countries) and 2300+ public visitors. As an added bonus, the participating exhibitors also received an exclusive run of this year's Inside Tour set. Word is that the event will actually happen again next year, but as a fan-run event instead of an event LEGO runs for the fans. It should be interesting to see what that means for the future of the event, since it appears that most of the seminars for exhibitors at this year's event were run by LEGO employees. Now that we're back to rounding up events that none of our contributors personally attended, we've got coverage of this event: Mr. Tomato Bread's Flickr photos Community Team Blog: The Last LEGO Fan Weekend (event coverage) Community Team Blog: The Last LEGO Fan Weekend (announcement) Bill Ward has both uploaded photos to Flickr and blogged about the event. Cassiebsg's Brickshelf Gallery Gianni Bassini's Flickr photos The photo used above was taken by Bill Ward and shows a recurring miniland-scale layout by Stephan Sander.

San Diego Comic Con 2014 Round-Up

Name of Event: San Diego Comic Con International

Found at: http://www.comic-con.org/

Details: It's been a little too long since I've rounded up an event I didn't personally attend. July's San Diego Comic Con International is an enormous event that attracts an unreasonable amount of media attention, so rather than try to find everything, I'll focus on grabbing the LEGO-related coverage. While there's still plenty of that out there, my understanding is that the event itself isn't conducive to the sort of in-depth LEGO photos I like to see. If you've got a highlight we missed, let us know in the comments or by sending us an e-mail. IdleHandsBlog's Flickr photos (somehow, the blog these photos are tied to doesn't seem to have a dedicated post for LEGO coverage). StarWars.com: MASSIVE LEGO STAR WARS 15TH ANNIVERSARY MINIFIGURE CASE – SPECIAL PREVIEW! FBTB: LEGO Connect App LEGO Systems Unveils New Products, Experiences and Exclusives at San Diego Comic-Con MTV Reveals 75084 Wookie Gunship, Rebels’ Chopper Statue LEGO Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Statue to Debut at Comic Con Stay Puft Marshmallow Man On Display More Pictures of 79018 The Lonely Mountain Set LEGO Smaug Statue Details The Statues of The LEGO Booth The LEGO Star Wars Minifigure Gallery LEGO Batcycle Sculpture Allen "Tormentalous" Tran at The Brick Fan was in attendance and covered the event (and the announcements leading up to it) rather thoroughly in real time. Here are some of the highlights: POP! The Art of the Geek Exhibit at San Diego Comic Con 2014 San Diego Comic Con 2014 LEGO DC Comic Book Image Full LEGO Booth Details at San Diego Comic Con 2014 The LEGO Movie Unikitty SDCC 2014 Exclusive Minifigure LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Panel at SDCC 2014 A Look at Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary Panel at SDCC 2014 (Note: this is about the documentary film and not related to our favorite YouTube channel) The LEGO Movie Panel at SDCC 2014 San Diego Comic Con 2014 LEGO Recap He also took the photo shown above and about 200 more great photos (on Flickr), including close-ups of the four exclusive minifigures he was able to acquire. Rather impressively, LEGO and CREATACOR have put out official coverage of their presence at SDCC this year as well: CREATACOR's Flickr photos More of CREATACOR's Flickr photos CREATACOR blog post LEGO Press Release We've previously rounded up coverage of LEGO events at SDCC in 2010.

CharacterCentral Takes on LEGOLAND Billund

Photos by: PeterPanFan and Disney Dan from Character Central

Found at: http://www.charactercentral.net/B3666_LEGOLANDTripReportBillundTheTownthatLEGOBuilt.aspx and on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterpanfan1953/tags/LEGOLAND%20Billund%20Resort/ and https://www.flickr.com/photos/theverynk/sets/72157646618885782

Details: Recently, PeterPanFan and Disney Dan from Character Central made the trip out to Billund to take in the original LEGOLAND park and surrounding area. Being seasoned Disney theme park reporters (seriously, their site has more information about the various Disney attractions than I could ever make myself read), they had a bit of an advantage in knowing how to take decent photos of the displays - usually I end up highlighting features from Miniland when I blog about park photos, but these guys knew to get photos of the sign at the LEGOLAND Hotel, ceilings, detailed mice on rides, a Pick-A-Brick wall, themed characters, corporate-sponsored buildings, shopping and displays at the airport, the promo area for the LEGO house, the viking dragon, the dragon in the hotel lobby (every hotel needs one), the hotel bathroom, the Friends minidoll-scaled display, the train as it drives behind miniland, the wildlife, an arctic helicopter sculpture, DUPLO sculptures, external signage, and of course, Miniland. This isn't quite a full guided tour, but it's probably the closest thing we've seen to it. Now if only they could take more close-ups of Miniland... Oh, they did get a few of those too. Here's a wampa from Hoth in Miniland Star Wars, some rock climbers, a Coke truck, the Acropolis (Wikipedia), an interesting angle of Kennedy Space Center's rocket garden (Wikipedia), Neuschwanstein Castle (Wikipedia), Osaka Castle (Wikipedia), Nyhavn (Wikipedia), Amalienborg (Wikipedia), and even a LEGO Truck Show from the late 90's. I could probably comb through these photos even more thoroughly and find even more highlights, but I'm a bit short on time to keep researching this. These may be the most complete current look at the Billund park we've seen yet. Disney Dan has 529 photos on Flickr. PeterPanFan looks to have a few hundred photos on Flickr, but I don't have an exact count since they're organized by tag instead of by album/set. The photo featured above is this one by Disney Dan.

BrickCon 2014

Name of Event: BrickCon 2014

Found at: http://brickcon.org/

Details: BrickCon is this weekend! I (Dan) have all of 14 hours to finish packing before I leave for the airport! Who needs sleep? There are more MOCs to build! This year's theme is "Invasion", and that's why it's finally time for LMOTD to "invade" by making an appearance there this year. Although I actually used to live within driving distance of this convention, I never attended because I was in my teens at the time and BrickCon didn't allow anyone under 18 to participate in the full convention. Seriously, I still have the flyer from when they tried to advertise at a free event LEGO was running. Although BrickCon is still a needlessly exclusive event (seriously, why does anyone think LEGO events should exclude the people who have the most time to spend with the brick?), I've since aged to the point where I'd be allowed to attend - and more importantly, I've been convinced to go so I can see the birthplace of Mini LEGO Con. In spite of this being a smaller event (roughly 500 attendees, compared with nearly 1,000 at BrickFair Virginia or Brickworld Chicago), there are actually quite a few noteworthy builders attending, so it sounds like a promising show. Public hours are from 10-4 on Saturday, October 4th, and 9-3 on Sunday, October 5th. Find me there and you can get your hands on one of our 2x2 LMOTD tiles. I'll add our usual round up of coverage of the event to this post after the event has passed. This was a great event - in spite of the smaller size, BrickCon has roughly the same concentration of talent as some of the larger conventions, so there's still plenty of great LEGO creations to take in and exciting people to meet. Here's our round-up, still in the early phases as of this writing (10/10/2014): My (Dan's) photos are on Flickr. pasukaru76 highlighted Star Vikings at BrickCon 2014 (on Flickr). pasukaru76's general BrickCon 2014 photos on Flickr Lino's Flickr photos The Brothers Brick wrap-up Nannan's Flickr photos brickstuff's Flickr photos BrickCon Flickr pool Proudlove's Flickr photos legotanks' Flickr photos Lonnon Foster's Flickr photos Bill Ward's Brickpile's Flickr photos and blog post Sean Edmison's Flickr photos

BrickFair Virginia 2014 Round-Up

Name of Event: BrickFair Virginia 2014

Found at: http://www.brickfair.com/

Details: This was an absolutely fantastic event this year - as always - and I'm going to probably write much more about it over the next few months. I'm still recovering from what was an amazing and exhausting 7 days (yes, 7) at BrickFair Virginia. It could take weeks for me to process everything that happened there, and I could write pages of thank yous to everyone involved who helped to make it a magical experience. I recently finished uploading my photos to Flickr. There are fewer than 4,000 this year, which we should all consider a scandalous disappointment. Personally, I love this event too much - between the giant exact-map Mini Con layout and the 4 games/seminars I was in charge of, I spent most of the event running around setting things up. I didn't have time to photograph everything, and I actually never properly worked out where I needed to add an additional magnet to my badge (I ended up not wearing it much because I needed to make sure it didn't fall off). The photo to the left is from Joe "Unhalfbricking" Miserendino of this year's Micropolis collaboration, after the invasion of some Exo-Suit sets. Micropolis is always a large fixture at BrickFair Virginia, but the decreasing popularity of the micropolis standard at other events means that BrickFair Virginia now represents the largest ongoing Micropolis display at a convention. As always, if you have or know of photos or other coverage of BrickFair Virginia 2014 that I don't have here (I'm sure there's something I'm missing - I'm starting with fewer links than usual in the interest of not putting this off any longer), feel free to mention it in the comments or send an e-mail to legomodeloftheday@gmail.com so that we can add it here. my (Dan's) Flickr photos JustJon's Flickr photos Black Six's Flickr photos Kreativ Snail's Flickr photos Bob Hayes' Flickr photos ajfeist's Flickr photos TJJohn12's Flickr photos DJ Quest's Flickr photos and videos Official BrickFair Flickr group (goes back to 2008) AgeOwns.com's Flickr photos ajfeist's Flickr photos BrickFair 2014 Flickr Group (130 photos as 9/1/2014) ToaMeiko's Flickr photos Brickset posted about the event shortly beforehand. ExclusivelyPlastic (Caleb L.)'s Flickr photos Bosta's Flickr photos bhrome's Flickr photos and videos Rob Bender Cale Leiphart's Flickr photos Beyond the Brick's Joshua Hanlon finally made it out to BFVA and BTB actually have published their own playlist of videos by made Beyond the Brick at BrickFair VA 2014 - but before they went, Josh and Matthew interviewed the event organizer (Todd Webb) and a frequent volunteer who plays a role in coordinating some collaborations (John Rudy). Interview with Todd Webb Interview with John Rudy Beyond the Brick Guided Tour (2.5 hrs) playlist of shorter on-site videos (including 12 more that I haven't singled out here) Beyond the Brick's Flickr photos EDWW day_dae (esteemedhelga)™'s Flickr photos are split into multiple sets this year: Pre-Show & Showtime BrickFair VA LEGO 2014 BrickFair VA LEGO 2014 I BrickFair VA LEGO 2014 II BrickFair VA LEGO 2014 III The Fox 5 videos seem to be a bit better this year, although their anchors still keep trying to put an 'S' at the end of LEGO and pretend that's a real word. My understanding is that there were four segments aired live Sunday morning, although only two appear to be online: 7:20 AM: Mini Con interview with Mariann Asanuma and Daniel Pikora (hey, we know those two!) 8:40 AM: Charity minifigures interview with Ben Spector 6:24 PM: Evening recap Fox 5's Kellee Azar also gave BrickFair some positive coverage on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KelleeAzarFox5/status/496374700570705920 https://twitter.com/KelleeAzarFox5/status/495916112291594240 https://twitter.com/KelleeAzarFox5/status/495888337677586432 We also rounded up coverage of BrickFair Virginia in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. I'm not sure why 2012 was skipped - I still intend to catch up on BrickFair 2013.

Brickworld Chicago 2014 Round-Up

Name of Event: Brickworld Chicago 2014

Found at: http://www.brickworld.us/

Details: For the second year in a row, LMOTD made it out to Brickworld Chicago. Technically speaking, back in 2013 we were still trying to merge with Beyond the Brick, so we skipped rounding up coverage last year in favor of video work (Matthew) and behind-the-scenes efforts for the aborted site (Dan). I may try to do a proper round-up of BW13 at some point, but for now I'm focusing on 2014. In the interest of being competitive, I did not take enough photos to beat my record from last year, but I did seem to take more than any other individual. I don't know if that counts as winning, but it's a start. It's weirdly satisfying knowing that I ended up missing a few of the MOCs because I was too busy enjoying rare opportunities to catch up with friends from previous events. Another nice thing for many of us is that the amount of high-profile people who showed up this time around and don't always make it (the west-coasters in particular had a huge presence this time) turned this into more of a networking event than in prior years - it was great getting to meet many of you that I previously only knew from online. Pictured to the left: the spectacular Micro-GARC Brickworld Grand Prix was not just a highlight of the event, but perhaps the most successful online community collaboration ever, with dozens of excellent models being put in a side area because of overwhelming participation. Usually you see group layouts find creative ways to work around low participation - this was the first time I've ever seen extra space required to fit excess models. This photo of part of the layout is by Cale Leiphart. As always, if you have or know of photos or other coverage of Brickworld 2014 that I don't have here (I'm sure there's something I'm missing), feel free to mention it in the comments or send an e-mail to legomodeloftheday@gmail.com so that we can add it here. My (Dan's) Flickr photos Brickapolis (Matthew)'s Flickr photos Beyond the Brick's Flickr photos (most descriptions have links to their videos on YouTube, including the keynote address and a tour, as well as interviews - which they're actually still editing and uploading) Nick Brick's Flickr photos: day 1, day 2, World of Lights, day 3, & day 4. Kevin Hinkle's Flickr photos CEE Team Blog Event Recap RedCoKid's Flickr photos Cecilie Fritzvold Flickr photos hinckley39's Flickr photos Joe Meno's Flickr photos: setup, World of Lights, 1, 2 Bill Ward's Flickr photo album and (blog post) Cale Leiphart's Flickr photos The official Brickworld Flickr pool SavaTheAggie's Flickr photos blackpony72's Flickr photos We also rounded up coverage of Brickworld Chicago in 2010 and 2011. Some housekeeping sidenotes: Yes, we still intend to round up coverage of other events, in particular BrickFair Virginia 2013, BrickFair Alabama 2014, and BrickFair New England 2014, because I (Dan) loved all of those and continue to be active with BrickFair as an event volunteer (please join us in Virginia later this month!). Also, I've decided to back off of trying to keep track of the official Flickr jargon - from here on out, we'll just refer to a grouping of photos on Flickr as "Flickr photos" (rather than "photoset", "set", "collection", or "album", since these seem to change).

Mini LEGO Con

Name of Model: Mini LEGO Con

Created by various people, see below

Found at (semi-official Flickr group): https://www.flickr.com/groups/2318936@N22/

Details: As I hinted at earlier, there's a big project I've been involved with for a while now that I am really excited to share with everyone. That project is Mini LEGO Con - in short, a miniland scale model of a LEGO convention. This is a massive group layout that you can expect to see at many LEGO conventions (and other conventions, too!) in the years to come. Mini LEGO Con was first displayed at BrickCon 2012 by Steve Oakes (BrickCon Microscale coordinator) and Mariann Asanuma (former LEGOLAND Master Model Builder). Mariann brought Mini Con to other events throughout 2013 (BricksCascade, Emerald City Comic Con, BrickWorld, BrickFair VA, Bricks by the Bay, BrickCon). After BrickFair VA, BrickFair coordinator Todd Webb decided to make Mini Con a part of BrickFair going forward, and purchased the parts required to assemble the layout at future conventions. Most notably, Todd decided to change the layout from being a caricature of a convention to being an exact match - at BrickFair, the baseplates and tables are set up in the same layout as the convention itself. Back at BrickFair Alabama 2014, I (Dan) assembled the miniland-scale (roughly 1:20) tables, chairs, and stanchions for use at BrickFair events, the next of which will be in Manchester, New Hampshire, this upcoming weekend (public hours are May 10th & May 11th, 2014, 11:00am - 4:00pm, we'd love to see you there!). If you've registered to participate, you should make sure to bring a miniland-scale version of yourself and microscale versions of the models you're bringing (BrickFair provides the bare bones of the layout, so you shouldn't need to pack your own mini tables and mini stanchions). If you're attending as public, you're in for a real treat, as this enormous layout will completely match the map of the convention (and should be filled in even more than the layout in Alabama earlier this year). Can't make it to New Hampshire next weekend? BrickFair will also be in Virginia (July 30th-August 3rd) and New Jersey (October 30th-November 2nd), and similar, smaller layouts (without BrickFair's backing) should be appearing at BrickWorld Chicago (June 11th-15th) and BrickCon (October 2nd-5th). We're hoping this catches on more generally as a theme and a building standard for group layouts at LEGO events (like moonbase or the Cafe Corner standard). I've started a Flickr group to make it easier to find ideas, inspiration, and displays related to this theme. For blogging purposes here, we're mostly talking about LEGO conventions, but these displays are also a hit at Comic and Sci-Fi conventions (think: minilanders in costume as their favorite characters) and I intend to expand to Maker Faires this year as well. The Flickr group discussions include an attempt at a list of all Mini Con events.

GFLUG Moonbase at MegaCon 2014

Name of Model: MegaCon 2014 Moonbase

Created by: GFLUG and "Orange LUG"

Found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/moctagon/sets/72157638835134784 (and more - see roundup below)

Details: Last weekend, I was out at MegaCon 2014 with GFLUG, "Orange LUG", and the Bonahooms (of BrickWorld fame, there promoting the upcoming BrickWorld Tampa event). The main group build was a Moonbase-themed display, although it ended up being more "moon" than proper, standard-meeting Moonbase. In spite of my post here about the moonbase standard being the top Google result for "Moonbase Standard", I had actually never built a moonbase module before - something I rectified with an Alien Conquest-themed build (not itself worth featuring here, although I'm happy with how the corridors came out). There were other MOCs on display as well - many small things, a large train display, a LEGO-movie themed section, a fantastic twist on the Great Ball Contraption concept, and many MOCs based on various movies and television shows. You can see all of those in the coverage roundup below. ...but you probably shouldn't. You should go build some moonbase modules, right now. Moonbase isn't dead! Moonbase is easy! Moonbase is fun! You should build moonbase! Go, now, stop reading this and build some moonbase! Coverage Roundup (trying to focus on LEGO-oriented coverage - there are some "interesting" cosplayers at this event, be warned that you're likely to see something Not Safe For Work in the background if you dig too far): Moctagon Jones' Flickr photos my (danny316p's) Flickr photos Orlando Weekly slideshow BrickRabbitt's Flickr photos (added 4/25) Todd Thuma's Flickr photos (added 5/5) As always, if you know of photos or other coverage I should have here and don't, you can leave a note in the comments or e-mail us at legomodeloftheday@gmail.com