Cat Burglar Sculpture

Name of Model: Up to no good.

Created by: Ryan McNaught (The BrickMan)

Found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanmcnaught/17403430781/

Details: Minifig sculptures are an interesting genre - you can build them at so many different scales, and with so many different techniques, but it still seems like most people just copy set 3723. Increasingly, the official sculptures that LEGO uses for promotional purposes seem to be getting increasingly cartoony, with dimensions and angles that look less like actual LEGO pieces and more like something out of a LEGO-branded video game. It's an interesting aesthetic that I suspect we'll see leaking into fan-created builds over time, but so far seems to be used primarily by professionals. One advantage of Ryan McNaught's status as a LEGO Certified Professional in Australia is that his model shop is LEGO's preferred method of making official promotional sculptures in Australia (this doesn't happen in most of the world, but it's an advantage of being on a continent without other model shops or certified professionals). Because of this, official designs for sculpted large minifigures have been trickling out on Ryan's Flickr photostream for some time now. They're not all necessarily built or designed by Ryan, but they're all built in his studio. You can see a few more characters under his legominifig tag and legocity tag, or, say, in any of these photos. There aren't too many photos of any particular model, but the models themselves are nice, with appropriate details and sculptural technique. It's worth taking a look and browsing through his photostream.

Brickvention 2011 Round-Up

Name of Event: Brickvention 2011

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

Details: Australia's big LEGO convention was the weekend of January 15th and 16th this year. Lots of people went, lots of LEGO models were displayed, lots of people took photos, and now we will round lots of them up: Brickset recap Brothers Brick recap Intrastella's flickr photos Time Prowler's flickr photos Brickvention flickr pool Brickvention 2011 flickr pool "Interest building quickly as the lego" article in the "Herald Sun" Modelbuildingsecrets's Weblog recap (focusing on the Love Boat) Brothers Brick covers the "LEGO Ararat in 1972" layout "The older kids on the block" article in "Brisbanetimes.com.au" Shannon Ocean's MOCPages report: part 1 part 2 There's already some overlap there, but since so many of these links in turn link to more photos, we've probably gotten everything covered.

"On the Loose" Displays in Sydney, Australia

Name of Model: On the Loose

Created by LEGO master builders

Found at: http://myfun.com.au/on-the-loose/

Details: The details seem a bit hazy (I'm still not sure when this event ends - I've seen conflicting dates but nothing official), but it appears that there is are two large, long-term LEGO displays going on in Sydney, Australia - one at the Sydney Aquarium and another at Sydney Wildlife World. I'm not sure how this snuck in under our radar, but apparently these models have been "on the loose" since December 22nd, 2010. Long story short: there's a need to round-up photos of great sculptures: Stobbsc (Christopher Sobbs)'s flickr photos Wanderer and Wonderer's flickr photos News.com.au article Eeks! A mouse . . . blog post (includes some photos) Photo above by Stobbsc (Christopher Sobbs).

BrickVention 2010 Coming This Week!

Australia's LEGO convention is happening again this year. As with most of these events, there's a convention for AFOL's (in addition to the portion of the event open to the public), but here's the flyer for Sunday's public expo: BrickVention has been going on for a few years now. We've previously highlighted the event in 2008 and 2009. Reprising my clever trick of announcing this event and using photos from previous years of this event as a Sunday "model" (from 2008), I'm really pointing you towards the photos from previous events on the official website as today's model of the day.

Brickvention 2006

Name of Model: Brickvention 2006

Created by: BrickVentures

Found at: http://www.brickventures.com/index.php/Brickvention-2006.html

Details: There are a number of great models to be seen on the website of BrickVention 2006. BrickVentures has scheduled another BrickVention for later this month - if you are in Melbourne, Australia, you really should try to check it out. The BrickVentures website mentioned above includes info on this year's event, which will be held from 25th January through 27th January. The photos at the link above are from the 2006 event (I suspect it will be mostly things built more recently at this year's event). The thumbnail above features 2006's best-in-show winner, Aaron A's "Micro Melbourne"

This is Sunday's model of the day

Wind Turbine Follow-Up

There is an update on the working wind turbine models posted at Brickley's Words.

Australian Wind Turbine Competition

Today's "model" is actually just this wind turbine competition. For more information, please see this post at Brickley's Words.