An Interview, A Presentation and An Update

Over at A Look at LEGO podcast, a friend of mine, Paul Janssen was interviewed about building the Ohio State University horseshoe... I haven't seen it in person yet, but I know it's a monster build.  I vaguely remember when he announce to the LUG that he was going to build it, so it was nice to reminisce.

Thinking about monster LEGO buildings reminded me of a presentation that I gave at BrickMagic '10, on Building Commissions.  I had uploaded it to BrickBuildr, but under the 'downloads' section, I guess I forgot to add a link -- it's there now.

I should update the presentation a little, there's more information I could add, now that we've completed the Miami Children's Hospital build... updated photos of the model, a small picture gallery of source images, a quick snapshot of architecture drawings we used, etc., to give a rough idea of the process we go through for building a large model.  It sounds like a similar process Paul went through to build the horseshoe, but he was a one man builder, whereas we had 4 builders.

On a side note, our LUG is getting ready for Star Wars Celebration VI.  Which means I've been a slacker, and only have a few weeks left to build.  :)  I've started on project if you haven't seen it in my Flickr stream -- I'm a little further along than what's pictured here, but not much...

If you're going to be in town for Star Wars Celebration, give us a shout out.

Orlando Attractions Magazine - Episode 21

brickbuilder711 has shared a video with me:



From about 9:44 to about 17:15 is the segment on the newly remodeled LEGO Imagination Center in Orlando, FL.  Some of my pictures don't do the new store justice, but this interview with Justin Tripp, VP of LEGO Retail Stores, does a great job summing up the changes to the newly reopened Orlando store.

Orlando's LEGO Imagination Center

IMG_2296,
originally uploaded by thumat2002.

Todd Thuma uploaded some pictures of the remodel to the Orlando LEGO Imagination Center to his Flickr account -- taken last weekend. As you can see, progress is coming along.

Festival of the Masters

IMG_0998,
originally uploaded by thumat2002.

Festival of the Masters was this past weekend (Nov. 12-14) -- this happens annually at the LEGO Imagination Center in Orlando, FL. This year our group's theme was "Memorable Movie Moments".  This year, my wife created a Cinderella castle MOC (I helped a little), complete with a ballroom, glass slipper, and smashed pumpkin carriage.

Joe Meno's gallery
Todd Thuma's gallery
Legoriki's gallery
My gallery

BrickFair

BrickFair,
originally uploaded by ((Primus)).

So BrickFair is this weekend in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, we can't make it -- no vacation time and GFLUG has a little event of our own soon called Star Wars Celebration V, here in Orlando, the following weekend.

If you happen to be going to Celebration V, drop me a line or swing by our display and introduce yourself.

iPaB Update Form

Haven't had time to update the web-site lately... I've added some missing parts to the iPaB database today & with the help from Moctagon Jones, the Orlando LEGO Imagination Center's PaB has been update.  There are now inventory from a total of 21 LEGO stores and their PaB walls on-line... The sad thing is, only a few of them have been updated in the last few months, or even updated at all.


In other news, Moctagon Jones came up with a low-tech device (in the form of a speadsheet) to update the iPaB wall.  So with his permission, download the iPaB update form. Print it out, take it to your local LEGO store, write down the parts description/color, then update iPaB!  


And again, if you don't find your local LEGO store, send me a Flickr mail letting me know the dimensions of your LEGO store's PaB and I'll get it added ASAP!

Brickfair & Mini MegaCon this Weekend

Brickfair swag,
originally uploaded by jmenomeno.

Joe Meno has started posting pictures to Flickr from BrickFair. Yeah! I am blown away the with the number of registered attendees to BrickFair... all I can say, it will be crazy, busy, plastic fun convention... Wish I could be there.

The reason for not being in DC this weekend? GFLUG will be displaying at (Mini) MegaCon this weekend. Can't let my mates down. :) This Mini MegaCon is a smaller show (the bigger show is in spring). It's a geek convention -- comics, artists, actors, models, wrestlers, robotics, anime, LARPers, gamers, etc. It's a fun mix of people watching & gawking -- there's lots of cos-players there as well.

I'll be posting pictures all weekend from the display -- a mix of LEGO and geekness. Oh and so will Joe. :)

LEGO Family

Family,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

The LEGO family statues at the Orlando LEGO Imagination Center has been moved from it's previous location to the far edge of the store, nearest the World of Disney store... I think this was to better help the flow of traffic -- there's always a constant flow of people around these statues, taking pictures of family members along side of LEGO family. The dogs are also a source of wonder in their life-like detail, that seem to fascinate anyone who has never seen them.

If you didn't know this, in each round window at the LIC is a 2-D scene of some popular cities from around the world -- Hong Kong, New York City, London, Paris, Moscow, etc. In each window, there's a miniland scale version of the LEGO family in each window, doing some wacky things. Look for them during your next trip to the Orlando LEGO Imagination Center.

LEGO Handcuffs?

LEGO Handcuffs?,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

Sorry... I thought this was a strange thing to find at the LEGO store --LEGO handcuffs... just wrong on so many levels.

In other news, the LEGO Imagination Center in Orlando now has new name key chains in stock. It has printed printed 1x1 round black bricks. Haven't figure out what I'm going to do with them yet, but they're neat.

LEGO Pirate Battleship

My LEGO Pirate Battleship,
originally uploaded by mhuffman.

So a little horn blowing... Over the weekend, my LEGO club, GFLUG, had a display at MegaCon in Orlando, FL. It was crazy fun to say the least. Anyway, for the show, I decided to add something to the LEGO gaming area -- my version of LEGO Pirate Battleship. I wanted it to be table top sized and micro-scaled... so two people could sit down and play it and lots of people could stand around it to watch. The size was right, but the micro-scaled didn't happen -- ran out of time to build between work and life. Anyway, it was functional -- a few kids had fun playing it.

Video from Festival of the Masters '08

Festival of the Masters '08
Originally uploaded by mhuffman

So I was off-loading some pictures from our digital camera earlier today and found a short video that I took from GFLUG's display at Festival of the Masters (Nov. 2008) out side the LEGO Imagination Center in Orlando, FL. It give you an idea of the crowd, and how large our display is... and to be honest, it was a light crowd; last year was much bigger.

It's a great show. Most people are there on vacation & are amazed at our "art". Our theme that was "Transportation: Past, Present & Beyond", so we have jet packs, trains, planes, cars, ships, tanks, spaceships, etc.

Enjoy!

Happy Holidays

LEGO
Originally uploaded by postpac

It's Christmas Eve. Everyone should be opening the last of their advent calendars... I've been following and enjoying MisaQa's "Mythical Creatures" advent calendar... this is the third year I've followed MisaQa and look forward to it every year. And speaking of advent calendars, I saw on BrickSet's RSS feed today that there will be a #6299 Pirate Advent Calendar next year??? Let's just hope LEGO doesn't screw it up next year and not ship them to the US like they did with the #7979 Castle Advent Calendar! I bought my two and I'm jonesing for another one.

Was surfing around Flickr looking for something to blog about and stumbled across this Christmas LEGO display. I really wish I knew some of the history behind it -- I don't think I've seen anything on this scale in the US, except the there's a similar LEGO Santa at the Orlando LIC... And I'm starting to wonder what they'll do with the LEGO Santa after the holidays (put it in storage, ship it back to HQ, or something else).

Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Festival of the Masters

My LEGO club, the Greater Florida LEGO Users Group (or GFLUG for short), will be displaying our LEGO creations at Downtown Disney by the LEGO Imagination Center store November 9-11, 2007, from 10am – 5pm daily for Festival of the Masters. This year’s theme is ‘Vs.’ as in Spy vs. Spy (from Mad comics), Robots vs. Aliens, Giant Spiders vs. Tanks, etc.

Here’s some pictures from last year’s display.

Come out, there’s fun for the whole family. Chalk artist on the sidewalks, art booths everywhere, and LEGO.

Festival of the Masters Video

Joe Meno just posted a video from our LEGO display the Festival of the Masters event in front of the LEGO Imagination Center in Downtown Disney, Orlando.

Festival of the Masters

Joe Meno dropped in Wednesday night for this weekend's LEGO display at the Festival of the Masters over at Downtown Disney. We stopped by the LIC & picked up some of the new mosaic sets... spent part of the nights Wednesday & Thursday coming up with Disney related mini-mosaics to add to our display -- WARNING: the new mosaic sets are addicting; I bought my 4th set last night.

I had lots of fun with this display. I was overwhelmed by the number of people that stopped by. And floored by the quality of artwork by the chalk artist up the way from us. Erika & I walked from one end to the other taking the sites in -- this is the first FotM show that we've attended.

If you're in Florida, try to make it to the LIC store in Downtown Disney. Our group, GFLUG, has put on a LEGO display for this weekend... Come check us out.

Ugh!

Back from vacation and I'm ready for another one... Work has been crazy again... Got my shipment from Lego Imagination Center today... I should post some picts of my shipment... In the mean time, I only took a few pictures this vacation that's public viewable; most of the pictures we took were of the wedding.

This pictures is of the Pick-A-Brick wall. Tried using it as a computer background... it's a little busy. Maybe next time, I'll take a few 'artistic' shots of the PAB wall... if they don't kick me out of the store.