BrickCon 2012

The following is a preliminary version of the article about BrickCon that I'm doing for HispaBrick Magazine.

Fun!

I have been a bit slow getting to the BrickCon mosaics.  They'll be coming along, I promise.  But first, here is a BrickCon entry from a different category:  The "Fun Haus" by Paul Hetherington (Brickbaron) was awarded the "Best in Town" award this year.  I know it was in the town category, but look at all the mosaic work!  It's fantastic.

Here's a close-up of the snake mosaic: 

 

 

Check out the ornamentation on the side of the building:

 

Here is a photo of the "Day of the Dead" flower mosaic on the ground, without the rest of the model:

 

 I love how precisely those butterflies fit together. 

 

 

Here's a close-up of another small bit of ornamentation:

 

 

 

The rotational symmetry makes my heart happy.  When I grow up, I want to build like Paul!  ;-)

P.S.  It moves!

BrickCon Presentation

I've been busy preparing for BrickCon (instead of working on updating this blog).  I'm giving a presentation on how to make cheese slope mosaics on Sunday morning.  I have posted the PowerPoint part of the presentation online.  You can find it here:  https://dl.dropbox.com/u/74076182/Cheese%20slope%20mosaics%20power%20point.pptx

Let me kinow if it doesn't work out right. 

Last spring Heather Braaten, a talented AFOL, passed away.  I didn't really know her, but I loved the doll house she brought to my first BrickCon.  She also founded the FFOL Brick Chick group on flickr, which was made to help encourage female builders in a predominantly male hobby.  It was nice to be able to connect with some other "Brick Chicks" through that group. 

Some of Heather's SEALUG friends are planning a mosaic to commemorate her.  The mosaic will be mostly built at BrickCon, and then given to her family.  Lino M. has a very descriptive post about the project on flickr, which I will copy here.  (Just realize that updates to the parts needed will be made on the flickr page, so be sure to check there if you are planning on donating anything.)

Here is Lino's post:

 

Heather Memorial Project

Hello friends.

 

As many of you may know, Heather Braaten had passed away this past March. She was a LEGO convention staple and a friend to many, both in and out of the LEGO community. Her loss was felt throughout the LEGO world as blogs, publications, and websites mourned her passing, including Brothers-Brick, Bricklink, Model Building Secrets, and Eurobricks. Even the LEGO Corporation paid their respects to such a vivacious and dynamic individual. She was a talented builder, a graphic designer, a wife and mother, a close friend...and, as I can personally attest, a formidable Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit player.

 

If you haven’t already, you may join the Heather Braaten Group here on flickr to post any Heather related photos you might have, engage in discussions, and to remember her as she lived.

Robert Frost and I are the founders of The Heather Memorial Project. Our goal is to present a large LEGO mosaic of the above image to Heather’s family at BrickCon 2012 this coming October, but we need your help. The mosaic dimensions measure 40x50 inches, using twenty 10x10in. baseplates or 20,480 studs. It will be an interactive project, allowing convention attendees the opportunity to actually participate in the building of this mosaic and to write personal sentiments to Heather and her family. While the brunt of the work will be done at BrickCon by the attendees, the mosaic mapping, planning and collection of funds and materials rests on our shoulders. BrickCon is just around the corner and while generous donations have already provided all twenty baseplates, most of the inner structure and all the pink plates we will need, there is still plenty left to do. More donations are needed to purchase project supplies. Any extra funding at the end of the project (and we hope for extra) will be donated to Heather’s family, or a charity of their choice, at BrickCon or shortly after. If you’d like to donate to help the project along, you may at our pay pal account: heather_memorial_project@comcast.net.

 

Another great way to help is to donate LEGO plates (not bricks), either from your own collection or through orders. Its been suggested that it might be fun to “sponsor a color”, and I wholeheartedly agree. The plates still needed are listed below and quantities will be changed or crossed out once these plates are acquired.

 

300 1x1 plates white
200 2x2 plates white
100 L-shaped plates white
40 1x1 plates tan
50 1x1 plates dark tan
50 L-shaped plates dark tan
500 1x1 plates medium blue
300 L-shaped plates medium blue
100 2x2 plates medium blue
50 2x4 plates medium blue
500 1x1 plates blue
300 L-shaped plates blue
300 2x2 plates blue
16 4x12 plates blue
100 2x3 plates blue
30 1x1 plates yellow
300 1x1 plates green
200 1x1 bricks dark green
200 1x2 plates dark green
200 1x3 plates dark green
100 2x2 plates dark green
500 1x1 plates light grey
200 L-shaped plates light grey
200 1x1 plates dark grey
200 1x2 plates dark grey
 

If you can donate any of these LEGO plates, please let us know either here or in our flickr inboxes and we will notify you where to send them. Whether you donate funds, plates, or both, of course anything you do will be greatly appreciated, but as BrickCon 2012 is quickly approaching the time to act is now. We will find a way to make your donations from you or your organization known...or you may request to donate anonymously as some have already done.

 

Thank you all, in advance, for helping us celebrate a creative builder and dearly missed friend.

 

Take care.

 

Lino Martins and Robert Frost
Heather Memorial Project

Interview: Dave Ware (Brickwares)

Dave Ware, a titan in the mosaic world, has built some awesome mosaics. Over the course of a few days, I was fortunate enough to interview him over the course of a few days about him, his "War of the Worlds" mosaic, and his experience at Brickcon.

Who are you?

"I’m Dave Ware (Brickwares). I’m an AFOL who specializes in LEGO Mosaics. I’m a husband and father. I live in Calgary, Canada, and I work in as a Business/Systems analyst in the Energy industry."

How long have you been into/playing with Lego? Have you ever had a dark age?

"I loved LEGO as a kid, my friend had all of the space sets, and I would play for hours, making mostly the interiors of ships etc. My dark age would be from the usual (13? 14?) until I was about 27, when I saw the Witch’s Windship, and bought it on impulse. Since then, I’ve been collecting sets. I started building mosaics in 2006, after a trip to the local science center with my almost 3 year old son. It was a LEGO Egypt exhibit, and I was fascinated with the map they had built, and wondered if I could make something like that. The answer is “yes”. I started experimenting with colors and designs, and have built around 20 mosaics in the last four years, and have been honored to win the Best Mosaic category at BrickCon in both 2009 and 2010. These days I’m looking at ways of expanding by mosaic building into a side business, trying to find art galleries to hang my pieces in, etc."

How and when did you find the online Lego community?
"I started searching on the web for other mosaics probably in 2006. Early on, I was using MOCpages a lot, but these days I pretty much post my works on my website (brickwares.com), as well as my facebook group and flickr. I’ve made a lot of friends through attending BrickCon the past 2 years, and most of them I stay in touch with through Flickr and facebook. Readingwise, I enjoy Brothers Brick and Eurobricks, and check in daily to see what other people are building. Seriously, the best thing about this hobby is the imagination and creativity that people show, with seemingly no limits."

What themes do you like to build in? (if any?)

"I like building Town stuff, mostly. I’ve been collecting the “Cafe Corner” style sets, and have a nice street made up. I’m trying to learn how to work in that style so that I can make my own buildings, as I’ve been taking a lot of pictures of wonderful style houses in my travels. I also have a soft spot in my heart for the Islanders theme (sub theme of pirates). I can’t explain it, I just really like them."

Ok, now let's move on to your mosaic, "The War of the Worlds."

Where did the inspiration for this mosaic come from?

"Apart from portrait style mosaics, I like to make mosaics of comic book covers, art deco style stuff, and generally iconic images. The important thing to remember about larger scale mosaic building is that you’re going to be working on, and staring at, the image for dozens of hours, so you HAVE to choose subject material that inspires you, something you’re excited about. I had done a classics illustrated comic book cover last year (“To The Stars”,), and found that the comic book covers really have a lot of style and big splashes of color, without being overly intricate. Often I’ll just randomly do Google Image Searches, and also on flickr, to find subjects I think are interesting, and save them to an “idea” folder. I’m a big sci fi fan, as well as a comic book reader, so War of the Worlds was a natural fit. The thing that really grabbed me after I started tinkering with the image was that there were big areas of bold color, which really stand out for me."

The mosaic is absolutely huge! It's one of the biggest I've ever seen. How did you go about designing such a large project?

"It’s big, for sure. I’ve made a couple that were bigger than this, but not many. This past summer for the opening of the first Canadian LEGO brand store, I built a Stampede Poster mosaic that was 7 feet tall by 5 feet wide . And to certain, there are bigger ones out there. The issue you run in to, quickly, is that more baseplates means more brick, and adding a row or column to the mosaic translates to a LOT of brick and time. When I’m trying to sort out how big something needs to be in order to pull the details I need, I always have to keep in mind that adding 1 baseplate in width could translate to an extra 4-5 baseplates worth of brick."

Once it was all designed, how does it stand right side up? Do the bricks connect to baseplates, or do you glue them, or something else?

"The baseplates (X-large) are drilled through, and attached with screws to a piece of 5/8 or ½ inch MDF. I tried plywood in the past, but it bends too easily. There’s a LOT of weight, and it tends to warp the wood quickly. Most people tend to use plate, which would be a lot lighter. I’ve never switched over, I work only in brick. I use everything from 1x1 up to 2x10. I’ve never glued, as that would easily double the time involved, and make the works permanent. That’s fine if it’s for a commission, but with stuff around the house, I generally want to build something else sooner or later, and use the bricks again. Also, it’s LEGO. It won’t fall off or loosen unless lots of people are touching it. For something really public where folks are touching, I’d consider glue."

Were there any other particular challenges that went along with building this mosaic?

"The biggest challenge was one of capacity. I built this for BrickCon 2010, and I wasn’t about to trust it to the airlines, so I knew I’d be driving it, which meant I had to keep the size down to something that would fit in my CR-V. Width-wise I was fine, but it was too tall. I had to remove the top row of16x32 baseplates, and mount those to a separate piece of MDF, and then assemble on site. Recently I installed this piece in a local comic book store, so I had to do it all again. Essentially, there’s a point where big mosaics become all about carpentry!

The other issue I ran into, is that skin color doesn’t translate well in LEGO, so while there is a tan color, it’s not quite right. So for the central gunner in the picture, who was wearing a tank top in the original, I added some camo sleeves to avoid this. Also, there’s a lot of fine detail towards the bottom, so there was some changing and new color choices involved in trying to keep some of the detail."

Next, we're on to Brickcon...

What was your experience at Brickcon 2010 like?

"I had a blast at BrickCon. It’s a great chance to meet other AFOLs, to get inspired about new things, and to see the brilliant creations that people come up with. I made a lot of new friends, and tried out a few new things, like the Speed and Master build challenges. I recommend going to BrickCon, or the other conventions to everyone. Because of the size of the mosaics, and the fragility of them, I end up driving down. It’s a two day trip, but I really enjoyed the whole experience."

Was there a large presence of mosaics there?

"I think there might have been fewer mosaics this year, but the quality was certainly there. There was a beautiful castle mosaic in a very classic style, an Obama “Hope” poster, and a few others."

You also mentioned that you won an award for the War of the World's mosaic which is also your second mosaic award from Brickcon. What was that like? Were you shocked to win again?

I was honored to win the award, it’s always thrilling to be recognized, especially by your peers. While I don’t build the mosaics for BrickCon for awards, it’s certainly a nice pat on the back. Hopefully we can encourage other people to create mosaics for next year.

Do you plan on going to Brickcon next year?

"I’m planning on going. It’s a long time from now till then, but unless something major comes up, I’ll be there."

And lastly...

What does the future hold for Dave Ware?

"Short term, I’m working on displaying my work in local shops and hopefully a gallery. Long term, I’d love to do this for a living. Until then, I’ll keep building things I like, and hopefully others will feel the same way."

Many thanks to Dave Ware for the interview! Even more thanks for your patience! ;-D View all kinds of things about Dave, below:

- Flickr - MOCpages - Website -
- TV Mini-Interview - Facebook Page -

Interview: Katie Walker (eilonwy77)

Katie Walker is a FFOL pioneering the niche of patterns, designs, and stained glass cheese slope windows, developing new and creative designs. Over the course of a few days, I was able to talk with her about herself, her building, and her experience at Brickcon 2010.

Who are you?

"My name is Katie Walker, and I’m 32 years old. I’m married and am currently staying home to deal with the shenanigans of my 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son."

How long have you been in to/playing with Lego?, and have you ever had a dark age?

"I remember playing with DUPLO when I was young. I loved to connect a bunch of the train cars together, and then build houses on top of them, so that my DUPLO people could live entirely on a train. Sometime around my 12th birthday I decided that I really loved Legos (yes! We called them “Legos”! Heresy!) and told everyone to get me Castle and Pirate sets for my birthday and Christmas presents. I spent many a happy afternoon during my early teens building away in my room.

I did have a dark age which essentially started when I left for college. I did bring my LEGO collection with me, and a few times dumped it out on my dorm floor so my friends and I could fiddle around with it. After college, my friends and I re-enacted the song “Space Oddity” with LEGO, including dangling rocket ships over the edge of the loft where my bedroom was. But I think you could say those were just dim points of light in a dark age that lasted till we bought the first DUPLO bricks for my daughter."

How and when did you find the online Lego community?

"In 2008 my husband and I bought our daughter a 33-piece DUPLO set. It became quickly apparent that I couldn’t build anything cool with just 33 pieces. I did some investigating and discovered e-bay, and then BrickLink. It wasn’t long before we’d built up a fairly impressive DUPLO collection. At some point during my attempts to find cheap bricks I became exposed to some of the other LEGO activity on the web. I discovered the existence of LEGO blogs in 2009 and suddenly became aware of how cool LEGO creations could be. I also realized that lots of people posted their pictures on flickr, and I had an account there already. So I started posting our DUPLO pictures, and shortly thereafter created the LEGO DUPLO flickr group.

In the fall of 2009 I got out my “little Legos” (as we call them) to show my daughter. I fiddled with them a bit then, but mostly just came to the sad realization that my “immense” collection was actually teeny-tiny by AFOL standards. It wasn’t till 2010 that I finally bought some more of the smaller bricks and got around to really using them. I feel like that really marked my entrance into the online LEGO community. People started leaving positive comments on my photos, which gave me the confidence to start participating in groups and forums."

What themes do you like to build in?

"The majority of my building thus far has just been about me trying to teach myself how the bricks go together. During this process I’ve come to realize that I’m rather obsessed with patterns and geometric designs. Occasionally I pause from those investigations and make a more official MOC. Those have all fallen in the Castle theme, partly because I really like castles, but also because there are lots of opportunities to display the patterns I discover in a fancy palace."

Now, lets talk about your designs and patterns...

When did the "obsession" with patterns and geometric designs start? Have you always enjoyed them since you were young (or younger), or is this a new thing?

"I’ve been interested in geometric designs off and on since the elementary school art class where I learned that you could make an apparent curve out of straight lines. Over the years I would draw geometric designs, such as the ones seen here. I didn’t really set out to do geometric designs in LEGO, but once I started doing them I found them very compelling."

Did making the designs and patterns come easy to you? Or was there a there a learning curve you had to overcome? Or...has it always been a uphill battle the whole time?

"Making designs and patterns is very easy for me. Often I will be trying to make something non-geometric, but a pattern just somehow comes out instead. It feels a lot like plugging numbers into a formula and having it spit out results. My struggles have been in making something that isn’t obsessively symmetrical; photography has been another challenge for me."


Recently, you've made a "switch" to doing stained glass windows that are made out "cheese slope" pieces, maybe a little more "mosaic" side of your building. What brought these about?

"I was trying to design an intricate floor for a MOC. While working on that design, I came up with the need to somehow fill an empty square which had sides 2.4 studs long. The solution to the problem came through using “cheese slope cubes”, which is just two cheese slopes placed together to form a cube shape. I had to add in some 1x1 plates to make it work, which then sparked some ideas for other cheese slope cube patterns. Then once I had done a few, it seemed like a great idea to try to do them in transparent colors and make them into windows. After a little bit of experimenting, more ornate designs started to develop.

Were these especially challenging, as well?

"Yes! The cheese slopes do not attach to each other; they are all held together by compression and friction. They are rather small to work with, and I often have to use a toothpick to try to finesse them into the right spot. They have a tendency to tip over, and it is a true pain to try to frame them securely enough to stand completed patterns up as windows. Another problem is that cheese slopes are shaped like triangles with one of their points cut off, so a lot of patterns end up with disfiguring gaps where the missing points ought to be. I truly get pains in my neck from working with them! But the results were so lovely that I wanted to keep at it. Besides, challenges can be lots of fun. I do get the urge to scream a little, though, when I have an unprotected window that dislodges and “shatters” to pieces. I didn’t have enough transparent bricks to hold the upper windows of the atrium in place, and one of them did come apart when I was moving it around trying to photograph it. That night I had all sorts of bad dreams about my stained glass windows falling apart and raining down cheese slopes on me."

(Link to the completed atrium: LINK | Link to the back side: LINK )

Do you have a favorite (or especially rewarding) cheese slope stain glass window, or pattern/design of yours?

"I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I haven’t been able to pick out a favorite. What I really like is the sense of discovery, of figuring out how different elements can fit together. I think that’s part of what makes LEGO fun for lots of people: you get the chance to put the bricks together in different ways and see what happens. There are literally an infinite amount of possibilities. At times I feel a bit like a scientist, trying out a certain idea and seeing what happens. Sometimes a particular pattern is especially difficult to figure out, and then I tell myself “I will make this happen!” Then I do feel a bit more rewarded when I finally get it to work."

Over the course of the summer and up 'til now, you've been gaining a lot more notoriety, and I'd say becoming a pioneer in patterns and designs. You've been blogged here, and posted there. What has that experience been like?

"Honestly, the best word that I can think of to describe it is “bizarre”. After the first time I was blogged at The Brothers Brick, I got a ton of views and comments on my flickr account. It was hard to believe that that many people were interested in something I had made. Then I got excited, thinking to myself, “Wow, maybe I’m not that bad at this.” That brief moment of optimism was quickly followed by getting really nervous. I felt like I could never build anything else that would live up to that again. Anything else I made was bound to be a disappointment.


But then after a few days things settled down and my fingers wanted to start moving bricks round into crazy patterns again. (It does seem like my fingers are the parts of me that figure things out; I think my brain is only an assistant in the process.) I still like to say that my reservoir of ideas is going to run dry in the near future; how many patterns can there possibly be to discover? But thus far my fingers always manage to figure out something else, and I remember that there are an infinite number of possibilities. Then the cycle tends to start over: I make something, and if it turns out well, I get excited, quickly followed by becoming a bit anxious about it. The public attention, to whatever extent I get it, is both exciting and nerve-wracking."

What was your experience at Brickcon like?

"I went to BrickCon with my mother for the day on Saturday. I was a bit frazzled when I got there, because Snoqualmie Pass had been closed for rock blasting, and we had to sit on the freeway for quite awhile. I thought I’d be too late to register, but thankfully they let me in. I took the atrium with the fountain and stained glass windows, and then threw in a spider mosaic I had been trying to design for a friend to use. I was so nervous and shaky when I got there that I could hardly set up my MOCs. The stained glass windows got most of the attention, but the spider was the MOC that won an award, for best small mosaic. That was exciting.

Overall, the experience was a lot of fun. I was a nervous wreck much of the time, because I tend to be shy and have a hard time talking to new people. But the LEGO creations there were really fantastic, and once I started talking to people, I found that they were all really nice. Now I keep thinking about the different things I saw and did at BrickCon, and look forward to being able to attend again in the future, hopefully for more than just one day."


Was there a large presence of mosaics there?

"There were some. Someone mentioned to me that there weren’t as many as in past years, but the large ones that were there caught the eye. Truthfully, I didn’t see many small mosaics. I think that the favored technique of making mosaics using 1x1 bricks works best on a larger scale, so most mosaics tend to be larger. I’ve been working on using cheese slopes to create more angles and details in a mosaic on a smaller scale, but I have only seen a few other people do this. (Building a Battle Bug is a much more popular endeavor!) My goal is to be able to incorporate small mosaics into larger MOCs as window, wall, or floor decorations."

What does the future hold for Katie Walker?

"The future will mostly hold more of the same. I don’t have any big projects planned, being short of both bricks, time, and space. I’ll probably just keep experimenting and getting new ideas, and then occasionally will try to incorporate them into a more official MOC, though I imagine they’ll remain on a fairly small scale for quite awhile. I hope to visit BrickCon for a day next week. I’d like to go for longer, but can’t really be away from my kids for that long yet."

NOTE: Many thanks to Katie Walker for the interview and the long delay of its posting. Thank you for your patience. ;-) For her links look below:

Flickr - MOCpages