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As Josh mentioned at the most recent LUG meeting, Brickfair VA is now planning to be open to the general public on Jul 31 and Aug 1.
This date coincides with the Saturday that was proposed for LUG attendance at the fair in South Fayette.
Anne and I are taking her aunt, who is also an AFOL, to Maryland that day so we are tentatively planning to stop in Chantilly VA during the 1-4 Sunday afternoon session.
More than 800 people are already registered (the average for the past ten years has been about a thousand). I am now registered, I think Rachel and I will probably go. I noticed that Micah is registered.
If I get a GBC module built by the end of this month, even a simple one (note that ‘simple’ and ‘small’ are not necessarily the same thing.), I will take that; the last module I had on display, at several events in 2017, was dismantled a long time ago, since I thought it would be easier to improve it by starting from scratch.
Otherwise I will take the Space Plants build, the version that I took to Bricks Cascade in 2020 is still assembled and packed for transport.
I am registered and will be there the whole week. I’ve never attended a LEGO event as a member of a LUG before, so I’m unsure about what the expectations are as far as MOC display goes. I am participating in a collab with some friends from Virginia in the Pop Culture theme and usually try to keep all my builds together at the same theme table. However, if the LUG is getting its own table, I’m open to moving some of my other stuff to display there.
As of right now I have a lot of unfinished projects, so I don’t know what will be completed in time for Brickfair. I’ll definitely be displaying a collection of Transformers and other brick-built characters from movies/video games, but which ones exactly and how many I’ve yet to determine.
The short version is that the LUG has never had its own table at BFVA, and it’s extremely unlikely that it will happen this year. You should plan on doing BrickFair like you usually do, although you should definitely wear your Steel City LUG brick on your badge. I’ll be set up in either the GBC section or the Space section (and it will be one or the other, not both).
In April of 2015, we had more than a dozen people at Philly Brickfest and had one of our best group displays ever at that event, comparable to what we typically do at the annual November Greenberg Train Shows in Monroeville. But since then, we’ve never been able to replicate that success at any event outside of Pittsburgh, in terms of getting that many people at the same place at the same time. Tim, Greg, Josh, Matt, and Walter have all attended BFVA in years past, but the only person I expect to see there every year is Micah.
I’m hoping it’ll happen again someday like it did at PBF15, but given the current situation, this has not been the year to think about trying to organize a large group trip to the event.
The short version is that the LUG has never had its own table at BFVA
… but someone did take the sign once.
Ooh good, Greg’s post gives me an opportunity to post some of my best Greg pics: the ones I took documenting how much he enjoyed setting up that display (there was a lot of complaining at the time).
Bruh, investing two days of a LEGO conference to setup and not see the other exhibits does not seem like fun when you are doing it.
>> Bruh, investing two days of a LEGO conference to setup and not see the other exhibits does not seem like fun when you are doing it.
I love setting up at conventions, I can’t wait until I have something big enough that takes two days. The builds I did at BWC18 and BWC19 both took the entire day because they were built from scratch on the spot. That giant GBC I had at BFVA16 only took about two hours to set up, it was very disappointing.
I remember Greg telling me that the LUG needs to rent a building in Pittsburgh where we can set up our stuff for the public to come see and just leave everything there all the time, and then we’ll never have to do a setup EVER EVER AGAIN EVER! He was very adamant about it.
You should plan on doing BrickFair like you usually do, although you should definitely wear your Steel City LUG brick on your badge.
Thanks for the clarification, although I don’t think I have a Steel City LUG brick yet. Do you know how/when I could get one?
Thanks for the clarification, although I don’t think I have a Steel City LUG brick yet. Do you know how/when I could get one?
Every member of the LUG receives a LUG name badge once that member has participated in one public display/event.
Ooh good, Greg’s post gives me an opportunity to post some of my best Greg pics: the ones I took documenting how much he enjoyed setting up that display (there was a lot of complaining at the time).
It was the best of times!
Bruh, investing two days of a LEGO conference to setup and not see the other exhibits does not seem like fun when you are doing it.
…it was the worst of times…
That giant GBC I had at BFVA16 only took about two hours to set up, it was very disappointing.
It was indeed very disappointing.
I remember Greg telling me that the LUG needs to rent a building in Pittsburgh where we can set up our stuff for the public to come see and just leave everything there all the time, and then we’ll never have to do a setup EVER EVER AGAIN EVER! He was very adamant about it.
That’s brilliant! Everyone sell all your Dogecoin and we’ll pool our resources to buy a huge warehouse!
>> Every member of the LUG receives a LUG name badge once that member has participated in one public display/event.
True. Josh usually hands them out at quarterly meetings. We also have bricks that say Steel City LUG on them, I’m not sure what the rules are on those, if any, but I have a couple extras at my house, so I can bring one to BrickFair for you if you’d like.
I started on a new GBC module, it is partially assembled, but it will not be done in time for BrickFair, so I am taking the space plants v2 build. It has not been out of the storage containers since being packed up at Bricks Cascade in Feb 2020 (and we’re not going to take it out before we get to Chantilly), so even though I have lots of ideas on how to improve it, this time around it will be unchanged. There are exposed support bricks on one side, so I’m thinking of taking a bunch of tan bricks and plates in order to improvise a wall on site to cover it up. This will actually be a bit of a first for me, I have never displayed anything at BrickFair other than GBC.
Boring update from Ben: Me n Rachel arrived on Tuesday. I set up yesterday.
In anticipation of Bricks Cascade, I had taken about 250 photos of the build as I disassembled it for packing, to aid me in setting up. When I set up at that event less than a week later, the pics were fresh in my mind and I successfully used them to set up, and I patted myself on the back for taking such awesome photos.
When I tore down at that event, I was really sick (we’re pretty sure it wasn’t Covid), and so things only kind-of sort-of got put back in the right bags. The containers weren’t opened again until yesterday. This time, setting up was like solving a puzzle. I had all these photos, some of which were useful, and some of which I was wondering what I was thinking when I took them. They were way less organized and systematic than I’d remembered, and they frequently didn’t show the information I wanted. I’d sometimes analyze five different photos to place one plant, before moving on to the next one. At the end it was like an IKEA build, I have two plants and one rock brick left over and there’s really no place they can possibly go. We’ll be doing better on the photos and setup instructions in future builds.
I also replaced the plants I liked less with new plants that I like better. I haven’t decided if I’m gonna make any other plant substitutions. Today I’ll be building the end cap discussed in a previous post, I brought plenty of parts for it. I haven’t had much time to just look around the hall yet, and so I have not found Logan C yet. I did bring an extra Steel City LUG brick in case he wants to use it at the convention.
Today’s update part 1:
I did the GBC workshop module yesterday. They’ve been running these workshops for years (they call them ‘beginner workshops’ cause the main idea is to bring new people to GBC, since getting people involved is always problematic, but really everybody does them), somebody designs a module that’s small enough that it can be built in an hour or so in the convention hall, and small enough that they can BL the parts and charge everybody an affordable amount for them (this year it’s $31). They modules have had variable reliability over the years, this year’s is looking pretty good, so I’m looking forward to seeing it in heavy duty action during public hours. It has a sweeper arm that lifts the balls to a higher level.
A new wrinkle this year is that the kit included a bunch of extra blue half-pins, which we can use to decorate the module. This is especially useful cause the modules all look the same on the GBC table and people need to be able to claim their own at the end. I decorated mine with the only parts I had available – my BFVA21 printed brick parts (I never use them, preferring my own black and yellow Steel City LUG bricks instead), space plants, and Clarence. I’m attaching a couple photos of the modules lined up on the table, and if you can’t pick mine out from that, a close-up of my build.
There should be more modules coming, yesterday’s workshop had 50 people (and I got in as an extra) and there’s another one today for 50 people as well, and both are full. You may also notice that the badge bricks have shrunk this year, from the traditional 1×8 down to 1×6 (with 1×1 bricks provided to put on each end). I’m not a fan of this development, but I can’t do anything about it.
Today’s update part 2:
I finished setting up the space plants build yesterday. My end cap went about as well as I had hoped (although it might not be as easy to remove), and I swapped out a bunch of plants I wasn’t so happy with for plants that are better, so I think this one is a big improvement over what I took to Oregon (which was a big improvement over the one I built for Q3 2019, although the rocks on that one were better than what I have now).
I’m discovering that my phone takes great close-up shots but not-so-great wide shots under artificial light, this is about as good as it gets for now. Rachel brought black fabric as a backdrop, so we’re gonna try n get better photos later, but if they work out, I will post them to my Flickr account rather than here.
When I was in Oregon, I don’t remember anybody asking if the build glows under blacklight. Here, four people have asked already. They all depart disappointed – the whole build has only five parts that will glow (trans medium green 2×2 radar dishes with white printing on them), which means that the rest of it does not.
I also met Logan C yesterday, although I have not gotten over to see his stuff yet. I have not seen any indication that Micah is here, @hacim. I think Glenn said he was coming, I saw Cale setting up his typical giant PennLUG display, but he was still just getting started last time I was over that way.
BrickFairVA 2021 is over. Registered exhibitors was just under 900, about 12% lower than usual, but it seems likely to bounce back next year. We didn’t get official attendance numbers, but Todd thought it would come out to about 10-12K. It definitely wasn’t crowded, with Sunday morning being especially light.
I did eventually run into Micah and confirm that he was still alive and present. I didn’t get any more pics of my build. If anybody posts a good album of the event to Flickr, I’ll post it here, I am still waiting on the usual suspects who take a lot of pics at these things.
I am claiming three cup credits for this event – one for displaying, two for staffing @joshhall. The Steel City LUG name still gets lots of people’s attention.
Didn’t get a chance to post daily updates here, but Brickfair was a blast! It was so great to come back to a convention after all this time. Thanks again to @bengood921 for the Steel City LUG brick!
After working all day Monday and Tuesday to finish some builds, I was able to have a pretty substantial display this year. I brought my usual selection of Transformers and other pop culture characters such as Lagann and Marvin. The big new thing for me this year was my Kingdom Hearts building obsession, as those characters took up just as much (if not more) table space than my Transformers did.
As mentioned before, I also participated in a collab with my friends from Virginia where we each built a scene from our favorite movies and connected them with brick-built filmstrip. My contribution was a diorama from The Matrix showing both a scene from the ship in the real world and the famous “bullet time” scene from the matrix. I put in lights for the ship and the binary code in between the scenes to make it look extra cool during World of Lights. In addition, I made a simple scene from Jaws Tuesday night to replace the build of someone who pulled out of the collab last minute.
My Matrix build won a “Staff Favorite” Brickee which is amazing! With all the effort I put into the lights, I thought I had a chance at “Best Lighted MOC”, but this was certainly a welcome surprise! I’m planning on hopefully attending at least one more convention this year (assuming that it is safe to do so), and I look forward to finally meeting more of you in person!
For some reason the other 3 photos in my first post don’t seem to have been posted correctly. I don’t know if anyone else is having this problem, but it’s not the first time this error has occurred on my end. Anyway, I switched browsers and am trying again. Hopefully it works this time 🙂
My contribution was a diorama from The Matrix showing both a scene from the ship in the real world and the famous “bullet time” scene from the matrix.
Yo, that’s a pretty sweet build!
I did eventually run into Micah and confirm that he was still alive and present.
ohgood. I’d started to worry.
Yo, that’s a pretty sweet build!
Thanks!
So switching browsers didn’t work, as it still only lets me post 1 photo at a time. My only other theory is that the files were too large so now I’ve compressed the last two photos and am attempting to post them both here so I don’t have to keep spamming this thread (sorry about that by the way!) If this doesn’t work I don’t know what will and I am open to suggestions.
Ok that didn’t work either. Darn. Well this is the last photo of my display anyway. Hopefully I can figure this out next time.
@bengood921 @loganc Thank you for the pictures! Great job on all the displays and the Brickee! Glad to hear Steel City LUG still has a good rep in the Con community. Hope to get back to BFVA next year.
>> If this doesn’t work I don’t know what will and I am open to suggestions.
This website was built using WordPress and it is incredibly picky about the size of the files posted. My guess is that you were having problems because the pics were took big, I saw that at least one was over 2500 pixels wide. I usually make a size-adjusted copy of any photo I plan to post here, resized down to 1200 pixels wide, and then I can post three at a time, I’m pretty sure I’ve never had success posting more than three at a time.
I enjoyed your pics, and of course I did get around to seeing everything in person, but I noticed that you didn’t post your most awesome build here – wasn’t the one of Rush yours? I’m a big fan.
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