@tbrown00
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I will probably install the butterflies ahead of the main install thus removing one step for people to wait on, particularly if we are doing morning of the 31st. Depending on when install happens I may leave a vase of flowers in there as well. How big is the top of that white building? Just so I know how big we are talking. Although I may talk with Madison about modifying the flowers into an arrangement instead. …More stability and potentially more color.
Not sure when BrickFair is but Library Tear down is early August I believe. Certainly we have it down well before School starts up again.
Though based on the timing, that may not work. Meeting may start at 11 over in Monroeville and the Cranberry Library doesn’t open til 10. I doubt that timing is going to work out. We may need to look at a weeknight install. On my end I can always pre-load stuff and have you arrange the stuff(mainly the flowers) when you fill out the display.
Madison Brown has almost every single Botanical and would jump at the chance to put them on display. So it really comes down to how much space we are wanting to devote to them.
For reference. Both large windows fit about 5 32×32 baseplates. The small one fits 2. The middle can fit another ~3 with a bunch of 16 stud wide spaces filling the gaps. Anything yellow here are irregular gaps in increments smaller that 16 stud so use caution when planning for them. Keep in mind this is best of my ability based one the measurements I took and expect some small about of margin of error in the spacing. Mainly with regards to where regions 3 and 4 meet since there’s no buffer there.
Thus person A could say something like I’m building to fill the space in region 3 and I’m building to a depth of X from the window. That would let person B who claims area in region 4 or 6 to adjust the size they plan to claim to account for the already claimed space in region 3. Also doesn’t have to be 1 person per region or vice versa. Can claim half a region, or more than one region. If you are building high (let’s say in excess of 3′), please note roughly how high as that can affect suspended build placement.
I say ditch the black and white if we aren’t going to do the cubes with transition. Let’s just go for bright colorful builds and use your idea of rivers/pools of color between builds for filling gaps. For now I’m just going to commit to building the suspended butterflies. But depending on what others commit to, I may bring/build something else as well.
My experience would be that Pitt/CMU would likely require either paid parking (Sat) or walking a good distance to get to the room even with free Sunday Parking (I usually have to park over by Phipps and walk to Carnegie main on Sundays). Possibly both. For that reason I’d personally prefer to keep the meeting in the burbs were we don’t have to concern ourselves about parking. Rodef Shalom does rent space but it couldn’t be a Saturday (Shabbat) and the fees are probably more than we are willing to spend…but we do have a dedicated parking lot, an elevator for handicap accessibility and multiple different sized rooms that could be used (everything from a small classroom to a giant hall). If we really want to pursue having a meeting in that area, I could look more into it. For reference, it’s right across the street from where they filmed Mr Rogers. It’s literally a 5-6 min walk to get to CMU’s main campus. Bit longer to get to Pitt’s main campus.
My availability in May is iffy at this point regardless of whether it’s a Sat or Sun, so just going to roll with whatever gets picked and see if I can make it happen. @joshhall maybe we start talking about Q3 now so we can lock in a location/date early and folks can plan for it/the church as availability?
I don’t know that I’ll be there right at open, but aiming for early. I’ll have to head back up North by about 1 though. I’m going to bring stuff for my claimed space and some filler for other areas. The filler I may just keep in reserve under the tables till Friday to allow others the opportunity to add their stuff first. I work the first shift so I can place filler stuff out as needed then.
Point of clarity. The build challenge thread on discord (I believe the aim is monthly on that) does not replace the quarterly build challenges for meetings as discussed here. It is in addition too. The key here is that at least half our active members don’t use discord. And those that do don’t necessarily do it regularly. These forums are the main source of information for the LUG with discord acting as a secondary resource for members should they choose to take advantage of it. That is what the LUG decided when Discord was set up (until/unless further LUG discussion changes that). So we do still need to lock in a challenge for Q2 on here whether it’s one of my suggestions above or another (possibly inspired by discord discussion).
We may want to look into how to do partial reimbursements then. Anybody have the relevant accounting experience, knowledge, phone a friend? I know some members have mentioned not wanting to support this event because they do not find the shuttles to be convenient and would prefer to park at the convention center but those fees add up quick. As for street parking, there are quite a few folks who are not on board with that either for safety, inconvenience or other reasons.
Now that said, I will now instruct folks on what they would need to do to get a receipt for parking at the “shuttle parking lots” for exactly $8 (or the relevant daily fee should it have changed this year) on a day that they worked the Home and Garden. Step 1. Go to https://alcoparking.com/parking-receipt/ . Step 2 self report what lot you parked at (Gold lot 1), what you paid with (cash), the amount ($8 assuming it’s the same this year) and the other relevant information Name, Date, Duration. Hit submit and it generates a pdf receipt for your parking to submit for reimbursements. Last I checked the lot attendants really didn’t care who were coming into the lot And there were quite a few cars parking there. They just pleasantly took the requisite cash fee and gave you change as required. If asked for a receipt they would direct you to the above website. Just sayin
I support folks being able to claim a cap of $8 per day worked regardless of where they park. I understand that the stadium isn’t convenient for everyone. But I do highly recommend it as the shuttles run constantly, the drivers are well coordinated to get you where you need to go even when cops decide to block of Gen Robinson and you have to take the back roads up past the Children’s Museum and Aviary as I experienced last year. 🙂
The LUG has in the past reimbursed for the $8 that it would cost to park at the Stadium. This is a balancing act. On the one hand, the only reason we are getting any money is because we pointed out that there is a significant cost incurred by the LUG and it’s members to put on this show. Hence all of the money we are getting is meant to support the show in some way. Whether that’s parking, stanchions, table cloths, meals etc. That’s at our discretion as a LUG. On the other hand the funds aren’t unlimited and having everyone park at the convention center or claim meals would eat up those funds real quick. So the consensus thus far has been the fee for stadium parking and not to cover meals. What’s left over has gone on to fund things like the MILS plates for the trains as well as support the LUG in other areas throughout the year.
I don’t know that we need to scale back space. Most of us can always bring more filler and because Home and Garden lasts so long it tends to fill in as we go since folks tend to bring stuff to build during the show. Hence we can spread out some in the beginning to allow for those builds to be added later. Maybe add the display spreadsheet link to the first post so it’s easier for folks to access it?
So I’m going to put this out there as a proposed challenge. Doesn’t have to be for Q2 but I think it would be cool to do a color pop challenge. The most famous example is probably the girl in the red coat from “Schindler’s List”. However, if you google “Color Pop Photography” you’ll see many examples of this technique in practice. The main gist of this is to create a mostly black&white/grayscale scene and then select something to focus on in that scene that will be in a very bold color. i.e. a Red Rose against a grayscale field of flowers. A butterfly picked out against a grayscale flower. The idea is to create a strong contrast between the subject and the rest of the scene. The main questions you’d be asking yourself (and probably detailing for the judge) is why did you pick the subject that you picked and why the color(s) that you picked for it.
Another possible challenge would be to have a build that starts in black and white on one side/corner(doesn’t matter which) and then gradually pulls in colors as you move through the build until you get to the other side/corner which is full color. This effect would be more akin to the movie “Pleasantville” Where the show starts out in Grayscale and slowly gets ‘colored in’ as the movie progresses. The aim being an “explosion” of color in the build.
Both of these are inspired by the color your world library theme. Neither will work for what we are probably going to be doing in Cranberry (Basically a case wide version of the 2nd challenge), but they might work for the other libraries especially those with less display space.
bringing us back to Q2, do we have any dates in mind yet? That might determine what we do for the challenge. As if it’s prior to Summer reading set ups, we might leverage it for that purpose.
lol I don’t think you realize just how many folks I’d disaapoint if I touch the iguana. If I have the parts I might could build a chameleon but I’m not sure at this point so we’ll see.
WIP but this would is the first of maybe 4-5 Butterflies to be suspended from the top of the case for this display. The aim is to keep it simple and to have some good color mixes going on. Madison’s happy I’m finally doing color. Also my youngest pointed out that the Iguana has never been on display at Cranberry and the Librarians there love him so I’ll see if I can’t craft some kinda space for him in the cube system.
By 3 cubes you mean 3 columns? Also folks will need to make sure they have good supporting columns between builds. I have depicted builds with a back corner wall support and a front corner column, but that probably isn’t enough support for the builds above. I would test adding weight on top of your build.
To be honest, I don’t know how much I’d avail myself of the cube form. I’m not exactly known for building to a base plate standard. What I think I’m going to aim for this display is a handful of colorful butterflies to suspend from above. If we brought the cubes together, That would provide room to add the Boa. It’s brown scale with some black so it’d work for the floor space and should be done before home and garden. Plus I don’t foresee needing it over the summer. That’s an option but certainly not something I’m going to insist on doing. For the cubes…if I manage to work out a good design for them, I might be doing a build with poison dart frogs that would probably fit some where between brown scale and colorful but at this point they are in early development so no guarantee.
Arranged with a transition that happens diagonally and with doubled columns…i.e. 64 deep from the front.
It’s usually just comes down to someone suggesting something and a few others concurring with them. If we already have a next challenge, then the new idea gets pushed out to the next open meeting. i.e. there really isn’t any actual procedure per se. I am not sure, but I don’t think we had a challenge in place yet for Q2.
