Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
And the winner is ...
Winners have been announced for the 6th annual Colossal Castle Contest. Most important to this blog, the vignette category was taken by Hippotam's Double Trouble. I'll have a more comprehensive review of this category sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Christmas in February
I should go back and do a fuller recap of the FBTB Christmasification contest. All of the SW Christmas vigs are in this thread. The field was narrowed down to six for voting. The five runners-up were:
Glorious Kyle's I saw Vader Choking Santa Claus
GIR3691's ROTJ Final Duel
Daveexmachina's Christmas song-inspired vig
Pepa Quin's Christmas at the Kenobi House
Shad's Christmas Visit
And in a landslide, Larry Lars won with Star Wars nativity
Glorious Kyle's I saw Vader Choking Santa Claus
GIR3691's ROTJ Final Duel
Daveexmachina's Christmas song-inspired vig
Pepa Quin's Christmas at the Kenobi House
Shad's Christmas Visit
And in a landslide, Larry Lars won with Star Wars nativity
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
2008, a year in vigs
It's been another great year in LEGO. Let's take a look back on the vigs of 2008.
There were a few new developments this year. Back at the start of the year we noted Corran101's Balcony. Since the inclusion of magnet bricks makes it possible to stick these to the fridge, Nelson dubbed these "magnettes." It turns out that this wasn't the first - Paul Donnis had done some previously, and you could argue that some of the more elaborately decorated fest badges have the same idea. Hopefully now that magnets are for sale again we'll see more of these. Nelson says he has some ideas up his sleeve and I've got one of my own pinned to my bulletin board awaiting photography.
Another different trend I saw this year was the use of Fabuland and Duplo in vigs. Maybe we can start featuring the under-5 crowd more on this blog.
With the release of the new Pirates sets and contests held by Classic-Pirates and the new website Forbidden Cove, we saw many vigs in this theme, such as DNL's End of the World and RichardAM's Sharkbait.
Current events were often the inspiration for vigs and related MOCs. It may be hard to remember it now, but then-candidate-now-secretary-of-state-designate Hilary Clinton got kind of nasty during the presidential campaign, as Nelson depicts in Witch Doctors. Diegoboy's And now what? looked at recent economic trends.
Jarod Uses Film and 713 Avenue celebrated the Summer Olympics.
RebelRock took a less cheery look at China with Organ Harvesting and Dunechaser sparked a bit of a firestorm with Extraordinary Rendition.
Over the last four years, vignettes have become popular subjects for contests. Since they can be fairly quick builds contests can be conducted with short turnaround times, and the small size is an equalizing factor so that those with large collections of bricks don't have massive advantages. Let's just take a quick look at some of the contests and other events of 2008. Early in the year, Classic Castle held a storytelling contest that was won by MrTS' But it wasn't me. The LEGO Military Group Contest had a vignette category, won by Obxcrew's Silent Approach.
Klocki hosted an Indiana Jones contest, and the memorable scene category was won by Ciamek's Cart Ride. Vigs are small and easy to transport, so they can be great to take to fests, like Ken Dowd's Wizard of Oz scenes.
When the new set of LEGO Ambassadors were chosen (in a new process this year where LUGs and on-line communities got to nominate people), and LEGO challenged these representatives to build vigs to represent them, such as Marcin Danielak's Out of Dark Age. The Potuguese group Forum 0937 held a contest to celebrate the 50th year of the LEGO brick where builders had to use a large-sized brick in a scene, such as Ztp's Let's Play.
LowLUG regularly holds MiniMocMadness, or MMM contests, with 16x16 footprint restrictions. One theme this year was "back to work," and Mahjqa's scene took second place. I was asked to help judge the Brick Science contest over on Reasonably Clever. My thoughts on the entries are here. The vig category was won by Ean H's Theoretical Physics.
The Brothers-Brick celebrated thirty years of the minifig by hosting the Go Miniman Go contest. There were a ton of entries; my own favorite was Rupi's Miniman Go Downhill. Eurobricks holds regular vignette contests, such as their Halloween Contest won by BaronSat's Halloween's Puppeteer
FBTB held a Christmasification contest, with a category for Star Wars themed Christmas vig won by Larry Lars' Star Wars Nativity. Finally, Classic-Castle's annual Colossal Castle Contest had a castle vig category with 56 entries. Since I'm a judge I'll hold off commenting until the winner is announced, but I'll post my full thoughts on this category here after judging is finished.
Several builders created series this year. Some favorites included Nelson Yrizarry's Gangsters and Mike Crowley's Leafblower Man series.
A couple of builders vigged other members of the community this year. This is a nice trend and it would be good to see more like Keith Goldman' series on Ley Ward and Jon Palmer's vigs of Aaron Sneary.
Batman was a popular subject this year, with series by Obxcrew, Kurtis Harris and Ken Dowd.
Some other great MOCs from this year:
Michael Jasper is great at creating little scenes, like his series on peer pressure. Barbara Worth did this neat little series of four vigs on growing grain.
Noddy's Yin-Yang definitely deserves two looks.
I got real laughs out of Matt S' Summer's End and Rocko's Rapture.
Those are just a few of my favorite vigs from 2008. To those saying "New post!!", I've had this one simmering now for a week, but I hope the delay was worthy getting in a fairly comprehensive post, and I'll try now to start updating more regularly with new MOCs.
There were a few new developments this year. Back at the start of the year we noted Corran101's Balcony. Since the inclusion of magnet bricks makes it possible to stick these to the fridge, Nelson dubbed these "magnettes." It turns out that this wasn't the first - Paul Donnis had done some previously, and you could argue that some of the more elaborately decorated fest badges have the same idea. Hopefully now that magnets are for sale again we'll see more of these. Nelson says he has some ideas up his sleeve and I've got one of my own pinned to my bulletin board awaiting photography.
Another different trend I saw this year was the use of Fabuland and Duplo in vigs. Maybe we can start featuring the under-5 crowd more on this blog.
With the release of the new Pirates sets and contests held by Classic-Pirates and the new website Forbidden Cove, we saw many vigs in this theme, such as DNL's End of the World and RichardAM's Sharkbait.
Current events were often the inspiration for vigs and related MOCs. It may be hard to remember it now, but then-candidate-now-secretary-of-state-designate Hilary Clinton got kind of nasty during the presidential campaign, as Nelson depicts in Witch Doctors. Diegoboy's And now what? looked at recent economic trends.
Jarod Uses Film and 713 Avenue celebrated the Summer Olympics.
RebelRock took a less cheery look at China with Organ Harvesting and Dunechaser sparked a bit of a firestorm with Extraordinary Rendition.
Over the last four years, vignettes have become popular subjects for contests. Since they can be fairly quick builds contests can be conducted with short turnaround times, and the small size is an equalizing factor so that those with large collections of bricks don't have massive advantages. Let's just take a quick look at some of the contests and other events of 2008. Early in the year, Classic Castle held a storytelling contest that was won by MrTS' But it wasn't me. The LEGO Military Group Contest had a vignette category, won by Obxcrew's Silent Approach.
Klocki hosted an Indiana Jones contest, and the memorable scene category was won by Ciamek's Cart Ride. Vigs are small and easy to transport, so they can be great to take to fests, like Ken Dowd's Wizard of Oz scenes.
When the new set of LEGO Ambassadors were chosen (in a new process this year where LUGs and on-line communities got to nominate people), and LEGO challenged these representatives to build vigs to represent them, such as Marcin Danielak's Out of Dark Age. The Potuguese group Forum 0937 held a contest to celebrate the 50th year of the LEGO brick where builders had to use a large-sized brick in a scene, such as Ztp's Let's Play.
LowLUG regularly holds MiniMocMadness, or MMM contests, with 16x16 footprint restrictions. One theme this year was "back to work," and Mahjqa's scene took second place. I was asked to help judge the Brick Science contest over on Reasonably Clever. My thoughts on the entries are here. The vig category was won by Ean H's Theoretical Physics.
The Brothers-Brick celebrated thirty years of the minifig by hosting the Go Miniman Go contest. There were a ton of entries; my own favorite was Rupi's Miniman Go Downhill. Eurobricks holds regular vignette contests, such as their Halloween Contest won by BaronSat's Halloween's Puppeteer
FBTB held a Christmasification contest, with a category for Star Wars themed Christmas vig won by Larry Lars' Star Wars Nativity. Finally, Classic-Castle's annual Colossal Castle Contest had a castle vig category with 56 entries. Since I'm a judge I'll hold off commenting until the winner is announced, but I'll post my full thoughts on this category here after judging is finished.
Several builders created series this year. Some favorites included Nelson Yrizarry's Gangsters and Mike Crowley's Leafblower Man series.
A couple of builders vigged other members of the community this year. This is a nice trend and it would be good to see more like Keith Goldman' series on Ley Ward and Jon Palmer's vigs of Aaron Sneary.
Batman was a popular subject this year, with series by Obxcrew, Kurtis Harris and Ken Dowd.
Some other great MOCs from this year:
Michael Jasper is great at creating little scenes, like his series on peer pressure. Barbara Worth did this neat little series of four vigs on growing grain.
Noddy's Yin-Yang definitely deserves two looks.
I got real laughs out of Matt S' Summer's End and Rocko's Rapture.
Those are just a few of my favorite vigs from 2008. To those saying "New post!!", I've had this one simmering now for a week, but I hope the delay was worthy getting in a fairly comprehensive post, and I'll try now to start updating more regularly with new MOCs.
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