|
|
| |
RichLUG will hold its monthly meeting this Saturday, March 3, 2007, at the
Tuckahoe Library on Starling Road (off Parham, behind Topeka's Steakhouse).
The meeting will start at 10:00 am and run until approximately 12:00 noon.
We will be in the (very) large conference room upstairs, right off the main
atrium. Please stop in if you are in the area!
Tim
RichLUG member
|
|
| |
The Richmond Lego Users Group (RichLUG) will once again present a display at
the Virginia Aviation Museum's seventh annual Wings n' Rails show in Richmond,
Virginia, on March 25-26. Hours for the event are 9:30 am to 5:00 pm both days.
The museum is located at the Richmond International Airport in Sandston,
Virginia: http://www.vam.smv.org/
Hope to see you there!
Bert
Member, RichLUG
|
|
| |
I've uploaded pics from the GATS 2005 show to our RichLUG folder on
Brickshelf.
Dustin
|
|
| |
I will be in VA this week, or part of it. I fly out tonite, getting in late. I
am for sure going to be around tomorrow (Tuesday) nite, but depending on the
needs of the client, may or may not fly home Wednesday, or stay later.
if anyone is interested in getting together, drop me a line or call my cell,
it's not hard to find the number as it is on any email I've ever sent, just
about.
I am flying in/out of Norfolk, and staying at a Courtyard in Virginia Beach.
Would LOVE to hang with folks!
|
|
| |
I finally have something to post about...
This past weekend, the Richmond and Hampton Roads LUGs put on a combined display
at the GATS show here in RVA. This was the first time appearing at a GATS show
for either club. The organizers awarded our display with a Third Prize ribbon
which made us feel even prouder of our work.
The local TV news coverage of the event provided us with an even better form of
recognition by showing video of our display as the backdrop to the story about
GATS. This story was broadcast on Sunday evening, July 18th.
During that afternoon we spotted a cameraman and reporter from the local NBC
affiliate taking some shots of our stuff. We chatted with the guys for a few
minutes and promised to be watching that night which may have figured in to them
choosing us to represent the entire show. That’ right - they didn’t show any
video from any of the other train layouts. Our LEGO display was the only thing
seen during the 25 seconds that the newscaster talked about the show.
Unfortunately our clubs didn’t get mentioned by name but that’s ok. That will
teach us to get some kind of big banner with our club name on it to hang in the
background.
Since the local NBC station also provides the news for the Fox affiliate here in
town, we actually made two different broadcasts. The video used was the same
for each story but the narration covering the event was slightly different for
each. Each broadcast was about 25 seconds in length.
I rendered the clips into MPEG files and have them loaded to my
TubeVision site. Each one is fairly small (around 2
MB) and you can download them by right-clicking on the links below:
10 PM News FOX 35
11 PM News NBC 12
Enjoy!
P.S. We should have some pictures from the show up soon but I wanted to go ahead
and post about this in the meantime.
|
|
| |
The Richmond Lego Users Group (RichLUG) and Hampton Roads Lego Users Group
(HardLUG) will present a join display at the GATS show in Richmond,
Virginia, on July 17 and 18. The Showplace exhibition center, located at
3000 Mechanicsville Turnpike) will host the event. Hours for the event are
11:00 am to 5:00 pm both days. Hope to see you there!
Tim
Member, RichLUG
|
|
| |
The Richmond Lego Users Group (RichLUG) and the Hampton Roads Lego Users
Group are joining forces this weekend to feature a joint display at the
Virginia Aviation Museum "Wings and Rails" Show in Richmond, Virginia. The
show is this Saturday and Sunday and starts on Saturday at 9:30 am.
Location is the Virginia Aviation Museum located on Airport Drive right next
to the Richmond International Airport (take the Airport exit off I-64 and
stay straight through two stoplights). Anyone in the area is welcome and
encouraged to stop by!
Tim
RichLUG
|
|
| |
As part of my month-long buildingpalooza leading up to the next RichLUG Train
Show*, I completed another residential themed creation to add to our City of
Brickmond town display. This time I whipped up “Brickmond Estates” – a
neighborhood that can be seen in the pictures of this BrickShelf folder:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=64111
Brickmond Estates is a mobile home park - or at least that’s how the
neighborhood started out. As you’ll see from the pictures, the residents of
Brickmond Estates have obviously been planted for some time and have made
themselves quite at home on their small lots. In fact, the Covenant that all
residents of the Estates have signed states that no home is allowed to have its
wheels still attached while used as a residence in the neighborhood. You’ll also
see that the folks from the Estates have gone to great efforts to make the park
“a nice place to live” – not like those other mobile home communities you hear
about in the news or see on “Cops.”
There are currently six homes that make up Brickmond Estates. I owe thanks for these models to Kevin Salm who totally inspired me with his trailer park set-up at BrickFest 2003. Here’s a picture of his creations that I found in a folder with pictures of a LUCNY event: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=445193
In talking with Kevin about his trailers/mobile homes, one of the things he said that stuck with me was these models were great for making use of odd colors of which you might only have limited supplies – not enough for a big MOC. Taking that advice I was able to make use of light yellow, earth orange, light blue, and dark pink (I’d been really waiting for something good to make with this color). Between the color schemes and the slight variations in design I’m really pleased with the way they all look – both individually and as a collection. And overall, they were pretty simple to throw together. The big challenge was eking out the last of my doors and windows to get six of these done.
After they were finished I decided that I wanted to design a more fixed setting
for the homes – unlike Kevin’s models that seem to get situatated wherever
there’s room for them (down by the tracks, oil well and graveyard at BrickFest).
Mine are still “mobile” and self contained – they just sit down in their little
slots in the park but can be easily picked up and moved elsewhere if need be.
This setting for Brickmond Estates may not survive beyond our train show this
weekend (you never know when re-zoning might strike) but I at least wanted
something that looked a little more detailed and established for the debut of
these MOCs. I think folks are going to get a real kick out of Brickmond Estates
at the show.
Hope y’all enjoy the pictures and thanks again to Kevin for the inspiration.
Greg
*RichLUG Train Show – Nov. 29th & 30th – Science Museum of Virginia – Richmond,
VA: http://www.smv.org/ModelRR03.html
|
|
| |
New Address for BrickShelf Folder:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=64110
I goofed up my BrickShelf account today and accidentally deleted the folder with
the pictures of my Brickmond Boulevard Block.
So in case anyone was interested in checking this out who hadn't already please
use this new link above.
Enjoy!
Greg
|
|
| |
In lugnet.town, Kevin Wilson wrote:
> Love it Greg! The buildings themselves are nice and the grouping works
> together very well, with all the nice residential area detail touches. I
> especially like the Paradisa building, but I'm a sucker for mint green and
> pink :-)
Kevin - Thanks for letting me know that you enjoyed checking out my buildings.
I also am really pleased with the way the shades-of-Paradisa building came out.
Those parts were originally intended to be used to build a carriage house for my
Brickenbloom project (http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=14933) but
I'm really glad I decided to go ahead and use them in this way.
I've actually been thinking about tearing Brickenbloom down and starting over.
I've picked up a lot of good ideas this past year (especially at Brickfest) and
I think I could come up with something that's even grander than what I've got.
Maybe one day...
From one mint green and pink loving sucker to another - thanks again for letting
me know that you liked my creations.
Greg
|
|
| |
In lugnet.town, Chris Phillips wrote:
> > <http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=63570 Brickmond Residential
> > Block>
>
> This is fantastic! Not only do you have some beautiful architectural details,
> but you also have a very nice layout that is quite realistic. Some might say
> "prototypical" of a city block. Nice windows, gardens, balconies, and overall a
> top-notch set of creations. (When can I move in?)
Chris - thanks a lot for taking time out to let me know you enjoyed checking out
my block of buildings. Once it was done, I did feel like I had created a fairly
realistic (at least in LEGO terms) city block. I'm really looking forward to
the show when I'll be able to really bring it to life with all the detailing of
figs, vehicles, etc.
Move-in date in Nov. 28th (day before the show). I've already claimed the top
floor of Building 1 (the red/yellow/green one). Don't worry though, the deck is
for everyone in the building to use.
> Best of luck with your upcoming show!
Thanks, I'm really psyched for this show now that I've got all this new stuff to
show off. It's going to be a lot better than it would have been a couple of
months ago with the same old same old...
Greg
|
|
| |
Greg Perry wrote in message ...
> I enjoyed a four day weekend due to the Veterans’ Day holiday and ended up • using
> a couple of those days to knock out the first two buildings. By then I had • “the
> fever” and looking around at my available bricks, doors and windows I • decided to
> do another smaller building. Then I decided the block needed a small park • area
> to go between a two of the buildings (similar to mews garden areas found in • the
> Church Hill district of Richmond). I still wasn’t satisfied though having
> decided what I really needed to finish off the block was some kind of • building
> on the corner that would have a small shop on the ground floor with a • couple of
> levels over that.
Love it Greg! The buildings themselves are nice and the grouping works
together very well, with all the nice residential area detail touches. I
especially like the Paradisa building, but I'm a sucker for mint green and
pink :-)
Kevin
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Railroad Depot kit: http://www.lionsgatemodels.com/cat-rrd.htm
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
LEGO TOWN PLANNING information:
http://www.lionsgatemodels.com/COntent/Townplan/townplan.htm
BrickLink Lego parts store: http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=Kevinw1
The Guild of Bricksmiths(TM): http://www.bricksmiths.com
Personal Lego Web page:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kwilson_tccs/lego.html
|
|
| |
In lugnet.org.us.richlug, Greg Perry wrote:
> RichLUG has a <http://www.smv.org/ModelRR03.html train show> coming up
> (11/29-30) however and about two weeks ago I decided I was going to build
> something new for this show. I settled on trying to put together a couple of
> small residential/apartment buildings similar to those that you would find in
> The Fan section of the city of Richmond. These buildings were intended to go
> along the version of Monument Avenue that Tim Freshly has put together for
> our Brickmond train/town displays.
>
> I enjoyed a four day weekend due to the Veterans’ Day holiday and ended up
> using a couple of those days to knock out the first two buildings. By then I
> had “the fever” and looking around at my available bricks, doors and windows
> I decided to do another smaller building. Then I decided the block needed a
> small park area to go between a two of the buildings (similar to mews garden
> areas found in the Church Hill district of Richmond). I still wasn’t
> satisfied though having decided what I really needed to finish off the block
> was some kind of building on the corner that would have a small shop on the
> ground floor with a couple of levels over that.
>
> So after about a week and a half (some intense building days followed by the
> puttering days) I ended up with the following:
>
> <http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=63570 Brickmond Residential
> Block>
Greg,
This is fantastic! Not only do you have some beautiful architectural details,
but you also have a very nice layout that is quite realistic. Some might say
"prototypical" of a city block. Nice windows, gardens, balconies, and overall a
top-notch set of creations. (When can I move in?)
Best of luck with your upcoming show!
- Chris.
|
|
| |
Greetings fellow LEGO fans and freaks. It’s been a really LONG time (seemingly)
since I posted about any new creations from me. In fact, I thought about
calling the subject of this post “Holey Moley – I Actually Built Something!” My
LEGO collection has sat virtually untouched for the last 9-10 months while I’ve
been off pursuing other trivial pursuits (mainly pretending to be a
rock videographer).
RichLUG has a train show coming up
(11/29-30) however and about two weeks ago I decided I was going to build
something new for this show. I settled on trying to put together a couple of
small residential/apartment buildings similar to those that you would find in
The Fan section of the city of Richmond. These buildings were intended to go
along the version of Monument Avenue that Tim Freshly has put together for our
Brickmond train/town displays.
I enjoyed a four day weekend due to the Veterans’ Day holiday and ended up using
a couple of those days to knock out the first two buildings. By then I had “the
fever” and looking around at my available bricks, doors and windows I decided to
do another smaller building. Then I decided the block needed a small park area
to go between a two of the buildings (similar to mews garden areas found in the
Church Hill district of Richmond). I still wasn’t satisfied though having
decided what I really needed to finish off the block was some kind of building
on the corner that would have a small shop on the ground floor with a couple of
levels over that.
So after about a week and a half (some intense building days followed by the
puttering days) I ended up with the following:
Brickmond Residential
Block
I’m really pleased with the way this project turned out and can’t wait to show
it off to at the train show during the weekend following Thanksgiving. Not only
do I have that sense of satisfaction of finishing off something that I’m proud
of but it was also great to become reacquainted with my collection. I had a few
moments of head-scratching while I tried to remember where I had filed away this
or that specialty piece type but overall I did pretty good – managed to
eventually find everything I knew I had but couldn’t immediately put my hands
on.
Architecturally there’s nothing to these buildings that I think necessarily
breaks new ground. I’m happy though with the way I was able to incorporate a
few different decorative touches here and there that provide some variety to the
buildings even though they’re basically similar in design. My color schemes
were based on the doors and windows I had available and I’m happy with they way
they came together. As you can see I didn’t have a lot of windows to waste so
from that perspective the buildings are fairly basic.
One of features that I liked the most is part of the first building I completed
(the red, yellow and green one). The rooftop deck structure was actually
inspired by row houses I’ve seen in Baltimore. Some of the buildings in that
city have really elaborate decks up on top of apartment buildings and row
houses. Of course, some of them are a little rickety looking too. I think mine
is perfectly safe for up to twenty mini-figs at a time.
Now that I’ve got the city block done, I’m been moving ahead full steam. I
constructed a small Brickmond Memorial Cemetary that’s the size of a single
green baseplate. I’m also working on the Brickmond Trailer Park that is based
on and inspired by Kevin Salm’s creations. I probably won’t have pictures of
these creations and others (were doing a parade as part of our town display)
until after the show.
I hope folks enjoy the pictures and of course any feedback or comments would be
appreciated.
P.S. For anyone too uninspired to click the link above here’s a picture showing
three of the four buildings:
|
|
| |
The Richmond LEGO® Users Group (RichLUG) will be participating in its fifth
train show event the weekend following Thanksgiving – November 29-30, 2003.
This is the 26th Annual Model Railroad Show
hosted by the local Richmond Freelance and Prototype (RF&P) Model Railroaders
Club. It will be held at the Science Museum of Virginia
here in Richmond.
This show was originally scheduled for the weekend that Hurricane Isabel blew
through the area. As it turned out the change in dates has turned out to be
great for me in terms of getting some new stuff built for this show. I’ll be
showing off such new MOC’s as a block of four residential buildings and a small
park to go along Tim Freshly’s version of Brickmond’s Monument Ave and a small
graveyard. I’m also currently working on a trailer park.
I know other members are working on their own creations so I’m looking forward
to having a brand new Brickmond display for the public to enjoy.
RichLUG has also decided – given the weekend the show is now happening on – to
have a parade as part of display. This will be a
Thanksgiving/Christmas/Anything Goes kind of parade. After building my
residential buildings with all the balconies, it occurred to me that a parade
would be the perfect reason to have folks hanging out on them. On the day that
thought occurred to me and I planned to e-mail the other RichLUG folks, the
latest LEGO Maniacs Mag show up with its plug for building a parade. I love
synchronistic coincidences!
We’re also excited that members of HaRdLUG (Hampton
Roads LEGO Users Group) will be joining us on Saturday for the show and
contributing some of their creations to the mix.
Anyone else who’s in the neighborhood that weekend – and not busy shopping - is
invited to stop by, say “howdy” and hang out with us for a while. The museum is
open on Saturday 9:30 A.M. – 5:00 P.M. and Sunday 11:30 A.M. – 5:00 P.M. The
train show is included in the regular admission ticket to the museum.
Greg
|
|
| |
On March 22-23, RichLUG participated in the annual Wings ‘n’ Rails Show at
the Aviation Museum of Virginia (http://vam.smv.org) here in Richmond, VA.
Here’s a link to a folder in our BrickShelf gallery that contains some
pictures I took with an elderly 35 mm camera and had developed to a CD:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=38991
Here are some details:
This is the smaller of the two shows that the Science Museum of VA
(www.smv.org) hosts each year. The “big” show is takes place in September
and is held at the main museum in the city. This smaller, spring show takes
place at the smaller aviation museum that is located at Richmond
International (RIC) Airport (about 6 miles east of downtown).
In addition to our club’s set-up, there were about 7-8 other model train
layouts and a few vendors. Over the course of the two days there were
probably about 1,000 visitors to the museum. Attendance was perhaps a
little lower than it would have been due to the fact that the weather turned
really nice on the weekend after several consecutive days of rain. Even so,
for the Aviation Museum it was a boom since they’re probably used to getting
50 people on a good day.
We had considered skipping the show this year but the invitation from the
organizers included the news that they had decided to give us the space on
the observation deck of the museum. The museum is a huge
hangar-of-a-building and in the center of this big open space is a small
little block structure that houses a theatre. On top of the structure is an
observation deck that allows folks to get a different perspective on the
planes that are in the museum as well as get a little closer to the ones
that are suspended from the ceiling. The idea of setting up our display up
above everything else was too appealing to pass up.
The whole space is about 15’x 30’. We ended up setting up an I-shaped
display that was about 10’x 18’. One end was devoted to downtown Brickmond
and the other to Brickenbloom House & Gardens and a commercial area
consisting of a motorcycle repair shop, a pizzeria and the Brickelodeon
laptop theatre.
In the center we set up a small airport. One of our members (Bert Waters)
has a fairly good collection of planes from various town sets and we’ve
never really had a chance to lay them all out before. Around and through
all of this we managed to put together four loops of track.
A BIG highlight of this show for us was being able to show off the upcoming
Wright Bros. Flyer that will be next Famous Planes release from Lego Direct.
The Aviation museum has been involved for a while in a project to recreate a
working model of one of the Wrights’ flyers. They also have a couple of
Wright gliders on display (suspended from the ceiling).
Once we decided to do the show, the idea of contacting LD and asking about
displaying the Flyer was raised. I was pretty sure that with the release
still several months off that there wouldn’t be any sets available that we
could borrow. To my surprise though, when I raised the idea with Brad he
immediately offered to ship us out the prototype for the show so that we
could display that since it really was the only actual thing they had
available for promoting the set at this time. Many thanks to Brad and Jake
(who took care of getting the plane down to us) for providing RichLUG with
this unique opportunity.
We enjoyed “showing off” all of the planes and people were very impressed
with the sets. This included quite a few of the actual aviation museum
employees and volunteers (many of whom are retired aviators) along with the
general public. Folks really liked the way the engine and propellers moved
on the Wright Brothers Flyer.
The only downside to our display of the planes was the fact that the museum
had its Flyer recreation packed up on a trailer in preparation for a
cross-country tour. We had hoped to get some pictures of it and the Lego
set together. Maybe by the time we do next year’s show it will be back home
and we’ll have our own copy of the Wright Bros. set to show off.
The other big highlight of the weekend was the Brickelodeon laptop theatre.
I put together a collection of brickmation videos that I had downloaded from
the Internet by way of the BrickFilms directory (www.brickfilms.com). There
were a total of 16 videos that were in this loop. I also played a few of my
videos though for some reason the playback of my stuff was acting goofy so I
mainly stuck to the variety collection.
People really enjoyed stopping and watching the brickmation that was being
shown at the theatre. There were plenty of kids who seemed to sit through
at least one complete loop of all the videos and because they were kids
there were several that seemed to sit through it multiple times. Some folks
came back to watch some more after wandering away for a little while.
A lot of the items in our layout are things that we’ve shown off before.
The one new creation that I had to show off was my version of the Hogwarts
Express. You can see it in some of the pictures that include Brickenbloom.
We ran it on a small loop around the house and gardens where its 8-wideness
was not a problem. I have some more pictures of this train on another roll
of film that has yet to be developed. I will post them soon though.
That’s about it for the report. Hope folks enjoy the pictures.
Greg
P.S. More pictures (from Tim Freshly) of the show are available on the
RichLUG website:
http://groups.msn.com/RichLUGWebsite/march2003trainshow.msnw?albumlist=2
|
|
| |
The Richmond Lego Users Group (RichLUG) presented a train layout at the RF&P
Wings and Rails train show on March 22-23. Pictures of the layout can be
viewed at
http://groups.msn.com/RichLUGWebsite/march2003trainshow.msnw?albumlist=2.
Alternatively, pictures can also be accessed in the photo gallery section at
www.richlug.org (this is an MSN site).
Features of the layout include 4 independant loops, a downtown section, an
airport, a movie theater (with working screen thanks to a laptop computer)
showing various Lego animations, and Brickenbloom, a large country estate
with many beautiful gardens.
Enjoy.
Tim
|
|
| |
The Richmond Lego Users Group met on Saturday, February 1. A good time was
had by all. Pictures can be viewed at the RichLUG website under Pictures
(www.richlug.org or direct link
http://groups.msn.com/RichLUGWebsite/february12003meeting.msnw?albumlist=2.)
. Notable was Rich Schoonover's bus and large helicopter; Nate's automatic
switcher; and the meeting of Greg Perry's Confererate forces (led by Robert
E. Lee) and Nate's Union forces (including cavalry led by Phil Sheridan).
Our next meeting will be Saturday, March 1. All are welcome to attend.
Tim
|
|
| |
The Animated Brick Company is proud to announce that its latest brickmation
video “plasticgrass” will be airing on MTV beginning Saturday, January 25,
2003. It is scheduled to be shown that day at 4:41 PM EST (during either
“The Osbournes” or “Clone High” depending on which programming guide source
you use).
After Satuday, it will continue to be shown at random times throughout the
following month (at least once daily). During that period of time, the
video will also be available for viewing on the MTV website.
The video is being aired as part of the ongoing “MPEG Us” campaign that MTV
launched back in mid-2002. This campaign encourages viewers to “make their
own music videos” (no longer than 10 seconds) and submit them to the network
with the hopes that they might be used on the air. Beyond the ego-boost of
having your work shown on MTV a handful of times there are no other prizes
awarded to the “winners.” The number of people who make it on the air only
seems to be limited only by how long MTV keeps the campaign going.
What I’ve observed is that about once a month, MTV will rotate in a fresh
crop of 5 or 6 videos. The MPEG Us clips can show up at any time of the day
or night though I’ve had the best luck catching them in the late morning and
mid- to late afternoon hours (EST).
But wait, the news get better – not only is my video airing on MTV but I was
actually paid to create it for them. It seems a producer at MTV had seen my
brickmation video for Ween’s “The Mollusk” and liked it enough to get in
touch and let me know about the “MPEG Us” contest. A few months later he
popped up again and asked if I’d like to be hired to create one as part of
the “official” p.r. for the campaign (at that time MTV hadn’t gotten a lot
of submissions).
Even more months later, after some typical corporate, legal and bureaucratic
delays, I finally had everything squared away contract-wise. I created the
video and mailed in off to MTV just before Christmas. I finally heard back
from them early last week and in the last couple of days received the
confirmation that the video would begin airing this Saturday.
I don’t know very many people who admit to watching MTV these days but
hopefully if there are any LUGNET folks out there who do indulge in it,
they’ll catch a glimpse of my video at some point. Pay attention though
because it is only 10 seconds long and by the time you realize you’re seeing
Lego, the clip will be done.
For anyone that does get to check it out (either on MTV or via the website),
I hope you enjoy it.
Here’s a link to the MTV site’ page for the MPEG Us gallery. It includes
links to videos that are currently airing (the ones at the top with
thumbnail pics) and a listing of videos that have already aired (with
links). Hopefully, starting on Saturday or at least by early next week
you’ll see “plasticgrass” showing up on this page:
http://www.mtv.com/onair/mpeg_us/gallery.jhtml
Also, anyone who (for whatever strange reason) is interested in a more
detailed write-up about the making of this video and my dealings with MTV,
can check out my (long) Big Announcement posting on the BrickFilms ezboard
forums:
http://pub89.ezboard.com/fbrickfilmsforumsfrm1.showMessage?topicID=1972.topic
And finally for anyone who is unfamiliar with my Animated Brick Company
work, here’s a link to my page here on LUGNET:
http://www.lugnet.com/~250/brickmation/
Thanks for reading this announcement.
Greg
|
|
| |
The Richmond Lego Users Group (RichLUG) will be holding its next monthly
meeting on Saturday, February 1, 2003, from 12:00 noon to 5:00 pm at the
Tuckahoe Library on Parham Road. General fun with Lego is on the agenda.
Check out our website (www.richlug.org) for more information and directions
to the library. See you there!
Tim
|
|
|
