Tag: lego

Categories
Adventure

The Art of the Brick

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I can’t begin to count how many people took the time to let me know that The Art of the Brick exhibit was at the nearby Franklin Institute. Apparently my interest in Legos has grown to a near legendary status. So when I heard that NGM was moving out of the area (but not too far away) I knew it was time to check it out.

So I took the voyage to NGM’s house. It wasn’t too bad of a drive, I’ve got it down by now. Didn’t even need to use GPS or look at a map the night before.

Perhaps the most eventful part of the day would be NGM’s road rage (well it wasn’t really that bad). We were cut off my BOBAH, and it enraged him! Then we drove around the parking garage for quite a big. There was no parking and we had no idea that we were driving in a circle for quite a bit. It was funny.

Once we got inside NGM completely BOBAH’d me and cut in front of me to get his bracelet. I was a bit disappointed by the display of aggression.

The exhibit was really cool. There was quite an impressive variety of works. Famous works redone in brick as well as original creations too. All very impressive.

Afterwards we got some good pizza at Bricco’s. It was really good too, they always know fine places to eat.

It was another great NGM trip.

 

Categories
Design

Building a Lego Sculpture Tips

I’ve recently completed a life size Lego sculpture of a Jack Russell Terrier as well as the head of a capybara. Using Legos as a creative platform has turned out to be even more fun than I anticipated it would be. However it can be a lot of work and get expensive rather quickly, so I will share my tips on how to build a Lego sculpture.

  1. Like any project you need to have a plan in place before you begin. Give it some good thought about what you would like to construct. Sketch something out on paper first or use the Lego Digital Designer to help you prototype before actual building. Discovering that something might not work in the planning phase could save you much time and money.
  2. Color – there is a limited color palette that is at hand. For instance, you’re going to find it to be very difficult if not impossible to find certain brick colors (good luck with purple). So be sure to be aware of any color limitations that you might run into.
  3. Amount of bricks necessary. This can be very difficult to gauge. I highly recommend using the Lego Digital Designer to assist you in figuring out just how many bricks might be necessary. I find that no matter how many bricks you have, you always somehow seem to need more.
  4. Next you’ll need to acquire bricks. You might want to start off asking people if they have some lying around that they wouldn’t mind parting with. This didn’t work out so great when I attempted, but free bricks is worth a shot. If you’re really serious you’re going to have to stock up at a Lego Store or online using the Pick a Brick. Stocking up of Brick Buckets always helps too.
  5. Now I begin the fun part, building. I tend to start with the area that will be the most detailed, then build around that. I found that approach to work best for me. Also be sure to give much thought to strength and stability when stacking bricks.
  6. That’s really it. I will ask others for their opinions and then make any adjustments if necessary. Usually end up needing to scrounge up even more smaller bricks to get more detail into the sculpture.
  7. Have fun and show off your masterpiece to everyone you know!
Categories
Adventure Video Games

Day of Many Adventures

Lego Polar BearYesterday turned out to be one of my more adventurous days in quite a bit. I guess I was a bit overdue for some adventure since I really haven’t gotten the chance to leave the house much yet this summer due to some bad luck with some unkind viruses and such.

The day began with me making some yummy waffles for breakfast, then heading over to the Philadelphia Zoo. The Zoo was awesome as always and had a really cool Lego exhibit going on. I’ve been working on a Lego sculpture myself recently, so this was a treat for me to check out. The polar bear made of Legos there was amazing, I can’t imagine just how many bricks must’ve gone into making it. Also, the weather wasn’t really that bad while I was there, glad I got there a little on the early side as later in the day it would get extremely hot and humid.

Wall of BricksNext I embarked towards the King of Prussia Mall in search of the Lego Store. I really need some more individual bricks for my sculpture, and I was truly a kid in a candy store in the Lego Store. I figured out a system to most efficiently pack as many bricks as possible into a container. You pay by the container not the brick here, so maximizing brick placement was key.

There were some really cool stores at the mall too, and being in the air condition after on this really hot day turned out to be a nice idea. I got to eat some Chik-fil-A for lunch, which I sorely miss ever since they left the Hamilton Mall. It was one of my favorite lunch spots for the longest time at work.

As great as my day had been thus far, something else ever greater lay in store. As the day was beginning to wind down all the way at the other end of the Mall my eyes caught glance of it. The Wii Games Summer 2010 was in King of Prussia today!!!

It’s a national competition with people competing on various Wii games, and by some amazing coincidence I happened to be there on the day when it was taking place. What amazing luck indeed. I quickly signed up and began competing as the team “Best Team in Town”. I wanted it to be “Best Team in Town 2”, but alas it as too many characters.

My teammate tore it up in bowling and hula hoop on Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus. I did so so on 3 point shoot out on Wii Sports Resort and finished very well on Mario Kart (even though I hit that damn goomba twice). Haha, I actually got tired on my third round in 3 point shooting, it was a very exhausting day and I really needed some water in me at this point.

The final challenge was a 2 player coin grab in Super Mario Bros Wii. I thought we did pretty well in this, it was one of the tougher levels. I was really hoping that Super Mario Galaxy 2 would be part of the competition as I’ve played so much of it recently when I wasn’t feeling well, but oh well the other games were a lot of fun to compete in as well.

“Best Team in Town” finished in a respectable 3rd at the time, and checking the leaderboards just now it looks like we can in 10th place overall out of 48 teams. So that wasn’t too bad considering that neither of us really played these particular games much with the exception of bowling.

After this, finally got a bite to eat then headed home. A truly adventurous day for me, and so nice to be back out doing stuff like a normal person again.

Categories
Design

Going to Make a Lego Dog Sculpture

I’ve decided to make a Lego sculpture over the summer. I kinda wanted to be a Lego designer growing up and somehow lost track of that one, so out of the blue a week or so ago I thought that finally making a Lego sculpture of my own would be a good idea.

I decided that I would be making a dog for my first attempt. I’m modeling it after a Jack Russell Terrier I was once lucky to know named Rocky. He’s not too big, has short hair, and I figured it’d be nice to make something in memory of that crazy guy.

The first task has been to gather up as many white and black bricks as possible. I’ve bought a few bucket sets already, found some bricks that are older than me that were still in my parents attic (so glad I stopped my Mom from throwing them out years ago now), and ordered some individual bricks from lego.com.

It’s so cool that you can order individual bricks online, they have pretty much every shape and color imaginable. Another very useful tool I found was the Lego Digital Designer which is a free download. It allows me to build virtual prototypes before ordering any bricks, so far it’s come very much in handy.

Very eager to finish this creation up and will be sure to upload some photos once it’s complete.

Categories
Uncategorized

Creationary

I had to exchange a birthday gift this week and decided to use my newly found store credit on the Creationary Lego board game. I’ve always been a big fan of Legos, in fact my dream job as a child growing up was to be a Lego designer.

Apparently Lego has a full line of board games now, but Creationary was the one that really caught my eye. It’s like Pictionary but instead of drawing the things to guess, you build them with Lego bricks. A simple, yet brilliant concept.

You also know something is good when you can get people who’d never participate in a board game to play it too. Some of the cards are pretty challenging actually, but there’s 3 levels of difficulty that you can choose which helps even things out amongst different skilled players/teams.

I’m very pleased with this fine purchase and have to highly recommend this as a fine game to play with a group of people. Plus you get to build with Legos which is always a good thing.