Tag Archives: wheeling

Brickworld 2012

Each year a Lego event called Brickworld takes place just north of Chicago.  Last year was the first time I had visited the event and I did write a blog post about it then.  If you want to see that, you can find it here.  The event is a convention for the Lego artists and they have a number of sessions before the whole thing opens up for the public.  That was when we got to take a look.

There are a whole bunch of really cool models that people have made.  Some of these are relatively straightforward models of individual subjects while others are far more involved.  There are dioramas based on people’s own ideas or themes such as movies.  Some are unbelievably complicated.  Often there are structures with multiple levels of detail.  A medieval castle may look impressive but you might take the top off and find interior rooms fully modeled as well.

Additionally, there was a complex machine that moved little Lego footballs around all sorts of clever contraptions and ultimately back to where they started.  It was a never ending path (provided the balls didn’t get stuck or fired out of the capture range of part of the device!).  Stills don’t give that device any chance of being appreciated so I tried making a little video of it which is below.

The level of detail in some of these models is amazing.  One medieval scene had hundreds of troops and horses set up, all of which had been done for the first time when setting up at the exhibit.  Some real effort is involved.  The Justin Bieber concert above also involved a lot of minifigs being set up.  (It was also surprising to see how many Bieber figs were in different models!  What does that mean??)

I will not say any more about the event but below are a bunch of shots of some of the myriad models made.  You can see them better than I can describe them.

Lego Masterpieces

An event was held recently that I had never thought of visiting before.  It was a Lego convention of some sort held up in Wheeling.  I had no idea what to expect at this – was it going to be a lot of vendors selling stuff or exhibitors of their creations.  It is safe to say, it was a lot more fo the latter.  I don’t know whether I was being unimaginative, but the quality of the work was astounding.

There was a lot of variety.  Quite a few Lego fans obviously like fantasy themes and so there was plenty of work like this.  I wasn’t as interested in that as I was in the creations of normal things that people had put together.  They obviously have a lot of imagination – and a lot of Lego.  One guy (who admittedly worked for Lego) had come from Australia.  I had seen a previous creation of his online.  It was a Qantas A-380 and was stunning.  This time, he had recreated the Love Boat and the captain from the series had coincidentally been in the day before and autographed it!

There was far too much stuff to fairly represent here but below are just a few shots of things that I was really impressed by.  (By the way, I know I said the fantasy stuff isn’t my thing but the Lord of the Rings display is included since it was quite incredible!)