MicroBricks

Friends pointed me to this MicroBricks post last week highlighting the micro fleet in conjunction with the Galactica mosaic in the BrickCon display.



I really dropped the ball when it came to the micro section of the display, and nearly all credit for what we had there goes to Kevin Blocksidge for bringing microscale models of different ships from the fleet, as well as Adrian for bringing his micro Movers. I had wanted to do a much larger micro display, but just never got around to organizing it because I was so busy building the hangar.

The Battlestar Display

At long last, I present the Battlestar Display that ChiefLUG put on at BrickCon 2008 in Seattle last weekend!



Overview shots
Details!

Some shots of the display:

Katie's mosaic!












Don's AWESOME video of the display (and a Viper flyby!)

And we won BEST IN SPACE!


The whole thing turned out way better than I imagined, and I'm sad that the weekend flew by so fast. A massive thanks to everyone who brought a Viper, a Raptor, a Raider, a Colonial Movers (there's 3 of you!), hangar space, figures, or a mosaic (love you honey!) We had 35 smaller vehicles all told, many more than I imagined when I first put out my announcement about the ChiefLUG initiation.

I don't know if we can top it, but there will certainly be more big ChiefLUG projects in the future, and you haven't seen the last of my hangar.

Post-Con Wrapup coming soon!

I'm nearly finished uploading and organizing all the BrickCon photos from this past weekend, and am preparing a post detailing the BSG display we put on. It was epic in every sense of the word, and it will never happen again.

A teaser:

Packed!

Final Pre-Con tally

I've been a liiiiittle busy, so that's why I haven't been posting.

Thought I would give one last update before we leave for BrickCon in the morning:
31 pictured, 3 confirmed missing from mosaic:

Click for larger versions and links to the originals

See you at BrickCon and the biggest Battlestar Lego display EVER.

Rocketeer

Gasp! A post not related to the Battlestar display?! What heresy is this?

It's freaking retro awesome heresy is what it is.


Click here for more
Dave Ware, aka BrickWares, built this stunning reproduction of a Rocketeer movie posrt, and I adore it. It looks beautiful, and whoever gets to have this hanging on their wall is one lucky person.

PROJECT UPDATE

One month to go! Set Condition One throughout the fleet!

Click here for large

HANGAR FILLED

We did it! With just the folks attending today's supermegaawesomerad ChiefLUG meeting, we filled the entire hangar!


Sure, the hangar's not finished, and a couple of these models are incomplete, but we filled every stall, and had crew and techy bits strewn throughout. Fradel and Gary's Vipers were brand new to me, and looked great, as did Scotty's WIP Heavy Raider, if a bit underscaled. Bram's models were also really well done.

ChiefLUG members new and old were in attendance, and I think everyone had a great time. It was an excellent test run of what should be a really rad display at BrickCon.

See more pics of the fun here.

Inverse

I started a new Viper last night:

I flipped the colors of the first Viper I made, and kind of surprised I have enough parts in dark red to do it this close to the original design.

Hangar Update

This 7 and a half foot slice of ridiculous is taking up a nice chunk of floor in our living room. It's come a long way since my last post, but still not even close to being finished.

Floor

Baseplates arrived yesterday. I had bought extras, but then decided there needed to be more floorspace (for tools and crew and stuff,) and used the extra plates to widen the hangar. Now I need to buy more...

Oh, and Andrew brought his newest Viper and Raptor over, and I got mine back from Fradel, who was borrowing it to make his own. We also built a bunch of figs based on characters from the show.

PROJECT UPDATE

Click here to view larger version
That's a lotta Vipers (and other ships!)
I posted this mosaic of all the current finished or WIP Vipers that have been tagged or added to the ChiefLUG pool. I couldn't be more excited for the turnout so far. The last few days have been especially rewarding as several models have been finished and posted and I hear about more and more in the works.

This display is going to be EPIC.

Another

What about this one?

Hangar Started

I finally started the Hangar today for the BSG Display:


Not much to show, just testing out an idea for the stripey columns. Still not sure what to do for the floor, but leaning towards baseplates with tiles on top.

Regardless, I think I'll be spending way more on this project on Bricklink than anything I've ever done before, because if I go with this technique, I'll need lots of slopes and their inverses, and TONS of jumper plates.

Blogged!

The Initiation was blogged about on the Brothers Brick yesterday! That's great exposure for this crazy display. I didn't mention it before, but I also made a Flickr group dedicated to the construction and display of this project.

I figure posting about it as many places as I can (within reason: the folks at Classic-Castle wouldn't care for Vipers :P) will help get more models for the ChiefLUG Galactica display, which seems to be slowly catching on.

ChiefLUG Initiation Announced

Today I announced the ChiefLUG Initiation here on Classic-Space.com, with an additional mention on Flickr.

What's going on? Why am I doing this? This all basically happened because you know how much I love Andrew's Viper


click here for the full Brickshelf gallery

I decided, after a brief conversation with Andrew about it, that there should be a Battlestar display at BrickCon, and that ChiefLUG should be behind it. There's a ton of BSG fans among the Lego spacer community, and a love for all things Colonial and Cylon in geek culture at large. I imagined rows of custom Vipers all lined up, with the Colonial Anthem blaring from a radio nearby.

By making the Viper build the requirement to enter ChiefLUG, I think we'll not only get a lot more members in our pseudo-KeithLUG, but we'll also be able to easily fill some kind of BSG display at the Con.

And the more I think about this display, the crazier I get. Why just throw Vipers down on a table? They need something equally nice to sit on. What about the hangar? I've thought about building the hangar ever since I first started watching BSG and people called me Chief. But I never felt up to the task. And surely a hangar big enough to hold a few Vipers would be much too big for my collection. But... putting them just on tables? No dude, we need the hangar. Well allright, let's see if I can pull this off. (See? Talking to myself: crazy!)


I'll be looking into brickbuilt versus baseplate floors, and start crunching some numbers to see how big it should be. Check back for updates later!

The Birthday Boys

Yesterday Andrew and I celebrated our shared May 13th birthday. I turned the big 24 and Andrew's now 26.


Out to dinner with our lovely Katies (taking the picture)

If you've noticed a bit of Andrew love around here, it's because he is a super awesome builder who lives nearby and is really fun to hang with, and it's just a blast to dissect his models and try to figure out how he does what he does (see previous post where I copied his Viper design.)

3vil Tau

Andrew lives nearby and lent me one of his dark red hovertanks so that I could make a copy or two to help build up an army for... well... you'll see later. During the reverse engineering process, I decided to try it in a different color scheme, just for kicks.


3vil Tau tank
Yea or nay? I heard a few nays from folks when the images first got posted to Flickr. I stalled after that. I'd still like to finish it, but right now it's missing a prominent skull and the 3vil color scheme just may never work right with this design.

Old Tablescraps

I had these on my desk back in December. They're still there, waiting for a nice moc to call home.


My tablescraps

Gem

Besides my own works in progress and finished models on Chief's Deck, I also plan to spotlight some of my favorite creations and build techniques from fellow builders and friends.
The first highlighted moc on the Deck is a surprisingly gorgeous dark red and pearl gold number that absolutely stunned me:

Geminated Ruby by Zach Clapsdale
Zach had described the color scheme to me shortly before posting, and I admitted I was kind of iffy on it. It was hard to picture anything good, even from Zach. I had to apologize when he posted it because it's a beauty. He uses the rarely-seen UCS X-Wing windscreen to great effect, and the pentagon trick from which the moc sprouted is used masterfully. There's some very nice sticker placement here as well. I do think some of the gold swords seem ill-placed, but these are minor blemishes on the Gem.

Copycat

Andrew Lee posted his stunningly perfect Mk II Viper, and after I struggled to copy it by the pics alone, he lent me his and I was able to finish it off last month:


Mine is white w/ dark red, and some battle-worn discoloration, and Andrew's is the white w/ red stripes in back.

The Deck is Active

Watch your heads and limbs, there's a lot going on around this deck and you're liable to get hurt if you don't watch your back. It's a lot of work keeping these frakkin' birds in the air, but our lives depend on it.

Keep checking this blog for the latest construction shots of my own work and the newest space models from around the Fleet (aka the Lego community.) I'm just starting to figure out what I'd like to do with this place, so expect more soon!