Team J.A.F.

So I'm spending my spring break up in Tacoma at City Blocks, helping build a giant system model of Mata Nui the island.  As one of the main designers (I guess Swert can take some credit too) I am trying to remain extremely faithful to the MNOLGs and the famous maps.  However, there's a lot of inconsistencies, so some of it will be custom designed based on how I view the geography of the island in my head.  Hate or love the idea, we're going to be working on it all week and will be showing it off at BrickCon and maybe Bricks Cascade.  (Transportation issues may be a problem for the latter.) And no, this will not be to figure scale... in fact, I'm hesitant to even add in any villages for fear of messing with the scale.

For now, progress pictures.

Yesterday, the only real thing we did was lay out the base plates for the different sections of the island.  We require a lot of blue, and for reference the grey baseplates are just stand ins for blue ones that won't have anything built on top of them.

Today, we worked on the two major landmarks, the Magania volcano and Mt. Ihu.  I designed the top section of the volcano, but Swert took over trying to create a round base.  Thus I then worked on the mountain, which is going to end up taller than the volcano (as per our plan.)  We've left room inside the volcano to put stuff, like lights and trans red elements.  Both landmarks are on a raised section of Duplo bricks, and the adjacent baseplates will have slopes reaching up to them.

Tomorrow, we hope to finish the mountain and volcano, and begin to plot out the coastlines.

So I had a class field trip to downtown Portland.  (For the record, while I've been to Portland I don't go down there all the time like I know some people do... hey, you see how much I blog, where do you think I spend my time??)  I was running low on time, so I ended up parking in a lot next to the Oregonian building, where my class was going to tour.  (They're a local news-paper, but also have an extensive online news site, and we talked to people about video journalism.  It was cool.)  Anyway, I know the class thing would take a while, and parking was either for 1 hour, 2 hours, or all day.  I just went for all day to be safe (and I now realize that I probably could've found cheaper places now, but whatev the past is the past.)  So thus after our class trip, I decided to just walk around Down Town Portland, which is something I've never really done on my own.

I started out by getting down to the waterfront.  I don't know about the east side, but the west side has quite an amazing waterfront, and it's even nicer when it's not crowded from some public event.  Then I made my way down to the Steel Bridge and crossed over to the convention center, where Bricks Cascade is going to be.  I walked around a little trying to see what good restaurants are nearby, and realized that the Lloyd Center Mall is within walking distance.  (Somehow never made that connection before... remember, I said I don't go to DT Portland often, much less walk the streets for hours.)  Lots of good restaurants there... and a Chipotle.  I'll have to stop by there at least once during the convention.     Sadly, the local Lego Store is quite a ways away, and the TRU in the mall appears to be gone.  It would've been really cool if the mall had a Lego Store within walking distance from the convention... I'm sure that would've helped business.  

Then I crossed the bridge again, wandered around the Pearl, and went to VooDoo Doughnuts.  I guess it's like the famous Portland doughnut place.  It was fancy, and I could see lots of cool doughnuts they had in there.  The one I got was decent.  IMO a fun little place but not exactly what I would define Portland by.  (My definition of the city would probably be all the cool bridges.)  But I could tell it was popular... there was a fairly long line in the shot itself, and I could see where the line would go when it extends outside... they had it all the way down the block, which means they must get busy sometimes!  Another fun note; I was trying to find the exact location, and then a few blocks away I could smell the doughnuts in the air before I even saw the shop.  Crazy.

Then I went back to my car, and drove home, and got stuck in stop-and-go traffic on I-5 North.  Standard stuff.

One of my main goals for this little excursion is to see what we can do in Portland for Bricks Cascade.  I know a few people who are coming down to our area for the convention who might stay an extra day, so I'm thinking of all the cool stuff we could do.  Walking across all the bridges would be neat, if we're up for the exercise.  We could also go to Lloyd Center and go ice skating on their rink... for all of us who want to embarrass ourselves in public.     Another idea is to go to OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.  Sure, it's not the Smithsonian, but it's still pretty awesome, depending on what exibits they have up in June.  (I looked at their website... they don't seem to plan that far ahead.)  We could also visit the Oregon Zoo, which is awesome even though I've been there many a times as a kid.  My other ideas also involved driving through the Gorge and going on some of the nasty vertical hikes that are offered there... but dunno how others would appreciate that idea.     (Also, Velox suggested Laser Tag again, but there aren't any places quite as close as the one was in DC.   )

A few other notes of my little trip today; I walked far.  My legs are sore now.  I must've covered a couple of miles at least.  Also, I'm impressed with the public transit in DT Portland.  I didn't take it (because I was walking ) but it was all very high tech and nice.  But the crosswalk things would speak to me, like really say "Do not cross yet."  Or worst, "The light is already green, you didn't need to press this button loser."  But the light was red just before I pressed it!!  Um, anyway, yeah, interesting day.

So a month ago I posted a blog asking for opinions on Bionicle mosaic projects for the two Northwest conventions I’ll be attending, Bricks Cascade and BrickCon.  Hahli Husky, Black Six, and Kakaru all said they’d be willing to send a piece in, but I didn’t get much else besides that.  (Swert commented too but I know he can’t send a piece in…   It’s okay, we’re working on our Mata Nui Island project that’s gonna be epic.)  The conventions are edging closer, so I would like some more opinions.

1: Can you bring a mosaic piece for one of the Northwest conventions, and if you can, WHAT COLORS WOULD YOU WANT TO USE?  I know people have a limited amount of bricks they can use, so I could either work towards a black, white, and grey mosaic again, or if people have enough blues or reds, we could try something in a specific color.  I would particularly like responses to this question.  

2: BrickFair’s Bionicle Mosaic is also a WIP, and I know CF and Nukaya are making some plans for it.  But, having read DeVee’s blog, I know he’s willing to take MOCs sent to Bricks Cascade and bring them to BrickFair.  So potentially he could do the same for mosaic pieces.  A single mosaic could premier at Cascade and then travel across the country to show up at the Fair on the other coast.  I’ve thrown this idea out a few times, but I haven’t gotten any feedback on it, so what do people think?   Not happening, I guess.

In that case, let's focus on BrickCon.  Letagi, Razlak, Kakaru, KopakaNui, EW, and I have all contributed mosaic pieces before, and other Bionicle peeps at BrickCon are willing to contribute too.  I think out Bionicle mosaics in the past have been just too cool, and we should try to get them to show up at more conventions!

Answers to these questions can help me determine specifics for designing the mosaics, based on colors and size (how many people are interested, ext).  So if you have any interest, please respond.  

I brought up this idea in a previous blog post; the idea would be to use the giant wheels that came with the Thornatus set and build a tower with them at BrickFair.  Maybe it's not the most original idea ever, but it would be a cool yet simple group project, if everybody who has a wheel can just bring it in.

And now I have an LDD image to show how we'd make this:



The only extra pieces we'd need are the three 2 length connector pieces and 6 +o rods.  Additionally, I could create a more elaborate top of the tower out of system bricks, but the big wheels are still the main draw.  So I'm pushing to see if we can get more people to bring some in!  

People Interested in Participating:

Xccj
Dorek
Kakaru
Bulik
Nuju Metru

Click For Topic

Gosh, that was hectic to write up.  Not to mention all the pictures I had to go through.

Okay, so I have this new project.  Back in 2001, the Toa Kanohi all came in six different colors.  I finally completed my collection of the original 36 Toa Mata masks a while back, but what to do with them?  Well, I plan to make a MOC for each of the 36 masks.  And to give it a theme, I'm going to use the original six masks to recreate the Toa and use the rest to build various Rahi.  This is my Thirty-Six Masks Project.

The above topic shows off my Toa remakes.  I also have about 19 Rahi built too, as well as a plethora of Matoran villagers.  My idea is to use all these models to stage a massive battle scene at Bricks Cascade.  DV, make sure you leave room for me.     Some of the MOCs are good, some are a little less than that, but each and every one will have a mask included in its build.

I still have roughly 10 more MOCs to make, and I haven't taken pictures of any of the Rahi, so there'll be more to come from me.  Until then, have a look at my Toa.  Comments appreciated, but it's unlikely that I'm going to radically alter then before the convention.  (Because I'm starting to run low on useful pieces.   )

Also, this topic was my 6,000th post.  Yay me.

Do you own a Thornatus (2009 Tan Battle Vehicle) and plan on attending / sending stuff to a convention?  If so, this blog post is for you.  

So the Thornatus has this one GIANT black, spikey, plastic wheel.  IMO, it's kinda a lame piece; it doesn't make for a good wheel, and it's too large to really fit on anything else nicely.  For me, it mostly takes up room in my Lego containers.  I'm not going to assume that this is the same for everybody who owns that piece, but I'll guess that it's not on your star MOC.

So we need to make it into a MOC.

You see, I was thinking, what if I had multiples of these wheels?  And what if I... stacked them?  Using only a couple of technic connectors, the wheels should fit on top of each other snugly.  And if we could do this for multiple and multiple wheels, we could make one rad looking tower.  (I'd upload an LDD image, but that'll have to wait for when Majhost comes back.)

To do this tho, we'd need lots of these wheels.  I checked online, and they're hard and expensive to come by, so this can't be an individual project.  But then I thought to myself "Where would I find a bunch of teenage to adult people who would've probably bought a Thornatus set back in the day?  Maybe on a Bionicle fansite!!"

So what do you think?  Send in a big Thornatus wheel, help make a giant tower?  (We could even use the 4 smaller-but-still-big-and-spikey wheels that came with the Thornatus to build smaller side towers.)  Thoughts?

Unless you live under a rock (IE don’t read the front page often… which a surprising amount of people don’t seem to do) you’ll know the huge success that the Bionicle Mosaics have had at BrickFair these last two years.  Chocolate Frogs and Nukaya organized the projects, and then regular members brought or sent in the pieces.  They’re working on another one for this year too, but that’s not what this blog is about.

See, BrickFair may be the largest convention for BZPower folks, but it’s not the only one.  BrickCon in Seattle has a healthy group of MOCers, and I know we’re expecting a few to come to BricksCascade in Portland.  It probably wouldn’t make too much sense to fly the BrickFair mosaic to all three conventions (although that would be cool) but perhaps each convention could have its own Bionicle mosaic?  This is not a competition between Lego conventions, but rather a way for all of us to show our appreciation of Bionicle!

Still, this will take some logistics to figure out if it’s possible, since as mentioned before, BricksCascade and BrickCon do not quite have the member attendance as BrickFair.  So if you’re attending either of these two conventions, post and say if you’d like to make a 32x32 mosaic piece.  Additionally, if you’d prefer to use one color over another (like you have more red bricks than blue, ext) mention that too.  And if you’d want to send in a piece too, I’d be opened to that, but you should probably volunteer for the BrickFair one first, since that’s gonna be the bigger one for sure this year.

So, thoughts, opinions?  This is a blog post to get feedback, so if there’s no interest, the project gets dropped.     Thanks for reading.