Admin Rock blabs about some LEGO thing he built over at Brickwares.

Check it out over there.

Hey there. In addition to not destroying The Correctness website too often, I also moonlight as a Lego freak… Thought you guys might like to see some of my stuff from 2010. I go by Brickwares at my other website (www.brickwares.com). If you have a few extra thousand dollars lying around, I can make you the coolest wall decoration ever.

2010 was a very busy year for Brickwares. I built 4 large mosaics, as well as some smaller pieces, had a few commissions, joined a LUG, won a number of awards, and my LEGO world expanded as I met and networked with a number of luminaries within the hobby.

In January, I entered the Silver Springs community show, an annual show in Calgary. The highlights of the show for me were meeting up with a number of the folks from SALUG (The Southern Alberta Lego User Group), and a second place ribbon for the “Rudolph and Hermey” mosaic with its light up nose.

April brought about another local LEGO show, at the Ogden Millican Community Centre, for which I built a mosaic of my youngest son, Max. It turned out very well, and took first prize at the show. I also built a small microscale city, which won 3rd prize in it’s group.

Hot on the heels of that show, we discovered that Calgary had been chosen for the first LEGO store in Canada. Very exciting stuff! As part of the build-up to the grand opening, Chinook Centre was interested in displaying some local LEGO pieces from SALUG. During one of our meetings, I was lucky enough to meet Robin Sather, an incredibly talented builder from the West Coast. I decided to build a replica of the 2010 Stampede poster. It was the largest piece I’ve attempted thus far, and on a serious deadline. Many late nights and rush bricklink orders later, I had something to show.

Big enough for my family to lay on!

In the garage, attaching things..

The finished piece!

The Stampede mosaic received a lot of attention, even from the president of the Stampede Board himself. While that was flattering, the next event brought the highest praise of all! I was lucky enough to be able to help with the “Build-A-Buzz” event for the store opening, and met Dan Steininger, a Master Builder with The LEGO Group. He was very impressed with the Stampede mosaic, which blew my mind. Dan let myself and Jen Wagner put the finishing touches on Buzz. It was such a great experience, and I met a lot of great people, some of whom would keep popping up during the year, like Ed from the Anaheim store!

Dave and Dan

I also volunteered for the Stampede Breakfast, helping with the Minifig builds, which was a blast, and allowed me to be near a LOT of minifig parts…

So many torsos!

Minifig parts galore.

Dave and the little Brickwares.

After the summer was done, and the store in full swing, it was time to turn my attention to BrickCon and Seattle. This is by far my favorite LEGO event (at least so far!) and I was excited to return. I even remembered my passport this year! The show was even bigger than the year before, and I had a great time, meeting up with some old friends, and making a lot of new ones. Some of the highlights were meeting people like Mariann Asanuma and Alex Eylar, whose work I admire greatly, helping to judge the train category, and hanging out with Dave and Stacey Sterling, Tom Rafert, Iain Heath and John Langrish until the wee hours. Oh, and winning Best Large Mosaic was pretty awesome too. “War of the Worlds” was build specifically for the show, and was a lot of fun to make, with bright colors and some fun laser work! Michael Giacchino, Academy Award winning composer (“Up”, “Star Trek”, “Lost” among others), and very awesome Lego guy tracked me down to tell me how much he liked the piece, which made my brain asplode!

Getting ready to roll!

Lasers are dangerous!

After I returned from Seattle, “War of the Worlds” went up on display at Phoenix Comics on 16th ave in Calgary, where it currently resides, until I figure out what to make next!

In late October, I was contacted by an old friend from high school, and commissioned to build a mosaic for his wife’s birthday. After looking at the picture for a bit, it struck me that I wanted to make a picture of her eyes, and style it after the old Nagel pieces from the 90′s (you might remember his cover for Duran Duran’s “Rio” album). It was a quick but fun build, and as a bonus, I received a picture of the piece hanging in their home.

After I finished “Eyes”, I started toying with something for an upcoming project that’s still in the planning phases. Without giving too much away, I built a small prototype (not of the final image) to show how the concept would work, and my good friend Tony (Tbinns) liked it so much it now adorns his baby’s room.

With Christmas fast approaching, I didn’t have time to build much more, but I’ve made a few microscale things for the next Silver Springs show, and, since time prevents a new mosaic before then, I’ll likely bring War of the Worlds to that show, though I don’t like bringing “old” pieces to shows…

At any rate, I can’t imagine what 2011 holds. If it’s anywhere as amazing as 2010 was, I better hold on to my hat! Have a great new year and we’ll see you back here soon.

I debuted my latest piece at Seattle’s BrickCon this weekend: “War of the Worlds” (More on the mosaic in another article to come). For the second year in a row, I was awarded the “Best Mosaic” trophy, and even received some votes for “Best in Show”. Seattle and admin_rock seem to get along very well!

This year’s BrickCon was even bigger than last year’s, with almost 11,000 people checking out all of the great creations by 400 builders. I had a great, met some new friends, and learned some new building techniques. If you’re anywhere near Seattle on the first weekend in October 2011, I highly recommend you visit.

I’ll be posting some of the awesome creations I saw at BrickCon on Brickwares over the next few days.

Here at the Correctness, we appreciate our moms a lot. Mostly because until a few years ago, we lived in their basements, but there are many reasons to thank our moms!

admin_rock

My mom encouraged my nerdiness in oh so many ways, some of which I’m certain she didn’t (and still doesn’t) understand. The first thing I recall (apart from taking me to Star Wars, which might have been Dad’s idea) was to take me out shopping on a sick day from school. She bought be a bunch of Star Wars figures, at the princely sum of $2.00 each. I still have some of these, and have passed possession of them on to my own son, as they are 50 times cooler than the crappy assed new ones that they make.

She was also awesome about taking me to get games for my atari, and even picked up the later games that involved hooking up a tape recorder (which I can’t recall the names of, nor find in my quick google search).

She encouraged my love of computers, buying me a Sinclair zx80 (with the extended memory module), and patiently put up with my complaining whenever a small bump caused it to disconnect. I also remember, years later, her taking me to the store to buy an Atari 800, which was pretty freaking cool.

RobbieRobTown

My Mom was a Librarian. Consequently, after being encouraged to read a lot, I was then permitted to read anything. I had no taste, and desperately trying to recapture the magic of the Lord of the Rings from the first time I read it, I spent my entire adolescence reading the worst kind of crap fiction that existed.  At the time I thought my mom didn’t understand what I saw, but I realize now she actually understood completely, and was allowing me to make my own horrible, horrible mistakes. That was sweet of her.

She used buy MAD magazine for me, when summer road trip season came around, which I thought was hilarious. It was not, I’ll have you know. I used to wonder why my parents didn’t appreciate the advanced comedic concepts contained within. Again, I was wrong, and Mom and Dad were right, just unflinchingly tolerant.

There was a lot of Lego, and immense messes of Lego because of the Lego. My Mom took me to see Return of the Jedi in a real theatre! My mom also got on the 4 month-long reservation list to see worn out copies of Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars on Beta. BETA!

More than anything, my mom was constantly kicking me outside. I think she had a hunch that I had special powers, and that outside is where I could go play with my elf friends, and where I was a Jedi.I don’t know how she knew, maybe she was a Jedi too?

Tbinns

My mom was from an older generation. She was a landed immigrant who grew up in wartime England, so sci fi was not even on the radar. My dad encouraged me to read Tolkien, but then again my dad encouraged reading period regardless of genre. So I think it’s fair to say that my mother encouraged nerdiness through tolerance. There was always a generous amount of Kenner Star Wars toys under the tree.

In fact, one year she was determined to get me a radio controlled R2D2. Trouble is, as I said, this was sooo NOT a part of her world. She couldn’t get “R2D2” out to save her life. It seems weird to us now that someone wouldn’t know who Artoo is but to her it was like cracking a code, and she told me she stood there in the store going through every number letter combination she could think of. Even the store clerk was having trouble remembering.

I got a radio controlled Sandcrawler that year. It was easier to remember.

There was always 5 dollars in her purse for a matinee. And her tolerance level for neighborhood kids piling over to her house and cluttering up her table with strange looking maps, lead figures and books seemed infinite. And she had hobbit like ideas about entertaining, so there was always food on offer, despite the fact that we weren’t exactly the richest family around.

I lost my dad when I was 14 (Hello Lung Cancer, my name is Tony Binns, you killa my father, prepare to die) and my mom on my 26th birthday (Heart attack). I don’t know how she contributed to my nerdiness per se, but she contributed to me being somebody who approached life with a sense of humor, and that, surely is geeky enough.

So for all the Gemini (Atari rip off) games, her patience, her nerd hosting, her buying volumes of d and d books and Star Wars stuff that she barely understood, I would like to say thanks and Happy Mother’s Day…wherever you are. I still remember exactly how you like your coffee, when we meet again.

So, for all the things they did for us, we want to thank our moms.