Christopher’s teacher had asked for parents to volunteer to come in and tell about their jobs. While my LEGO freelance artist thing is nothing like a full-time job right now, I thought it would be something that the kids could relate to.

When I asked the kids if any of them had ever built anything with LEGO I was practically knocked over by the verberations in the air from 20+ hands shooting straight into the air. Okay, so I wasn’t really knocked over, but I don’t think I’d ever seen that many hands go up that fast. And you want to talk about an engaged audience? I was blown away (again, not literally) by how into it these kids were.

Christopher was my helper and we showed his classmates LEGO Green Eggs and Ham, a life-size batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies and Milk — something my wife and both boys had fun helping me put together. Then we showed them the giant LEGO chocolate chip cookie. And finally the jigsaw portrait puzzle I had built of Christopher’s face. That one I pulled out in the six individual pieces first and let the kids guess what it was. Several of them could see his face in it before I had the last two pieces on, so that was really neat.

So that was my ten minutes of Friday fame. Lots of fun. For a sneak peak into the future, here’s a picture of a new LEGO portrait I’m working on of our second-born, Patrick. Stay tuned for updates!

PicToBrick is one of several programs available to aid a user in converting a picture into a size and color system that works with LEGO bricks. I’ve tried the program, but haven’t cared for it too much, so I thought that a workshop with a live person showing the program would be helpful.

On the one hand, I was encouraged that a lot of the problems I’ve encountered with PicToBrick are things that David mentioned as shortcomings of the program. So, while I’m a little less worried that I’m “missing out” by not using the program exclusively, I am willing to give it some further use. Either way, I still think that Sean Kenney’s typical approach to building portraits out of LEGO (by hand, without the use of PicToBrick) is superior to any effort relying solely on software, and I’d like to continue that discipline as well.

Hands-on Mosaic

For the hands on part we built a 3×4 baseplate version  of Bart Simpson. We split into 12 groups and David gave each group a diagram. We worked with 2×2 bricks, so it was much easier than starting with 1×1′s. David said that this is a project that is great for school kids. They can each work on their part of the mosaic, and then put the whole thing together at the end.

All in all it was a great session and it gave me a lot of great ideas. Thanks David!

Nathan Sawaya does the sort of thing that I want to do when I grow up. Er…okay maybe that’s not accurate, because he hasn’t grown up either. Nathan is one of only a handful of LEGO Certified Professional builders — i.e., he doesn’t work directly for LEGO, but his day job is building art using LEGO as a medium — the sort of thing I do here on Duckingham, just on a much smaller scale than he does. You can check out his work at BrickArtist.com.

Nathan was great to talk to; he didn’t bring any of his own work (most of it is too big to fit in his carry on bag ;D), but said several nice things about what I had there.

Anyhow, here we are:

Nathan has also made a chocolate chip cookie; his used a lot more bricks than I own, but this is the one I built, and I might add, I had mine posted on the web sooner, so I could claim he stole my idea. Nah.

Registered attendees were able to sign up (in advance) for workshops on Thursday. The morning’s sessions were Art & Architecture by Arthur Gugick, and MLCAD 101 by Jeremy Spurgeon. As much as  I really want to learn more about MLCAD and the LDRAW group of programs, I’ve admired Arthur Gugick’s ingenuity for building for a while.

Arthur Gugick

Arthur is a highschool math teacher, and apparently is accustomed to speaking to groups of people and connecting with an audience. His presentation was tremendous.

One of the first things Arthur did that was veeeery helpful was pronounce his last name. The first “g” is hard, the second one soft, so more like goo’ – jick.

For those not familiar with Arthur Gugick’s work, check out his stuff on MOCPages.

Arthur told us a bit about how he went through a more of a Dim Age than a Dark Age (Dark Age is typically what’s referred to as the period of time when you stopped building LEGO as a kid until the time you picked it up again as an adult). And that when he started getting into building, before he discovered BrickLink, he would take pocket fulls of LEGO when he took his kids over to other kids houses to swap out for pieces he needed for his collection.

The “Taj” Movie

Arthur’s biggest current claim to fame is that one of his versions of the Taj Mahal plays a key role in an upcoming film called “Taj.” When Arthur was first contacted by the director he thought he was being “punk’d” by one of his old college buddies. But after money started showing up in his paypal account he became more convinced. He ended up building two versions, and was flown to Australia to get everything set up.

Spencer Rezkalla

Spencer also spoke for a few minutes. He is a builder I wasn’t previously familiar with, though he’s done some pretty awesome stuff, too, though I’ll be quick to admit I’m more interested in Arthur’s work.

U.S. Capitol Building Model Build

Much to my surprise and delight, Arthur gave us the pieces for a recent model he’d constructed and walked us through how to build it. Much to my chagrin, despite the fact that there was a limited sign-up for the workshop, at least twice as many people were there than were supposed to be. So Arthur had a box with red and blue 1×1′s in it and we passed the box around and everyone picked a color. After we all picked, he told us the correct color was blue, so everyone with blue got to do the set. And we got one — which was fortunate b/c when it got down to Maria and I there were only 2 blues left (no reds). We took one and passed the last one on to the next person in line. There were still about 8 more people (over the 50 who got to pick) who didn’t get a chance to pick.

But here is the completed build:

At the front of the registration window — all the BrickWorld badges waiting on the wall for the 556 registrants.

A close up of this year’s BrickWorld Badge.

Where it was

The actual building event took place in an opened area at the food court. Good idea since there were literally hundreds of people there that day taking part in the event. There were a lot of people at the LEGO store, too, partly since participating in the event got you a $5 off coupon any purchase over $35.

The LEGO Master Builder & company

Here is the Master Builder for our event,  Dan Steininger. He had quite a few helpers. There were usually 1 or 2 guys behind “the fence” with him answering questions and taking completed 4x bricks.

In the meantime you had about a dozen extra LEGO store attendants on-hand assisting the Master Builder,  refilling brick tubs on the tables, answering questions, keeping things flowing at the store itself, etc., etc.

Yes, I’d like a coat like that.

Sculpture Instructions

Dan the Master Builder had a smaller model of R2-D2 that he has made that he used as his “instructions.” The basic idea is that each brick in the small model will end up being one of the 4x bricks in the big sculpture.

Dan also had some “instructions” for some dogs he’d built. I was pretty excited to see them because these are the ones that I’ve personally seen and photographed outside the LEGO store at Downtown Disney in Orlando, Florida.

Making 4x Bricks

For the building process  there were about  8 tables set up with bins of bricks and the instructions to make the 4x bricks. The 4x bricks were pretty straight forward: 2 layers of 2×4 bricks, then a top layer of 2×8′s. There were a couple tables each for white, grey, and blue, the 3 main colors of the sculpture.

Finishing Your 4x’s

Once you were done with however many 4x bricks you decided to make, you took them to the Master Builder, or to another attendant. In return you got a $5 coupon and a slip of paper to take back to the LEGO store to get your participation certificate.

Back at the Store

I was surprised (but in retrospect shouldn’t have been) how mobbed the LEGO store was. And they had a long line for the cash registers — but, to LEGO’s credit they kept the lines moving pretty quickly. (That in spite of the fact that a kid in front of me dropped his whole pick-a-brick tub all over the floor! Yikes! The LEGO employee who quickly came with a dust-mop said,  “Happens more often than you’d think.”)

Despite it being busy, the event seemed very well planned … most, if not all of that LEGO store’s employees seemed to be there to help guide folks through the build, answer questions, and get you through the long line in the LEGO store itself.

Despite the long line, it was moving quickly,  and the personnel were very professional and helpful. It was nice to see at least 4 store employees we remembered from our trip to the LEGO store last year.

End of the Event

Since we only were able to be there on Saturday, we didn’t get to see the finished sculpture, so I don’t have a final photo. So if anyone else was there, or at another of the R2-D2 events and wants to send me a picture, I’d love to add it.

What’s Next for R2-D2?

Dan said that after the event, the R2-D2 will get completely dismantled to be re-used for the next event. This one has already been built several times. Check out LEGO’s events page for things going on at your local LEGO store.

And check out more photos of the event at my Flickr Photstream.