Category: Community (Page 147 of 174)

The Brick Fan 2014 Recap

January 1, 2015 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

2014 flew by just like that and it’s our tradition to take a look at last year’s statistics as well as a recap of everything that’s happened on The Brick Fan. As you can see from the graph below, the site had a significant increase in traffic of an approximately 253% compared to last year where we had over 185%. As we continue to grow, we also had a very large number of first-time visitors with an 248% increase from 2013. What I’m more impressed with is the number of people who returned to the site which had an 318% increase.

We’ve also hit some traffic milestones last year. We passed the 5 million page view mark in the middle of July and had also 6 million total page views alone in 2014 which is mind-boggling to me. Barring any major disasters, I expect we’ll pass 10 million page views in the middle of March/April.

Over to our social media sites, our Facebook Page “Likes” went from 1,582 to 4,137. I remembered last year that I was looking for a gradual increase but it was actually a very sharp increase.

On Twitter, we gained over 1,000 followers throughout 2014 and it was a great way to interact with some of the readers almost in real-time.

Finally on our Google+ Page we’re over 500 people who added us in their circles. I didn’t have much expectations on G+ since it’s not as well adopted as Facebook or Twitter but I do appreciate the people who added … Continue

LEGO Store Fashion Valley Community Window by monsterbrick

December 9, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

LEGO Store Fashion Valley Community Window - Monsterbrick

The Community Window at the Fashion Valley LEGO Store has been recently changed out and this month it features the work of Matt Armstrong, aka monsterbrick. For this month, Matt has brought in some of his animal-type builds including a cobra, elephant, spider, and mouse. If you have Beautiful LEGO 2: Dark, which we reviewed back in October, you may notice a couple of the builds have been featured in the book.

The cobra build named Danger Danger! was created in 2009 and consists of about 500 pieces, mostly with claw elements. If you stretch it all out, it is a little more than 5 1/2 feet in length.

The other build that’s been featured in Beautiful LEGO 2: Dark is the spider. It is named No…Lil Miss Muffet Lives Down the Street and it consists of about 100 pieces.

In the foreground is a little TECHNIC mouse. You can see another angle of it here.

Finally, the last animal is the Mecha-Elephant. What’s cool about this build is that the legs are from the style of the Star Wars AT-AT. The rest of the elephant is just Matt’s style.

I’ve seen images of these builds online before but to see them in person is totally different. Just the sheer size and detail of these builds are truly amazing. If you’re in San Diego, I suggest go checking out the Community Window for yourself. Also if you’re lucky to have a LEGO Store near you, go check out some builds of local … Continue

Philly Brick Fest 2015 LEGO Fan Festival Announcement

November 21, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

I am happy to announce that Philly Brick Fest 2015 will be returning to the Philadelphia Expo Center April 23 – 26, 2015.

As many of you know may or may not know, Philly Brick Fest was the first LEGO convention I ever attended and it was worth the trip. I hope to attend again this year to cover the event, so stay tuned for updates on my travel plans.

LEGO conventions like Philly Brick Fest give FOLs – Fans of LEGO an opportunity to come together as a community under one roof. Convention activities include playing fun LEGO games, learning new building techniques from other builders, and of course seeing the amazing creations.

Some of my favorite games during the private days from last years event included the Minifigure Identification Game, and Bowling for Bricks which was a relay race where we built a LEGO set and played a game of bowling at the same time. There were also seminars from Alice Finch, Kevin Hinkle from the LEGO CEE Team, and Clutch (Chris Byrne) gave a talk about running one of the largest US-based Bricklink stores, Bricks On The Dollar.

Then came the MOCs and collaborative LUG layouts. PennLUG, SteelCityLUG, ColonialLUG, and DelVaLUG each had their own layouts. PennLUG touted the largest train layout in their club’s history and other layouts included a Moonbase, Explorian Fleet, and more. In addition to the collaborative displays, there were also loads of stand-alone creations. Here is the link to my Flickr stream from last years event.

I spoke … Continue

Toys R Us Ultimate Wish Saturdays LEGO Building Event This Weekend

November 20, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

Continuing with their Ultimate Wish Saturdays at your local Toys R Us stores, they will be hosting another LEGO building event. This Saturday, November 22 from 12pm-4pm, head to your store and your child can build a winter city scene.

Again, these free building events are intended for children ages 3 and up and they usually get pretty packed so get there early if you want to attend. There’s no images of what the winter city scene will look like at this time so you’ll have to go there and check it out. Thanks to everyone who emailed in about it.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

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Adult LEGO Users Survey and Sweepstakes

November 19, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

LEGO is doing an Adult LEGO Users Survey and they are collecting information about the behavior of AFOLs who use LEGO products.

The survey asks you typical questions such as how likely are you to recommend LEGO products to others and reasons on why. It also asks if you have been in the “Dark Ages” and why you decided to become an AFOL.

It’s a pretty interesting survey and after you finish, you have an opportunity to enter their sweepstakes to win some LEGO products so there is an incentive to doing it. The survey takes about 5 minutes to complete and ends on December 17, 2014.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

When you make a purchase or, sometimes, carry out some other action as direct result of clicking on a link at The Brick Fan, we will receive a small commission.

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Designer Con 2014 Happening This Weekend

November 7, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

Designer Con 2014 is coming up this weekend at the Pasadena Convention Center. BrickStuds has come up with a very cool LEGO building theme called Comic Bricks! The idea behind Comic Bricks! is to take any comic book cover and build it using LEGO bricks. Members of BrickStuds, LUGOLA, SandLUG, FBTB, and BrickNerd will be collaborating to display a number of these builds. There’s a Flickr group going that already shows off some of these MOCs.

That’s not the only thing that will be happening at Designer Con. FBTB will also be hosting a speed build event and where the contestants will be building the LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes UCS The Tumbler (76023).

Tickets to Designer Con 2014 are available for purchase for only $5 per person or $10 for both days. Tickets will be $7 at the door.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

When you make a purchase or, sometimes, carry out some other action as direct result of clicking on a link at The Brick Fan, we will receive a small commission.

www.thebrickfan.com/

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Upcoming LEGO Conventions in November

November 6, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

There are a couple of upcoming LEGO conventions this month and their representatives have emailed us to help spread the world about them. The first one is LUG Brazil EXPO 2014 which is happening this weekend.

The LUG Brazil EXPO 2014 is an exhibition of creations made with LEGO® parts, built by members of the LUG Brazil. This is the 4th edition of the event, which is free and will feature 23 stations distributed over 1,000sqm.

Location and Dates

Campus Barra Funda Faculty Impact of Technology, located at Av. Rudge, 315 – Barra Funda, Sao Paulo .

Free admission!

November 8 »12h to 19h
November 9 »12h to 18h

The other LEGO convention is Brick Nation which is happening next weekend.

Join us at “BRICK NATION” a Lego Fan event.

November 15th & 16TH

Brick Nation, a Lego Fan event for enthusiast of all ages. Brick Nation is being created to increase awareness of the fact that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are all in play when it comes to LEGO and other construction toys. Creative arts, the sometimes forgotten form of education, can be expressed with LEGO. Families will be able to participate in unique Lego building activities and attractions.

Listed below are some of the actives that you will find at “BRICK NATION” are:

Lego charades – It is Pictionary, except you build your clues with LEGO pieces.

Rubber band race – Build a Lego rubber band powered car and race it against other contestants

Robot rumble – Two Lego remote control robots

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