Category: Community (Page 151 of 174)

Firestar Toys Custom Minifigures to Support NSPCC Charity

August 1, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

As we know by now, our friend Richard over at Brick Fanatics is an avid supporter of the NSPCC children’s charity. The charity was a huge part in his life and was introduced to LEGO when he was younger. Now Richard is giving back to the charity that saved his life and he’s been doing half marathons throughout the year to raise money for the charity. He has teamed up with Firestar Toys to create some custom minifigures that are in his likeness. If you’ve seen Richard in his running outfit, you can tell that the minifigures are a very good representation of him.

Although these minifigures won’t be sold, Richard will be posting details later on how you can get them. The money raised through the custom minifigures will go towards Richard’s challenge total which is then given to the NSPCC. If you want to help support Richard and his charity, head over to his fundraiser page.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

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Treasure Bricks May Be Your Next LEGO Storage Solution

July 19, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

If you’ve been looking for a solution to organizing your LEGO collection, then Treasure Bricks may be your solution. Treasure Bricks is an interlocking and stackable storage box that you can customize in different colors. Currently, there are four colors to choose from, Berry Blue, Rocket Red, Pure White, and Jet Black. Each Treasure Bricks system consists of three components:

Interlocking and stackable storage boxes.
Drawer component for easy access to your bricks. The drawer is easy to open and close, and the drawer is removable if you wish to empty your LEGO onto the carpet and start playing. You can take your LEGO collection anywhere to play!
Flexible organization – choose as many as you need and you can always get more as your collection grows!

For more information about Treasure Bricks, head over to their Kickstarter page.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

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LEGO Wall Redesign by Bruce Lowell

July 17, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

It’s always interesting to see how other builders’ store their LEGO collection. Renowned brick artist Bruce Lowell has recently redesigned his studio and he has documented the changes on his site to show what he has done to reorganize his collection. Bruce explains the different types of storage containers he uses to organize his bricks including Stock-On, Sterilite, Darice, and Plano.

After seeing images of his finished wall, I emailed Bruce asking how he sorts his LEGO elements. Some people may sort by color and some may sort by type. Bruce does a combination of both. Bruce notes that he sorts about 70% of his part types excluding all bricks and plates, slopes, wings/wedges, less used and larger parts (such as panels, wheels, animals, TECHNIC, house parts). However, he does sort all non-printed minifigure body parts, accessories, small hinges, rare slopes and small curved slopes, detailed pieces such as bars and taps, small animal parts, transparent parts, tiles, SNOT bricks, and much more. Each of these part types and the containers that hold them are contingent on the amount that he has in each color family.

Check out how Bruce redesigned his wall on his website and maybe it’ll give you some inspiration when it is time to reorganize your building area.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

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Brickipedia Announces 2014 Comic-Con Contest

July 15, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

It seems like there are contests going left and right lately in the LEGO community and that’s not a bad thing at all! With San Diego Comic Con 2014 coming up, Brickipedia has announced their first ever public contest and you can win some very cool prizes. All you have to do to enter is to build an original battle machine using LEGO elements found in the same theme including Star Wars, Super Heroes (DC Universe/Comics and/or Marvel), and Middle-Earth (The Lord of the Rings and/or The Hobbit). The prizes for each category are as follows:

Best Star Wars MOC: B-wing (75050)
Best Super Heroes MOC: Knowhere Escape Mission (76020)
Best Middle-Earth MOC: Mirkwood Elf Army (79012)

Head over to Brickipedia to read all the contest rules and to enter. The contest runs until July 27 23:59 (UTC) so you have about a week and half to get working on your MOCs. Good luck!

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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Brick-A-Pic Project Needs Your Help on KickStarter

July 14, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

I was contacted by Jake from Brick-A-Pic who is spearheading his LEGO KickStarter project. Brick-A-Pic is a website that converts your photos, logos, and other images into LEGO mosaics.

LEGO mosaics are a popular form of artwork in the LEGO community and Brick-A-Pic makes that process of creating one a little easier. They currently have a software that you can demo to give you an idea of how Brick-A-Pic works. One cool thing about the project is that, they also provide you physical LEGO bricks along with the plans and instructions.

Check out the video below for more details and test out the demo on the website to get a feel of how it works. The goal is to get $50,000 in a month so help spread the word.

Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

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San Diego Comic Con 2014 LEGO Store Community Window

July 12, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

Fashion Valley LEGO Store Community Window

San Diego Comic Con 2014 is upon us and my LEGO Store in Fashion Valley has gotten into the mood as well with their latest community window change out. This month’s window is centered towards the geekiness that is Comic Con with contributions by fellow SandLUG members Jason and Mariann. Jason, known for his CubeDudes creations, has built a number of pop culture characters from different TV series and movies including Batman: The Animated Series, Doctor Who, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Avengers, and Star Wars. If you look closely, you can also see Baymax from the upcoming Walt Disney animated movie, Big Hero 6. As you can see, he has done an amazing job on all the characters and it shows with a bit of imagination and creativity, you can build almost anything.

Mariann’s contribution to the window is her mosaic portrait of Doctor Who’s 11th Doctor, Matt Smith. In this type of mosaic, she is able to capture the portrait using the sides of the LEGO elements rather than the traditional studs up method of creating a mosaic. You can check out how Mariann created the portrait on her Flickr where she shows a blueprint of the complicated process. I’ve seen images of the mosaic before but to see it in person makes it even cooler.

If you’re going to be here for SDCC 2014, I highly recommend checking out the community window at the LEGO Store here in Fashion Valley Mall. You can easily take the trolley from the convention center … Continue

Brickset LEGO Minifigure and Brick Review

July 7, 2014 / Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

A few weeks ago, we reported that Brickset has teamed up with MinifigForLife Print Studio to create a small range of Brickset branded LEGO minifigures and bricks for sale. Today I received my order of one of the male white/blue minifigures and a white 1×8 brick.

The minifigure is your standard LEGO minifigure but the Brickset logo is what makes it stand out. You get your red, yellow, and green 1×1 plate logo printing on the center of the torso and Brickset right underneath.

The 1×8 white brick also has the same printing except that the wording is next to the logo and not underneath it. The brick makes a nice addition to your name badge bricks that you get from various LEGO conventions and it’s a great way to show your support for Brickset and what it does for the LEGO community.

Overall, the printing is very good on both the minifigure and the brick as they are printed at 1440dpi on a Roland UV printer. If you look closely, you can see that the printing is slightly raised but not much. It cost me about $17 for both the minifigure and brick and it took about 10 days for them to get here which is pretty fast considering that it ships from the UK.

There is another version of the 1×8 brick in blue for sale as well as various combinations of both the male and female minifigures so go here and check out the selection they have.