Brickcon 2015!

Subtitle: how to be completely out-of-sync since I haven't even posted about (much) earlier events....  Oh well.

This weekend was Brickcon 2015, one of the biggest Lego conventions around.  Tons of "well known" Lego artists show stuff there, and we've been going most recent years.  We represented the R2-D2 Builder's Club, showing off the banner we picked up at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim.


L3-G0 and MCK-Y, Lego Droids at BrickCon 2015

MCK-Y the Mouse Droid and I had tons of fun entertaining folks 

Entertaining kids at BrickCon

On Saturday we had some excitement when the fire alarm went off.  Apparently some mom had her kiddo in one of those backpack things, and was leaning against the wall to rest.  When she went to leave, the kid was apparently really curious about this thing attached to the wall and tried to hang on.
Lara was wrangling L3-G0 at the time and was wondering what kind of whacky noise she'd triggered!

 

MCK-Y also took it upon himself to go entertain some of the folks in the crowd outside waiting to get tickets (there's often a line, particularly in the morning).  Unfortunately, he also tried to test the strength of this wall by backing into it!
The line curved around this shallow fountain, so MCK-Y decided to show off his off-road skillz!



Lego Mouse Droid driving through fountain!

Here are some of the other MOCs (My Own Creation, 'cept that these other people's creations, it's a Lego Builder acronym for things they make).

Cool Lighthouse, 2nd place in People's Choice



Nifty Lego Mosaic, Our Neighbor won an Mosaic award



These computers were also our neighbors, Look at those Lego cases!

On Sunday we were privileged to receive the BrickCon 2015 People's Choice Award.  What a cool honor!  We're glad you liked L3-G0 and MCK-Y, and thanks to everyone who voted for us.  We go to the cons because like showing off the droids for the crowds, especially when folks are excited and curious, but we don't mind winning prizes :)  There were tons of other great and deserving Lego Creations at the show, so we're thrilled and humbled that you chose us.

L3-G0 with People's Choice Award

L3-G0 trying the People's Choice Trophy on as a hat!

Now maybe I'll get around to posting some of the things that happened earlier in the year...

 

L3-G0 is Ready for Brickcon!

Yippee!  All ready for Brickcon 2013 (October 5-6 at the Seattle Center)  He's not going to have feet at Brickcon because that's going to be another very huge undertaking.

 

I didn't have a ton of time to post, so a lot happened.  The dome sits on a bearing, so that had to be mounted and bolted on.  The dome also basically fell apart and had to be rebuilt... better... stronger... faster... (yes faster, and it didn't even cost me Six Million Dollars).

 

Nikita helped test the dome:



 

The bearing and dome base rest on a support that is made from the hinges that hold the panels together.  There are two motors for the Lego EV3 Mindstorms (this is the largest Mindstorms robot I've built by far).  Two because they push a lot better than they pull.  The wheels will rest on the inside of the bearing, attached to the dome of L3-G0.  On the right, near L3-G0's blue front you can see a color/light sensor.  The light sensor is used so the EV3 knows when he's facing forward.

 



And here it is with the dome base on.  You can see that the plates on the base of the dome ring are bolted to the aluminum bearing.  The bearing has a plastic support ring on top of it, also to keep it from dragging the dome bottom on the static side of the bearing.

 

The bottom of the bearing is mounted to 1/4" plywood, seen here from inside the body, before the dome ring was installed on top. 

 

 The dome itself has been strengthened, and stays together much better now.

 

Also finally got the shoulders finished.  Lots of bits weren't perfectly aligned in the Lego Digital Designer (LDD), and LDD also doesn't show you how to attach 12 pieces from different directions at the same time!  Getting everything to snap together right was a bit challenging.



I like the detail on the shoulders, and also I like the "Under Shoulder Detail" (R2 Builders Club Lingo):

 

Timelapse Video on YouTube

 

I show his dome spinning at the end.  I'll have a better video of that later, but here's what I have so far:

Filling Holes

Yippee, most of the rest of the bricks arrived (there are still a couple where we were short for various reasons, but that won't stop us).

So this post is "filling holes" in the parts we already built, along with some better photos once the right parts are in place

First I added the little gray ring on the tippy top of the dome, only one brick, but a pretty big detail

 

Next was filling in mostly the missing tiles on the body.  Some of the white tiles for the panel outlines were missing, as well as tiles on the vents and some of the coin return slopes.

 

Detail of the side vent, notice that the blue parts are recessed.

The quarter of the body that fits together so far (3 other panels are done, but they're the same or mirrors of these and don't directly connect).

 



Next, the legs.  I really like the detail on the leg strut and it's angled square top.  Also the complex curves where the notches are, and at the top of the booster cover under where the shoulder hub will go.  We were missing the little slope parts and some tiles to make this all work.

 

Top of strut in booster cover:

Notches recessed in a curve in the booster cover:

 

Complex curves at the top of the booster cover:

The center foot was also missing a couple square plates on one side, but the photo isn't really different than before, so I didn't include it.  Also the side "footprints" were also missing square plates, but they're not very far along, so I'll photograph them when I do the rest.

 

Lastly, I fixed the colors around the bottom edge of the Holoprojectors and removed the shim plates, so they look a lot better:

Next up is probably more of the body, probably starting with the rest of the back since the two remaining back panels would allow me to connect 8 of the 12 body panels.

Time lapse of filling holes and the resulting parts

Other Lego MOCs

I wanted this to be all about L3-G0, however it occurs to me that its not easy to find out about our other MOCs, so here are some links.

* http://ourrandombits.blogspot.com/ - Disorganized posts including other Lego MOCs
* http://www.youtube.com/shawnlara - Disorganized YouTube channel with MOCs (don't tell google that you clicked on the ads for me).

Our Lego Space Needle:

http://ourrandombits.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-space-needle-was-destroyed-again.html
http://youtu.be/TIX5zC-na1A

Our Lego Disney Wonder Cruise Ship:

(Cool story)
http://ourrandombits.blogspot.com/2012/12/LegoWonderCruiseShipPage1.html
http://youtu.be/npljfpINL70

L3-G0, the full size Lego R2-D2.

We've made a few Lego models, such as the Lego Disney Wonder cruise ship and a Lego Space Needle, and it's about time to do something new, but all of our ideas were pretty lame.  So in the back of our minds there was some thinking about "what could we build next?" 

Then we went to Emerald City Comicon and saw some of the wonderful Astromechs there.  Of course I wanted to build one, but quickly realized it'd be a ton of effort, cost a lot, and I wasn't terribly familiar with the materials.

It should've been obvious, but "gee, I wanna build a droid" sat in one part of my brain while "I wonder what I'll build next in Lego" sat in another part.  Eventually we came to the obvious conclusion:  "I'll build an L3-G0".  Don't know why it took so long.

Normally I grab a bunch of bricks and start building, then get more bricks, but for various reasons I started toying around with some of the sections in Lego Digital Designer to see if some of my ideas were practical.  Of course, once I started, I forgot to stop.

Now we have a 15,000 piece model pretty much figured out, and all we need are about 12K more bricks!  (Well, and some sort of frame, and some motors, and some electronics).  We're hoping that at least part of L3-G0 will be done for BrickCon in October.  Feel free to send us your spare bricks ;-)

There are some parts that will undoubtedly need changed from the LDD model, and he's going to need an internal frame of aluminum or wood or something, but it should be do-able.

A couple more screenshots of the drawing:

The model is based on plans from the R2-D2 Builder's Club (Astromech.net)  Of course brick isn't as finely detailed as manufactured parts, but he should be "pretty close" to spec.  He'll probably be about 100 pounds.  Eventually we'd like more functionality, but for a start we're looking at getting him to move and beep in time for Emerald City Comicon (ECCC) 2014.  We'd love to take him other places too, anyone know how to get him to Celebration in one piece?

We'll post more as the project goes.

Bricks acquired so far:  15900/16000.