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Raytracer

Brickvention 2012: A Con-goers perspective

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So, you're short on cash, you live in a different state, you haven't prepared the MOC that you wanted to bring and there's a 700km drive ahead of you. What do you do?

Well, in my case, I went to sleep. Tuesday evening, 10pm, I was lights out in bed ready to get up at 5:30 and get cracking. On getting up though, there was the *slightest* issue.

My partner's MOC was only half packed.

The car was nearly full.

If there is an award for real-life tetris, I would like it forwarded to my loving fiancee pronto, for getting out of bed and making the fastest unpack/repack job I've seen.

Anyway, Departure time and we hop in the Barina and get cracking.

<Some time later>

Rolling into Melbourne coming from Adelaide is always an interesting experience, but I don't think I've done it in the mid-afternoon before. The roads were surprisingly quiet and we arrived at our weekend halt, staying with Damien and Jax, quite possibly the most awesome couple I've met. Damien was attending as a con-goer as well but Jax is not interested in Lego, and yet put up with two young naive troublemakers in her house, and fed us to boot!

Anyway, so Wednesday was a blur of driving, arriving, half unpacking and sleeping.

Thursday though... well, Thursday was an interesting one.

I'd been asked to come in for some training at the Melbourne office on Thursday, you see, and this was supposed to be at 12:30. Doors opened for MOC delivery at brickvention at 12. In Adelaide, this wouldn't be a problem, you go, you unload, you drive to a carpark, park and walk to the office.

Nobody told me that parking in Melbourne STARTS at the $20/hr mark.

I ended up forking out $80 to park in the city for my training, which thankfully I'll be getting back, provided I glare at my boss enough.

Anyway, so I didn't get to see most of the setup day on Thursday, but I did go in after work for a couple of short hours - just enough to see my partner working hard on her Hogwarts:

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Oh, and Travis, one of the members of the Committee that makes Brickvention happen, looking rather Sailor Venus:

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Unfortunately we couldn't stay long on Thursday because we had to get home, feed and sleep because of Friday.

Convention Day.

We rolled in nice and early on the train, got in just in time for setup and the prelim speeches. Some were interesting (Derek, Ryan) and some were uh... not as interesting (Mayor of Melbourne City Council) - but still relevant!

Build in a bag came, heats were run, I got my time in and got into the finals (good fun!). During lunch I went MOC stalking, and had a chat to the crew making a documentary - later in the day we would be interviewed as the first Lego building couple they'd met - that's either awesome or sad, I can't work out which.

So what did I see in my MOC stalk?

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Some cricket, which I didn't realise until later had a streaker running across the pitch (sorry, he(?) was built like a ken doll so no pictures for the ladies)

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A man in a suit, running through some grass with a scared look on his face. I think he needed his meds,

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Another man's bottom, unfortunately this really big dish-thing got in the way,

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Some really tall colourful towers with some multi-coloured glass in the background,

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And some men on horses. I think they were comparing the length of their swords.

After a quick stalk and lunch feast, we were back into the convention room for the next competitions and the finals of the build in a bag - unfortunately, I pipped myself at the post in the build in a bag by confusing a 1x1 round plate in trans-orange for the same thing in light grey, but still came second overall.

Speed build was interesting, the difference between first and second was only 8 seconds and I came... second. I enjoy building things fast, can you tell? On the quick sort I was nowhere near on the pace, and I blame gremlins, the moon and even the slight breeze coming in through the door. No, wait, I'm just bad at sorting. Oh well! Sometime during all of this I'd bought raffle tickets, $10 worth which amounted to twelve tickets. I promptly put six into the super star destroyer, four into the hoth echo base and two into the unimog, then forgot about them for the rest of the day.

I decided to go back upstairs and talk to people, mingle, as it were, and do some more MOC hunting.

Round two of MOC hunting unearthed the following:

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A man staring intently at a train,

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Some brightly coloured Sphericals,

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A tiny man choosing some bottles,

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A poor photographer looking for opportunity,

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Some utterly gorgeous miniland-scale vehicles,

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And lastly, some faces in the crowd, before the crowd has even arrived!

Returning back downstairs, I arrived just at the draw of the raffle, snuck to the front and got settled just in time for this to happen. Yeahh, I was fairly stunned. So stunned in fact that I don't really recall much of what happened after, only that I went upstairs and suddenly it was 7-something and dirty brickster was supposed to be starting soon wasn't it and oh crap time to get back downstairs just in time to sit in on the fun. Stole myself a nice lantern!

Cue poorly done transition to Saturday, the first public day. I elected to sleep in, rather than trying to get myself up. Relaxed, I strolled in with my camera to see the masses at work. It must be time for...

More Photos!

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My quick and dirty Mostly Yellow, made on Thursday night using the parts provided in the showbag, seemed to be getting a surprising amount of attention,

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A crowd within a crowd, and some people on broomsticks flying around,

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A machine for moving balls around,

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The crowd crowded around the most interesting models: This, the quidditch pitch,

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My partner's Hogwarts,

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The amazing train display,

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And at some points in here, there's a rocket, a buckingham palace, a white house, a roller coaster, some ships, a partridge in a pear tree and wally. See the rest here.

Sooo that was public day 1. Public day 2 saw me arrive at the start of the day, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and working out how to best help out. The rest of the day saw me delivering cups of water to thirsty exhibitors and relieving people for lunch. I don't recall much except that there were MANY happy children and adults.

End of Sunday saw a rapid bump out, a packed car and a delirious drive back to our beds. An early night and a 5:30 wake got us back to Adelaide just in time for snoozing o'clock.

So, my thoughts? It was a much better run event than last year's, which while well organised, simply overloaded on people. The pre-booked tickets this year were perfect as a solution! Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, even if some con-goers (me) needed deoderant halfway through the day because of all the running around. Will I be going to Brickvention 2013?

The only thing that will stop me is the planet suddenly ceasing to exist.

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My partner's MOC was only half packed.

So NOT true. I had the car packed. It wasn't my fault you wanted me to leave some of my lego behind :(

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<*Snip!*>

Round two of MOC hunting unearthed the following:

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A man staring intently at a train,

<*Snip!*>

That's me! And my monorail! lol :tongue::tongue:

It appears you took that photo of me whilst I was helping set up the MOC that my mate Tim and I brought to Brickvention 2012.

Cheers,

J.P. Manalo

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Thanks for the write-up.

For someone like myself who has never seen a Lego show these posts are such a wonderful taste.

Lego is great. But to see groups of people enjoying Lego is a whole other ball game.

Awesome!

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