LEGO® Fan Media Days 2018: What happened

Thanks to over 30 wonderful New Elementary readers who gave generously to our GoFundMe campaign, we were able to send Are J. Heiseldal to LEGO® Fan Media Days 2018 in Billund, Denmark this week.  In reverse chronological order, here's a taste of what happened and what interviews you can expect to read on New Elementary in the coming months!

LEGO TECHNIC 42083 Bugatti Chiron

On Friday the new Technic supercar for 2018 was announced in an exciting press event at LEGO House.

London AFOLs: Abstract

We took a box of new LEGO® pieces to a meet up of London AFOLs for some fast-paced building adventures. London AFOLs meet in a pub every second Monday of the month, and new and international visitors are always welcome. Check out the group on meetup.com/LondonAFOLs. 

Last time we shared some of the real-world objects the builders made; today it's the abstract builds. People had just 20 minutes to create something using some new LEGO parts, some elements that have recently come in new colours, and London AFOLs' general brick stock. 

Love this simple usage of  Brick 1X1X1 2/3 W/ Vert Knobs in Bright Red [TLG]/Red [BL] (Element ID 6187620|Design ID 32952) to create a spiral. Those 1x4 tiles are Bright Green (6195267|2431); these are back again having briefly appeared in 2012/13. They come in the exclusive set 21037 LEGO House which also introduces 1x1 tiles in this colour!

London AFOLs: Real-world

We had a box of LEGO® pieces left over from our Skærbæk Parts Festival (which Jason Briscoe kindly drove back to London, thanks Jase!) and so we took them to a meet up of London AFOLs, for more building adventures. London AFOLs are - you guessed it - a bunch of adult fans of LEGO who meet in London. In a pub! It's very friendly and informal, and new and international visitors are always welcome. They meet on the second Monday of every month, so check out the group on meetup.com/LondonAFOLs. 

Over three posts, we will show you just a fraction of what was built that evening. Today we start with some real-world objects the builders dreamt up. Our parts were added to London AFOLs' existing brick stock and head honcho Richard Selby had the idea of restricting build time to just 20 minutes! Then everyone would move tables to try out the different parts on offer. Many of the featured 'seed' parts from the festival had previously been gobbled up by Skærbæk builds, so you'll notice more of the supplementary parts from the festival in these builds. A lot of these were rare or new recolours of existing parts, so I will point some of these out as we go.

2017 Skærbæk Parts Festival

On the last weekend of each September, the Skærbæk Fan Weekend brings together hundreds of LEGO® fans from dozens of countries for a few fun-filled days in a remote Danish coastal town. 2017's was the biggest yet, and on the Sunday morning New Elementary ran one of our 'live' parts festivals: a special workshop where, thanks to the LEGO Group, 60 AFOLs got their hands on some of the newest LEGO pieces to see what they could build within the space of an hour.

At long last I'm ready to show you what they made! Well, almost. Today I will introduce the parts I chose for the festival.

PdC Parts Festival: Day Three

Here are the results from the final day of our first ever live parts festival, where AFOLs from all over the world who were attending the Paredes de Coura (PdC) Fan Weekend last June were given just over an hour to come up with ideas of what might be possible using a range of new LEGO® parts. See the parts selection here.

Bill Ward

At the rear of his spaceship, Bill created rather neat vector thrust capability by creating oval shapes from pairs of Mudguard 3X4, W/ Plate, No. 1 (6178912 | 28326). I will show you a breakdown of this technique in my next post, when I explore the geometry of this part a little more deeply. 

PdC Parts Festival: Day Two

AFOLs from all over the world took part in our first ever live parts festival in June in Portugal at the Paredes de Coura (PdC) Fan Weekend. Each day, 15 builders had just over an hour to explore what might be done with a range of new LEGO® parts. See the parts selection here, but today let's look at what the second round of LEGO fans came up with.

Amy Fennell

PdC Parts Festival: Day One

Our first ever live parts festival (or "parts party" as regular reader Håkan put it!) took place in June in Portugal at the Paredes de Coura (PdC) Fan Weekend. Each day, 15 builders had just over an hour to explore what might be done with a range of new LEGO® parts. See the parts selection here, but today let's look at what the first round of LEGO fans came up with.

Michael Studman 

Yes, that's his real name. Jeal much?

Most of the seed parts are present in this characterful chihuahua! Funny, I never thought to use Boomerang (6153574 | 25892) as the structure of a dog's body...

PdC Parts Festival

Back in June, we had a first for New Elementary; our first ever live parts festival! We've run several online parts festivals in the past, where we take some of the newest elements released by the LEGO® Group and challenge builders to explore what they might be used for. This time around, regular contributor Jonas Kramm proposed that we run a workshop at the Paredes de Coura (PdC) Fan Weekend in Portugal to see what builders could come up with - in the space of an hour!

LEGO® House pre-opening event

The new experience centre/museum in Billund, LEGO® House, has now opened to the public but on Friday 22 September 2017 there was a special pre-opening event for hundreds of LEGO fans from around the world. I was lucky enough to be one of them, so here are some photos from the day. If you are planning to go yourself, you might consider any photos to be 'spoilers' but I am glad to report that there is just so much to do and enjoy inside LEGO House, the photos I'd seen beforehand really didn't spoil much for me and I trust this post won't either.

General manager of LEGO House Jesper Vilstrup welcomes us along with third-generation owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen. Behind them is a lenticular made of cheese slopes (Design ID 54200) that shows either the company motto or portraits of the four generations of family owners, depending where you stand.

Bricktastic: Alex Jones (Orion Pax)

One of the many who regularly display at Bricktastic, the LEGO® show in Manchester in aid of Fairy Bricks, is Alexander Jones works as a LEGO Model Designer for TT Games, so if you're into LEGO video games you've surely played with his models before. But Bricktastic provided the opportunity to see Alex play with his own models! Including Arcee, one of the Autobots from the Transformers franchise which is a favoured subject of his.

2017 Skærbæk Parts Festival: registration

Sorry, this event is now fully booked.

Are you already registered to come to Skærbæk Fan Weekend in Denmark in late September? If not, I am afraid you are too late for this year, folks... but if you are registered: New Elementary will be running a one-off special building workshop and we'd love you to come and build with some new elements!

Bricktastic 2017: Event videos

I shot a couple of quick videos on my phone at Bricktastic, the LEGO® show in aid of Fairy Bricks.

It was an awesome event! As you can see, plenty of people, but also plenty of space to move around. This was a deliberate move by the organisers to ensure people didn't get stressed by the crowds or feel they couldn't stop and stare at something for ages... like these amazing models....

Bricktastic 2017: event pictures

We're live from Manchester! Bricktastic, the event run by the wonderful charity Fairy Bricks, is underway and the quality of models is outstanding. It's a really relaxed event thanks to the generous space, carefully managed crowd numbers and the lack of doof-doof music!

Here's a very random look at some of the AFOL creations on display - sorry not to be more polished with this post, it's been hard to find the time. Enjoy!

Steve Deaville and Steph Cotter - The Odyssey (1980s animated series)

Bricktastic 2017, Manchester UK

The third annual Bricktastic show takes place on the weekend of 1st and 2nd July at Manchester Central. Come along! And tell anyone you know who lives in the Northwest to get there too - it's worth travelling to experience this big, friendly LEGO show with a great atmosphere. Many of the UK's greatest AFOL builders make the effort to be there, because it is run by and in aid of Fairy Bricks, the wonderful charity who raise money to buy LEGO sets for children's hospitals.

I'll be there too! The New Elementary table will feature some of the amazing Nexogon models you're seeing from our talented UK builders, and Elspeth De Montes will be adding some colourful creations, no doubt injected with her colourful sense of humour.

Here's another of the amazing models that will premiere at the show; Jamie Douglas has expanded the official set 10253 Big Ben to show the entire Houses of Parliament!

LEGO® Leicester Square

You've most likely seen many pictures already of the new flagship LEGO® Store in Leicester Square, but I thought I would share mine too. These were taken the day before the official opening at the AFOL-only VIP event.

My favourite thing in the shop is this incredible diorama.

It's not flat; sections of it project outwards.

Let's get ready to rumble

I've nearly recovered from the huge "Brick 2015" LEGO event which took place in London from last Thursday to Sunday - nearly! - and can say that I had a really great time. It was especially wonderful to meet more New Elementary readers, even some from overseas.

The first afternoon was AFOLcon, consisting of a few talks given by fans as well as LEGO Senior Designer Mark Stafford who revealed some of the thinking and the work behind Nexo Knights, the new Castle-meets-Space theme (and TV show) coming in January 2016. There was plenty of chat about the new elements designed for the theme, some of which have a dramatic V-shape which evokes the angular forms of castles and heraldry, whilst also distinguishing the theme from the organic forms of Chima elements.

Pull Together With Polybags

Here's a box of about 100 polybags, collected from people from New Elementary and London AFOLs and destined for Germany where they will be personally handed to refugee children. It's not too late to donate some yourself!

AFOLCON 2014

Just a note to say I've no time to put a post together this week... as AFOLCON/Brick 2014 is here in London, and today consisted of some 200 or so adult fans enjoying seminars and setting up displays in the MAAASSIVE exhibition hall. However I'll try to post bits and bobs on social media, so keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook feeds. Here are some tidbits from today.

The best thing about today was someone quietly pointing out that the minifig heads from Minecraft are 'in System' after all, so I was wrong in my recent post on the subject. By placing a 1x2 jumper and a 2x2 jumper next to each other, two Minecraft heads align. Now that is nice.

2014 Inside Tour set: Legoland Train

Every year, The LEGO® Group (TLG) run a few three-day tours for small groups, opening all sorts of secret doors in their headquarters in Billund. Members of the public meet designers and other staff and gain access to incredible sights in the factories, offices, Legoland workshops, staff shop and "The Vault" - where a copy of pretty much every LEGO set ever made is stored. My friend Lee McG went on the first 2014 tour and the final tour finished today, which means he can now tell you about the most exciting gift that every participant received.

From Swindon to L.A.

In today's post we're going travelling to places real and virtual, concrete and plastic, past and future, around the globe and beyond. I hope I haven't overmanaged your expectations with that pretentious opening line?... the first destination is Swindon. That's the concrete bit.

I'm now home after an exhausting, fabulous weekend at The Great Western LEGO® Show, the UK's largest display, run by the Brickish Association who are the UK's largest LUG. I'm very rude to label the English town of Swindon as concrete, as the show itself is held in a beautifully restored nineteenth-century railway works building. I've not displayed there before and it was a wonderful experience to take part. Six other members and I covered 30 feet of the tables with models that we had built for The LEGO Play Book (the creation of which I discussed in an earlier post). It was such a delight to see little faces (and big ones) lighting up at the sight of my creations, especially given that they'd already probably spent an hour or more having their faces regularly lit up by LEGO before getting to our display, which sat towards the exit.