Day Out At Brickvention 2015

Had a really awesome time at Brickvention 2015, Melbourne’s largest LEGO event. Ever since I attended my first one last year, it’s hard not to get excited about Australia’s largest LEGO fan convention.

If you’ve never been to a Brickvention, imagine an exhibition filled with thousands of LEGO creations made by builders and LEGO fans from across Australia. Nestled in the Royal Exhibition Building in the Carlton Gardens, this fan exhibition is almost a necessity for any LEGO fan living in Melbourne.

This year, it felt like there were a lot more people than last year. This was the line that greeted us when we got there for our 1:00pm session. The massive crowds were not wholly unexpected since LEGO is quite possibly at peak popularity and it reflected by the size of 2015’s convention.

Here’s a look at the insides. It was packed to the rafters with LEGO fans of all ages. It was mostly kids and their parents at Brickvention on its first day, so if you’re going tomorrow, be prepared to bump elbows with a ton of people. Not sure if it was the crowds this year, but one particularly nasty aspect of this year’s Brickvention was the very noticeable body odour. Not sure if people don’t shower or if it was too warm, but it was almost impossible to avoid.

I took a whole ton of photos, but it wasn’t realistic to upload all of them into this blog post, so I’ve uploaded my complete Brickvention album on my Facebook page. If you haven’t liked it, please do as I post up news and other cool stuff that you wouldn’t normally find on my blog!

In this post, I’ve elected to feature some of my favourite builds from this year’s Brickvention. Overall, I felt that the quality and impressiveness of the models on display has improved over last year. I did notice several interesting themes: a lot of Lord of the Rings builds, regular stock modulars populated with superhero sets and quite a few of the same models from last year. Interestingly, I was expecting a lot more LEGO Movie-inspired builds, but I was surprised that there were so few of them.

Anyway, enough words! Check out some of the highlights from Brickvention. Obviously, spoiler warning! If you’re heading there tomorrow, look away!

I instantly broke into a smile when I saw these oversized sculptures of the Animal Suit Minifigures. They were very well made and perfectly captured the whimsical characters. Check out the kid’s reaction to the sculptures!

I think that this diorama of the Arctic was very well made, plus I’m a huge fan of the Arctic theme.

This model by Sam Wright literally made me laugh out loud. In case you don’t get it, it’s from the movie Zoolander where male model Derek Zoolander says his famous “What is this, a centre for ants!?” quote.

I liked this Chitty Chitty Bang Bang model. It was small, but looked great.

Similarly, this small Despicable Me model was quite cool – I loved the minions!

This was one of my overall favourites, a really cool build called “Above The Clouds” constructed by Gabriel Thomson. The lion head emerging from the rockface and the great mix of colours work very well.

It also has some great interiors.

You can usually expect several large town layouts in LEGO Conventions, but this one made out of vintage LEGO sets looked great. Loved how colourful and basic LEGO sets used to look like.

Speaking of large town layouts, this massive DUPLO setup was incredibly awesome. Not something that you see everyday.

This is “Don’t Keep A Dragon In Your Dungeon” – I really enjoyed the brick built dragon and the great use of transparent tiles to create the waves. There’s also a ton of stuff going on in this build, zoom in and check out all the great Easter eggs.

This is another impressive build – Cosmeos. It’s a mix of a museum, hectic battle scene and even a heist inside. If you think the exterior looks great, wait till you see what’s inside.

I really loved the kraken and the forest in this model. Another great scene that has a ton of stuff going on throughout the build.

This was a build from Rick James Bricks, a Dwarven mine. There’s a cave troll that’s used as a slave, which made me pretty sad.

There wasn’t a lot of Star Wars this time, but I loved this great mashup of an AT-AT and Toy Story characters.

Did I mention that there was a lot of Lrd of the Rings? Here’s the biggest and baddest of the bunch, a huge recreation of The Siege of Minas Tirith. I was incredibly jealous of all the minifigures that this guy had!

I liked this build of the scene in the second Hobbit movie where the Thorin’s company are captured and taken into Thranduil’s Elf crib.

This bust of Thranduil was incredibly well designed. His eyes are quite creepy!

Got to see TanTile’s massive Winter Village in person – it looks so much more awesome in the flesh! Also got to meet TanTile which was cool!

Also loved this statues by RainbowBricks LUG – a group of AFOLs that enjoy building using white, pink, purple, aqua, medium azure, lilac and light yellow bricks. These monochrome shrine-like structures stood out from the rest of the Brickvention displays, in a very colourful way.

Do you like airships? Then you’ll love Queen Victoria’s Secret Flying Navy. Some of the propellers are powered and actually spin around, which makes the entire fleet look like they’re flying through the sky.

Here’s a closer look at the main airship. Can you spot Benny in this picture?

Not sure if this is a French invasion or a Pirate Fort. Still looks pretty good.

A spectacular take on Mr Burns’ Mansion. The best part is definitely Mr Burns sending the hounds upon Bart who is making a hasty exit.

This picture may initially not seem like much, a regular modular street right? Look closer, these modulars are blown up miniland-scale versions of the original!

From mega-creations to microbuilds – this is Micropolis, an entire micro-scale city. I’m quite a fan of micro-scale builds, so I spent a lot of time admiring Micropolis.

Speaking of microbuilds, I loved these Game of Thrones landmarks. The Wall was especially well done.

You can’t have a LEGO exhibition in an Australian capital city without landmarks from said city being built in LEGO. This is the Melbourne Town Hall Parliament. The best part is definitely the protest outside – if you’re familiar with Melbourne, you’ll know that there’s always protesters outside!

Also loved this charming Totoro model.

If you’re into nostalgia, you’ll instantly recognize these Masters of the Universe builds!

 

I thought that this Japanese Bathhouse had a lot of character. It’s relatively simple, but captures the Japanese architecture influencers particularly well.

The interiors were great as well, with a lot of popular LEGO characters relaxing in a traditional Japanese spa.

This Football Stadium was quite popular among attendees. The best part has to be the characters in the stands, I spent a lot of time here appreciating the colourful cast of characters watching the game. The Classic Space Men are hanging out in the director’s box – they must be rich!

If I’m not wrong, this Miniland Scale Cloud Cuckoo Land was made by the same people that did last year’s Wizard of Oz one. I’m not a fan of large, messy scenes and much prefer smaller, well thought-out builds like this. Cloud Cuckoo Miniland was definitely one of my top picks from Brickvention 2015.

Every LEGO fan has a soft spot in his or her heart for Classic Space.

Here’s an obscene display of wealth and excess, the Grandest Emporium that I’ve ever seen!

There was this very touching memorial to Daniel Jezek, founder of arguably the most important LEGO site – Bricklink. Loved the Home Page made out of real LEGO.

There were some great LEGO mosaics on display.

The coolest of them all was this mosaic of the Queen from Snow White, which has a very cool trick.

If you view it from a different angle, Snow White appears!

It’s even better in GIF form. GIF created by Reddit user /u/DNZe

Last but not least, the creme de la creme of Brickvention, The Brickman’s Bounty – a massive Pirate ship designed and built by Ryan McNaught. Look at the faces of everyone marveling at his work.

Look behind and you’ll see a jaw-dropping cross section of the ship, with the insides of the ship buzzing with minifigure activity. Photos will not do this amazing build justice.

There’s just so much going on in there, that looking at it makes my head spin! This was truly the best thing on display at Brickvention 2015. Kind of makes sense seeing as how the guy who built this creates stuff out of LEGO for a living!

So there’s that for Brickvention! Overall, apart from the crowds, I had a fantastic time there as usual. I took about two and a half hours to look through everything and browsed the shops.

There was definitely more LEGO on sale this year, but if you’re looking for bargains, you’re better off shopping online or at your local toy store. Everything was either overpriced, or at RRP. There were a couple vintage sellers with ridiculous prices for retired sets. *shudders*

Hope you enjoyed the photos! To view all the photos that I took at Brickvention 2015, you can find them all in my Facebook album. If you were at Brickvention, let me know in the comments which displays were your favourite!