Bricks by the Bay 2018 – Bay Area Lego Convention

Five Cactus Brick club members went to Bricks by the Bay which is a Lego Convention in the Bay Area. We put together a 25′ x 12.5′ city/train layout which included the City, Farm, Bay of Arizona and a Western Town (as well as trains). Here’s a few pictures from it:

Phoenix Comic Fest 2018 – Photos

Here are some more pictures of our display at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018:

Desert Ridge Marketplace Christmas 2017

We have a large display at Desert Ridge Marketplace (Tatum & 101) from Nov 17th, 2017 to Dec 10th, 2017. We are located across from American Eagle Outfitters.

The display includes a large city/train layout (Justice League theme), Winter Village, Pirate scene and a lot of Star Wars models.

We’ll be open on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays.

Open hours are:

Friday: 6PM – 9PM
Saturday: 11AM – 9PM
Sunday: Noon – 6PM

Black Friday: 11AM – 9PM

Christmas 2017 Display

We are starting to setup a large display at Desert Ridge Marketplace. We will have the display open for 4 weekends. Exact times will follow this post. This is one of our largest displays and it’s free.

Here’s a few pictures from last year:

Lego Ninjago Movie Display at Tempe Marketplace

Cactus Brick will have a large Lego Ninjago movie display at Tempe Marketplace (across from Just Sports, suite #1234).

The dates that the display will be open are:

Friday, Sept 15: 6-9PM
Saturday, Sept 16: 12-9PM
Sunday, Sept 17: 12-6Pm
Wednesday, Sept 20: 5-9PM
Friday, Sept 22: 6-9PM
Saturday, Sept 23: 11AM-9PM
Sunday, Sept 24: 12-6PM

The Lego Ninjago characters will only be at the display on Wednesday, Sept 20 from 7PM to 8:30PM.

Cactus Brick’s Lego Ninjago Movie themed display at Tempe Marketplace

Bricks by the Bay – Aug 2017

Six of our club members travelled to Santa Clara for the Lego convention, Bricks by the Bay. They had several hundred Adult Fans of Lego (AFOL) attending with a huge convention center filled with Lego displays of all type. Here are a few pictures of our display there.

Tempe History Museum – June 2017

We will have a mid sized display at Tempe History Museum. There will be a 10′ x 15′ city/train display and lots of Lego models for the theme, “Transportation”. This is a free event with play brick for the kids. The display will be open on Saturday, June 10 (10AM – 5PM) and Sunday, June 11 (1PM – 4PM).

June 2017 Show at Tempe History Museum

Ocean Standard

Our ocean standard is designed to meet up with a MILS baseplate and still have some nice texture. Each section should be on a 32×32 baseplate. Here is a high resolution image of 2 sections with standard grass coast with ocean:

Ocean base with one straigth grass coast and one corner grass coast

The ocean itself is blue at three heights, the baseplate level, one plate above and two plates above. The heights should be somewhat random to simulate a rough surface (like the ocean). Above the blue plates, there are trans-blue plate, round 1 x 1’s that are randomly placed at all levels. There are also trans-clear plate, round 1x1s and trans-clear cheese slopes. Although other trans-clear pieces can be substituted for these as long as they blend in reasonably well. If you want to show a rougher ocean area (maybe near some rocks), then add more of the trans-clear pieces.

For coastal areas, there can be multiple types. The most basic coasts are grass, which is shown in the image above and beach. Another common coastal type is rocks, which would use dark gray slopes and more trans-clear pieces at the edge to show more waves.

All of the coastal types should transform from water to land around the midpoint of the 32×32 baseplate at the edges of each section which needs to interface with other sections. For the grass standard, the ocean should have approximately 14 studs and the grass would have about 14 studs and the shallows and beach would be approximately 4 studs. The coast should wander around a bit in the middle part of the section to avoid straight lines. You can design multi-section areas that are designed to be together so all sections don’t have to conform to the interface rules for the coast. However, the interfaces on the outer edges of these multi-section areas should conform to the standard interface rules.

The colors of the standard grass, beach, shallows standard are (all colors are Bricklink colors):

Grass: green at a height of 4 plates
Beach: tan at a height of 3 plates
Shallow 1 (closest to the beach): Medium azure at a height of 2 plates
Shallow 2 (closer to the ocean): Dark Azure at a height of 2 plates
Ocean: Blue at a height of 0 to 2 plates

Minor fluctuations of height, position and accent colors are expected and desired, please make sure it looks good with the generic standard so we can interchange the pieces.

Similar to grass, the beach, shallows standards are:

Beach: tan at a height of 3 and 4 plates (the back part of the beach should mostly be at 4 plates high since it’s designed to be next to a tan MILS piece.
Shallow 1 (closest to the beach): Medium azure at a height of 2 plates
Shallow 2 (closer to the ocean): Dark Azure at a height of 2 plates
Ocean: Blue at a height of 0 to 2 plates

The beach transition should be near the middle of the baseplate (between the 16th and 17th stud) so it will line up with the piece next to it. However, it is expected to fluctuate +- a stud or two to avoid straight lines. Here are 4 examples of a beach coast (a straight beach, an inner curve beach, an outer curve beach and an island):

Example of the beach standard with our ocean standard

With all four put together, the scene looks like:

Example of the beach standard with our ocean standard