We have a large display at Desert Ridge Marketplace. It will be open on weekends from Black Friday to December 16th. We are across from American Eagle Outfitters. We are open on Fridays from 6PM to 9PM, Saturdays from 11AM to 8PM and Sundays from Noon to 6PM. We have special hours on Black Friday from 11AM to 9PM. Admission is free and we have a large Mosaic build as well as a modular castle that people can build. There is a large Winter Village as well as a large City and train display. We’ve added a brand new Under the Sea section as well as a 1920’s city section in honor of a couple new movies.
Christmas 2018 – Desert Ridge Marketplace – Winter Village
Christmas 2018 – Desert Ridge Marketplace – City
Christmas 2018 – Desert Ridge Marketplace – City
Christmas 2018 – Desert Ridge Marketplace – City
Christmas 2018 – Desert Ridge Marketplace – Park and Ocean
Christmas 2018 – Desert Ridge Marketplace – Star Wars
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:
Bricks by the Bay 2018 – Overall display, city side
Bricks by the Bay 2018 – Bay of Arizona
Bricks by the Bay 2018 – Farm
Bricks by the Bay 2018 – Western Town with desert river
Bricks by the Bay 2018 – Western Town with Oil derrick
Bricks by the Bay 2018 – Western Town with army camp and cliff
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.
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:
Desert Ridge Christmas 2016 – Winter Village center.
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.
Bricks by the Bay 2017 – Joe’s Mountain, Corey, Joe, Clark and Stephanie’s buildings and Randy’s water tower and vehicles.
Bricks by the Bay 2017 – Joe and Geoff’s mountain
Bricks by the Bay 2017 – Clark’s Faery Tales
Bricks by the Bay 2017 – Clark’s Faery Tales
Bricks by the Bay 2017 – Corey, Stephanie and Eliza’s beach with Randy’s vehicles.
Bricks by the Bay 2017 – Corey, Stephanie and Eliza’s beach with Randy’s vehicles.
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
