Bricks by the Bay report
Posted by MeganL,
The 8th Bricks by the Bay (BBTB) was held this last weekend. It's one of the largest displays of MOCs in California. This year the convention theme was "California Dreamin'" and participants were encouraged to bring MOCs that evoked the theme. Read on for my observations on the event...
Thursday was dedicated to workshops, while Friday and Saturday had workshops plus class sessions, games and round tables. As with every LEGO fan event I've attended, there was so much going on that I wished I could be in several places at once.
The host hotel really got into the spirit of things with this welcome message as well as decorating their elevators with brick themed stickers.
As is typical for a LEGO fan event, all participants got a name badge and signature brick. It's typical at BBTB for the badge to have a small build associated with the theme; in this case it was a small rendition of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. I particularly liked the use of the sausage pieces. There was also a minifig provided with a customized BBTB surfboard.
You'll notice I have an extra brick on my badge; this year I was asked to be a judge in the Town & Train category. It was a lot of fun and I'll cover some of the great MOCs in that group a little later.
All attendees also had the option to purchase an event kit. This year's kit was designed by Erez Morag, and featured a map of California decorated with 21 colourful tiles. It comes with a booklet with details on each tile as well as a historical timeline. As Erez notes, this is a sample and the printed tiles and bricks are drafts and have not gone through final QA/QC. The final product will be of higher quality.
The first session I attended was a screening of the 2014 documentary "Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary" narrated by Jason Bateman. After the screening one of the producers was there to answer a few questions from the audience. We learned how Jason Bateman came to be the narrator (the producer knew Bateman's agent) and if there are any plans for a sequel (a definite maybe, but more like an update as opposed to a sequel).
The next session was with Amanda Sayers from the LEGO Design Group. Amanda started designing for the LEGO Friends line, and has recently moved to LEGO Disney.
Amanda shared her experiences on joining LEGO as well as some insights on the day to day work life of a LEGO set designer. She also shared some of the history of LEGO Friends, some of which I was familiar with but some of which I wasn't, such as the decision for the minidolls not to have hands rotate because it made the arms too bulky. Having realistic animals as well as lots of details is something that is important for LEGO Friends, something that is not news to anyone who has followed the theme. The introduction of LEGO Friends has quadrupled the number of girls building with LEGO, and the success of the theme is evident in that there are now four themes aimed toward girls: Friends, Elves, Disney and SuperHero Girls. Amanda also talked a bit about the team building and creative exercises that the LEGO Friends designer team goes through to generate ideas for new sets. Some of these ideas can be used for more than LEGO; I plan to use a couple of them for my own meetings at work!
Amanda has shared three sets so far: 41123 Foal's Washing Station, 41312 Heartlake Sports Centre and 41320 Heartlake Frozen Yogurt Shop. She also shared some insider information. In designing the Sports Centre Amanda made sure to include a reminder of her hometown of Los Angeles by including colours of the Los Angeles Lakers: purple and gold. Amanda is an avid dodgeball player, so one of the stickers in that set is a dodgeball poster, and a dodgeball is included as one of the accessories (now I know what that red ball was for!).
There's a printed piece (element number 6173617) that's a written list that's actually some Friends designers' names: in addition to Amanda (the only name not checked), Ola and Mauricio are included. Amanda herself is being memorialized as a minidoll in 41319 Snow Resort Hot Chocolate Van. I think I now have a new goal in life! I like the sound of a "Megan" minidoll....
After Amanda's presentation, we heard from Paul Striefler from the LEGO Community Engagement team. Paul covers the Americas, and shared some numbers that LEGO tracks on the AFOL community, specifically members of RLUGs. According to the data Paul shared the AFOL community is 86 percent male/14 percent female. I was surprised at that spread as I thought there was a larger percentage of female AFOLs. However, this approximate percentage was borne out later at a meeting I attended later in the convention where women were about 20 percent of the people in the room. Other stats shared by Paul was that 41 percent of AFOLs are parents, and 22 percent of AFOLs are employed in engineering or other technical fields.
Other numbers Paul shared were the number of AFOLs in different areas of the world. For the Americas, there are approximately 6,300 members in 7 countries. In Europe/Middle East/Africa there are approximately 66,000 members across 32 countries, and in Asia, there are approximately 314,000 members across 10 countries.
The following day was exciting for me, as it was judging day for all the terrific MOCs that attendees had brought for display. As mentioned before, I was asked to help judge the Town & Train section. There were a lot of terrific entries and it was fun (and challenging) selecting deserving MOCs for the awards since there were so many great entries. The following are just a few of the great entries in Town & Train. I'll point out that there are several other categories for BBTB with equally awesome MOCs, but I spent most of my time at Town & Train.
This rather nifty Victorian Firehouse by Chris Pratorius won Best Small Building.
The folks at CactusBrick brought a very large display that included this series of vignettes by Clark Edwards. Titled "Nursery Rhyme Town", there are several scenes from nursery rhymes and fairy tales including The Three Little Pigs, Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, Humpty Dumpty, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Gingerbread House.
However, the star of the show was an astounding MOC built specifically for this event's theme, California Dreamin'. Conceived almost a year ago and built over four months, builders Flynn De Marco and Richard Board created "California Dreamin': The Ride". The MOC starts with admittance gates and then has minifigs board a ride near a skyline and sights of San Francisco that then goes through several memorable parts of California: past a mission, through an old Gold Rush Town, up to the Sierras and past a fishing cottage (disturbing a bear while doing so), through central valley farms, then wending its way to Los Angeles and several of its features: the Chinese Theater, a sound stage from The Wizard of Oz, Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland, Muscle Beach, a surfer dude catching a wave, a shark "attacking" the coaster, in addition to others. There are many more details than what I've thought (or remembered) to include here. In case you're interested in higher resolution pictures of this MOC, you can check them out at Flynn's flickr page.
"California Dreamin': The Ride" not only won Best California Dream, but also Best in Show and Public Choice awards. In addition, the Sleeping Beauty Castle won in the Pop Culture theme for "California Cool".
One of the notable events on Saturday was a "Girl Powered Dreamin'" session, open to females of all ages to come and build together. There were several models to build in addition to a group mosaic. Development of this session came from feedback from previous years asking for some sessions geared toward girls. From what I observed, it was a good success.
On Sunday, the event came to a close with the public exhibition day, where thousands of visitors came to view the creations on display.
Putting on a LEGO event takes a lot of time and dedication and BBTB would not take place without its volunteers and Board of Directors, led by Erik Wilson. Many thanks go to Erik and the team for putting on a great event.
It was a great weekend, meeting old LEGO friends, making new ones and meeting some Bricksetters. I also want to thank Russell Clark for inviting me to participate in judging; it was a fun but difficult task!
I'm sure I'm not the only one looking forward to next year.
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17 comments on this article
Cool surfboard.
Those are some really cool MOCs!
So gutted! I was in the bay area last Saturday, and chose to head up to San Francisco for something to do! Must check the international show schedule before travelling in future! Looks like a good event.
Couldn't make it to this since I'm on the east coast and it overlaps with BrickFair Virginia, which I go to every year. I still had a great time. Glad to hear Bricks by the Bay was also lots of fun!
Those are some cool statistics about the AFOL community.
I think the 9th paragraph is missing the word "rotate" in the sentence " ... the decision for the minidolls not to have hands [rotate] because it made the arms too bulky" because that is the reason.
Of course they 'have' hands ;-)
Very neat! MeganL, thanks for sharing the photos!
Is there really only 6,300 AFOLs in the Americas? That seems surprisingly low, especially since it includes all the Americas... Wow.
I love the way that Victorian Firehiuse opens up.
I kept my eye out for you but didn't see you. It was my first BBTB along with my NLSO (Non Lego Significant Other, as learned from the Brickumentary, but that my be changing as she won the huge Technics kit door prize on Saturday), and I was fascinated with all the MOCs, both large and small. Looking forward to going again. By the way, MeganL, did you see the MOC of the San Francisco city scape? Very similar to what I was saying should be in one that Lego produces.
@Legoguy29 I was thinking the exact same thing... I wonder how as a per capita for these respective regions, if there's more parity. Strictly as a total number per region, the Americas look pretty slim.
Thanks for coming out. It was nice to meet you!
I like BbtB, but have not been able to attend for a few years. It is nice to see the stuff after the fact. Maybe next year, I'll be able to attend.
@mdransom @MeganL I'm pretty sure Lego are running a city skyline competition. I'd love to see photos of the SF one, though. (I've considered building one but I'd want to include Sutro Tower and it's a tricky structure.)
It was really a good time at BBTB. But it's like that pretty much every year!
Another interesting I didn't know from Paul's slideshow was Australia and NZ was bundled with ME and Africa. Not with Asia. Weird.
@mdransom @paulmison - I did see the San Francisco skyline MOC. Regrettably I didn't take any pictures of it. I would agree it had most of the landmarks I would expect to see in the skyline. However it didn't include the new Salesforce tower that's currently being built; I would think that would be included.
@Aanchir - I'm hoping to make it to Brickfair one year!
@Erez - Done!
Mind-blowingly AWESOME!!!
Ha, as a Male, a Parent and an Engineer looks like I fit the AFOL demographic nicely lol. That California Dreamin' The Ride is pretty spectacular.
@MeganL @paulmison I do have a pic of the SF cityscape MOC if you are interested.