My god, that Rivendale scene, amazing.
Ok guys I need your help deciding what I do next year for the Lego expo.
My initial thoughts are to do something completely different however I'm going back and forth.
This years display got a lot of good reaction from the patrons at the show, a few people proclaimed it their favourite display and it made the "highlights" for one websites review of the show, people seemed to dig the movie theme.
On top of that the fantasy display next to mine had a list of fairytale characters printed out for patrons to find in the display. People really seemed to like the interactivity, I blatantly copied the idea straight away and printed up a list of the characters in my scene.
As well as the interactivity a lot of the popular displays had moving elements of some kind, trains, rides and other various motorised things. Something I'd like to expand in to next year (though I'm leaning away from trains specifically as there was a LOT of trains on show).
I also noted that displays that are basically an assortment of smaller vignettes or sculptures aren't dwelled on by the patrons for very long compared to big scenes, people glance and move on pretty quickly (including myself).
So I have one of 2 options.
- Start from scratch with a completely new idea for a display. Probably vignettes based on my "job bots"
- I expand upon my current theme of movies/tv characters, add some moving elements (somehow), replace the bought sets in my display (town hall, pet shop, cinema, haunted house) with buildings of my own design and/or based on movie buildings/locations. As well as adding more famous characters/vehicles like a brick built stay puft marshmellow man. Probably add lights to all the building interiors as well.
I'll preface this all by saying there's several things I will likely never dismantle, the delorean, the ghostbusters firehouse, ecto-1 and the batmobiles
Now there's pros and cons to both...
New display.
Pros
- I get to build something different.
- Patrons get to see something different next year.
- Smaller, self contained builds are easier to manage and do of the course of a year, I can do as many as I have time for without it seeming like something is missing.
Cons
- I've probably spent easily over $1000 on parts to do this display, about $100 on road baseplates alone.
- Vignettes seemed to get less attention from the crowd than fulls scenes.
- No way to really motorize anything with the job bots.
Expanded "movies" theme
Pros
- I've already spent a lot of money on this display that wouldn't be going to waste.
- Room to motorise something in the scene.
- Full scene, more time spent by the crowd viewing.
- This years display was received well.
- Only a few buildings (GB firehouse and the alleyway, which would be made to be more solid/modular) would be kept.
Cons
- Same as last year, nothing new really.
- I would limit it to "city" based movie scenes, so no fantasy/sci fi buildings, just a street scene.
- I'm not really making anything drastically new.
What say you?