Vignweek is a contest hosted by RebelLUG, where the challenge is to build a vignette a day for a week, each day fitting a specific prompt. I wasn’t able to participate last year, but it looked like enough fun that I decided to join in this time around!
Keep on reading to see what six days of intense building looked like for me!
The prompt for day one was Ancient Civilization. I started brainstorming right away, and settled on Egypt–it was a combination of some neat concept art I found and also the feeling that I’d probably have the field largely to myself.
Since this build was relatively small, I was able to put a lot of thought into each section. I built rough sketches of the post and the gateway before reworking them into the final version. It was also fun to fit some creative part uses in there, like the cupcake holders and tricorn hats.
The statue was by far the most complex part of this build, getting it to look relatively right without falling over wasn’t easy!
Day two‘s prompt was historical. This was defined as 500-1800, which is an incredibly broad time period! I knew that castle and pirates were firmly in my comfort zone, but I also knew that they were in lots of other builders’ comfort zones as well. So I tried to branch out a bit. I started with Lexington Green, but that seemed too flat and dull for a vignette. I tried to spice it up with a unique border, but a simple row of firing redcoats was still not cutting it for me. A few trees later, I was losing the redcoats altogether. So I switched to Indians deer hunting.
The change in direction that this build underwent led to a less solid concept than I would have liked. There’s nothing wrong with a deer hunt in the forest, but it’s not a spectacular choice for a vignette since it’s just hard to get the immersive feel you’d want for something like that. Also, this was the build that took me the least amount of actual build time. In fact, I almost started a whole new vignette once I was done with it, but it was just a little too late in the day for that so I decided to run with my deer hunt, hoping to sell it with a good edit.
Too bad my favorite Indian is almost completely hidden!
Day three, and the prompt was fantasy. After my rough day two, conceptually, I was happy to have an idea for this category right off. I was going to build a ruined tower which would turn into a beautiful fairy castle once it hit the clouds.
But I was feeling a touch burnt out, and procrastinated a little on building. Plus, I couldn’t quite visualize how my tower was going to look. I knew it should be round, but I also knew that would be an extra layer of complication. So I started building the ruins of a square tower, without having more than the vaguest idea of how the top level would look.
Three or four hours later, I had a 16×16 of imposing light grey ruins in a squarish formation, and a few clouds. Then I started on the fantasy half of the castle–and that was when I started running into difficulties. Since I’d started building without a clear vision, I had no idea what color the top of the castle should be. I didn’t want it to be too different from my ruins, but white seemed out of the question, since my clouds were white also. I started slapping together a square light grey tower, and it looked pretty pathetic. So I tore most of it down, and began to build the castle you see here.
This was clearly screaming microscale, and my ruins were definitely not microscale–at least not that micro. Not only that, but the architectural styles were straight up clashing. I took the fantasy castle off the ruins and decided to focus on it. (In retrospect, maybe I should have focused on bringing a fantasy element to the ruins, which were much more imposing than this castle.)
At this point I had some clouds and a fantasy castle with a fun layout. I just needed a complementary base for it. Obviously, I went fairly simple. This was in part because I was feeling burnt out, but also because I wanted to keep the micro scale and just didn’t have other ideas besides a flatish green landscape. Even at this point, I can’t think of something that would have worked much better, though I could have spiced the landscape up with a windmill, river, better integrated path, etc.
I’m not unhappy with the final result, though it doesn’t reflect how much work actually went into this creation. But I still have the ruined half of the vignette built, and also have a pretty good idea on how to spice it up… so it wasn’t all a loss!
Moving on to day four! Thankfully, I woke up refreshed, got my castle edit done and the picture posted, and was ready for the fourth prompt: modern. This wasn’t giving me any immediate ideas, so I browsed around among my table scraps.
A toy store came to mind (I have a couple modern day toy table scraps lying around). That sounded fun, but I thought it might end up a little cluttered… hmm… clutter… How about an old clutter filled barn? American Pickers kind of thing? After a bit of browsing, I honed down further on that idea and decided on a General Store. That became a specific store–a hardware store–once I found the hammer and tongs sign.
I was so happy with how this vignette turned out–and in fact, it was the only one of my vigs to place in vignweek; it came in third on day four.
The build started with the facade. Dark blue and light grey, with dark grey accents, immediately jumped out at me. Since I’d used both shades of grey already, I decided on blacktop for the parking lot. That was a risky choice, I know, since black bricks are reflective and don’t look much like blacktop; but I think it worked out okay. Probably better than grey or dark grey would have, anyways.
Of course my favorite part of this creation was the little details. I managed to use things like those funny legs from super mario turtles, the head of one of unikitty’s weird friends, and part of buzz lightyear’s helmet (as the glass over the peppermints on the counter).
When I said I built the facade, I definitely meant facade. There’s not much more to this build that what you can see!
The water barrel is attached by a bar and clip connection. I did have to be careful it didn’t go out of the 32×32 stud limit though.
Up until this point, I destroyed each vignette the following morning, usually while brainstorming for the next one. But I liked this one too much, and it was also a little big to take the time destroying.
Well, day five arrived, and it found me pretty excited and inspired. But I do know that sci-fi is not my area of expertise, so I figured I’d be wiser to try post-apoc. In order to stand out, I decided not to go for the typical browns and tans. I tossed back and forth between jungle apoc and frost apoc, but in the end jungle won the day. It’s more visually striking and also more in my comfort zone. And I’d had this concept art saved as build inspiration for a long time.
I started off with that layer of dark grey plates and wedges you see in the middle. This was meant to be my base, but I quickly realized that covering it with water would look awkward. So I put it off to the side and worked on the water itself. It’s a layer of trans blue 1×1 round plates on top of lime and medium azure plates (and a few dark grey to represent areas where the cement is higher).
I started this build around three in the afternoon (the toss up between jungle and snow delayed me for a while), but I had a couple other commitments come up later that day and I wasn’t able to really get going until after eight. The skyscraper I had planed was weighing heavy on my shoulders at that point! By two in the morning, I knew I wasn’t going to get as high or as complex as I had initially planned. For one thing, I was out of window frames!
Day six–the last day of vignweek–finally rolled around! Day six is actually a 48 hr day since it extends over Saturday and Sunday, but I don’t build on Sundays, so I didn’t get much extra time. I went to bed shortly after midnight on Saturday, but I did get up at four on Monday morning.
The challenge for day six was a theme mash-up. I thought of combing Safari and Monster Fighters; Toy Story also occurred to me, and it seemed like there might be some fun things you could do with the Disney princess themes. Ninjago is also a favorite theme of mine… but Ninjago has kind of already been mashed up in its official waves with every imaginable theme. And then, Power Miners has a special place in my heart. I loved the theme as a kid–only ever got one set from it, but still–and the Thunder Driller was my favorite of the vehicles. I knew it would be so much fun to recreate. And it just made sense for Power Miners to accidently burst into another theme’s domain.
But what other theme’s domain? I definitely toyed with the idea of a underground dinosaur world, but that didn’t seem like it fit the official LEGO theme requirement very well. The Batcave on the other hand–that totally fit. Only one small problem… I don’t own any version of LEGO Batman. Well, big deal. Batman doesn’t live in his cave anyways. (I think it hurt me a bit with the judges. But I’m happy with the build.)
So, the brainstorm ended with the Power Miners busting into Batman’s top secret lair!
I built the Thunder Driller first. I don’t consider myself any good at building vehicles, but I love how this one turned out. In fact, I really regret that I had to borrow the wheels from one of my brothers… I won’t be able to keep it together!
The next thing I did was Batman’s platform here with his symbol on it. This was pretty fun and looked so cool!
There’s a lot of randomness behind the scenes on this vignette. Not only is the rockwork kind of crazy, there’s also a lot of weight being supported with the suspended Thunder Driller.
A lot of the rockwork is angled… and in a couple different directions. The nice thing about rocks is that when things don’t line up quite smoothly and leave jagged edges, that can work to your advantage–if you’re doing jagged rocks, of course, which I definitely was.
The support system isn’t that complex. This 2×4 plate is rotated in every direction (with the help of a mixel joint) and the plates running between the two rock pillars are what really supports the Thunder Driller’s weight. Then there’s also that chunk of rock coming out under the drill. This is only supported by a bar and clip connection; it’s not that heavy–and it’s not supporting any of the drill’s weight!
I left a lot of empty space under Batman’s platform, since I wanted to be able to shine a light through it. For the final pictures, I put a tablet underneath.
The base of the platform also had to be transparent. It’s a strongly wedged together pile of trans-clear bricks. I think it looks kind of cool.
Unfortunately it was raining Monday morning (I usually take pictures outside in the natural light), but I was still able to get good pictures (probably the lighting under the platform helped).
So that was my vignweek! Thanks for sticking with the read this far, hope you enjoyed the look behind the scenes. I’m not very sure which of the six vignettes is my favorite. Probably the post-apoc one, but I think all the last three are among my best work. Let me know which was your favorite!
And you might also enjoy reading these other posts:
Geneva D 
What do you think?