Brickspace: 2009

I can barely remember the start of the last year... though it was only 12 months ago that we celebrated the end of 2008 and the start of 2009, it feels as if a lot more time has passed than just one year. Anyway, to sum up Brickspace's best year so far (yet its only complete year, heh heh), here's a quick overview of what happened in each month...

January We started the year with lots of new Dictionary entries, such as bley and VOAT, and also introduced our ever-popular Feedback form. I was amazed to see that in January we welcomed Zack to the Brickspace team: it certainly feels like he's been with us for a lot longer than that. We also announced the results of the Brickspace Awards 2009 (get ready to vote for your 2010 winners soon), where Philip Heinrich, Nathan Sawaya and Nannan Zhang collected the prizes. January was also the last time we heard about the 101 Brickfilms to See Before You Die project, which was sadly discontinued in February.

February In February we welcomed Doctor Sinister to the team - a momentous occasion as he has been regularly blogging here non-stop since then. He gave us the first peek at the 30 Years of Neo-Classic Space celebrations which happened in March. We also greeted Teikjoon and Gorazd to Brickspace's blogging team. February was a big month for pictures of new Lego sets: we got our first look at SPIII, Power Miners, 2009 Star Wars sets, and a lot more. We also heard about a range of mysterious Disney sets being released in 2010, which we know a lot more about now.

March As mentioned before, the community's eyes turned to Neo-Classic Space builders in March, and they produced some amazing stuff. Meanwhile, builders all over America were contributing to the massive Zero Hour on Highway 44, which was completed in March. Let's not forget our good friend Dane Cook, who appeared in many a Brickfilm blogged here in March, to the increasing despair of many of our readers. In the Brickfilming world, Brickfilms.com showed off its new version 3.0 whilst Philip Heinrich was announced as the new Admin of Bricks in Motion after Schlaeps left.

April This was a big month for Brickspace, because we released Brickspace 4.0! This is the version of Brickspace that you see at the moment, but before April it was very different. 4.0 brought with it the star ratings, new graphics and a search bar that I'm sure has become a standard part of your Brickspace browsing. Also in April, Doctor Sinister managed to get hold of the new City sets and we got our first look at Indiana Jones sets for the coming year. Elsewhere, the Brickspace Dictionary got lots of new entries, and I got completely tricked by a TBB April fool.

May In May we saw the release of David Pagano's Space Police series for Lego, which is still running now. The third Vintage Minifigure collection was announced, with the first Western minifigure for many years! Meanwhile, in the community, MECHA Hub were running their popular Civilian Mecha contest (we reviewed Sir Nadroj's entries), and Zack came up with the idea for Wave Racers. Brickspace 4.0 continued into May with the release of Get Involved!.




June In June there was a large amount of Brickfilms released: from Zach Macias' The Emporer's Royal Guard to Keshen8's Days of our Pizza. Meanwhile, in the FOL community, Powerpig showed us one of his few proper MOCs and we opened our eyes and showered our praise for LegoRevolution's space-age vignette. Let's not forget International Steampunk Day, of which it seemed only Jordan Schwartz knew about, or Cole Blaq's trippy starfighter 'Gokurakucho'. We also got the first news of Ben 10 Lego sets.



July After over a month's worth of an ad at the top of S@H pages and even longer knowing their release was imminent, the Lego Games line was finally released at the start of July. SavaTheAggie showed off his ingenious idea of Lego braille, whilst The Legohaulic made us all laugh with his "Lego lair" video. Brickspace also got its first Get Involved! post, from Iainy73. We also got the first news of James May's Lego house, the TV programme of which was broadcast only a week or so ago. We had a slight lapse in sanity as I posted two more Dane Cook Brickfilms, but luckily the day after we got a look at Toy Story and Prince of Persia sets for the first time at Comic Con. On the 28th July, I stayed up late just for you guys, the readers, and watched the screening of the entries to the incredibly popular Bricks in Motion STAR festival, where we saw such films as The River and CYCLIC. Finally, at the end of the month, the animated banner that you see at the top of all Brickspace pages today was released.

August The big event in August was, of course, the competition at the Lego Speeder Bikes group on Flickr. Cole Blaq and Dali Zheng hosted the contest, and loads of people built their idea of a 6x16x6 speeder bike. I reviewed the entries on the 7th, and then again at the end of the month on the 31st. Meanwhile, we got lots more Dictionary entries - including Jumper plate, Earling brick and the fades. On the 11th, Dano managed to find an Italian website with information about the Lego Atlantis theme - the first information we had of 'Aqua Raiders take two'. The site revealed the marketing plan for the series. The Bricks in Motion 2008 awards were announced, where Philip Heinrich took home 6 awards, and Zach Macias, Go Le Go! and Nikolas Jaeger also won. Brickspace 4.0 continued to take effect, with new Join and About pages.

September After the bulge in blogging in July and August, September was a low point, with only 14 posts here on Brickspace. I can only think of this as a result of our bloggers finishing their holidays and going back to school, or work, but we managed to get a fair amount of posts in nonetheless. We started the month with the exciting news of LDD 3.0, and the announcement of Lego Design byME. Mark Kelso continued his amazing Apocalypsis story and put on his cave-building cap for the second chapter. After the Bricks in Motion awards in August, Philip Heinrich announced the next BiM competition: 'Avant Garde', where Brickfilmers are encouraged to push the bar of Lego animation and try something completely different. Avant Garde is ending on the 25th July this year, so entrants only have 7 months left! On the 18th of September we got a much better look at the Atlantis line, along with Power Miners and the first picture of the Ben 10 sets, courtesy of BenLego and Dano.

October In comparison to September, October was much better in terms of posting. We started the month off with The Great Western Lego Show, where the new Pirate ship (10210) was first shown. But, aside from STEAM and MOCs, October was a momentous month for Brickspace: our first birthday! We celebrated with a series of special posts about Brickspace's history, its bloggers, its logos, and lots more. Whilst we were celebrating, the community got its first look at the second wave of SPIII sets, ThinkGeek came up with the idea of wearing a TIE Fighter on your T-Shirt, and the Gladitorial Combatant Contest started. Near the end of the month, and after some confusion with the release date, Lego Digital Designer 3.0 was finally finished - and I was there to cast my critical eye over it.  We finished off the month with a review of the new Lego Games, by yours truly.

November This month was, of course, all about Vic Vipers. Nnenn and PeterLMorris of the Vic Vipers Flickr group contributed to the event, now in its second year. We started off the month with a quick guide to building Vic Vipers, along with a short interview from Nnenn. We took a look at the first week's Novvember offerings, and then an overview of the whole month in December. Back in November, Brickspace had a large image hosting problem on the 11th, which cause all of our post headers to not display - and we are still working on fixing this now! ThePaleman9 and ModelGal were the first to get their hands on Atlantis sets, and we also got our first good look at Star Wars 2010 sets. Doctor Sinister showed us his 2010 Lego calendar, in the theme of 'Calendar Minifigs' (from 'Calendar Girls'). November ended with the sad news of the discontinuation of the Bionicle theme, after its final set of 'Bionicle Stars' in spring this year. But, despite the bad news, we got our first look at the range of collectable Lego minifigs, which we still don't know much about now.


December The year ended with another unfortunately quiet month of blogging, similar to September, but we made the most of it, posting about the strange yet ingenious products from MUJI+LEGO, and the trailer for feature-length Lego movie Clutch Powers. We also followed the hilarious National news Network (NNN) Brickfilms from David M. Pickett. Throughout the advent season, Powerpig, MisaQa and Fanboy30 were showing us their advent calendars, which helped lead us all the way up to Christmas. Finally, at the very end of the year, we got to see the prototypes for this year's Kingdoms Lego theme, as well as those for the World Racers theme.

Well, that was 2009 - and what a year it was! I hope you have all had a fantastic year, but it's time now to look forward to 2010: who knows what marvels of Lego building we will find in the coming months? Who knows what new builders will come into the spotlight?

No matter what happens, I hope you all have a great new year, and a great 2010!

~John, and the Brickspace team