PortLUG was honored to be invited for the third straight year to the Rose City Comic Con in Portland Oregon, September 8-10. Rose City Comic Con was celebrating their 6th consecutive year for their biggest year yet – final attendance numbers far exceeded expectations, with more than 56,000 attendees throughout the weekend!
Twenty-six PortLUG members participated in this show, and the LUG had the privilege of a prime 20’x40’ space next to the designated Kids’ Zone. Being a pop-culture oriented fandom event, PortLUG focused our MOCs on pop culture representations and tributes. Some of the MOC highlights included:
- Mercy Angel from Overwatch
- A series of LEGO mosaics depicting celebrity guests attending the comic-con this year, such as: Weird-Al Yankovic; Katee Sackhoff; Brent Spiner; Karl Urban (who unfortunately had to cancel his appearance)
- A 20,000+ piece MOC of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars (The builder of this MOC is only 17 years old!)
- A life-size “Rose Garden” flower bed, complete with gardening tools (as a tribute to Portland, the “City of Roses”
- “The Stacks” from Ready Player One – a big hit that got featured on Beyond the Brick!
- Giant-size Minecraft Creeper + Pig. These MOCs were part of the photobooth PortLUG hosted in the Kids’ Zone
Our tables were also full of lots of surprises and “Easter eggs” to help draw our guests’ attention.
In addition to our own table space, we supported the Kids’ Zone with Minecraft-theme play brick, which we supplemented with additional baseplates and some laminated photos of sample Minecraft LEGO creations to help kids get ideas and inspiration for their builds.
Our LUG was even featured on a local news station! We were approached Thursday late in the afternoon by the media marketing firm responsible for promotion of the convention, asking if any of us would be willing to participate in a live telecast on our local CBS affiliate, KOIN6. We jumped at the opportunity, and Kelley and James were both interviewed for a short segment the following morning at 6:30 AM as part of the morning programming. They only got a few minutes of screen-time, but it gave them an opportunity to promote the convention, and promote the hobby.
Finally – what’s a comic-con without attendees dressed in costumes? Several of our own LUG members got into the fun, and dressed in their own favorite characters from movie, TV, or comic books. We had LUG members dressed as: The Joker, Captain Marvel, Calvin & Hobbes, Dr. Who + a TARDIS, John Snow from Game of Thrones, a Ghostbuster, and even Wolverine and Jubilee (from the X-Men). A lot of the fun we had this year was getting into the spirit of comic-con, and of course, sharing through our MOCs common fandoms with attending guests.
Overall, the event went off very smoothly. We have been fortunate to be invited for three years in a row now by the convention organizers, who have been great to work with. We hope we will get an opportunity next year, as well as many years to come!
See more photos in our Facebook album
