General MOC-Discussion, WIP-Help, and Teaser Thread

[Maxim I]

Not really a WIP,
 but those who are wondering how the biggest Pirate lay-out so far would look like, here you can find the pictures of the Pirate Lay-out of Brickmania Antwerp 2016

64 ships represented, over 2000 minifigs and a 80 square meter area covered

[azog]

Hey Guys i'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this or not, if not just go ahead and move my question to some place else. My question is does anyone know what material lego uses for there sails. I bet I can find it by just looking but I thought this would be a lot easier. If you do know what material they use can you send me a link to it if they have it on amazon. Every comment is very much appreciated, and I would love to see what you have to say. 

[kurigan]

26 minutes ago, azog said:

Hey Guys i'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this or not, if not just go ahead and move my question to some place else. My question is does anyone know what material lego uses for there sails. I bet I can find it by just looking but I thought this would be a lot easier. If you do know what material they use can you send me a link to it if they have it on amazon. Every comment is very much appreciated, and I would love to see what you have to say. 

There is a long running topic about this already over here. Though I won't begrudge being overruled on this, I'm making a decision to leave your message here so that others may see it and find their way over the aforementioned discussion. There is also this topic which may be of use and would be overlooked if I just moved you over. 

[kurigan]

I was going to keep this one to myself until it was finished but I just plain ran out of (useful) bricks. I suppose I could have been working on a BoBS introduction but I just built it up too much and it just stopped being fun. That’s the problem I've been having with my fleet. I just needed to build something for the enjoyment. Besides, I felt like I owed my little colony a better fort after putting it off for years. 

 

Right now I'd guess it's about 80% done. There's a lot of detail work to do and I'm not happy with the railings or crenellations. There's a lot of SNOT and gravity connections involved and it's mostly built from cast-offs, rejects and knock-offs which weren’t suitable for sale. There's always rejects amongst the white in a used lot, so I just need to be patient and wait for bricks. I actually like the look all the discolored bricks lend to the overall effect. 

 

When I gather up enough time and materials to finish it, my fort will get its own topic, but until then please enjoy these, admittedly low quality, images and let me know what you think.

[Slegengr]

@kurigan That is a nice fort, coming together well!  Using SNOT techniques to give the walls a studs-free appearance is an interesting idea that I like quite a lot!  I will be looking forward to the finished fort.

So, are the minifigures an indication that you are leaning towards Corrington in BoBS? (Other than Spiderman, of course)

[Capn Frank]

Great work Kurigan.  

[Fox Womb]

I'm working on building a fort as well. Mine is a lot smaller, mind you.

The interior is far from done, so I'm not making a new topic on it. Here's what it looks like right now...

Spoiler

I'm trying to incorporate as many play features as possible, but so far all I have is the cannon mount I've already made a topic on, a rotating cannon on the roof, a gunner that can pivot, and a wall that can be destroyed. Suggestions are appreciated!

[Scarilian]

Thinking of trying to make a minifigure scale ship, in particular The Silent Mary, has anyone got any examples of a ship that would be exactly to scale with figures?

Wondering roughly how it would look. Ideally would have a cabin.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Scarilian

[SodorBricks]

2 hours ago, Scarilian said:

Thinking of trying to make a minifigure scale ship, in particular The Silent Mary, has anyone got any examples of a ship that would be exactly to scale with figures?

Wondering roughly how it would look. Ideally would have a cabin.

The new trailer 3 has quite a bit of onboard footage as well as some pan shots around the ship, which might be quite useful for reference. 

[Scarilian]

10 hours ago, SodorBricks said:

The new trailer 3 has quite a bit of onboard footage as well as some pan shots around the ship, which might be quite useful for reference. 

Thanks, been mostly working from that and this image which apparently is the inspiration;



My main concern is how wide it should be - given that we have limited views of the main deck - and that is what will determine a lot of the scale of the ship.

[Maxim I]

On 3-3-2017 at 7:12 PM, Scarilian said:

Thanks, been mostly working from that and this image which apparently is the inspiration;



My main concern is how wide it should be - given that we have limited views of the main deck - and that is what will determine a lot of the scale of the ship.

Sorry mate, but that is not the Silent Mary... 

[Scarilian]

Just now, Maxim I said:

Sorry mate, but that is not the Silent Mary... 

It was apparently the basis for the inspiration of the Silent Mary in its ghost ship form, admittedly the ship design in the movie is more similar to the 2010 Imperial Flagship just with added decorations. Unfortunately there are no images of the full ship currently. In the trailer we have'nt seen the full ship in frame in detail and there was no real life ship used for filming so trying to get a sense of the overall look is problematic

I'm currently working off a selection of set pictures i found when they built the deck of the ship for filming - coupled with shots from the trailer and comparing it to the Lego model to see how it was adapted/shrunk. Ordered a bunch of pieces and hopefully should make quite a bit of progress very quickly once they arrive. Mostly the intial goal is to 'repair' Lego's Silent Mary, then to increase the size of it to be more accurate.

[Jacob Nion]

@Scarilian

The hull of the Silent Mary is taken from a Ship of the line from around 1700, looking at the long and flat beakhead, the forecastle and the rigging. 

For the size you should just look for points of orientation. You want minifig scale doors to the fore and aft castle for example. That means these areas have to raise at least five bricks from the main deck. For the width of the main deck consider what size your cannons shall have. If you want to use the Lego cannon, the gun carriage + knob that makes 5 studs per side, so a total of 10, the cargo hold should be at least 6 studs wide, and at least 2 studs space between cannon and cargohold so it doesn't look stupid. That makes a deck width of 18, + 2 studs for the bulwark, so 20 studs. And of course the hull has a vault, approx. 2 studs on each side. That would make a total width of 24 studs. And that still is not accurate minifig scale, just a rough consideration. 

Now for a vessel of this era we can consider a width to length ratio of 1:4 (stern to top of the bowsprit) so you would go with a total length of ca. 96 studs, or 76,8 cm (if you're American, ~30,24"). 

I hope you know how ambitious such a project is. Building a brick built hull of this size alone is an art. Please don't underestimate the effort and resources necessary, otherwise this could lead to frustration.

But if you mean to go for the ghost ship appearance that would probably be way easier. 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Jacob Nion

[Legostone]

So, we have 10 guns on each of the gundecks. Let's go with the typical ratio of 4:2 for Lego guns: The gundeck part alone would be 60 studs long. You can expect at least 8 more studs on either end for stern and forecastle; so you can expect your hull to be at least 80 studs long. @Jacob Nion  is certainly right, this will be a proper ship of the line, with around 60 guns. Due to the price of the lego guns, I can only recommend you going with custom guns at least for the upper deck. This should also allow you to not make it as wide, I guess 16 studs width at the top would still be needed. 

[Maxim I]

the PoTC wikia is estimating 84 guns...

http://pirates.wikia.com/wiki/Silent_Mary

[kurigan]

On 2/19/2017 at 9:44 PM, Fox Womb said:

I'm working on building a fort as well. Mine is a lot smaller, mind you.

The interior is far from done, so I'm not making a new topic on it. Here's what it looks like right now...

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm trying to incorporate as many play features as possible, but so far all I have is the cannon mount I've already made a topic on, a rotating cannon on the roof, a gunner that can pivot, and a wall that can be destroyed. Suggestions are appreciated!

A prison cell or even a oubliette would be cool, and ghosts. Forts need ghosts, don't know why, but all the ones around here seem to have em

[Scarilian]

@Jacob Nion
The official version is 68cm in length - so by calculations by members here that only requires a 9-10cm increase. My main concern is the front of the ship - the sides seem fairly self-explanitory (Though the pieces used are pricey to acquire in the number needed) - though i do appreciate the warning about not underestimating the frustration building such a vessel will have. The spires will also be frustrating - there are pieces to better replicate the spires but the difficulty lies in them not appearing in any useable colour other than black - so even if i can replicate the scale i wont get the right colour scheme without painting them. It is an ambitious task

@Legostone @Maxim I
I appreciate that you posted the image of the ship, i believe its in the instructions, but seeing it now has certainly helped the direction of which i will need to take the ship.

I originally planned on drawing inspiration mostly from how the UCS Black Pearl was handled, in which the middle deck cannons will be official lego cannons while the upper deck and spires will be smaller brick-built cannons to maximise the room on the deck. I have 16 official Lego cannons currently so a small bricklink order should provide enough to have 10 on either side. I did not expect Lego to ignore an entire layer of guns though... this complicates things.

Though i did understand this to be a large project - so it's unlikely it will be done anytime soon. If i'm lucky i can probably get the basic deck done - but the hull is going to take a while.

[Legostone]

I have a quick question to some of the other shipbuilders here - why are so few of you using technic connectors instead of 1x1 round bricks? The axle connectors aren't exactly as round, but it ends up being barely noticeable and they don't have the thin ledge at the bottom - I think they are about even in looks, but the technic connectors are much better considering stability, as the connecting part goes completely through them unlike the round 1x1 bricks. Then there is also the completely round technic connector, which sadly has a slot, but it is also completely round.

6538b old axle connector (interesting: tan exists and isn't too expensive)
6538c new axle connector (reddish brown and black are widely available)
75535 old round pin connector, no slot (expensive in interesting colours)
62462 new round pin connector, slot (black, reddish brown and white are widely available)
18654 1L pin connector (tan and black available)

You can even have masts get thinner towards the top by combining the pin connector (thickest part), new axle connector (slightly thinner), the old connector (slightly thinner again) and technic axles. 

 

Oh, and lets add something silly - was anyone here thinking a 2 deck, 38 gun brig would be a good idea? The Austrians supposedly thought so. 

The article only exists in German, but here you go.

Edited April 23, 2017 by Legostone

[kurigan]

For a long time I've wanted to incorporate a technic connector/axle system, but simply put the pieces just aren’t as prolific as 3062b. Yes when your ordering them they are no more expensive, but when I'm scavenging up what I can find from used lots, I find a lot more bricks then technic. Even at $0.03 a piece, you still need twice as many technic connectors and pins/axles as you do 3062b. I like the look of the technic connectors, even the less than round ones, and I appreciate the tricks you can pull off with them while keeping cleaner lines. Best of all, you don't have to "cheat" to stiffen them up to take weight. Still, for the moment I've quite a few 3062b squirreled away and only a handful of connectors, so you won't likely see me convert any time soon. 

 

As to the Austrian brig; do you trust the source? It doesn't look quite legitimate to me. It appears to me that someone went and did some photoshop surgery on a draft of an early to mid 18th c. ship then superimposed a 19th c. rig over it. Nothing seems to scale. While the stern gallery windows wouldn't appear out of place on a cathedral as they appear to span two decks, the sails, especially the spanker/main, seem grossly undersized. Combine that with such a large flat bottom and she'd be likely to be about as weatherly as sheet of plywood. I'd expect she'd give as much leeway as headway all the while tossing her poor crew around something fierce on even the lightest swell. It might be a fun build in Lego, but what strange duck she'd be in the real world. Then again, what do I know? 

[Mesabi]

Hey, I've been working on a new ship, and experimenting with hinges to give it a more organic look. ideally I'd like to give the hull a

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shape, but I don't think I have the bricks for it  Anyways, if you guys have some feedback, that'd be great, I'm not sure where to go from here

BoBS teasers by North White, on Flickr

[kurigan]

@Mesabi

Well, mate, if I'm interpreting what I see correctly you're really trying for a dynamic, realistic shape. However, there isn’t a lot to go on. I'm not even sure I can tell the front from the back, or if I'm just seeing what I want to see. Can you help us out with a bit more data, perhaps more than just the one angle. Are you working from any inspiration or reference material? It's entirely OK to create a WIP topic, even if the end MOC if for BoBS. 

 

Cheers!

[Mesabi]

Alright, here are some more pictures.

BoBS teasers by North White, on Flickr

BoBS teasers by North White, on Flickr

I'm not altogether happy with it, I might scrap it and start over. I just wondered what you guys thought. 

[Bregir]

On 06/05/2017 at 6:32 AM, kurigan said:

As to the Austrian brig; do you trust the source?

The source (wikipedia article) looks perfectly legitimate. But I think the number of guns and the general looks of it might deceive us. I believe it is much smaller than it appears - notice how tall the decks look. I think the stern galleries are only marginally taller than i) a single deck, and ii) a person.

It is a "river frigate" from 1768 made to operate on the Donau (Danube) river, which explains both the oars, the flat bottom, and the large rudder. It may also well be the reason behind the curious rig, as it would probably only use sails under suitable conditions.

My guess? Lengthwise, it is no longer than a typical large brig, but with a wider and flatter bottom they have added another deck allowing it to carry considerable more guns. Being made for river travel, the demands on stability are very different, which means the flat bottom and a bit of top weight probably isn't a big problem.

@Mesabi:

I think I can see where you are going with the hull, and I am impressed you are, as a relatively new shipbuilder, trying out what appears to me to be a new, or at least not one of the established, techniques. Very ambitious, sir!

However, a few things might need a bit of rework - her horisontal lines are very straight, which makes her look rather modern, as if built in steel. I think the overall shape of the hull is rather good, but you have a lot of large straight sections and some pretty jagged transitions, that could use a bit more work. It will probably take some more hinges of different kinds (I have myself scourged bricklink for some in the most relevant colours - can be done even at a small budget, really.), but I don't think you will regret such a purchase in the long run. Helps shipbuilding tremendously!

[kurigan]

@Bregir Good point, I was not thinking "river boat" at all. I also must have missed Legostone's "here" link the first time around. Still it would have only done so much good as I cant read German. 

 

@Mesabi You're still leaving me a lot of guess work mate. Is this a full hull or waterline model? You seem to be putting a lot of effort into simulating the under-side curve of the hull at the bow but the shape you've achieved would seem more appropriate at the stern, just because of the way wooden ships float. This assumes that you're trying for something realistic at all and that I've correctly identified the front and back. 

[Ben Pitchford]

LEGO Medieval Watermill by Ben Pitchford, on Flickr 

Just a teaser pic of a much larger build...