Tag Archives: Ship

LEGO Halo fan spends 5 years designing & building 7-foot UNSC heavy frigate from 25,000 bricks [Exclusive]

For the past several years, my friend Steve Witt has been collecting the necessary LEGO bricks and fiddling with his design to produce a 7-foot-long (2.1 meter) recreation of a Paris-class UNSC heavy frigate from the Halo video game universe that he’s dubbed the Katara. After following his work-in-progress photos on Facebook and Flickr for five years, I’m very pleased to share this closer look at the finished ship, exclusive to The Brothers Brick.

We’ll take a closer look at the details and share some of the build’s history in a moment, but let’s pause and take in just how massive a LEGO ship 7 feet long really is, with this photo of the builder working on it.

See detailed photos and learn more about this massive Halo ship

A shipshape ship of brick

With many ship festivals and sailing events cancelled this year due to the ongoing pandemic, it is nice to be able to get my ship fix in via LEGO. Builder Lennart Cort certainly materializes the fine craftsmanship of a well-built sea vessel into the LEGO medium for viewers to enjoy in his build of the Dannebrog from 1852.

Dannebrog

The Dannebrog is a “ship of the line,” which is a type of naval warship that was produced in the 17th century to the mid 19th century. Cort’s micro-scale Dannebrog certainly exhibits the details necessary for a military ship. One example is his utilization of multiple round 1×1 with bar and pin holder pieces as gun ports. The Dannebrog was specifically an armored frigate of the Royal Danish navy – in fact, the word Dannebrog is the given name of the Danish flag, and through this build we can see this connection via Cort’s use of two red streamer flags modified with what looks like white tape to form the white cross on the Danish flag. My favorite part of this build is actually the brick-built sails that Cort expertly executes using white wedge plates and tiles; he really does an excellent job at making brick-built sails look like the real deal. In my opinion, Cort’s brick-built sails are visually more appealing than the ones featured in the new Creator 3-in-1 pirate ship designed by LEGO. As a whole, Cort’s creation certainly is beauty and must look wonderful on display.

Microscale mission of mercy

A friend in need is a friend indeed, they say. Who is they? Probably Louis of Nutwood, for one, since he built this microscale LEGO scene of a relief ship unloading its supplies to help save a city near destruction. The ship itself is small and sleek, elegantly color blocked, and the harbor is great, too, with its large cranes to unload the supplies. The water deserves some extra attention, with the subtle variation in colors and the studs being used for waves near the shore. But more than that, the whole piece has an elegant composition, with the rocks, uneven edge of the water, and the clear central focus on the ship. What kind of ship? Friendship.

A sailor's solitude

But why is the rum gone?

Where I sit, the government has issued a stay at home order, and non-essential in-person businesses are closed. Grocery stores are an exception, of course, as we all still need to eat, and so are liquor stores, as folks still need to drink. I mean really, what else do you do when socially isolated? It puts me in mind of Captain Jack Sparrow, getting through his time marooned on an island alone. He, too, drank away his sorrows. So when I (Benjamin Stenlund) decided to enter the Style it Up contest to pass the time during my days at home, it wasn’t long before I hit on the idea of building a ship. And since I have a lot of black fabric elements, I decided to build a black ship. And if I was going to make a black ship, why not make Captain Jack’s ship, the Black Pearl?

The Black Pearl

At first, I tried building the sides with slope bricks and tiles, but it looked too chunky at this small scale, so I hit upon the idea of using the quarter dome elements for the prow, and the rest of the ship filled in from there. The 1×1 round plate with bar makes for some nice cannons, even if I did not add enough to equal the real ship; there are concessions one must make at this scale, after all. The sails are cloaks wrapped in rubber bands, and the crows nests are Black Panther ears and ninja cowls. The soft sails, combined with the rigging, make this unique among small-scale LEGO ships that I have seen, but what really sets it apart (if I may toot my own horn a bit) is the atmospheric quality of the photo. Since the contest required that only one color be used, the water is black, too, and the backdrop is also black; in fact, the photo is unedited except for cropping, so this is full-color. Perfect for the ship of a drunken pirate.

The beauty that lies beneath the plank

This gorgeous LEGO diorama by Stephan Gofers shows us the ocean’s full depth, from the vivid coral reefs below the waves, to the sleek 3-master sailing on its surface. The pirate crew has captured a hapless guard, forcing him to walk the plank. In no short order, he’ll be admiring the fantastic marine life from a much closer vantage point, and since he’s not wearing handcuffs, we can assume he’ll swim safely to shore to become a new castaway.

Pirates a Go-Go

While the colorful reef draws the eye first, the ship itself is a lovely model, eschewing LEGO’s pre-made ship hull elements and instead opting for a planked-look made of brown tiles and curved slopes. The furled sails made of curved white slopes also look excellent. Continue reading →

Call it Leviathan

Many LEGO fans talk about hunting for their white whale – that one set they’ve been searching for all their lives. This is, of course, an allusion to Captain Ahab’s ultimately fatal obsession with finding an actual white whale in Moby Dick (do 168 year old books need spoiler warnings?). It would seem that that fairy tale whale is still out there hunting ships, as Oliver Becker demonstrates.

"Thar She Blows..."

Has the white whale grown to such an immense size to dwarf the ship? Or is she a regular-sized whale and it’s the ship that’s actually tiny? We’ll never know for sure, but we do know that there’s some excellent parts usage at play here. Dead center in the frame of the shot is a white lever base, expertly used as the whale’s eye. I really love the swords with jagged edges used to create a splash – those few parts convey the creature’s movement. And it’s a big splash, so maybe it really is a larger-than-life whale.

When the ants go sailing in...I feel bad for the spiders.

My original title for this article was something along the lines of a Zoolander quote, but then, that just made me feel old. But enough about me. We’re here to talk about a few amazingly detailed pirate ships at a scale suitable for Ant-man, the Wasp, or any other shrinking superhero, built by Robert4168/Garmadon and adorned with tiny sails made from paper, I think, and dozens of hand-tied rigging, which makes me tired just thinking about… or maybe that’s just me being old again. These ships may be small, but they still strike a mighty fierce cut.

Montroy's Flagship

This black-sailed ship is even firing cannons, using the ice-cream cone for the cannon smoke.

The Cardinal's Shadow

The Disqualifier falls short by a micro-smidgen

According to the Triassic Era LEGO gods who made this stuff up eons ago, a SHIP (Significantly Huge Investment in Parts) must measure at least 100 studs in any one direction. This craft by Filler Brick, aptly named The Disqualifier, measures in at precisely 99.9 studs. Close! So damned close! It would have been easy to take this creation to within specs but I get the hunch this builder liked being the underdog here. As someone who has often fallen short by a smidgen in so many different ways myself, I can relate. (Shut up, you!) Perhaps we could overlook its shortcomings with excellent presentation and the fact that this took thirty-one grueling days to build and somewhere between 3000-5000 pieces. It’s not about the size of the dog in the fight but rather the size of the fight in the dog. Or something. I’m feeling the love here, how about you?

Lego SHIPtember day 31: The Maiden Voyage of the SpaceSHIP Disqualifier

The Shipbreaker CALYPSO is clearly not from around here

For it is written, twas the Triassic Era LEGO Gods of Legend who sayeth unto he “go forth and buildeth a SHIP, a Significantly Huge Investment in Parts. It shall be no less than one hundred studs on one side. Thou shalt hence forth do it every September and thou shalt call it SHIPtember for that will be totally bitchin’.”

Like Noah, so many faithful disciples and space nerds had heeded the words of the legendary LEGO gods every September and has been building SHIPs for as long as we can remember. One such faithful disciple and space nerd is Shannon Sproule and this uncanny “Shipbreaker CALYPSO”.

Shipbreaker CALYPSO final

Click here to learn more about this alien ship.

A little thought about big spaceships...along with a big spaceship

Large spaceships get the geeky type quite excited, and we LEGO builders are some of the geekiest. Over the decades, this has lead to a standardized criteria of what qualifies as a large space ship – 100 studs in length. While I do love every large spaceship out there (as the especially geeky type of person I am), I wonder if this criteria has started to impede creativity. With an annual celebration of large LEGO spaceships (also known as SHIPs) every September, the bricks of the world have been concentrated to bring us many elongated spacecraft that quite often measure exactly or just over 100 LEGO studs long. What about bulkier 90 or 80-stud spaceships that so rarely get made? On the other side of the coin, this cultural phenomenon has been a great source of inspiration to builders who may not have otherwise built a big hunk of space metal, not even a medium sized one! Another point is that this common perception of what qualifies as “large” is a uniting factor in the community.

Pelicon-3

The third side of this (apparently three-sided) coin are builds that are basically the definition of an elongated spaceship, but still manage to impress immensely! Anthony Wilson brings us a creation that has some amazing textures, negative space and colour blocking. What I love most about Anthony’s Pelicon-3 is the bridge area, with windows on either side, revealing a busy interior filled with trophy minifigures.

Hunt for pirates on the HMS White Card

When I was a kid, pirate ships (as I called all boats with sails) were one of my favourite things to build with LEGO bricks. While I thought mine were OK, I wish I’d been able to jump forward in time and see some of Gerard Joosten’s ships, especially his HMS White Card.

HMS White Card

While childhood me and adult Gerard’s ships are similar in that they start at the bottom with boat hull pieces, that’s where the similarities end. Though we’ve featured his builds before, Gerard pushed himself to take his shipbuilding to another level with this one and it shows. The two aspects that jump out the most to me are the shaping of the hull and the intricate rigging. Those large sails, coupled with small details like the brick built wooden stock on the anchor cement the HMS White Card as quite the stunning ship.

An icebreaker, but not the desert-island-album question kind

I have an icebreaker for you. No, I don’t mean one of those icebreaker questions like “what is in the trunk of your car right now?” (Eldritch Horror game, reusable shopping bags) or “what childish thing do you still do as an adult?” (Well, duh!). I’m talking about a roughly 2,000 piece LEGO Antarctic icebreaker built by Luis Peña. This is the new icebreaker of the Chilean Navy, currently under construction in Asmar, Talcahuano, and should be set to sail by 2022. Equipped with two SH32 Cougar helicopters, it will be the most modern icebreaker in South America, and the largest and most complex ship ever built in Asmar. The ship itself still has no name, but the project is called Antarctica 1. Perhaps they will let the internet decide a catchy name for this vessel. I mean, what can go wrong?

Icebreaker “Antarctica 1”

Oh, I thought of an icebreaker question that I can’t see backfiring in any way: Which Brothers Brick contributor annoys you the most? What can go wrong, indeed?