Tag Archives: Ships

From Hawaii to Havana on the Bannanaville

A striking turn-of-the-century style dreadnought, the CWS Bannanaville is outfitted with more armaments than you could hope to face if she decides to give you a broadside. Designed by Thomas of Tortuga, this fictional fleet-leader is one of the best examples of microscale warship building I’ve seen, with lots of perfect little details. Because of how perfectly it fits, the one I like best is the use of the “cheese grater” 1×2 slopes for ladders between the decks. It’s a remarkably good render, to boot.

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A classic ride for your LEGO amusement park [Video]

With the new release of the LEGO Creator Expert 10261 Roller Coaster, we now have an all-out amusement park! It’s the piece of the puzzle we’ve long been waiting to add to the collection. On top of that, awesome builders are creating all kinds of fantastic rides to pair up with the Coaster, alongside the Fairground Mixer, Ferris Wheel, and Carousel. Lee Yung Chiu is one of those wonderful builders. His Pirate Ship Ride is a classic that just about anyone can identify with, and he did an excellent job.

Check out the video of it in action. There’s just something about that hypnotic swinging…

Chui’s ride is filled with carnival spirit and joy, as the patrons swing back and forth. The cleverly geared system is run off of a Power Functions XL Motor and Battery Pack. The whole creation is lighted, and also includes a concessions window that can be easily removed and customized.

Sure to be smooth sailing, wind or no

The Esmeralda is an unusual LEGO ship for several reasons. First, it’s a steam corvette from the 1800s, a period when many ships were rigged with sails and outfitted with steam engine-powered screws. Despite the abundance of source material, not many LEGO builders have recreated these ships. And secondly, builder Luis Peña has chosen an interesting size, scaling the ship to the game microfigs.

The finished result looks excellent, with a ship that’s big enough to incorporate lots of details like the anchor pulleys, while still small enough to be manageable with a reasonable number of pieces. Other great details include the Technic panels as sails (a technique LEGO employed on the Sea Cow) and the excellent little Chilean flag.

A shipyard above all shipyards

When it comes to building LEGO maritime creations, one artist stands out as being a foremost authority. Arjan Oude Kotte has graced us with several of his masterpieces over the years. They include a Rotterham Harbor Tugboat, and a massive 1930’s Danish ship, among others. All his creations are packed with magnificent attention to detail and incredible personality. His latest build, Finnian’s shipyard, is another superb addition to his collection, and we love it! The colors and details are truly impressive.

Click to check out all the details packed into this shipyard

Incredible sprawling Victorian-age LEGO city has a railroad, a church, docks, factories and more

Built by the members of SwissLUG as a collaborative build, this amazing Victorian-age city has details everywhere you look. Unlike many LEGO cities, the properly scaled tall ship at the docks doesn’t dwarf the rest of the layout, fitting right in while also serving as a beautiful anchor in the center of the scene.

Click to see more pictures of this amazing LEGO port

Head into space battles aboard the Andromeda

Large spaceships are a flagship of LEGO space creations, where “large” is generally accepted to be 100 studs in length (or honestly any other spatial dimension) — these are called capital ships or SHIPs (Super Huge Investment in Parts). For the past few years, it’s seemed like there might be fewer built throughout the year, because many people rather concentrate their efforts in the annual SHIPtember community challenge in September. So in a way, Lysander Chau‘s Battleship Andromeda is like a Christmas gift in May, and I hope your big spaceship lust is as satisfied as mine.

Click to see more of the Andromeda

Keeping the North Sea safe with the Guardian: an incredible 40k piece LEGO ship over 1.65m long

More than three years ago Arjan Oudekotte started design work on a new ship model. He then got side-tracked for a bit, building a few other things such as a lovely American themed harbour and a large excavator, while the unfinished ship gathered dust. He still has to add a few small details, but he has now finally posted pictures that show the model in its entirety.

Click to see more of this incredible ship

Whatever floats your tugboat

Every now and again we see a realistic civilian minifig-scale LEGO boat, and they keep getting better. The latest is this steam-powered tugboat by Koffiemoc. It is actually a recreation of the last steam tug in Germany, the Saturn. The builder was inspired by this photo and I think he has captured it almost perfectly.

Click to see more details on the Saturn

Surrender your life to the tyrant of the abyss

Who is the pirates’ greatest enemy? Imperial navy? Or is it really the mysterious ship-devouring monsters of the deeps? William Navarre tackles the latter with his latest creation, pitting a pirate ship against a gargantuan kraken. Of course I do not envy the pirates their futile fight, but seeing a kraken would probably be worth it either way…

This is a really dynamic image, owing this impression to the expressive curves in the monster’s tentacles and the perfect little tilt on the ship. As expected from Navarre, the build is full of intense textures and complicated techniques coupled with unique part usage. What most builders avoid like the plague, the builder uses to his biggest advantage: the water is more than a base or even just a blue background, Navarre has built it to show the forces at work with waves and splashes corresponding to the action in the scene.

LEGO Technic 42074 Racing Yacht [Review]

Unlike the charming LEGO Ideas 21313 Ship in a Bottle, the new LEGO Technic 42074 Racing Yacht, despite also being a ship, doesn’t come inside a brick-built bottle. Instead, this bright and vivid ship was designed for high-speed regattas. Even though its playability is rather limited, the set can give a young builder the very basic idea of a modern racing vessel’s mechanisms. The set is just 330-pieces big, but its retail price of £24.99/$39.99/29.99€ can make it a pretty good addition to your collection if you can deal with the model’s flaws…

Click here to read the full review…

Tora! Tora! Tora!

A Second World War themed LEGO airplane fleet is a rare sight to behold. This image by Allen Lim looks amazing, even though the Japanese Zero fighters are multiplied digitally. Obviously my favourite part is the effort put into editing, but that should not overshadow the excellent work on the aircraft carrier and the aircraft itself. There are some shapes around the cockpit and on the wings that are very impressive once you take a closer look and think about how they are done.

I think the best way to view this aircraft is in combat in a dogfight with a Spitfire.

Allen has been building military aircraft throughout February so expect to see more from him in the near future.

Shrinking the ship in a bottle, even smaller

The latest LEGO Ideas model, 21313 Ship in a Bottle was released last week and some fans of the original model were sad to see the final model was smaller. Rather than build the actual set, Jme Wheeler has built a microscale version that can be displayed on even the smallest of shelves. It is not always easy to capture the essence of a larger set in a much smaller scale, but this is a fantastic little ship in a bottle. In particular, the use of 1×1 tiles held upright by the 1×1 modified clips is a great way to create the masts and sails.

It may seem that Jme Wheeler has made the smallest ship in a bottle possible, but it didn’t take long for another even tinier version to wash up. Elijah Bormann has managed to build an smaller representation of the model with his adorable single stud sized ship.

So, does anyone think that one more, even smaller version is possible?

Well after posing the questions, I had to at least have a shot at building a nanoscale version of Ship in a Bottle.