Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Steam Battle

Name of Model: Steam Battle
Created by: SlyOwl
Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27444109@N04/3317519426/
Details: SlyOwl is a a fairly prolific builder who gets blogged a lot and for good reason. Here's one he posted at the end of February that I didn't see mentioned elsewhere—much to my surprise! Steam Battle is a good dose of LEGO steampunk with a lot going on without overdoing it, and a variety of excellent modern building techniques.



Here are three of my favorites in this MOC:

The Splashes
You've got that boiler unit hitting the water front and center of the MOC and a gigantic clear cylinder dish representing the splash. A bit to the left is a smaller splash but a really cool "freeze-frame" effect like you often see in a photo of a drop of water taken at a very high speed.

SNOT Wake
This is better visible from a slightly different angle, but you can see some of it here behind the smaller splash. The boat is moving in toward the dock at a decent clip, demonstrated by the use of white, light blue, and light bley built into the SNOT (Studs-Not-On-Top) base. You can also see SlyOwl's use of 1x1 clear cylinders here as bubbles.

The Floating Rock
I've noticed a number of builders recently using this concept (e.g. Reejoc on his amazing interpretation of the Queen of Hearts' Castle from Alice in Wonderland). Let alone the excellent building techniques, I'm intrigued by the idea of a chunk of dirt or rock that defies gravity and is its own island in the sky, as it were.

2 comments:

Rod Gillies said...

This was an entry for the "Agents of the Imperial Crown" competition that a few of us organised over in the Flickr LEGO Steampunk Group.

It came a highly-commended runner-up in one of the categories behind a MOC by V&ASteamworks.

Duckingham said...

Good call, Rod. I should have noticed that when I wrote the post. Thanks for pointing it out!