Details: Here's a quick look at one of my own recent builds - a microscale Pirate ship (or more accurately, an imperial galleon for the pirates to attack). The original idea was to create a ship that looked good, but was small enough to animate for Mini LEGO Con. That didn't work out so well, but the finished model was nice enough to add a stand (with water). At 8 x 16 studs, it fits into a Mini Con display, but is slightly larger than one of the BrickFair-styled tables.
This was actually a very humbling model, since I ended up using quite a few pieces that I dismissed as unnecessary when they first came out. The base of the ship is a Bionicle Visorak foot - an "action figure part" you'll never use in-system, right? Two of the sails use a 1 x 2 plate with 2 clips (you'd think 2 1 x 1 plates with clips would do the trick, but this is actually sturdier). One of the sails uses a 2 x 2 tile with one stud in the center, which I remember saying was the equivalent of 3 jumper plates, but a plate shorter. Finally, a 1 x 1 round plate with hole (a part once exclusive to LEGOLAND for metal bracing and wiring) connects the tallest mast to the 1 x 1 round brick below it.
Kids, don't try this at home. You would not believe how difficult it is to connect a plate clip into the bottom of a 2 x 3 plate that already has two 1 x 2 tiles wedged into it. At least it looks good, but LEGO rightly considers that to be an illegal connection.
Details: I was having trouble determining the exact ship that the builder referenced in the title of this model, but this ship is based on a large soviet battlecruiser. The bold color scheme and microscale detailing help to make it stand out.
Details: Over the years, a number of display models have been used to promote general LEGO building. In the 1960's, this frequently meant large boats using large quantities of the fairly basic elements available at the time. These early models were glued and frequently made of cellulose acetate plastic. LEGO stop used that plastic in the 60's, after it became clear that it can warp in some conditions. That warping problem makes original models rare (few were kept in good condition, and nobody at the time expected that they wouldn't last terribly well), but many Adult-Fans-Of-LEGO reproduce the old design using parts as close to the originals as possible. Here, you can spot windows with a large ledge (that prevent them from sitting flat on a baseplate) on every deck of the ship. This particular boat was copied from a model found in the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum in Bellaire, Ohio, USA.
Details: If you've really waded through all of the thousands of photos from this past year's Brickfair, you've seen this beauty before. Had any part of this model been registered on its own instead of as part of the PennLUG town/train layout, it would have won one of the convention's awards. There's too much here to do an in-depth look at the details fairly, and it's connected to the rest of the layout in a way that makes it difficult to tell where various people's contributions start and end. A few striking things should not be missed: the large amounts of shipping containers, the enormous dark blue boat, the trans-green water (built with tiles in something of a mosaic style), the docks, the cranes. This was so much of a show-stopper that you could be forgiven for not knowing that the PennLUG is generally more well known for trains!
Details: LEGO focus groups most of their models with young people. At some level, that's fine - it's their main demographic. However, "those people" like different things than adults do - while kids always want more boats, racecars, police/fire/rescue sets, and other easy-to-play with models, the serious hobbyists invariably complain that they have too many wheels, boat hull elements, and goofy single-use parts. This is one of those models that makes great use of parts we frequently hear cannot be used.
Obviously, the biggest stand-out technique is the use of rowboats as small dormers and the use of a viking ship hull segment as a larger dormer. Continuing the nautical theme, we see a pirate ship's steering wheel over the door, and just above that we see the newer fish element used as a decoration. Over the first-floor windows (themselves a classy tan surrounded by plates with rails and headlight bricks with tiles), we see 3x4 leaves with cherries on them. That great Christmas tree out front? Look closely - those are upside-down palmtreeleaves. The use of some white strings with grips for strings of lights rounds out the tree.
Of course, what I really love about this is the polar bear hiding between the Christmas tree. I didn't mention the great use of color or the texture on the side walls either!
Details: This is a model of a Japanese ferry boat. You might not be able to tell from the thumbnail here, but the real boat's in the background of that photo. The ship is in minifig scale and features some nice on-deck detailing. The back has some open sections so you can see the cars it is carrying inside.
It looks like there's some more info on this graphic, but I can't read Japanese (my ability to pretend to speak all languages on the internet depends on text not being part of a graphic).
Details: Minifig-scale battleship, anyone? For the purposes of this model, minifig scale (a nebulous concept considering that minifigure proportions don't resemble the proportions of real people) is set to 1:40.
This is a recreation of the Japanese Battleship Yamato, a record-setting (in both weight and amount of weapons) vessel used during World War II. Even the LEGO version weighs in at a staggering 330 pounds (150 kilograms). At 6.6 meters (22 feet) long, this is the largest battleship ever made out of LEGO pieces, and it's likely to hold the record for some time to come.
Details: We've seen a few remote-control LEGO boats before (even one other that eschewed common "really floats" parts), but never one that used Bionicle canisters as a flotation device. Yes, kids, you can try playing with floating LEGO creations even if you don't have one of those big expensive "floating boat" kits (We do not recommend that anyone puts electronic LEGO elements near water. Experiment at your own risk). Although this set of photos is only named "boat", it looks like there are photos of multiple boats there - more inspiration for how we could use these plastic canister packages to win those competitive boat races that are increasingly common at LEGO fan conventions!
Details: While mulling over the thought of trying to put together a boat for a LEGO boat race (an increasingly popular challenge at Adult Fan of LEGO gatherings), it occurred to me that using the off-the-shelf remote controls wouldn't be terribly effective due to light distortion near the water's surface. The obvious solution is to use bluetooth instead, and devise some sort of remote control to steer the boat. Here's a spectacular implementation of that idea. Two small propellers steer the boat, and the motors are safely on board the boat (which is the only way I'd recommend trying to build something like this, although I understand some builders have had luck with risking their motors and other electronic parts touching the water). This design actually changes the angle of both propellers to steer - a nice trick I wouldn't have thought of.
2 Much Caffeine has so many things here that are working well that at first its easy to overlook the fact that this is a LEGO creation.
The scene is laid out well and the humor (or is it horror? ;D) is immediately evident.
The squid's eye stands out as a well done technique along with the whole scale of the tentacled beast. I like the minifig legs sticking up out of the water as well as the guys hanging on to the boat for dear life! 2 Much Caffeine has a nice use of white and green tiles to represent where the ripples are. Another technique that he's handled well here is angling the chest and box to get across the idea that these things are bobbing around in the ocean.
One last thing to note: it's not visible in this picture, but if you check out his other pics you'll see good use of a technique for finishing off the bottom of what is otherwise a flat boat. Very nice indeed!
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.
Details: The RMS Olympic (a sister ship of the Titanic) has been rendered in microscale - with LED lights for nighttime viewing. I'm on my way out the door right now, but you can't wait on a ship like this. Trust me - check the photos and you'll be surprised to see clever uses for chains, robot arms, and a variety of other parts that generally have little to no use on a microscale ship. That's a ship for water, too - not a spaceship.
Details: If you're familiar with any of the official boat sets, you probably already know that they're not really to scale - most boats are much larger than that. Of course, building a fantastic ship out of LEGO® parts can be pretty difficult and expensive because of the sheer size of these things. Today's model uses a novel approach to get around this: only building half of a ship - and then using the open cross-section as a way to show off complete interiors. Rather than focus on building a huge exterior, joaquin did tons of details in the middle of the ship. I don't know if the engine room or workers' quarters are actually based on the life-size Spanish sea vessel or not, but they look pretty good. The rescue vessel that this ship was apparently based on was named for 16th century navigator/cosmographer Alonso de Chaves - but surprisingly, it's hard to find a good link to compare with.
Details: This large minifig-scale battleship has a number of nice details and a removable engine room. In one shot, you can see where a disobedient subordinate minifig is doing push-ups. In another, you can get a good look at the precise railings and at the ladders that make various levels of the ship accessible. Normally I'm not a fan of mixing the older tones of gray with the newer "stone" or "bley" tones, but it adds a nice weathered look to this craft. You get the impression that it's been in battle and then been repaired. The final version of the engine room even features staffers with some equipment handy - and the use of one-piece engines and various sizes of LEGO® steering wheels was an inspired choice too. The hull, on the other hand, keeps it simple by using a large amount of large plates. There aren't that many pictures of this one, but they're all good shots that show lots of action.
Details: Last time we featured JP Brown's work, we saw his Rubik's Cube Solver, which was conveniently hosted on his own site. This time though, LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT-themed blog TheNXTStep brings us his new aquatic robot. This robot has some non-LEGO parts that float (I don't know what they are, exactly, but I am pretty sure it's technically "cheating" some astute commenters filled me in - these are zeppelin parts from the Adventures line (which was out about 8 years ago)), but and the programming and the moving parts are all done with MINDSTORMS parts. You can even see it steer itself with different rowing patterns in the YouTube video:
This is controlled remotely via bluetooth with a .NET program - which means that this isn't completely autonomous, but I suspect that the programming has simplified it to the point where not much is done manually either.
Oh, and DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME KIDS, it's NOT SAFE to risk your NXT by putting it too close to the water. If you are going to try to create something like this yourself, make sure that you can test the non-electronic parts first in a smaller body of water (maybe a full sink or tub) so that you can make sure that the expensive electronic parts will be safe and dry.
Details: This model is at least a year and a half old, but it seems to be going viral again on those "intarwebs" the kids are talking about. The thing about this model is that it's not just huge - it's actually to minifig scale and has all the details you'd expect any LEGO minifig-scale plane or boat to have. Of course, those ordinary planes and boats are all just little things inside of this behemoth, which features many functional sections and a full crew. In the interest of providing you with the most thorough documentation of this model that I can, I'm linking to the sleuthing done at The Brothers Brick last year. "Proper" links and gossipy links are both available at that page, and it's much better reading LEGO news from a LEGO fan then from some gawker on the 'net. Please note that some of the photos are on Brickshelf and will be unavailable in the near future.
Here's a quick look at one of my own recent builds - a microscale Pirate ship (or more accurately, an imperial galleon for the pirates to attack). The original idea was to create a ship that looked good, but was small enough to animate for Mini LEGO Con. That didn't work out so well, but the finished model was nice enough to add a stand (with water). At 8 x 16 studs, it fits into a Mini Con display, but is slightly larger than one of the BrickFair-styled tables.
-themed blog 
