cb4

MOC: A busy shipyard

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The frame is nearly complete - but what kind of ship is this going to be? And more importantly - who's the buyer?

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Apologies for all the black bricks- I know it doesn't photograph well - the ship itself is a study model so I can experiment with new techniques. Using a single colour is less distracting for me, and with black I never have to worry about running out of pieces. When I skin the hull there will be ample colour opportunities :)

The shipyard MOC is a fun way for me to present something unfinished in my first post.

EDIT: pictures resized - I ended up having to use Preview - Flickr's uploader tool's resize does terrible things to image quality.

Edited by cb4

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welcome to eurobricks

great start, and the picture quality are very nice indeed :thumbup:

good technique on the hull, black gives him mystery

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Welcome to Eurobricks cb4, what a great way to introduce yourself :pir-classic: The ship technique looks very good at me and all that black gives it a bit mystery. The backdgroung looks good too. Good luck whit this, hope to see some more photos soon.

PS: I think its gonna be a small merchant sloop, it looks so long and thiny at it would be almoust perfect hull for that purpose. Im i right?

Captain Becker

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First of all: welcome to Eurobricks!

That's a nice way to show the progress you make with your ship. But are you really planning to skin this hull? That may be quite difficult (but not impossible).

I also like the shape. It looks very delicate, long and fast.

Finally: your pictures are actually a bit too large. You may want to resize them, so here and here are tutorials :pir-classic:

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Thanks to everyone for the replies and comments.

PS: I think its gonna be a small merchant sloop, it looks so long and thiny at it would be almoust perfect hull for that purpose. Im i right?

Well, that's what the buyer said... he seemed a little shady, but he did pay in cash so the shipyard master isn't asking too many questions.

First of all: welcome to Eurobricks!

That's a nice way to show the progress you make with your ship. But are you really planning to skin this hull? That may be quite difficult (but not impossible).

I also like the shape. It looks very delicate, long and fast.

Finally: your pictures are actually a bit too large. You may want to resize them, so here and here are tutorials :pir-classic:

Skinning it should actually be quite simple. The main issue will just be with the slopes up near the gunwales. The ribs are all in the same plane and are locked to the same angle using pythagorean triples so I can just build long strakes the way I've done with the gunwales and fit them on. It will be somewhat piece-intensive, however :) I will try to post some pics of the bottom and internal structure to show how this works. This ship will have a LOT of room inside for lawfully purchased cargo.

The real problem area is the bows due to the intense 3D-curvature and small cross-section which is why I've just used regular SNOT there.

I'm going to fix the pictures as soon as I can upload re-sized versions. Flickr doesn't automatically create 800x600 versions, it seems.

Thanks,

cb4

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Here are some detail shots of the hull. I've tiled in the bottom three rows on one side as a quick demonstration of the skinning technique.

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Very creative way of showcasing your WIP! I like it so far, and the scaffolding looks great.

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I think that this technique may indeed work well on a larger ship. My goal with the smaller ship is to determine its viability for creating small brick-built hulls. There are a lot of techniques for larger brick-built hulls, and in general the larger you make a ship, the more flexibility is gained. Creating small brick-built hulls that look convincing seems to be an open problem. The best evidence of that is how the vote for the Best Lego Sailing Ships (Minifig Illusion Scale) is dominated by prefabricated hulls.

In any case, if you want to try using this technique, you're going to need to understand the geometry involved.

The framing technique uses 5/4/3 pythagorean triangles.

Here's a frame I've created for illustration purposes. It uses the old style hinges due to their geometric properties. I don't believe that using the old style hinges is strictly necessary, but it makes life much easier because they take up very little space and you don't need to make many allowances for them. For a really large ship you might consider using technic pins instead since they'd be much stronger.

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The bottom three hinges form two 5/4/3 triangles side by side. The "5" is the diagonal side, and it is 2.5 studs (25 units) long. The "3" is the horizontal side, and it is 1.5 studs (15 units) long. The "4" is the vertical side, which is 2 studs (20 units) long.

The top two hinges (they're completely unnecessary, but they show that you can place more hinges at regular intervals) simply double the triangles. Note that the middle hinges exploit the hollow studs of the old style hinges, which are offset by half a stud on the yellow 1x3s.

This method for creating a frame works well, but sometimes you can't fit those hinges in there without making your frame too wide. This is of particular concern when you're making a small ship. That's ok, because there are other places you can put your hinges to retain a rigid structure with the same geometry.

Here are some of them:

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This technique also uses 5/4/3 triangles, but they're oriented a bit differently. The "5" is now the vertical side, which is 5 studs (50 units) long. Because 50 does not divide by 4 evenly, there is a old grey Dalek brick (10 units) to fix our numbers. The "4" is the diagonal side, which is 4 studs (40 units) long. The "3" is also diagonal and perpendicular to the "4" side. It is 3 studs (30 units), and thus needs the old grey rocket bricks to even things out (1 rocket brick + 5 plates [you must include one half of the thickness of each hinge in your calculation] = 30 units).

Note that this pattern is also repeatable - another hinge can be placed on the center line another 50 units up. Additionally, two small triangles can be created using additional hinges so that the frame can be attached to our vertical structure. Since these triangles alone can make our structure rigid, the bottom hinge can be completely removed if the profile of the ship's hull calls for it.

Now we have two frames, we can attach them together.

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This doesn't look like much, but because our frames have a consistent geometry, they fit together exactly. We can attach them along the diagonal sides, or along the vertical middle. We can build as many frames as we want, and they can have any profile we want, as long as we make them rigid. The more connections we create between the frames, the stronger our structure becomes. We can design the ship as a series of frames, and once the lines are satisfactory, we can start attaching "planks" to the frames, and we have a hull. The orientation of the frames means that we can do this with much less investment in slopes, and we don't need a SNOT interface part way up the hull to switch from "bottom" to "side". The diagonal orientation of the studs gives us a approximation of the hull of a ship (a V shape) which can be adapted for the appropriate part of the ship. The issue of tumblehome on a larger ship definitely needs to be addressed, but this could be done with any number of existing techniques, be it "free" hinged sections or slopes.

There is most definitely a lower limit on how small you can make a frame (the hinges must go somewhere, and you must place them very carefully), which is why the bows of my prototype ship is simply SNOT. The larger your ship is, the less this will impact you.

I hope this helps.

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I think that the buyer will be the pirate with the brown tricorn hat stood on the top inspecting it.

Also I :pir-wub: Your MOC

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What do you mean the hull is half finished? I don't see a single plank!

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Uh, this way sir...

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Might need more caulking - I see daylight.

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Looks good. Although I would rather choose a white hull. But the technique is very clever.

Perhaps you could add white tiles to it or something like that. Looking forward to the next update!

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Looks good. Although I would rather choose a white hull. But the technique is very clever.

Perhaps you could add white tiles to it or something like that. Looking forward to the next update!

I agree completely - I want to do a nice white bottom/black sides/coloured trim colour scheme for the hull. Right now I don't have the white bricks to do it but that should change soon.

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The hull technique is quite innovative, I don't think I've seen it before on a hull of that size. :thumbup:

I am however not sure how you plan to finish it since the sides are at quite an angle and also not at the same height, so building on top of it might become quite hard.

When you started "planking" it with tiles it looked much better than it does now with studs up, but on the other hand I don't like studs in general. :pir-tongue:

I also agree with Admiral Croissant that both aesthetically and historically white would be a more appropriate color than black, but maybe it's too late for you to change that now.

But it's looking good so far and I also like your way of presenting your WIP. Good luck with your build!

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The hull technique is quite innovative, I don't think I've seen it before on a hull of that size. :thumbup:

I am however not sure how you plan to finish it since the sides are at quite an angle and also not at the same height, so building on top of it might become quite hard.

When you started "planking" it with tiles it looked much better than it does now with studs up, but on the other hand I don't like studs in general. :pir-tongue:

I also agree with Admiral Croissant that both aesthetically and historically white would be a more appropriate color than black, but maybe it's too late for you to change that now.

But it's looking good so far and I also like your way of presenting your WIP. Good luck with your build!

I would like to go all with tiles but I do not think that I have enough, so it's going to be studs out for now :) The studs do help hide the sharp edges of the bricks, however, and I find I like the contrasting texture.

Colour should not be a big issue once I have the pieces - it's very easy to remove any number of strakes. It is very much built like a real ship so maintenance is done much the same way :) I now have a reference so I won't mess up the lines.

This ship isn't really going to get any taller except for maybe a little bit of a quarterdeck as it is simply not that big (perhaps with additional slopes). If I were going to make much it taller, I would either build on the deck/keel structure, or I'd do something like CGH's technique using hinges attached to what on this ship are the gunwales so that I can have the sides lean in at the desired angle without using huge numbers of slopes. The upper parts of the sides of the ship would be non-structural in this case.

The technique is definitely a tradeoff - it gains a closer approximation to a V shaped hull before applying any bricks, and gives the gunwales a nice curve - but transitioning back to a traditional build is difficult.

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Edited by cb4

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This is a very refreshing technique, ingenious! Looking forward to seeing what direction it takes. It would be very interesting to make a ship like this with planks on one side and just the frame on the other, kind of like a cutaway model or something. Good work!

:jollyroger: Dread Pirate Wesley

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Although I think the line would look better entirely brown (so also the 1x1 round plates), this ship is great :thumbup:

I think the shape is excellent, and it seems like you're bringing the minifig-illusion scale ships to a new level with your technique.

I would change the connection between rudder and ship in black or grey instead of blue, but that's just a very small detail.

Good job sir! Can't wait to see the next update!

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So far so good. I like the hulls details now, they ar much better than before, even at the rudder is somewhat weird IMHO. I would make the studs upward. Anyways, i cant wait for see more, are you gonnamake her one mast orwill he be 2 masted? Keep it up :thumbup: ¨

Captain Becker

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