[ENTRY] 6232 Skeleton Crew Remake (Mini Set), revised

[HAL-9001]

For the 'Mini' category, I have here a remake of 6232 Skeleton Crew.  This set is near and dear to my heart, as it was one of the first LEGO sets I ever had!

Our friend the pirate sits on a lonely spit of sand and rock.  He's improvised himself a shelter under the rocks, and evidently there's only room for one...also, I just noticed there's a bit of an Escherian illusion going on with the leaf at this angle, but the other angles should make it clearer what's going on!

The leaf serves as a roof over his head, and also a rain-catcher for his barrel.  The two panel pieces were some of my favorite parts as a wee builder, so I made sure to keep them (and the big leaf -- or rather, all three parts' modern replacements) here!

And here's the third angle.  Alas, poor Yorick.  Did he try to bring a banana to a gunfight?  Well, at least the pirate can stave off scurvy for a while...but what was it that brought these two into conflict over this miserable sandbar?

Hmm, looking down on this island from above, something doesn't seem entirely natural about that rock formation...it looks kind of like a letter...!

Aha!  "X" marks the social media site spot!  There's some gold, a treasure map, and -- most importantly -- a bottle of rum!  (The yellow tile at the base of the 'treasure trove' is a reference to the yellow plate under the original 6232.)  At least the rum will stretch a little further with only one mouth drinking it...

Original entry below:

Spoiler

 

For the 'Mini' category, I have here a remake of 6232 Skeleton Crew.  This set is near and dear to my heart, as it was one of the first LEGO sets I ever had!

MLCad says it has 59 pieces, but the four pieces o' treasure came as one sprue (-3), the pirate's arms and hands were pre-attached to the torso (-4), and the legs were pre-attached to the waist (-2), so it's got 50 pieces of eight exactly!

The shelter on the island has every single grey brick that the original came with (or its updated counterpart, in the case of the two panels), plus a few more bricks and a couple of 1x3 slopes to give young builders just a little more material to work with.  (The original set could be rebuilt into a castle wall, or a sail, or any number of things, so I had to recreate that feature here!)

I gave our lost crew member a little more of a roof over his head, and also posed the big leaf over the barrel as a sort of rain-catcher.  Good thing gold doesn't rust!  The skeleton (now updated to the Imperial Guard rather than the Armada...sadly, the conquistador helmet is long out of print) also gets a tombstone/seat for himself.

As an Easter egg and reference to the original, the plates underneath the island have the original yellow color!

 

 

Edited August 27, 2023 by HAL-9001
Revised my entry based on feedback

[Mazin]

Your design looks nice and both the skeleton and pirate look fine, but i thinkn You'e spent too many pieces on the baseplace and there's very little action here and fun here. I'd go with a smaller or single baseplate, that would only help position the rocky element and use recovered number of elements for more fun. Some more equipment for the skeleton would a good idea, like maybe he was carying a flag, or maybe he was a courier with an important letter, maybe there is a snake nearby that bit him, or maybe the skeleton could be behind some bars in this version and so was trapped and couldn't escape.  Or the cave itself could be bigger with a torch provided to light the way in...

[MstrOfPppts]

Not much of a remake apart from the base which took too much of a design thought as well as parts. The shape of it is really nice though and would make an excellent stand for a little bigger display set. The build on top uses most of the pieces from the original in a too similar way to be a proper remake and also the minifigures do not resemble the original in any way. In one case there's a strapped bandana pirate vs an ordinary tricorne guy and in the other a what used to be an armada guy vs remains of an imperial soldier. 

[Mister Phes]

8 hours ago, HAL-9001 said:

This set is near and dear to my heart, as it was one of the first LEGO sets I ever had!

Aye, I can relate to that feeling.  My first set was 6235 Buried Treasure.

The Skeleton Crew Remake has been added to the Entries Index.

[HAL-9001]

2 hours ago, MstrOfPppts said:

Not much of a remake apart from the base which took too much of a design thought as well as parts. The shape of it is really nice though and would make an excellent stand for a little bigger display set. The build on top uses most of the pieces from the original in a too similar way to be a proper remake and also the minifigures do not resemble the original in any way. In one case there's a strapped bandana pirate vs an ordinary tricorne guy and in the other a what used to be an armada guy vs remains of an imperial soldier. 

I appreciate the feedback.  The pirate (and skeleton for that matter) were deliberate choices on my part, to use parts available in the present day (this one from the 3-in-1 pirate ship and this one from Pirates of Barracuda Bay) that I felt reasonably closely resembled their 90s counterparts.

3 hours ago, Mazin said:

Your design looks nice and both the skeleton and pirate look fine, but i thinkn You'e spent too many pieces on the baseplace and there's very little action here and fun here. I'd go with a smaller or single baseplate, that would only help position the rocky element and use recovered number of elements for more fun. Some more equipment for the skeleton would a good idea, like maybe he was carying a flag, or maybe he was a courier with an important letter, maybe there is a snake nearby that bit him, or maybe the skeleton could be behind some bars in this version and so was trapped and couldn't escape.  Or the cave itself could be bigger with a torch provided to light the way in...

Yeah, that's great feedback!  I could have adjusted the 'brick budget' to tell a little more story of why and how they got here...

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by HAL-9001

[Mazin]

18 minutes ago, HAL-9001 said:

I appreciate the feedback.  The pirate (and skeleton for that matter) were deliberate choices on my part, to use parts available in the present day (this one from the 3-in-1 pirate ship and this one from Pirates of Barracuda Bay) that I felt reasonably closely resembled their 90s counterparts.

Yeah, that's great feedback!  I could have adjusted the 'brick budget' to tell a little more story of why and how they got here...

 

Thanx :) Glad that did like my thoughts :) And yeah, to me Lego is about storytelling just about at it is about brickbuilding, with storytelling being probably even more important ;)

[iragm]

2 hours ago, MstrOfPppts said:

The shape of it is really nice though and would make an excellent stand for a little bigger display set

I agree - the shape of the island is top notch, simply perfect.  Unfortunately, the rest of the set is more a simple rebuilding than a re-imagining.  It also looks like the island would appear to float a plate off the ground.

You went to some effort to make sure that all the original bricks could be used to make a sail -- why not show us an alternate model or two?

A few more accessories, an animal, more modern leaves, and better rock shaping would really bring this to life.  Again, the design of the beach is amazing, it's just a shame the rest of the set hasn't been modernized to the same standard.

And these renders from LDraw are nowhere near as good as what Stud.io can do, I would try to import this file and get some good quality renders.

Still, this is a great start and I hope to see more stuff from you in the future!

 

[Rogue Redcoat]

A nice small set, but unfortunately has some unnecessary parts, get rid of those yellow plates underneath, and try to reimagine the set a bit more maybe the minifig was able to move the rocks around some, build a place to sleep, some food to eat, and a fire to signal with. Other than that, the build looks great so far so happy building :)

Edited August 26, 2023 by Rogue Redcoat

[HAL-9001]

Thanks all for the feedback, I've revised my entry!  (I had thought the deadline was ~24 hours ago, but then I saw the timer embed got fixed and there was still some time...I don't have the time or energy to make another revision, so this will be it, but I'd like to think I've made a good run at the 'most improved' mini build!)

Everyone was quite taken with the shape of the island base (so was I), but it did take up quite a lot of pieces out of the allotment of 50 to just build stuff on top of it.  But when I cleared off the pieces and left it alone, I had a brainwave...the 2x8 and two 2x3 bricks at the center formed a cross-shape, and of course, what else would a pirate do with a big letter 'X' but bury some treasure under it!  And that also brings with it the reason for a Pirate and Imperial Soldier to fight over a little sandspit like this.  I was initially going to have the 'X' be tan, like a pile of sand over the cache, but then I hit on using the smooth arch pieces to bulk it up, and they don't come in that color.  So they became part of the rock formation instead.  I reduced the part count of the cave proper, but kept the big panel pieces (seriously, I cannot overstate how awesome those panels were to little HAL!) and leaf for that connection to the original (same reason I put a yellow tile at the bottom of the treasure cache).  I ended up with one spare part, so I gave the skeleton a banana.  Did he try to hold up the pirate with it but got his bluff called?  Did he tell the banana joke one time too many?  Only you can decide...!

EDIT: @Mister Phes, could you update the picture for my entry in the index?  Thanks!

Edited August 27, 2023 by HAL-9001

[Rogue Redcoat]

Aye, the updates look nice 

[HAL-9001]

Hi, @Mister Phes, could you please update the picture for my entry in the index to use my revised build (and render)?  I could just change the image on Bricksafe, but that feels a bit rude...but I do want to be sure my creation has its best foot forward, thanks!

Edited August 29, 2023 by HAL-9001

[Mister Phes]

48 minutes ago, HAL-9001 said:

Hi, @Mister Phes, could you please update the picture for my entry in the index to use my revised build (and render)?

It be done!

[HAL-9001]

9 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

It be done!

Arr, thank ye! But ye missed the one in yonder thread:

 

[Mister Phes]

19 minutes ago, HAL-9001 said:

Arr, thank ye! But ye missed the one in yonder thread:

Well blow me down!  So I did. That should be rectified too.

[HAL-9001]

1 hour ago, Mister Phes said:

Well blow me down!  So I did. That should be rectified too.