Bilge Punk Pirate Mech

[JeffBuilds]

Something I created last night in the studio. Honestly, I wanted to make a gritty, steam-punk inspired airship, mixing pieces parts from the Ninjago: Skybound 70603 Raid Zeppelin, 70601 Sky Shark, and Day of the departed 70592 Salvage M.E.C. 

 

All that I got from that was another pile of bricks.

 

Also, a pilotable mech suit for Pirates. 

 

 My inspiration was the Skeleton Mech that came with Ronin's Salvage M.E.C. Honestly, I wanted to make a diving suit for my LEGO CMF Series 8 Diver. After putting it together and taking it apart and rearranging the pieces so many times, I ultimately converted the Diving suit into a fully weaponized battle suit for the Brickbeard Pirates.

 

Looking at the build, it looks like an extremely scaled down  version of Kai's 70721 Fire Mech.

Another source of inspiration, is Captain Metalbeard from the LEGO Movie. By far my favorite character, and set, from the entire thing. (I have made heavy modifications to stock Metalbeard from 70807 Metalbeard's Duel, as well as build from scratch with instructions, An Evil Robot variation of Metalbeard I've come to call Steelbeard.

 The foot on the left leg is the only thing I dislike about the entire build. It seems flimsy as it is supporting the entire thing, and consists of two bricks. I do like the grating on the angle piece, to make it look like a boot tread though.

The major difference between this Moc, and traditional Steam Punk, is that this is more in line with the golden age of Piracy. Ergo, in lieu of a Steam Boiler, this battlesuit is fueled by Rum, grog, or anything else foul smelling that can burn in a boiler. Bilge Punk, if you would prefer to call it anything.

[Cousarmy0001]

LOVE THIS 

[Littleworlds]

Really cool build! Simple, but ticks all steam/bilgepunk-pirate boxes and has quite some character  Sadly the picture is a bit blurry and a bit too blue and the angle of the camera a little too high. The build itself is absolutely fine though and really a fun idea! 

[JeffBuilds]

13 hours ago, Littleworlds said:

Really cool build! Simple, but ticks all steam/bilgepunk-pirate boxes and has quite some character  Sadly the picture is a bit blurry and a bit too blue and the angle of the camera a little too high. The build itself is absolutely fine though and really a fun idea! 

Thank you, thank you!

 Sorry about the picture quality, I'm rocking a Logitech Pro Webcam C920, with a 6" Tripod, and standard Logitech Webcam Software. I manually adjust the focus until I can see the details on the Minifigure's face.

 The backdrop, I can switch out with a piece of white poster board. Other than swapping the background out for a flat white and shooting the picture without the tripod (perfectly feasible), What else could I do to improve the quality of my pictures? I plan to produce more pictures of MOCs, and I'd like to take the best pictures I can with what I have available.

[Littleworlds]

34 minutes ago, Jevil said:

Thank you, thank you!

 Sorry about the picture quality, I'm rocking a Logitech Pro Webcam C920, with a 6" Tripod, and standard Logitech Webcam Software. I manually adjust the focus until I can see the details on the Minifigure's face.

 The backdrop, I can switch out with a piece of white poster board. Other than swapping the background out for a flat white and shooting the picture without the tripod (perfectly feasible), What else could I do to improve the quality of my pictures? I plan to produce more pictures of MOCs, and I'd like to take the best pictures I can with what I have available.

Hmm, I can't say much about webcams really and how well they are suited to this sort of pictures. For myself, I am using a mid-range bridge camera. Nothing spectacular, and with a tripod, shutter times >1 sec and some delayed release (to avoid concussions by pressing the button), I get acceptable results (after a phase of experimenting with not always acceptable results).

The blue tint in the picture can be fixed with some colour-correction in Photoshop or Gimp - but a white background is a more easier solution indeed. Maybe a light tent. They are not expensive, but the size should be big enough to fit in your creation easily. Mine is 50x50x50 cm and just big enough for the Deep Sea Research Vessel. Also a couple of additional lights might come handy, to create a simple, but effective lighting setup. I got my light tent as a set together with 2 lamps. Its not professional equipment, but does what I bought it for and also didn't cost as much as a professional one 

There is also a really good Lego photography section here in the forum. I would definitely take a look there. Reading the tutorials there helped me a lot finding the right settings for my setup. 

 

[JeffBuilds]

Opened this on Brickshelf... it is still a little blurry...going to play around with software a little bit, as well as make some edits to this scene and settup. Make your way to Pirate Photography and stay tuned.

[blackdeathgr]

Ahahahaha! Nice little MEC! Bluecoats beware!

[Littleworlds]

On 2017-8-2 at 3:42 AM, Jevil said:

Opened this on Brickshelf... it is still a little blurry...going to play around with software a little bit, as well as make some edits to this scene and settup. Make your way to Pirate Photography and stay tuned.

That looks really dangerous! Lovely Minifig customization and of course I'm happy to see the old pirate Captain from the first pirate wave. 

The white background works well. The picture is maybe a bit overexposed. I would try to reduce brightness and increase the contrast a bit. That usually makes things stand out better. Oh, and cool perspective. Looks really dynamic!