[LEGO IDEAS] Armada Port

[BrickHammer]

Pirates and buccaneers beware!

Too long have you preyed on weak and unprotected merchant ships! Too long have you raided small Caribbean Islands and ports! Too long have you roamed the seven seas without meeting any real resistance! Now you will have to face the justice of the mighty Imperial Armada!

This "Armada Port" is an homage to the beloved 90s Imperial Armada pirates subtheme, which only ever got a single fort like structure! While sets like the "Eldorado Fortress" were clearly based on the British Empire, this all new design uses elements of real life Caribbean architecture to pay tribute to the Spanish Armada while also trying to capture the spirit of Caribbean ports like Havana!

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THE DESIGN PROCESS

After my first LEGO IDEAS submission (the "Imperial Island Fort") was turned down I immediately started to plan a redesign of the project. I always start my designs with a very clear vision in my head and for this redesign I had two major goals: 1. I wanted to make the design a lot more colourful and 2. I wanted to add as much depth and verticality as possible within the 3k parts limit of LEGO IDEAS. On top of that, instead of going back to the "old" red coats, who already had their big "Eldorado Fortress", I decided to honour the legacy of the Armada faction which only ever received one bulding: The Armada Sentry!

To get a better feeling for the general shape of the island I used a couple of placeholders to determine the relative size and location of the different structures, as can be seen in the picture below:

After I was satisfied with the results of the first couple of test renderings, I also made sure that the geography of the whole island was visually appealing from all angles and that there was a good mixture between 90 degree angles and odd angled elements, as can be seen from a bird's eye view:

 

Once, I was happy with the general shape I started to design the different buildings in detail. While the fortification and the smaller houses were quite easy to design, I struggled a lot with the design of the main building. Originally I had planned to include a big arch with a bell, but was unable to find a design that did not look like a church! In the end I decided to move the bell to the right outer wall and go for a more basic roof design, since I really did not want to make the building look like a chapel. You can see a couple of different variations for the roof structure below:

 

I am really happy with how my "Armada Port" turned out! If you like it you can check it out on the LEGO IDEAS website!

You can find more pictures on my LEGO IDEAS page and my Instagram page :)

If you have any questions please ask! I really appreciate criticism and feedback!

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[Legostein]

An excellent layout with many great details and a harmonic color scheme! Well done and good luck! 

[BrickHammer]

6 minutes ago, Legostein said:

An excellent layout with many great details and a harmonic color scheme! Well done and good luck! 

Thank you! I am glad you like the colours!

[NOD]

I like it! The Armada Port has some new ideas and is built differently. I like the spirit of Caribbean ports like Havana! 

Edited June 21, 2022 by NOD

[Marooned Marin]

It's an extraordinary build, and I like the both versions of the roof, even the chapel one, but I can imagine that this was a struggle for you.

Too bad you had to remove one cannon in this final version, it looked really mighty with two cannons on the platform.

And thank you for sharing details of your design process, I really like the picture of the first rough draft.

Questions

How long did it take you to design this, days... weeks... months?

And while designing, do you jump from one project to another, or do you stick to only one until it's finished 100%?

[Mister Phes]

11 hours ago, BrickHammer said:

Pirates and buccaneers beware!

Aye, we be on the lookout! This is certainly a worthy sequel to your magnificent fortress and the Imperial Armada needs a mighty stronghold, because let's face it. Their measly sentry box isn't going to get them far!

11 hours ago, BrickHammer said:

After my first LEGO IDEAS submission (the "Imperial Island Fort") was turned down I immediately started to plan a redesign of the project

That's a great attitude - do not accept defeat!

Classic Pirates would love to blog this MOC in the near future!

[BrickHammer]

14 hours ago, NOD said:

I like it! The Armada Port has some new ideas and is built differently. I like the spirit of Caribbean ports like Havana! 

Thank you! So do I! It was really hard to capture the spirit in such a small space and with so little pieces!

6 hours ago, Marooned Marin said:

It's an extraordinary build, and I like the both versions of the roof, even the chapel one, but I can imagine that this was a struggle for you.

Too bad you had to remove one cannon in this final version, it looked really mighty with two cannons on the platform.

And thank you for sharing details of your design process, I really like the picture of the first rough draft.

Questions

How long did it take you to design this, days... weeks... months?

And while designing, do you jump from one project to another, or do you stick to only one until it's finished 100%?

Yes, I was super sad aswell, when I had to remove the second cannon. Especially because it does not really make a lot of sense that the fort is not able to fire in all directions. Having such a big blind spot would really make the fort weak!

I have about 50 more pictures of the building process but I did not want to spam the forum thread! I might post them on my instagram later :)

I had started the project about a year ago but then put it on ice because I was not really happy with the results. At one point I just decided to move on to othe designs and have created a couple of them since then. You can see the final result of my first attempt in the picture below. Even though this was far from finished it is clearly visible that the proportions and the over all layout would have looked super weird:

 

I then returned to the project in early May 2022 and finished it in about two weeks. My main hobby is martial arts and for some reason I keep injuring myself which then results in me having more time to build. In a way this project is thus brought to you by my broken rib! However, two weeks are a rather long time for me. Some of my projects were built within two or three days (even some of the ones that made it to 10k). The rendering usually takes a longer than the building!

And to your second question: I never build more than one project at a time, but as I wrote before, I sometimes lose confidence in my idea and then move on two something else. And as with this one I ocassionally return to a discarded idea because I feel like there might be still a good idea hidden somewhere between the scraps. In this cases I sometimes also reuse design elements of prior attempts.

Thank you for your positive feedback and your questions. I hope I have sufficiently answered them :)

Edited June 22, 2022 by BrickHammer

[BrickHammer]

3 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

Aye, we be on the lookout! This is certainly a worthy sequel to your magnificent fortress and the Imperial Armada needs a mighty stronghold, because let's face it. Their measly sentry box isn't going to get them far!

That's a great attitude - do not accept defeat!

Classic Pirates would love to blog this MOC in the near future!

Thank you! I really appreciate that :)

[Marooned Marin]

1 hour ago, BrickHammer said:

I have about 50 more pictures of the building process but I did not want to spam the forum thread! I might post them on my instagram later :) 

Couple of things, sharing your Work-in-progress pictures is not spamming, it is great contribution to the community of aspiring builders who are nowhere near your level. And second, Instagram allows only 1080x1080 pictures, so sharing there could limit our ability to see fine details from up-close.

There is easy solution if you want to keep things nice and tidy. Hide your WIP picture with spoiler button here in the menu.

Example:

Spoiler

 

(If you need further help with this, just say so)

I like this, even though you find it weird... this could be very well MOC of it's own, which leads me to another question:

How come you don't sell instructions on Rebrickalbe?

I know once you submit design to LEGO Ideas you don't have rights to it for the period of 2 years (the fine print), but have you considered ever making instructions for sale?

[BrickHammer]

2 hours ago, Marooned Marin said:

I like this, even though you find it weird... this could be very well MOC of it's own, which leads me to another question:

How come you don't sell instructions on Rebrickalbe?

I know once you submit design to LEGO Ideas you don't have rights to it for the period of 2 years (the fine print), but have you considered ever making instructions for sale?

I was asked this question a couple of times in the last three or four months or so. There are several reasons:

1. As you just said, most of my stuff is currently owned by LEGO for another couple of months or years.

2. Most of my IDEAS projects would not be fit for rebrickable without modifactions because I often use parts in colours that are not available.

3. I build for fun and to relax and sticking to a piece count or even "worse" to the parts that come in a specific set (in case I would like to create an alt-build) and creating and polishing instructions is not really fun to me. It would feel like work. Which is precisely what I tried to get away from in the first place!

HOWEVER, there is a rather high chance that this will change in the future. I have started to think about designing projects specifically for rebrickable. If everything works you might see some results in a couple of months :)

Oh and I really appreciate the question because it implies that you think that people would actually want to build my designs which is kind of flattering! And thanks a lot for the info about how to hide pictures!

[Marooned Marin]

@BrickHammer thank you for your detail answers, I will try my best not to plague you with more questions (even though I could... Q: Have you built any of your 10k ideas in real-life and have them in your house...)

So let us add that big shiny SUPPORT BUTTON and help you reach your EIGHT 10K idea!

That's right folks, BrickHammer has in his portfolio 7x 10k ideas...  click HERE to read an interesting interview with this fantastic builder.

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[Khargeust]

Love it. I already voted for it a couple of days before. It's fantastic. I hope this project of yours will be on shelves one day. We definitely need that kind of set as an Imperial Flagship or Imperial Fortress to go with Pirates of Barracuda Bay. I also hope we will not wait until Lego 100th anniversary to see sets like that coming ! ;-)

[JintaiZ]

Amazing build as always!

[Legostein]

It's a great colour selection and a stunning architectural building style! 

Cheers! 

[Mister Phes]

On 6/22/2022 at 9:00 PM, BrickHammer said:

I have about 50 more pictures of the building process but I did not want to spam the forum thread! I might post them on my instagram later :)

Spam? NEVER! This is quality content we can't get enough of!

But no need to post them all at once, just gradually tease us with an image here and there.

[PxChris]

It's about time the Armada got the fort they deserve!

[Mister Phes]

On 6/22/2022 at 5:47 AM, BrickHammer said:

I am really happy with how my "Armada Port" turned out! If you like it you can check it out on the LEGO IDEAS website!

You can find more pictures on my LEGO IDEAS page and my Instagram page :)

If you have any questions please ask! I really appreciate criticism and feedback!

SUPPORT NOW

 

If ever there was another Pirate-theme project on LEGO Ideas likely to reach 10K supporters, this is it.

On 6/24/2022 at 3:05 AM, JintaiZ said:

Amazing build as always!

How's that blog post coming along?

We have some promoting to do in the future.

[Barbatos]

Wow, it's very colorful! Supported!

[Mister Phes]

And so it begins...

[Khargeust]

7 minutes ago, Mister Phes said:

And so it begins...

 

What do you mean ?

[Marooned Marin]

I think he means that this MOC is on Classic-Pirates.com

@BrickHammer check it out

[Mister Phes]

56 minutes ago, Khargeust said:

What do you mean ?

The promotion of Armada Port has begun!

Starting with this Classic-Pirates.com blog post.

[Mister Phes]

28 minutes ago, Marooned Marin said:

I think he means that this MOC is on Classic-Pirates.com

Thank ye! And now:

[Khargeust]

The project was submitted on the Lego Ideas platform less than 45 days ago and at the time of writing these lines it has 6330 votes. It's impressive ! Do you remember any projects that won support so quickly?
Honestly, I don't know how this one couldn't win and end up on our shelves, but no doubt that's the fan talking...

[Mister Phes]

5 minutes ago, Khargeust said:

Do you remember any projects that won support so quickly?

There have been a couple.  One was BrickHammer's first pirate related LEGO Ideas submission, "Imperial Island Fort" and another was "Caribbean Clipper" by Baby Teeth.

We became aware of both of those LEGO Ideas projects when they had around 5,000-6,000 supporters so we gave them a helping hand to ensure they got the rest of the way.

8 minutes ago, Khargeust said:

Honestly, I don't know how this one couldn't win and end up on our shelves, but no doubt that's the fan talking...

The winning part (I.e. gaining 10K Supporter) is inevitable, ending up on toy store shelves however... don't get your hopes up!

The LEGO Ideas Team has a nasty habit of rejecting pirate-themed submissions during the review process. So far four 10K submission have been rejected during review.