AardWolf

First off, I'd like to say that I need to carve out some more time to get on Eurobricks. It's a great site with a ton of great builders and I should make more time to comment. I've been very busy with life, but I managed to finally finish a large build I've been working on. Here it is. It's a beast, packing a full Power Functions battery case and lighting inside the house, with on/off switch accessible through a slide-out panel in the back wall. That panel is also built to blend right in with the rest of the wall, so as not to affect the look of the house from the back side. The house itself is very sturdy, and most of the walls are several studs thick. There's an internal truss as well that supports the overhanging area and connects it to the far wall. I have no idea how many total bricks are involved here, but I'll put it to you this way: the roof alone involves about 2,000 pieces, each black-trunked tree involves about 300 parts, and the ground across the front half of the MOC is built completely from 1x2 and 1x1 bricks. That's right, besides the pond, there are 0 plates involved in ground in the entire front half of this build. I've had a couple of requests for roof and tree tutorials, so I'll post those as soon as I can. The roof is really based on Luke Watkins' design in his "Where the Wild Things Are," but altered to remove the seams between net sections and to accommodate a window cutout. Also, if you're sharp-eyed enough, you can spot: A fishing rod A flesh-colored head 4 rotten bananas 2 Series 12 Huns' cloaks A small train wheel 7 assemblies that use minifig hands 14 nets A mischievous cat As always, check out more pictures and the story on Flickr!

Hey all, it's been quite awhile since I was last able to build, but I just couldn't miss the Colossal Castle Contest - especially with a warship category this year. So, Instead of building a handful of rushed entries, I decided instead to pour my heart and soul into a single entry. (Pictures link to Flickr) I decided to revisit an idea I had when I built my first ship a couple years ago. I hadn't managed to make it work then, but I have come a long way as a builder since then. The technique ended up working even better than I had hoped, allowing me to build a sturdy, frustration-free hull with multidirectional curvature and minimal attachment points. This enabled me to make the sides of the hull removable, and to add an interior. The walls you see belowdecks are actually attached to the backside of the ship's frame, meaning that no matter which side is removed, the cabin will always appear as a complete cross-section. In addition, the entire ship is modular, allowing for the removal of the mast and rigging, forecastle, stern decks, hull, and even the main deck, which slides up over the mast. I really wanted to go all-out this year, and, inspired by JKBrickworks' working torsion-spring ballista, I decided to add a functional artillery piece to the deck. This was very challenging, as JKBrickworks' model is over 16 studs wide (much too big for mounting on the ship). Effective torsion springs took up too much space, so I instead lashed together flex tubes and built a scaled-down winding/ratcheting system that is similar to JKBrickworks' original design. It worked, and the ballista you see will wind, hold, and launch multiple projectiles across a desk. Finally, the ship features a working rudder and tiller, all-LEGO rigging (including the rat-lines, which are cut and sewn-together nets), deployable anchors, three projectile types for the ballista (bolt, harpoon, and ball-and-chain), crow's nest mounted crossbow, working doors and hatch, and a full crew including the VIP passengers, captain, navigator, sailors, cook, naval warfare officer, ballista crewmen, marine detachment commander, marine boarder, "Leatherhead" marine sharpshooter, and expeditionary marine. I hope you enjoy this build as much as I enjoyed building it! As always, comments and criticism are welcome and appreciated, and there are (and will be) more pictures on Flickr. Happy New Year!

Hello everyone! My name is Aaron and I'm an AFOL currently living in the state of Georgia, USA. Some of you might know me as AardWolf or aardwolf_83 on Flickr. I'm mainly a castle builder, though I plan to branch out a bit more as I grow my collection. I'm happily married to the woman I fell in love with when she moved in down the street from me in fourth grade. We have two dogs and enjoy taking trips together and exploring the world as much as possible. I'm always looking to improve, so criticism is always welcome and appreciated on anything I post! Here are a couple of my recent builds for LoR over on Merlin's Beard: I look forward to meeting some awesome people on here and seeing some incredible builds! Aaron

Thank you very much! Thank you! Thanks Graham- much appreciated! Thank you Patrick! I've been a fan of your builds for quite some time, so it's great to get your feedback. Yes, it's totally fine to shorten the name too haha. Those trees each probably took an hour to build and perfect. As I've mentioned, when I get the chance I'll post a tutorial, so it'll be evident how long they take. I'm probably not the fastest builder, though. I have thought about joining GoH and I would certainly like to. Right now is a really bad time, as my wife and I just bought a house that we're fixing up, and I have finals coming up in a few weeks (I'm going back to school). Sometime in the future though!

Thank you very much! I will certainly post a tutorial, just as soon as I can get the time! (My wife and I just bought a new house, so we're working hard on that right now) Thanks so much - I'm glad you like it! The interior of this house is not viewable, since I decided to go with the Power Functions lighting instead. So, inside this particular MOC you'll find only a big Power Functions battery box and a frame that makes the whole house quite sturdy. I have done interiors in many of my builds, however, such as these, which also feature some mechanical moving parts:

Thank you very much! I appreciate that! I've been wanting to do a MOC with dark colors and this seemed like a great time. Thank you very much! I appreciate that! Thank you! Thanks so much! I definitely prefer making 360-degree viewable MOCs - It's just so much more satisfying that way. And you know what, with how my LEGO area is set up, I actually couldn't see the back of this thing straight on until I took the pictures. For not having a good look, I'm pumped about how it turned out.

Saw this on Flickr and I love it! All of the detail and history you managed to pack into microscale-style building is really impressive.

Hey everyone! This is my first space MOC, so any tips and feedback are appreciated. I'm going for realistic future space style, trying kind of a different space route than most I've seen. If you're interested, the start of a story is available on Flickr. Anyway, here it is:

Hey all! Here's my third entry to this year's CCC, for the Medieval Dungeon category. The Chamber of Unspeakable Horrors holds such appalling tortures as the Forbidden Feast, Trial of Terrible Taunts, Tortugan Tickle Torture, and, worst of all, the Abominable Accordion. Click the picture for a full description and more pictures.

Even unfinished it looks great. As I said on Flickr, I love all the little caverns and hideouts, especially that tomb. Awesome!

Really nice! I especially like how you did that recessing around the corners of the woodwork and how you did the windows. Excellent!

My second entry to this year's CCC on classic-castle.com, I present the English Trading Cog. More pictures and a more detailed description can be found on Flickr. This build was particularly challenging, perhaps even more so than my Spirit of Lenfald, because of the CCC's size restrictions. This made it very difficult to achieve good curvature in the hull, but with the help of some newly acquired Mixels joints, some Technic liftarms, hinges, and jumper plates, I made it happen. The rudder works and the spar and sail swivel with a range of motion of about 60 degrees. Overall I am very pleased with the result. Let me know what you think!

Thank you! I actually just used Google Images, including these:http://https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Kieler_Hansekogge_2007.jpg and http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/History/Ships_Discovery/Ships/Northern_cog.jpg Thank you very much, and I really appreciate that! Thanks man! Thanks! Unfortunately, it would be nearly impossible to make an interior in a vessel with this kind of hull design. Not only is the inside crisscrossed with Mixels joints and technic liftarms, but it also must be pretty solid to counterbalance the stress of the curved hull pieces. Thank you! Thank you very much, glad you like those windows! Thank you very much! Thanks a ton! Thanks Drew, I really appreciate that!

Ladies and gents, here is my most recent build for the Colossal Castle Contest XIII and for Lands of Roawia's LC 20. I present Linvale Falls:

Wow, great job on your first MOC in this theme! I especially love the transition from dirt path to stone courtyard and the bridge joining the two houses. Awesome!

Another excellent diorama, Gary, and one of my absolute favorite historical battles. I can't believe this only took four hours!

Impressive! Your design looks fantastic and I can't wait to see this guy actually built! I know what you mean about LDD getting depressing

Nicely done! I enjoyed the history behind it and you captured the shape of the church perfectly.

Excellent, Joshua! I've seen this build many times but it never ceases to impress. It's very clean and you captured the feel of a garden perfectly. Congrats on your first MOC on EB!

Hey all, I haven't had as much time as I'd like and so I haven't been as active on here as I want to be. Here's my most recent creation, an attack on a blast furnace by some very angry tribesmen. Blast furnaces like this weren't actually invented until after the Middle Ages, but hey, it's an imaginary world and I'll take my creative license, thank you very much. Enjoy!

I really like the tree and the colorful flowers around the rock edges. Of course, the bridge is excellent as well and, as I said on Flickr, I really like your choice of trans-clear cheese slopes for water through the rapids.

Thank you very much! Thank you! I really appreciate that. I'm glad you're a fan of all the details- thanks! Thank you! Haha anachronisms are quite fun! Glad I could give you a little dose of nostalgia too! Thank you very much!

Thank you! Thanks Graham! Haha I appreciate that! Hey thanks! I really enjoy posing figs so I'm glad you like it! More photos have been added! Unfortunately I was only able to build a facade for this, so I don't have my usual 360 degree pics. Sounds like you're a big history guy - yep, I did a significant amount of research for this and I was really interested to learn about the ingenuity behind the blast furnace. Pretty cool! I'm really glad you like it and thank you for your comments! Thank you so much, and I'm glad you like the posing! Thank you! Like many others, I fell in love with LEGO as a kid, but it was just last year that I started building again. I'll take a look at your creations for sure! More pictures are posted as well. Thank you very much! Thanks Gary! I was particularly fond of that feature too- I feel it adds a lot to the sense of motion. Thank you LittleJohn! I appreciate that. Thanks Faladrin!

Excellent! I really like how you used a black background to give the build a nice "dark forest" feel.

I've been wanting to experiment with roof curvature and multiple angles in buildings for some time now. I also wanted to build a landscape without using any regular green parts, so I just decided to try it all at once! I'm quite pleased with the results, especially the elevated barrel (beer tower, as I have dubbed it), the roof, and the woodwork. I'm not too fond of the dark tan pieces in the white wall, but I have plans to fix that on future builds. Please let me know what you honestly think!