[WIP MOC] The Wolf of the Sea (Pirate Galleon)

[Zeev]

170B

Hi. This is my first topic, and I am working on making a pirate galleon. I have a bunch of pieces (dozens of pounds) from about 1997 and earlier (including at lest some of the parts from a BSB) as well as a 99.9% complete Black Pearl (assembled). Acquiring additional pieces is possible but I would like to keep the number of orders to a minimum.

Goals for my build are to have a covered gun deck, a large aft castle (up to half the ship's length, preferably two story), and notable (but smaller, one story) forecaste, and four masts (two lateen rigged). I'm using the LEGO hull sections from the Black Pearl, I want the ship to be rather durable and have good access to all decks/cabins. I plan to use red and black as the main colors.

I have been working both with bricks and in LDD, but could use help in finding good reference material, such as what would a good book to use as a guide be, and what are the best threads to read up on for building a galleon. Any advice/guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Edit:

Work on the figure head. I could not find more than 1 black dragon wing but red fits the color theme.

Edit 2:

Figurehead on Black Pearl for some context.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Captain Braunsfeld

[Zeev]

I tried to add a sail on the bowsprit, replaced the masts with classic pirates masts, as well as some other mods (its still a work in progress) to my Black Pearl. I'm having trouble figuring out how the sails on the bowsprit are best attached (and also lack enough lego rope to try much more today in that regards).

Edit: Decided to start some studies in brick on the forward hull and forecastle design:

Edit 2: Expanded the above and made it modular

Edited December 24, 2014 by Zeev

[Captain Braunsfeld]

Overall shape looks galleonish already.

However, I must give a warning: black is not the nicest colour to work with. All the detail work you apply will have a tendency to disappear in the overall blackness.

I have modified the black pearl and was disappointed with the overall look - and also on the pictures not much was to be seen.

Similar story with a "dark fortress" I have tried (combined with dark red in that case). In theory it should be ok (e.g. Barad-Dur looks fantastic) but in real bricks it turned out bad.

Long story short: I would recommend to use black as a secondary colour.

Brick on and Merry Christmas!

[Zeev]

The overall lack of red right now is not how I intend it to look, I just don't have enough red bricks. I want to try and frame the black with red. For instance the hull could have red as the color for all of its bricks at its highest level, as could the forecastle just below the roof. I don't know if this will fix the problem, but yeah, all black is not very good in pictures. You really need a very bright photo to get any detail and the ship is too big already for the flash on my camera to work for a full width/height shot.

I looked into dark red but those bricks are a notably more expensive than black and I don't really have any dark red in my collection. There were a good number of grays in the Black Pearl so maybe I could work those in, also I could see where white would fit.

A white, gray, black, and red color scheme may work better. I'll have to see what bricks I can find to play with. I doubt I can get much through bricklink before the end of the year, but that is not too long to wait (its just not fun to wait when I have this in the works). I do have the hull sections for a number of other ships (3 small with a middle section for one; and the BSB) so I could try to get to work on another ship to pass the time.

Happy Holidays!

[Zeev]

Did some more work but am having a little trouble getting some parts, so still the color grey is not present and the ship is too short to accommodate a 4th mast. Anyway here are some pictures of its current state:

[Capn Frank]

Edit: @Phred: I have a WIP galleon (Wolf of the Sea) in another thread that is going to be their home once I get it to my liking but I am not the most skilled ship builder and need a lot more gray bricks to build it (I started with much in black but it is a bit too dark). Also I spent this and next months LEGO funds on mini-figure parts and accessories, as I need to tweak the design of the ship a bit/lot. Thread: http://www.eurobrick...howtopic=103640

Since you're potentially going to be tweaking the design a lot, I've got some recommendations for your vessel. Please don't take this to mean that I dislike your vessel. Any MOC we post could use some improvements. One of my first ships I posted on this forum was rainbow colored, and I haven't even posted a new ship in a few years.

• I think vessel will look a lot better with the black being broken up by dark bley, although reddish-brown would look nice too. You could add a third color (or use dark bley) that is a stripe along the gun ports on both decks. Similar to the yellow strip(s) on the example image I've posted below.
  
• I would highly recommend adding Tumblehome to your vessel. Tumblehome is "the narrowing of a ship's hull with greater distance above the water-line". To be able to use a lot of the bricks you're currently using, I would check out Captain Green Hair's Commander Red Hat's Ship Building topic.
  
• To keep the top of the deck from getting too narrow in pre-fab hulls I would use inverted slopped bricks right on the pre-fab hull pieces to widen your ship 2 to 6 studs before applying the tumblehome effect on a two-decker ship.
  
• Last, but not least, I would recommend making the stern of the ship more ornate. Add some fancy looking and colored bricks to the stern, and add some cool looking lanterns too.

[Zeev]

All sound good.

Looking around at designs, I think I will need a lot of dark bley (and or red/brown) plates to break up the black. I should have enough black pieces, except perhaps for the bow.

Tumblehome is a must. It looks like there are a lot of ways to accomplish it, I'll have to see what I can pull from bins.

Where should the inverted slopes go? I can't really think of a way to make them look nice. Is there a MOC that does what you say that includes closeups or LDD files?

The stern in the last version was not really complete. I had hoped to extend the ship another two hull pieces and build a two story aft castle, so I did not spend much time on the end but you are spot on regarding what should be done.

If anyone else has some advice, I'm all ears!

[Capn Frank]

I'm looking forward to the final vessel.

Looking around at designs, I think I will need a lot of dark bley (and or red/brown) plates to break up the black. I should have enough black pieces, except perhaps for the bow.

I would try to use whatever you have to break up the black. Use a nice bright color for the stripe along the gun deck(s), different colored rail that the rigging mounts onto, and fancy railing is really all you may need. In the end, do whatever you want.

Where should the inverted slopes go? I can't really think of a way to make them look nice. Is there a MOC that does what you say that includes closeups or LDD files?

They should go right on the mid-sections of the prefab hull below the gun ports is where I was thinking. Here's an extreme example in the HMS Leopard:

The prefab hull is widened from 16 studs to what appears to be 22 studs wide.