elfprince13

I might have to get some - I was absolutely obsessed with Redwall back in the day (even have some dandelion wine homebrewing in my kitchen right now), but I've never been motivated to do a MOC because it doesn't feel right without suitably mousey minifigures.

This is amazing! What are the mice from??

My table is getting a little full, but this looks like it could potentially "turn the corner". Thoughts?

Hi everyone! This isn't technically a pirate ship, but I figure all the ship-appreciators in this forum will appreciate it at least as much, if not more, than the sci-fi/fantasy peeps. Hopefully a few of you will even be willing to support on Lego Ideas 🙏. Click to enlarge any of the images / view on Flickr Starboard View with Roc in flight Aft/Starboard View with Roc perching Grabbing a snack in the galley - lines are connecting ship's wheel to rudder Folding bunks and hair-care in the cabin Fore/Starboard View Fore/Port Underneath View Aft/Port View Fore/Port Closeup The Full Crew Complement Background This build is specifically inspired by the novel "Ilse Witch", the first in a trilogy (within a longer series) aptly entitled "The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara". Unlike many other fantasy series, it's set in a world which sees substantial technological and magical innovation over the course of 32 novels and thousands of years. At the time of the novel, The Jerle Shannara is the fastest and most advanced airship ever built. The airships of the Four Lands are solar-powered and require active thrust to stay aloft. The sails, called "light sheaths", absorb solar energy, which is channeled through special rigging, the "radian draws", into the parse tubes which house the diapson crystals. It is these crystals which store the solar energy and distribute it through the ship's thrusters. After spending quite a well doing research based on the descriptions in the novel, and being unsatisfied with any of the existing artwork I could find online, I settled on a design which is somewhere between a racing catamaran and a Baltimore Clipper, with just enough additional other-worldly flavor to match the books. Hope you enjoy! A few fun features to highlight: • The captain's cabin in the front of the ship has been converted into two smaller cabins with folding bunks to account for the unusual crew. Captain "Big Red" shares the port cabin with Prince Ahren Elessedil, and his sister, "Little Red", shares the starboard cabin with the seer, Ryer Ord Star. A privacy curtain separates the two cabins on the aft side of the mast, and sliding panels allow access to a shared washroom in the fore of the cabin. • A removable platform between the main hull and port pontoon provides landing space for the roc, Obsidian, and his rider, Hunter Predd, to roost between scouting flights. • Other crew members can wrap themselves in their cloaks and sleep in the pontoons. • The ship is armed with a complement of ballistae to defend against hostile airships, and the ramps may be lowered to send over a boarding party. • The galley occupies the center of the ship and features a long table where the crew can dine together, or study their maps and charts. • The storage room in the aft of the ship has fresh water, food, the armory, and spare parts to make repairs on the long voyage. • The rope ladder may be raised and lowered to take on supplies and passengers. • The ship's wheel in the pilot box really controls the thrusters on either side of the ship's rudder, and the capstan hauls up the dual anchors! • The masts are grippable so crew members can climb up into the rigging. • Obsidian's wings fold and unfold realistically to move between flying and roosting positions. Build consists of approximately 2700pcs, including 12 minifigures.

This is soooooo sick.

Instantly recognizable! That was a show with a lot of great ship designs - I was sad we didn't get official sets for most of Ace Squadron.

This is is beautiful, great work!

Wasn't familiar with this TIE model before and was hoping this was going to be some kind of hilarious "Ugly" mashup of a TIE and the Phantom from Rebels. Looks great though!

This is great discussion and super helpful, thanks! =)

Thanks for the tip - Studio really needs a "pick the cheapest color for invisible parts" feature!

I think you could build a box around the turret + canopy area, connecting those 4 corners. If you go with longer axles, you could tie into the main body of the ship and not just those top few dome layers.

I had a good number of parts in the multi-dollar range skewing the stats.

You can use longer standard axles in a sandwich, alternating passthrough technic plates (e.g. 2x4, 2x6, 2x8 with holes) that tie into the surrounding brick-built superstructure, and 2x2 round with axle holes for extra clutch (or the 2x4 bricks with axle holes if you really want to go hardcore). Ideally you want to run that all the way down to the bottom of the ship, and maybe stop for a few tie-ins to the existing technic infrastructure I see you have in place. example:

HOW?!? I just did a first pass on pricing out my ~8400 part Hapan Battle Dragon yesterday, which looks way smaller (but maybe looks are deceiving?) and it's coming out over $2K.

I'm sure there are a few hardcore Mando cosplayers that might feel compelled to shell out for it! Beautiful model either way =)

Looks great! I really appreciate that you can see how the one would convert to the other!

yeah, especially since for accuracy you probably don't want to drive them synchronously. I have some ideas about how I could do it, but it's such an unwieldy model to pick up, I didn't really design it around playability. Now if I I could hide some drive axles in the straight sections of the saucer and stick a motor in each saucer.....

Just went with the default environment for importing LDRAW to Blender - next time I'll set the sky to white too :D And theoretically - you can see it in action a bit in the YouTube video in my original post, or in slightly higher quality (but portrait mode) on this Instagram Reel. But obviously it's hard to know how smoothly the mechanism will work out until I build it physically. There is a 2-plate-thick groove in the outer circumference of both saucers, and the belt has 2x2 round plates sticking inward at every 4th segment, with 1x1 round tiles built up on the inside to try and keep a smooth ride. TBH that was 95% of my motivation for building this - wasn't going to bother if I couldn't figure out a plausible mechanism for the belt since that is the iconic feature of the ship. The other 5% was the mention of Dathomiri Rancor riders on TBoBF.

okay here we are, sorry for the double post Hapan Battle Dragon NG by Thomas Dickerson, on Flickr

I've seen her fit into that size cockpit before - is it just the seat height that's the problem?

Absolutely - I'm going to make up a UCS-style nameplate sticker for it, and then do another set of "table top" renders in the next week or so. Yeah, there's a lot of hidden technic in there. This thing has a higher part count than the UCS Millennium Falcon and a good fraction of that is internal structural engineering to make it stable if I decide to do switch everything to physically available colors and source them from BrickLink. The connection between the hangar cones has 4x 16L technic axles running from top to bottom, and there's more reinforcement in the engine block.

Love the dark theme, this is fantastic.

Come on now, if we're going green, why not go for Hera Syndulla's X-Wing?

<3 Thanks! I'm so relieved to hear that! Most of my social circles are unfamiliar with the old EU and I felt like I was going crazy that nobody knew what it was