Pimbo

Awesome, and just in time for the end of the Aquazone 20th year anniversary! We need more Aquazone! I saw a similar blue brickbuilt underwater scene at Brickmania Antwerp last month - by Sebeus if I'm not mistaken - indeed it really fits the Aquazone scenery like they had in the catalogs really well. Somehow there's always a mysterious underwater cave - it's just the underwater explorer inside all of us! The lighting is a very nice touch.

I'm... confused... about these pictures.... what? Oh well, I suppose we had rodent motorcyclists from Mars in my days... But with all these Disney licences there's bound to be another sci-fi theme in the future.. but I'm not getting my hopes up for a normal yellow minifig theme anytime soon... The 6932 reference is awesome though - some Lego designers might be as desperate as we are for a classic space theme.

Love it! Classic space, when minifigs in space were all about exploration! Somehow, you just know that the gun he's sporting is just for self defence - not for kicking some agressive alien faction's behind. The build might not quite be instantly recognisable as 6883 but the minifig is better off in this comfortable ride anyway.

Thanks! I don't remember how long it took me to build, but it was very relaxing to build Lego after a long workday and some whole weekends. I don't have deadlines for my Lego my current project is over a year in the making... Yeah, one of the reasons the interior is so sparse is, a pirate age interior requires a lot of brown. I didn't have a lot of brown at the time, and I had all of it reserved for a huge pirate ship (which I never built). Fortunately, brown is ample available right now. The next historical build will be better!

As a kid, drooling over the early 90's Lego catalogues, I imagined the Eldorado Fortress as having a vast complex of dungeons and storage rooms inside that large raised baseplate. Before heading off to the Dark Ages of college, I had been thinking about building a huge imperial fortress. To allow access to the interior, it would have to fold open. So, when I started building again a couple of years ago, this project was first on my list. The fort, situated on a hollowed out rock (because bluecoats apparently are incredibly crafy engineers). The rear provides access to the interior. Most openings are large enough for a humand hand. The sides of the fort come off... ...to provide total access to the interior. I really enjoyed the challenge of building this largest building I had ever built, thanks to excess time and my discovery of bricklink. But during the build I discovered I had little inspiration to create a nice and detailed interior. And, looking back, my skills were really basic. Oh well, at least it has some cool play features.... A large set of doors is built into the rocks at the front of the cliffside... ...allowing access for small boats to the little docking area inside. Once offloaded, supplies can be hoisted through several floors to the storage room, using a crane. On the other side of the fortress, the small windows of the dungeons can be seen. But it would be hard to place a minifig in them through the prison doors on the inside... ..so the dungeon outer wall just comes off, revealing the interior. Most of the interior is just... empy rooms and hallways... but you can spot the bunk beds, dungeons and governor's office. The dining room The armory The rotatable 48-pounder. The fine men of the classic bluecoat army. This has been an excellent study in large scale building, and it has taught me that I really need to pay more attention to interior detail. Since then, I have built some classic castle things, but for now, I'll stick to sci-fi, there's a lot more freedom when it comes to detailing. More pictures in the brickshelf folder here http://www.brickshel...ry.cgi?f=535371 Thanks for viewing, and victory to the bluecoats! (..since I don't have any redcoats)

Excellent, lots of technically accurate details (except for the switching of the left and right navigation lights although I'm not sure if those were applied to aircraft back then). I bet that if Lego redesigned this set, it wouldn't be anywhere near this cool build. It's evident there's been a lot of work put into the build and the presentation. I'm hoping you'll keep this up, it's an inspiration for us all!

Arguably, it's all about frame of reference, and many adults may only know the simpler sets from their own youth, or the.. err.. less-detailed creations their own kids keep putting up for their approval. Some adult people also think those giant sculptures you always read about in the news are the only thing proper adults use Lego for. Alas, so far I have yet to (re)light the Lego flame in other people. Retirees should be a decent target audience, I wonder if Lego is considering this as well.

That's a sound strategy, I'm considering something like that but I fear I'd have to lock myself indoors and pull the tv- and internet-plug. Fortunately, the few other people at my workplace don't care about Star Wars. But I'm sure other people will have more trouble at school or work...

Love the skeleton's peg leg, it's brilliant!

What sails? The ship was never fully completed, I had planned on building several ships (including a large pirate ship with lots of play features) and do custom rigging and sails but never did. I have several more pics in the Brickshelf folder: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=535370 As for plans, well, I think ik could be a while before I do another pirates moc. I have an entire list of projects in my head but I can only build one theme at the time. For now, almost every square meter of horizontal surface in my Lego room has an Aquazone project on it....

I have long since taken this ship apart, but I have several more pics in this brickshelf folder: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=535370 I just used the technic axle connectors because they're compact and somewhat look like cannons, my parts selection was still somewhat small. The hull parts I had bricklinked, I'm not fortunate enough to own the armada set (yet). Sure, on a large enough ship you could use the real cannons, but they're expensive. A technic axle connector (several variations are available) would surely look menacing enough, and they're easy to incorporate in a mechanism like this.

I would say Pulp Fiction, but since saying that always invokes mixed reactions, I might say Kung Fu Hustle. And, not qualifying as a movie, the Horatio Hornblower miniseries

Dan Simmons - Ilium As a sci-fi fan and having been classically educated, this is just my cup of tea. I read his Hyperion Cantos series multiple times, those are my favorite books by far.

I had considered this... On a large ship, it would probably be possible to have a mechanism, using Sebeus I's "functional capstan"-gearbox mechanism http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=86762 to have a gearshifter and turning knop control 1) rolling out all the guns, 2) full broadside, alternate fire recoils, 3) anchor mechanism and even 4) functioning cargo tackle rigging. But that's for a future build...

Currently still on my wishlist, the 1986 Black Falcon's Fortress is one of those sets that was re-released for a reason: it's simple but epic. Therefore, I built a small castle for these cool and mysterious guys that surely would make them feel right at home. Overview shot of the fortress, located on a small peninsula. Two guards stand.. well.. guard, at the main gate as a patrol party returns to the castle. For one of the guards, this means relief from his duty and off to dinner! The courtyard has stables for some horses and a walkway along the battlements accesible via a door in the keep. There's also a trap door with a staircase underneath... ..that leads to a hidden door at the rear of the castle where one could moor a small boat. The rear of the castle with de hidden door clearly visible (heh ) The keep opens up, as a play feature.. ..as does the roof of the armory I'm really happy with the composition of the castle, it's really compact and I find it visually pleasing. More pictures in the Brickshelf folder here: http://www.brickshel...ry.cgi?f=541898 On behalf of the Black Falcons, thanks for viewing, and don't tell anyone about the hidden passageway!

Personally, I love adding fun play features to my builds, although I do not "play" with them as such (I swear ). Literally my first build after coming out of my dark ages some years ago, I created a mechanism that rolls out all guns of a ship simultaneously, and pulls them back in just enought to be able to close the gunports, by means of a knob at the rear of the ship. So, I thought I would share this here. In this boat (I would hesitate to call it a ship) three guns on each side are attached to axles, actuated by a crank mechanism. The axle underneath is for added rigidity. Obviously, the rigidity of the axles limit the overal lenght at which this mechanism could work. If I were to have 14 guns along one side of the ship, the forward guns probably wouldn't roll out as far as the aft ones. But on larger vessels, presumably the outward curvature of the hull wouldn't allow for a mechanism like this anyway, if you choose to build a ship with a curved hull. In this ship, the 24-t crank gears are both driven by the axle underneath it (with 8-t gears on it). This improved the rigidity and allowed for all guns to roll out and back perfectly. A picture taken from the rear, guns out. Guns rolled back, gunports closed. The 1 stud of horizontal movement that is allowed is just enough for the gunports to close, and enough to look menacing with the guns run out (although I don't have any pictures of the ship with the guns out ) So, I hope you can find a use for this mechanism and probably improve upon it. But in all probability someone already did something like this, maybe you can post pictures here! Steady as she goes!

I regret having zero photographs exist of the lego builds I made as a kid... it being before the time of digital camera's and analog photo's being too expensive. In my memories, they were elaborate and awesome builds! At one time, I covered the entire coffee table (which was technically my Lego table) with blue paper and had the enitre thing filled with pirate ships, treasure islands, and fortresses. But then, looking back, aside from beard growth not much has changed....

Excellent moc, it's very nice to see another LDD design into real bricks. The crane has that turn-of-the-century harbour look, very historically accurate. Adventurers is another one of those underrated themes. I'm curious - how does the sliding door work, does it just slide to the right and bump into the crane?

I absolutely accidentally created the setup for these photographs. They were shot at night (obviously) in a room with only one small lightsource (bedside light in this case) shining directly on my wristwatch, reflecting the light, casting the shadow of my ship onto a white wall. I thought they turned out quite nice!

Testing Brickshelfs promise that deeplinking images works immediatly after uploading And yes it does Although I could've sworn I resized it properly....

Well, a motivated AFOL would gladly spend 2 minutes researching the answers to these more difficult questions, but would a spammer pull up bricklink and search the set database just to post an advert for some dubious product that's going to be deleted within the hour anyway? I doubt it.

Heh, I am aware of this rule but I seem to have resized the castle pics to the incorrect size, apologies. I'll upload some more pics of these projects to brickshelf and post them in the appropriate forums this weekend.

When I signed up this week, to complete the signup form I only had to answer the securityquestion "what does the L in AFOL" stand for. How about asking, instead, several and more difficult questions? Surely spammers would not be motivated enough to go figure out "how many monorail sets with minfigs did Lego release?" or "what year did Lego switch old grey to bluish grey?" and upon a wrong answer, block the signup for 30 minutes or whatever..

My point is, if kids play with bad quality bricks, they might consider building a bad experience and they may be tempted to completely disregard any type of building bricks, and pick up a nerf-blaster or 3ds instead.

You and I might not, but a child might.