Captain Zuloo

Happy birthday Tom! May you recieve lots and lots of LEGO goodies! Three cheers for our Classic-Pirates.com LEGO Ambassador!

Typo. Thanks for that Cap'n! And thanks for resizing your images Mister Leonov.

Looks nice, but you should really resize your images. Eurobricks has a maximum image size policy of 800x600 to keep loading time down for those with slower connections. Check out this tutorial on resizing images. But from what I can tell of these oversized images, your MOC looks nice. I like your custom sails.

Uphill and the 5th switch point...I can see a downhill stretch coming along...

Damn, I was getting really interested... I don't think anyone else should be thrown off until it is clear that we need to lose more weight.

I have a feeling we're going to end up somewhere we haven't been... somewhere unsafe...

I don't think we should throw anyone else off until we know if we'll get to the top of the hill or not. But if we have to, I say Jeb and Jethro should go. I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually George who stabbed me - I think the meat clever came off the Emerald Express. Remember all the knives were missing when we left?

*yells up at the angry mob on the roof before returning to drive the train* Just to put it out there, the policeman shoved Kill'n George off the train just as he was giving some evidence about the town council...

Yes?

NOT IT! I'm needed to drive the train. Do you think whoever gets off can run up the hill and get on the train again when it gets to the top?

G'day mate! Welcome to Eurobricks. It's great that your getting into Pirates, and you couldn't be getting into the theme at a better time, with the new sets and revamped interest in the brilliant theme! Do you know about Classic-Pirates.com? And don't just tell us about your large town, show us! Take a few photos and post them in the Trains & Town Forum! Enjoy your stay.

After we pushed for it, we finally have a Brick Flick forum! Hooray! But what happened to the tutorials? Answer: I stopped making them. So without further ado, here is the newest Brick Flick tutorial: Jumping Ok, so you know how to walk at 15 fps, but how do you do more tricky things like jumping? There are a few ways, but I'll show you my personal favourite as well as the most commonly used one. Jumping with no Post-Production This is the most common way to make minifigs jump because it requires no fancy programs that can edit images. This is a simple process that just makes use of raising the minifig up one plate per frame. Our first image is of our minifigure on his own: I apologise about the inconsistant lighting - poor weather outside and the lights have been changing levels of brightness for a few hours now. Then we add a plate underneath him. The ground is green so I chose green plates so they would be as unnoticable as possible in the final film. The basic idea here is to try to make the plates the same colour as their background: You'll also note that I'm moving the fig's arms up a little each frame to make him look more like he's jumping: Continue this until your subject is at the desired height, then linger in the air a few frames before repeating the process in reverse. Ok, well that was easy enough. It isn't that noticable, but if you really want a cool looking brickfilm, there is a little more advanced method of doing things. The downside is that you need fancy photo editing software with layers. I'll be using Adobe Photoshop CS2. Jumping with Post-Production So the first thing we do is take a picture of just the background without the subject: Next, repeat the previous method, first with just the fig then with the increasing plates. This time you can use any colour for the plates. I'll be using yellow to demonstrate how effective this can be, although the colour is up to you. It doesn't matter, we'll be erasing it later. Now start adding plates: Same as last the last method, continue until your minifig reaches the desired height before lingering in the airl a little and bringing the fig back down. Now that you have your animation, it's time to edit it in post production using your image software frame by frame. Open the very first image you took of just the background up in one layer and the image you are editing in another layer. Ensure the background image is underneath: Now, go to the top layer (the one with the minifig in it) and use the eraser tool to remove the plates under his legs. Not a supurb quality image from me, but then, that's the incosistant lighting and I was in a bit of a hurry. So sorry about that, but you get the idea. Which method is up to you - it depends on how much you are worried about small visual things like that. But anyway, now you know how to make minifigs jump! Be sure to share with us what you get out of this tutorial. Best of luck everyone.

Well done Ice Cream! Only a Regulator for a few weeks and you've already left a legacy. Tops effort mate.

Thanks for the review Panda! This was my first LEGO train, and I'm a big fan of it. It was released waaaay too short, but with a few more cars it looks really cool! I have been lucky enough to see about 10 cars on this train on pe668's layout. BTW, nice modifications.

Oh dear, no mainline? Fortunately I locked all the Emerald Express doors before I we last left the train! If when we get to the next town, hopefully there will be a spare (non-crippled) LRTS loco that we can come back and collect the Emerald Express.

Now to catch up behind the rest of the Emerald Express to push it home!

Citizens of Willoughby, I invite you to board the dining car of the luxurious Emerald Express! Welcome aboard, but please be considerate of the full paying passengers and do exactly as the staff ask you.

Nice snaps Blackmoor! I'm in awe of your experience. I think this is a story for the frontpage.

They can be locked in the storage car. Please come foward...

Wow! That is one of the most realistic, detailed, clever and coolest train MOCs I have ever seen! The colours work well together, the application of SNOT is amazing. The smooth curves are outstanding, and the proportions are perfect. The lights are a great addition. I also like how you have added to the bogies to make them 8-wide. I could go on forever about this, it's a very good MOC. Good luck in the contest, and brilliantly done! Thank you for sharing.

Firstly Mr. Hyphen, welcome to Eurobricks and Train Tech! Now, to your entry. It is certainly inventive, and I doubt you'll have much competition with other similar MOCs. Very nice details with the (is it an exhaust pipe?) 1x1 cylinder on an angle. It looks like a cool concept and I think it would prove popular on an exhibition layout. Well done.

Look, I have an obligation to respect the paying passengers privacy. Heck, even passengers are only allowed in the cars necessary to reach their cabins. It's not that we don't want to help you guys, it's just that I don't see any reason why you would even want to venture into other parts of the train.

Greaseman, you're a genius! Let's do it! And town folk, what other parts of the train did you want to travel in? The rest of the train is just the passengers rooms. There is no reason to visit any other part of the train, the dining room is the most luxurious anyway!

The second two deeplinks are within the BBCode code tags. Anything inside code tags will show as code. That includes BBCode, HTML, CSS etc. So deeplinking images within the code tags will just display the code, not the image.

Moving the tanker isn't a problem - we'll get it out the same way that we got it in. Tractor ready boys? Now, are all the points in position? Because we'll need the loco to come onto the mainline behind the Emerald Express at a low speed so I can couple it to the train so it can push it to LA. We MUST take the Emerald Express with us, else I'm in the poo with LRTS! Would the passengers like to get back into the luxury comfort that you paid for for the remainder of the trip? There won't be room for everyone in the loco, so I would say only the train engineers who are actually employees of LRTS should drive. Willoughby reidents, you may travel in the dining car ONLY.