evancelt

Redcoat Navy. Building out my ship's complement: Admiral, Captain, Commander, Lieutenant, Acting Lieutenant, Midshipman, Marine Lt. Colonel, Shipboard Marines, and sailors

And a goofy cutout

Newly minted Lieutenant Studbury, given command of a small harbor defense sloop, allows Midshipman Minifigson to test out the swivel gun. Their shipboard marine pretends he doesn't hear or see anything.

Looking good! What are the bricks used to make the furled sails?

The tan bicorne and shakos are from BrickWarriors, and the blood and bayonets are from BrickForge

I wanted to use the landscape I made for "Out On Patrol" again before I took it apart, so I made an ambush scene with bluecoats. Comte de Rochambrick gets assassinated by brigands.

Thanks! Yeah, black cannon. Black glossy spray paint. I was going for something like this

I love the scale of it. So cool! Great work!

Cool Captain's office!

Colonel McBlock and his men go out on patrol. They brought a field gun because you never know who you're gonna run into.

Over drinks Colonel McBlock and his senior staff discuss the infamous escapades of Captain Redbeard with the garrison commander. McBlock's orders are to wait at Fort Brickleton for passage on a navy ship - then onward with his men to the new world to seek out Redbeard.

Experimented some more with putting Lego system Bluecoats on the Duplo 7881 pirate ship. Next to another 7881 so you can see the Duplo stud base. The ship decking without all the stuff on it. Ghost pirates off in the distance!

It's coming along! The builders are waiting on a shipment from St. BrickLink with some roof supplies.

WIP: After days of marching, Colonel McBlock and his men arrive at the site where Fort Brickleton is being constructed. The fort, slated to be finished in the next year, is replacing an old stone shore battery tower that currently looks out over the bay. As dusk approaches, the garrison greets them.

I wanted to post an update. Today I added gold epaulettes to the officer and I think it really completes the image. I used the epaulettes from the chest portion of the original pirate head piece. After cutting the black beard off, I used super glue and a clamp to glue the gold epaulettes onto the officer. The way the cut plastic goes around his neck kind of looks like a collar. I will likely make a second front-back bicorn officer as lieutenants, and a side-to-side bicorn officer for captain. They may look good with red capes.

I’ve posted previously about Creating Custom Duplo Redcoat Figures and Creating Duplo Tall Ships for them to sail on. In those earlier projects, the officer redcoat was one figure where I simply left off the gray tricorn hat (he’s bald!) in order to differentiate him from the rank and file soldiers. I recently set about making that officer figure a bicorn hat! See the project here: https://www.evancrouch.com/duplos/creating-custom-duplo-redcoat-officer-figures/

As I’ve posted about in previous posts, my 3 and 5 year old sons are into Duplo knights and pirates. This past weekend, I helped them build some Duplo tall ships for the “good guys” to use to fight pirates. Over the years, Duplo has created a number of really cool pirate ship sets. We have all of them, but wanted some kingdom ships to fight the pirate ships. All of the pirate sets from Duplo come with sails that have pirate emblems on them. So, I decided to spray paint some of them linen colored. I got six of the small black sails and three of the big black sails on BrickLink. We painted three of the small sails white and two of the big sails. The brown/gray ship hull from the smaller pirate set above doesn’t have any overt pirate symbols built into it (like the large ship does), so we used that for the ship base. We used the smaller masts at booms on the front of the ships, and the tall masts to hold the sails. Check out the full blog post for process shots: https://www.evancrouch.com/duplos/creating-duplo-tall-ships/

Since my kids have gotten interested in Lego Duplo blocks, I’ve been looking for ways to make unique little landscapes for them. Duplo blocks are big, but the official baseplates that Lego sells aren’t that big! Also, I remember having a fun Lego island baseplate when I was a kid that I used to make pirate bases. The internet is a big place, but I haven’t been able to find pre-made baseplates available that have interesting designs like this for Duplo-sized blocked or a massive scale.So I made 4 different ones! A giant green baseplate A giant blue baseplate A raised green baseplate relief landscape A Melissa & Doug wooden castle Read the full blog post here: https://www.evancrouch.com/duplos/creating-custom-duplo-baseplates/

Previously, I’ve posted about my experiments in Creating Customized Duplo Figures by re-combining existing figures into new combinations. Recently, while playing Duplos with my sons, we noticed that the official Duplo pirate characters didn’t have a “good guy” royal navy to battle against. So we made one that kind of resembles British Redcoats! By combining the gray tricorn hat from the skipper figure, the red coat from the pirate captain figure, and the gray pants from some knight figures, we came up with a standardized uniform for the sailors. We left one guy with an eyepatch to be the captain of the good guys, and then made some figures with a variety of the faces available. Read more here: https://www.evancrouch.com/duplos/creating-custom-duplo-redcoat-figures/

Hi all - When my sons got into Duplos in 2016, Lego had recently released the Lion Knight and Eagle Knight lines, which are kid-friendlier sets than the more historically accurate Castle sets from the early 2000s. The more recent Lion Knight and Eagle Knight sets didn’t come with shields, so we recently used stickers to customize Duplo knight shields from earlier knight sets to have the lion and eagle knight logos/colors. Has anyone else made this sort of custom shield decal for Duplo? I saw some internet results for little legos, but not Duplos, so I ended up creating design files from measurements. You can see a full write-up here, along with vector design files to make your own shield decals: https://www.evancrouch.com/fun/creating-custom-duplo-knight-shield-decals/

Hi all - I've been getting into Duplo castle/knight sets with my 4yo and 2yo sons over the last year. This past summer I made a blog post about reconfiguring Duplo figures to make custom ones, and thought it might be of interest here! You can see the post here: https://www.evancrouch.com/fun/building-custom-duplo-figures/ Has anyone else made custom Duplo figures?