Kai NRG

What a magnificent build - huge, in the first place, and wonderful choice of colors with the three darks, red, grey, and brown, contrasting with the bright white snow! The different things you've done with the dark red are great, I'm thinking especially of the slots in the bridge (to nowhere... ) and the really cool slope on the tallest building! As I mentioned on Flickr, great job merging but not mixing up the hewn and organic rock - and great realistic touch to the snow, as always from you two. Cool waterfall too, it's a shame so much of it is hidden at first, but it's that much more to spot on a closer look!

Captain Argentum's adventures continue!

Chapter IChapter IIChapter IIIChapter IV Chapter V (you are here) Chapter VI Captain Argentum, as you know, was last seen ready to put an end forever to the picnicking depredations of one hungry Corry—a Corry who, incidentally, seemed to be slowly sequestrating the affections of the good Captain’s own and only fiancée, Lady Cora of fainting fame. His blow came down with stunning force, cutting into the Colonel’s scalp, deflecting onto his hand, and then gashing his leg. This piece of violence led to three unintended consequences. The first unintended consequence was: A lot of fun stuff to try out in this build. Unfortunately I don't have quite the right amount of dark red profile bricks but I think I was able to do a fair job disguising that. It was great to revisit my sideways tile technique. @Garmadon had this very interesting idea of continuing the border along the sides and on top. I liked the way it looked, but since it was a bit of an afterthought and since the set up for keeping the sideways tiles in place is rather complex, there ended up being a gap between the border and the wall, for which I apologize, it's not like me. The bed was fun - on the other hand, the bay window... C&C welcome! Stay tuned for the next consequence of Captain Argentum's reckless behavior!

Way to go out with a bang!

Beautifully simple... I love those new pieces!

Thank you! Thanks Roadmonkey! No, I selected those sections and then messed with their color, adjusting just the blues. That way I didn't have to cut them out precisely - the whites, browns, etc, on the torsos stayed the same. Crossed anchors: All we need is a shield tile shaped like a barrel.

Thanks! I did look up some shots of Victorian era baths, so I'm glad I was able to capture a bit of that look!

You're welcome! Glad it helped you out!

Thanks Blackbird! This is the perfect layout to work with in bricks, since it's very easy to photograph, one shot gets almost all the details! Thank you! It is kind of humorous, now that I think about it. And trans-light-blue is one of my favorite LEGO colors! Thanks Wellesley!

Great end to the series, lots of fun minifigures and presenting them as an advent calendar was a really good idea!

Hilarious Mitgardian santa and cool idea to go a little bigger for this last day (though the tree was a sizeable piece too!). It's been fun to see all your little builds, great job sticking with it!

I think the present-suit guy is hilarious.

Ooh this is an awesome Elven build! The height of that center tower, the great colors of those flowers and foliage, and the great gold details all make this creation eye-candy! The tribe's motif is quite clever too. Very cool job!

Actually the GIMP stuff wasn't hard to do! I would have liked to turn it a little darker green but that messed things up too much. Thanks! Thanks! Thanks Ayrlego! I love building me a good pool scene for that same "bright and inviting" look! As I mentioned to W. Navarre, the edit was surprisingly easy. I used a circle selector to select each torso (and as much of the surrounding bricks as was convenient), turned those selections into one layer, and then played around with the color balance. Within certain limits, it was easy to change the torso colors without affecting surrounding bricks. If I had cared to manually cut each torso out precisely I would probably have had an even greater color range to work with, maybe managed to turn them dark green or something, but with the quantity of torso changes I needed for this whole batch of pictures, I didn't care to be so picky.

Good to see some boats in this build, fun presentation too - I especially liked the expressions on the teacher's faces. Great job keeping in the same style while building a totally new kind of shape!

Thanks! It was totally Capt Wolf's idea and I was like "Pool!! I'll build it." Thanks Professor! The peristyle was my favorite part, I love the way it reflects a little off the water in some shots. Thanks Capt Wolf! Oh yes, that does sound more military... Thank you! Those new stud with bar pieces are so handy! Thanks Bodi! The strange thing is that under the trans-blue pieces is a sideways wall of light blue bricks, and it fits exactly into the rectangle left by the studs around. So I would have thought I could get the tiles in there snugly, but maybe they're just a touch smaller than a stud wide and over all that space it added up to leave about 3/4s of a stud gap at the lengthwise end. Or maybe it's something else entirely, the baseplate or something! Thank you! Yeah, I wish now I'd gotten some pictures of the interior from the back, since it didn't work through the windows. Oh yes, I knew it was a bowsprit but I was wondering what to call the LEGO piece. And I bet the cadets do play games in the pool when they get a chance.

A wading pool is the perfect place to practice navy techniques and stage mock battles with miniature ships! Any self respecting Naval Academy needs one. I enjoyed working with the colonial style for this build. Mostly I tried to imitate the great look Capt Wolf achieved for the main campus. Originally I planed on pyramid shaped roofs for the three towers, but since I don't have many dark red slopes and was working with sideways bricks instead, that proved much too complicated! Instead I settled on some castle crenelations, and that way I was able to get some cannon in there! Higher grade clases get down into the water and maneuver the ships so younger cadets can learn! Better stand at attention or Captain Argentum will rap you over the head with his sword handle! (This was back in his glory days.) I enjoyed designing these windows especially. You'll probably see the same basic thing again sometime! Micro ships were the reason I jumped at this scene. I don't think I'd ever built one in dark orange before but the color seemed to work well! Those new 1x1 plates with a bar--you know, that thingy up toward the front--took my typical micro ship design up a notch. Of course I had to do some bigger ships too. And a smaller one... a bit top heavy this... Originally I planed to go for a two story building, but small as this is, it pretty well emptied my white bucket! Here's a shot without the uniformed soldiers (well, except for the guards). I don't know why (it doesn't make mathematical sense) but for some reason there wasn't enough space for one last row of trans-light-blue lengthwise (tried forcing it in a couple times and sent whole rows of tiles flying around my room ). So that gave some wiggle room which I used to curve the lines a little - I think it subtly helped the pool look! Great to have a build this size for BoBS again! I really enjoyed building the pool, the windows were fun too, especially the small ones with quarter tiles (they're attached of course! otherwise they would have been quite a pain!). I did some stuff behind them, like a student walking inside, blackboard and stuff, but sadly it all went to waste in the pictures. Oh well, at least I know it's there. If you'd like to see a few WIP shots of this build, I did a post on my blog. Thanks for checking this build out, hope you enjoyed it and be sure to check out @Capt Wolf's additions to the Royal Naval Academy - Part 1, The Main Campus and Part III. The Boathouse. Oh, and in case you were wondering where I got the bright green uniforms...

This looks great, I really like the colonial style of the building (very satisfying size too!) and the details of sideways tiles and white lip plates are all spot on. The mast centerpiece was a really cool idea too, and the simple landscape gives it a well-maintained feel. Good to finally see it posted, I've been looking forward to this!

Great shape for the hole!

Excellent hat and hair combo, and a cool recolor for that bag!

Great partisan presentation of the Isla Victoria politics! Seriously, I did enjoy it and the build itself is really good--especially the grey stripes. A laundry business is something new for BoBS I think, certainly at this scale. I see you seem to have taken advantage of some gravity defying superpowers in that department though.

That's a really cool idea and perfect torso for the girl!

Well, the reason they're not working as icicles for me I think is the kind of autumnal foliage... I'd expect either evergreen or bare branches on a tree with icicles. I enjoyed the story, the laughter was unexpected and made me want to read the explanation. However in English we use quotation marks to indicate dialogue. Such as, "This rain will keep us from being followed," he shouted. At the end of the spoken sentence use a comma if you plan on continuing the sentence outside of the quotation marks and a period if you don't. Ex: He shouted, "This rain will keep us from being followed." [period, end of both sentences] or "This rain will keep us from being followed," he shouted. [comma first, because the sentence continues, and then a period when the whole sentence ends] If you want to end with an exclamation point or a question mark, then it doesn't matter whether you keep the sentence going outside of the quotation marks or not. Ex: "This rain will keep us from being followed!" he shouted. and He shouted, "This rain will keep us from being followed!" are both correct. Now if you happened to want to quote what someone who was quoting someone else said, you would do it like this: "I think these pancakes are delicious, but Frank said, 'Seriously, pancakes again!' when he first saw them." So the quote inside the dialogue is marked with a single apostrophe on either end. (If you happened to want to do a third quote inside that quote, you'd need to go back to the double quote marks... what fun... haha!) Last point with regard to quotation marks, if someone talks for a long time and you want to indicate a pause in their thought by starting a new paragraph, then you start the new paragraph with a new set of quotation marks (but don't close the previous paragraph). For instance, quoting what I said above: "Ex: 'This rain will keep us from being followed!' he shouted. and He shouted, 'This rain will keep us from being followed!' are both correct. "Now if you happened to want to quote what someone who was quoting someone else said, you would do it like this: 'I think these pancakes are delicious, but Frank said, "Seriously, pancakes again!" when he first saw them,' she remarked. So the quote inside the dialogue is marked with a single apostrophe on either end. (If you happened to want to do a third quote inside that quote, you'd need to go back to the double quote marks... which is quite confusing... haha!)" Notice the three quotation marks in bold, and notice how there's no mark after the end of the first paragraph. So that way the reader knows that the same person is talking, but in case they had forgotten, they get reminded by a new set of " at the beginning of the next paragraph. (Also note how I had to change all the inside marks to single or double marks, as the case was.) And, I should also say that using dashes to indicate speech is quite intelligible. Not something an English speaker would do but something probably all readers will easily understand. So if quotation marks are just too complicated don't feel bad about sticking with the dashes! There you are, you did ask.

Great job with the sideways slopes! The shape of the tree is also really nice, with all those flat branches sticking out at different heights. Trans-clear studs as raindrops was a bold move, I don't think it quite worked (we needed some suspended in midair ), but it's always good to experiment now and then!

Ah right, I had totally forgotten about the tag for that.