Wes

I'm SO EXCITED! Pirates are more expensive than ever these days and it'll be nice to have new set available to keep the pirate market open! I am already dreaming of the days when my old pirates will look from their crow's nest and spot a never-before-seen vessel on the horizon!

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Raising the sides and adding gunports: I prefer to keep the cannons on the deck, so I can move them around if needed. Basically, I don't want to be trapped with broadside guns on only one side of the ship. With the guns on deck, my crew can roll them to face port, starboard, or even diagonally. Schooner sails: I love the schooner design and it's something that fits pirates (they loved schooners) but wasn't found in any Lego sets, so I figured I'd try it. The only consideration/drawback is that you have to watch out for the boom on the bottom of the mainsail. It limits the height of your sterncastle and can make the poop deck a dangerous place to put anyone (if the wind changes, it could suddenly jib the mainsail and send the boom slamming into whoever is standing by it. For this reason, Geisha typically keeps the boom secured with a preventer). Cabin: I tried to make the sterncastle more rounded than squarish by using slops and inverted slopes on the side, and later by adding an angled aft wall (it opens too, ala 6285). But, for the forward area, I didn't want to obscure the quarterdeck so it's still at a right angle. I'm pondering alternatives. Index: Thanks for adding Geisha! Stern too big?: I don't think the stern is too big...I'm going to assume you meant the bowsprit. I extended the bowsprit a little when I added the staysail. Many LEGO ships on the narrow hulls use somewhat undersized sails, but I used a large sail plan with the full-size (even extended) 6285-style masts so a proportionally large bowsprit was a necessity to keep the staysail and the jib from overlapping too much.

I chose Pirates because I like the time period better. Pirates brought SO much into the Lego world, like mini-fig faces, new parts, and an exciting part of history. Pirates theme includes castle elements in its forts, but expands to golden age sailing ships...and I love tall ships! I love both themes but I made my decision long ago...It's a Pirates life for me! ARRR!

PNGs should work fine in IE 7, and who still uses IE 6? Vista and XP SP3 come with IE 7. I looked at my webstats for my site and I found that only 3.5% of users are still using the obsolete browser IE 6, while 20.6% are using IE 7 and 59.2% enjoy Firefox and 9.2% use Opera. Opera, like Firefox and all modern browsers, also supports PNG transparency. Using inferior file formats for the sake of a small percentage of people that have an obsolete web browser doesn't make sense.

It occurred to me that maybe since the US has more people than UK, perhaps there's more bidders and thus higher end prices than the UK.

How many posts do you need to make to be a "Citizen" anyway? I've found some interesting eBay stuff that I wanted to post lately, such as a guy selling ONLY the ship from the 6277 Imperial Trading Post (Port Royal), and a 6285 that just sold for only $101 and change. I prefer Bricklink to eBay but nevertheless the big auction site has its moments from time to time.

MAJ find: http://www.majhost.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=147376 I checked and did not see it in the MOC Index.

Unfortunately I'm in a bit of a bind. 97% of my massive pirates collection is up in Virginia at my parents' place and I'm living in Atlanta, 11+ hours away. I have to get my ships on the next trip to see my family. Consequently, I can't take any new photos.My largest ship, the ISS Advantage, is a heavily modified Black Seas Barracuda with four center sections blue and white striped sails. It has 2 large masts (main and fore) and a lanteen-rigged mizzenmast. There are 5 cannons per side and 6 swiveling cannons on turntables (2 fore, 4 aft) for a total of 16 guns. The sterncastle galley is three standard pirate ship windows across and has two levels with rooms including a food storage room with apples and such, a bar, and a "command center" of sorts with various maps, a backup compass and steering system, and work desks. Going by the pictures you posted, Advantage is probably not as big as you'd like. There's another large ship in the Chesapeake, VA area that I know of...it's longer than mine but is more of a gun tub (not as much detail and deck) but you could load a massive pile of troops in it. Its name is the Chesapeake, and it's owned by a member of HaRDLUG, whose name I can't recall at the moment. I have never built anything as large as the ship you linked to but I imagine the cost could run at LEAST $500 USD, just for parts alone and shipping costs would be atrocious as well. In the interest of saving you money, I have another suggestion: Why not take a trip and visit the owner of a huge ship. The travel would cost less than making a new ship. You could film all the large exterior shots while visiting and then do any extra closeups back at home with "movie sets" -- large vignettes that were copies of parts of the ship like the quarterdeck.

I might be interested in building one or more ships for you. Here's another idea, though: Why not borrow or lease some of our MOC ships for the movie and then send them back when you're done? It'd probably be less expensive to make the movie that way.

PNG also supports transparency (even partial transparency!) and has full colors. GIF has a max of 256 colors. The only real reason to use a GIF anymore is to make the file size small or to make an animated image.

Why not provide everyone with a blank head template to start with?

Hey, any chance we can run this contest again sometime soon (Maybe run it from August 1 to September 31)?

http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/34713 Found via Google Image search. I didn't see it in the index.

I'd like to see a Lego City sailing yacht, something about the size of the 6271 Imperial Flagship. It could have either one or two large masts and canvas sails, ala Pirates theme.

To be more specific on the pirate stuff...

Probably because a cabinet is a type of furniture piece. :P Try "stern castle" or "captain's cabin." I didn't have a lot of luck finding pics either, though. Here's what I found so far: Here's the cabin of the USS Hartford: HMS Grant Turk, Nelson-era sixth-rate frigate HMS Rose I hope this helps!

I recommend the following books: The Story of Sail: Illustrated With 1000 Scale Drawings (Hardcover) http://www.amazon.com/Story-Sail-Illustrat...282&sr=11-1 The Illustrated Companion to Nelson's Navy (Paperback) http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Companio...369&sr=11-1 The Pirate Ship 1660-1730 (New Vanguard) (Paperback) http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Ship-1660-173...245&sr=11-1 The first is a huge, very comprehensive collections of information and drawings. The second is a very heavily illustrated, extremely detailed reference to everything relating to ships in the pirate era, and the third book is a nifty little booklet with pirate-specific info and a nice cutaway or two.

Now we're talkin'! Nice guns! The hull looks more solid too.

I would love new pirate ships, islands, or ports, but NOT Pirates of the Caribbean--ESPECIALLY NOT the ghost ship. The last thing Lego needs is more supernatural junk. We already have trolls, dragons, ghosts, HP creatures, and 4+ pirates. We don't need anymore monsters. Give me MINIFIGS. What we need: - Small Pirate and/or Merchant Sloop or Schooner - Galapagos island with pirate shack (standard-size baseplate island) - Imperial Soldier/Guard shore artillery battery (Small baseplate; good for fig/cannon collectors to buy in large quantities) - Pirate Jungle Hideway (large island, lots of vegetation pieces, buried treasure) - New imperial/civilian dock set, similar to 6277 Trading Post crossed with the Sail-n-Fly Marina (think row of shop faces, with boardwalk in front and docks. One or two mini-ships (ala 6277) and a boat or two included. I'm not sure we need another huge ship, at least until the small ones reignite the market.

One post is for the ship discussion, and the one in this thread was so it would be added to the index.

http://stararmy.com/lego/moc/geisha/geisha.html

57b Geisha returns! Updated the page, with mostly new pictures: http://stararmy.com/lego/moc/geisha/geisha.html

I'd like to some more pirate ships (the old school kind, not Duplo or 4+) and islands. If that's not available, how about a CITY sailing yacht that could be easily converted to a pirate schooner or sloop? It'd be the best of both worlds. Pirate theme idea thread: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19602

Mast extension: Crows nest and exanded mast platforms:

I would try fabric stores again or try other ones. My local store had "heavy canvas" (or something like that) which was sturdy and the right color. Make sure you pick up some anti-fraying liquid to put on the sail edges before you cut. Without something to stop fraying, your sail fabric will fall apart. Here's a pic of the sails I made: A little crinkly but good color and texture and stiffness.