This one is big. Like, really really big. Konajra has clicked approximately 100,000 LEGO pieces together to create this 3.25 meter long replica of the 1934 MS Jutlandia. It’s big enough that we lost more than a few Elves for several hours (you can come back any time Konajra). His latest commissioned piece is available to view now on MOCpages.
This stunning photograph comes from James Pegrum, with his beautiful recreation of one the most important ships ever to sail.
The HMS Beagle was an unremarkable 10-gun Cherokee-class vessel that served with the Royal Navy and HM Customs and Excise from 1820 until it was scrapped half a century later in 1870.
Unremarkable apart from one detail. It carried a passenger working as a naturalist and geologist. His name; Charles Robert Darwin.
Yaarr! What better t’celebrate the return of pirates than with a 48,000 brick pirate ship!*
Certified LEGO Professional Ryan McNaught aka TheBrickMan has welcomed the LEGO Pirates line back into stores in 2015 in a huge way. At 2 meters long and taking 120 hours to build, Ryan’s ‘Brickman’s Bounty’ is the pride of the Brickvention 2015 Lego Show.
The ship is constructed as a cut-away so you can can see interior too – Click the link above to visit Ryan’s photostream to see all the details of the Brickman’s Bounty, and you can see all of Ryan’s other works that have featured here by clicking this link and scrolling down.
*In a pirate voice
Because millionaire mini-figures need to get from Long Island to Manhattan too.
JBIronWorks has built one of the more luxurious ways to commute to Wall Street with his beautiful recreation of the 1929 motor yacht ‘Mohican’, and it looks the perfect bath-toy for TLCB executive jacuzzi.
The real classic yacht is currently up for sale for a cool $1million, but if that’s a bit out of your reach you can pretend with JB on Flickr. Money can’t buy you happiness anyway. Although it can buy you a $1million motor yacht.
The very best Lego vehicles in the world feature here at The Lego Car Blog. But the quality isn’t limited to just the build – the standard of presentation must be exceptional too. If you’re here wondering ‘How do I get my stuff to look that good?’, Flickr’s Konajra gives us an insight into the easiest and most accessible way to make your creations look the business.
Konajra’s behind-the-scenes shot above reveals the secret. Simple huh? A plain coloured background – often white but any contrasting colour will do – and curved to remove the shadows in the corners, is all you need to make your Lego creation look like something from The LEGO Group themselves.
Some builders add proper photography lighting to their set-up, but natural light is actually the best way to illuminate your model – so wait for sunny day!
Once you’ve got your shots upload them into any one of the variety of image editing tools, such as Gimp, Photoshop, iPhoto and even Microsoft Paint. Many builders will spend days perfecting their images, but a quick crop, auto-enhance and watermark (if you’re protective) is all that it takes to make a big difference.
Once you’re happy with how your images look you’re ready to upload them to your chosen creation-sharing website, however it’s worth noting that the quality of your images can be constrained by the site uploader. As such we recommend uploading to Flickr, and then using the embed function to transfer your images to your other online accounts.
Follow the above steps and you should end up with photos like Konajra’s ‘Zwarte Zee’ below, and they’ll be good enough to appear on one of the major Lego blogs, maybe even this one!
If you’ve discovered a creation that you think qualifies to appear here at The Lego Car Blog you can check its suitability by visiting our Submission Guidelines page – if it meets our requirements then let us know!
This enchantingly beautiful Vietnamese fishing boat is not our usual blogging fodder. However, in parts of Asia the boat is the car, so we’re bending the rules a bit! Either way, Hoang Dang‘s creation is one of the greatest we’ve seen this year. See more of his incredible vessel on Flickr by heading over via the link above.
The Elves are putting on their best pirate voices today, after the discovery of this beautiful 14-gun brig ‘Pinnacle’ on Eurobricks. They sound a bit like the chipmunks with the flu but we’ll let it slide. Mr Townsend is the builder and we highly recommend taking a look through his Eurobricks discussion here, there’s a lot to see!
*In a pirate voice
Not really a car, but a good excuse for a Lynryd Skynryd song title. Lukasz Wiktorowicz’s US Navy battleship is one of the smoothest, cleanest and most perfect creations the Elves have found this year. The polar opposite of them in fact. See more on Flickr here.
Here at The Lego Car Blog we love to hear your feedback and your suggestions if our Elves have missed a creation worth posting. A little outside competition helps to keep them sharp too.
This post was suggested to us via the Feedback and Submission Suggestions page by one of our readers, and although it’s not a car we do occasionally blog other transport-related creations. It is in fact a 1/350 replica of the USS Missouri battleship that saw service in World War 2 and the Pacific, built by a previous ‘Featured TFOL (Teen Fan Of Lego)’ Achintya Prasad. See all the photos, and a video demonstrating the motorised rotating fore guns, on either MOCpages or Flickr.
If you’ve found a creation our Elves have missed and you think it should be here please visit our Submission Guidelines. Please note that self-requests are not encouraged.
The Lego Car Blog’s home nation has a close relationship with the sea. An island dependent upon the dangerous waters surrounding it for trade, Britain has pioneered sea travel for hundreds of years.
Sadly this means that countless lives have been lost over the centuries to the waters, piracy and the cold. In 1824 an organisation was established to save those in peril. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has operated in the waters around Great Britain since its creation almost 200 years ago and today has over 400 boats stationed in over 200 rescue centres. An average of 22 people are rescued every day, with over 140,000 lives saved since the charity’s foundation.
Ralph Savelsberg has built one of their most recognisable tools in Lego, the Land Rover Defender tow car and mobile RIB rescue boat. You can see all his photos on Flickr here, and read more about the work of the RNLI at their website.
This, simply put, is probably the best Lego creation you will see this year.
It’s the work of MaydayArtist, and it’s a perfect scale-replica of the 1577 English Warship ‘Revenge’ that fought (and defeated) the Spanish Armada that was 9 months in the making. It’s all Lego apart from the sails and rigging and was built with the help of a wooden model ship-builder.
The level of detail is breathtakingly real so we’ve included an extra image in this blog post, but you really need to see the close up shots on the Eurobricks’ Pirate forum here, it’s a new benchmark in Lego shipbuilding. For our French readers, the ‘Revenge’ will also be shown at the ‘Festibriques’ show in Paris this year.
It might be well into Ma.Ktober but here at The Lego Car Blog, we’re still not sure what that is. One of the Elves thinks that it has something to do with October being rainy and people needing coats but we’re not convinced. In the meantime, a crew of Elves has just dragged this late entry to SHIPtember up the stairs to our penthouse office. It’s the work of Crimso Giger on Flickr, who is well-known for his colourful sci-fi builds. We think that he’s outdone himself here in creating this 132 stud long, dazzling monster.
The appropriately named “Morning Glory”, seems to have a certain gravitas to it, despite being a feast of red, yellow and black patterns. This deep-space ship features brick-built wings and loads of greebling in all three of its colours. We post photos at a maximum of 500 wide on TLCB, so it’s well worth clicking this link to the Flickr page to take it all in. If you’re a bit overwhelmed by this SHIP (the Elves who delivered it to us nearly were) then relax your eyes with a spacecraft, in the very unusual colour of green, by the same builder. The Elves liked Crimso’s “Soyuz 2267” because it reminded them of the “Starbug” from Red Dwarf, which is a treat for them to watch if they’ve worked VERY hard. Click this link to its Flickr page, to see more.
This year has seen a new month added to Lego builders’ calendars on Flickr: SHIPtember. A SHIP is a Seriously Huge Investment in Parts and is typically over 100 studs in length. Builders from all over the world have been posting photos of both WIPs and completed projects, which are generally long and thin. Dover (Drew) has chosen to take a sideways look at the theme, literally, and produced this 101 stud wide Bubble Fighter.
The spacecraft is based on one flown by Matt LeBlanc in the 1998 film of “Lost in Space“. It has a pistol grip handle to hold when swooshing it and rotating wings too. There’s also some nice parts usage, with the Christmas decoration cockpit and especially the real teeth in the markings on the wings. The Elf who discovered this MOC is still a bit upset by the big, pointy fangs. Please don’t be scared to check more photos of this colourful spacecraft by clicking this link to its Flickr page.
It’s so big! And long! It might not fit in. Is it loaded and ready to fire? Ok, we’ll stop. Lego Admiral’s 7ft 6inch (286 studs) ship is part of Flickr’s ‘SHIPtember’ project, where this September builders are producing sci-fi models over 100 studs in length. We don’t really understand sci-fi here at TLCB, so we had to resort to innuendo, but if it’s your thing check out both Lego Admiral’s amazing model and the competition here.
This magnificent micro-scale USS Enterprise CVN-65 is the work of Locutus aka primanota82 and was suggested to us via the Feedback page. As well as being the most nerdy spaceship ever, the USS Enterprise was the first nuclear powered warship and is still the longest ship in the US Navy. Commissioned in the 1960s the Enterprise was retired last year to be replaced by the Nimitz-Class carriers, currently readying for the assault on Syria. Locutus’ 1/350 scale version comes complete with a variety of miniature aircraft, including Phantoms, Tomcats and Corsairs. Identify them all via the links above.