Strangely enough, I blame this project on "Star Wars."
When I was a kid, I thought Luke Skywalker was the coolest dude alive. The Force, the lightsaber, having Darth Vader for a Dad....what wasn't there to like?
Well, there was one thing.
I didn't like his X-Wing. Han Solo....now he had a cool car. No matter if Luke that the Millennium Flacon was "a piece of junk" - I loved it.
And thus began my fascination with Tramp Freighters. From the Falcon I traded up to Ripley's Nostromo in Aliens. From there - well, to any science fiction movie I could find about cargo carriers.
I missed out on the network airings of Joss Whedon's Firefly. It took a friend coming over and basically forcing my wife and I to watch the first disc of the DVD set before I knew more than "It's by the guy who made 'Buffy', right?'"
But after seeing the pilot - I was hooked. Not only was the show itself very good - it had an awesome Tramp Freighter. A Firefly-class vessel by the name of Serenity.
I had wanted to build a large-scale tramp freighter out of LEGO bricks for a while. I had attempted my own designs a couple of times, but without much success. The friend who introduced me to Firefly suggested that Serenity would make a perfect project for me. So, on June 20th, 2005 - I started work. On August 19th, two months later, I was satisfied enough with the design to call things "done."
Check out the construction log to hear about the long road that lead to Serenity - or read on and learn about the end result.
One of the first things I did was to mock up the crew in LEGO Mini-figure form. From left to right: River, Jayne, Simon, Mal, Book, Inara, Kaylee, Zoe, and Wash. I had to fake a head for Zoe - LEGO had yet to release a female (or even "gender neutral") head in brown.
My initial plan was for Serenity to be at mini-figure scale...so the crew would be essential. Sadly, I had to cut the size of the ship in half, so there isn't much use for these guys yet. Someday I'll get around to building some interior shots, and then they'll have their day in the sun.
Over he next few pages you'll get to know my version of Serenity pretty well. I've broken up the narrative into several pages to help the photos load faster.
Anyway - enough with the intoduction....ON TO THE PHOTOS!
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