LEGO Battleship Yamato by Jun Brick

Japanese LEGO craftsman Jun Brick is recreating the famous Japanese battleship Yamato in LEGO (the real WWII-era one, not the space battleship). He's documented his build-in-progress on his site, which in some ways may be more interesting in the final product, as you can see how much work must go into the superstructure infrastructure necessary to support such a large scale model. (It's basically a mini-fig scale replica, which must make it 15-20 feet long, at least.)

The Yamato was a nearly legendary bit of engineering and remains an important cultural artifact to the Japanese, something like the way Americans revere the USS Enterprise, our first nuclear carrier. Construction on the Yamato began seventy years ago; design work had begun three years earlier.

Artist's page [Geocities.jp via Hobby Blog]

[#1 posted by strider_mt2k , November 16, 2007 4:40 AM]

Beautiful work in LEGO.

Now do the Star Blazers one!

[#2 posted by Nelson.C , November 16, 2007 5:26 AM]

Yes, I was so disappointed to sea it was the WW2 version. Where's the Wave Motion Gun?

[#3 posted by akbar56 , November 16, 2007 8:03 AM]

actually, if you poke around his page a bit... he did make the space battleship one as well.

[#4 posted by akbar56 , November 16, 2007 8:08 AM]

In fact, here is the direct link to it
http://www.geocities.jp/jun_brick/s_yamato1.html

[#5 posted by Santos , November 16, 2007 9:09 AM]

The Anime one used the WWII as its' structural base AFAIR. This remains very awesome regardless.

[#6 posted by nex , November 16, 2007 2:53 PM]

It's not the job of superstructure to support anything, Joel. In a ship, the superstructure is everything above the deck.

[#7 posted by Joel Johnson , November 16, 2007 2:55 PM]

No shit, nex? I guess that makes sense if you actually parse the word. I guess what I was looking for was "infrastructure." Thanks!