It’s time to set sail for adventure once again aboard LEGO Icons 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship, so Design Master Psiaki shares insights into how he crafted this brick version of the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean.
LEGO Icons 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship beings Pirates of the Caribbean back to the brick after a long absence. To mark its epic return, Design Master Mike Psiaki discusses how he designed a sleek frigate.
Appearing silently through the mists, black sails looming above the water, the infamous reputation of the Black Pearl preceded it at every port. Feared by other pirates and merchant vessels alike, there were few survivors to tell tales. But when Captain Jack Sparrow regains command of the ship, he wants a grander life of adventure searching for treasures beyond the horizon. Inspired by the classic Disneyland attraction, Pirates of the Caribbean is a blockbuster film franchise with its fabled pirates, paranormal intrigue and backdrop of sweeping romance. Inspired by the Golden Age of Piracy around the early 18th century, it takes plenty of creative liberties to make fun adventures where dogs look after keys and cuttlefish serve as metaphors.
While there have been many LEGO sets inspired by the franchise, no icon is as recognisable as the Black Pearl. So when it came to revisiting Pirates of The Caribbean in the LEGO Icons range, the Black Pearl was the obvious choice for Mike and the LEGO design team. 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship is the first time the vessel has been on shelves since 2011 and he was determined to recreate it as accurately as possible at this scale.
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The Black Pearl is inspired by 17th and 18th century frigates that were designed for speed and manoeuvrability using sleek, elongated hulls. “On sailing ships you really need to capture the curvature of the hull, so that was something I really tried to explore,” explains Mike. “In my initial sketch models, I actually built the hull completely from scratch, not using any of the moulded ship parts at all. But it was really tedious and didn’t achieve a result any better than those elements. So I had to exaggerate some of the angles, especially at the stern, and figure out how to taper everything in a way that stayed true to the shape of the actual ship.”
To help figure out these angles, Mike looked back at 4184 The Black Pearl from 2011, which he pulled out of the archives. “I actually borrowed it while I was making this one. We have memory lane, where we have one copy of each LEGO set in the box, that you can go and see on tour. But we also just have built copies of every LEGO set that employees of the company can borrow as needed. So when I was making this model I borrowed Queen Anne’s Revenge and that 2011 version.”
This 2011 version was the first time there was a LEGO pirate ship without a symmetrical hull and he used the same techniques on this bigger rendition. “It just stopped at the back of the ship and used some arches,” explains Mike, referring to how the hull tapers into a square edge at the stern. “That was the inspiration for how to build the hull of this ship. Technically it should taper in at the stern, but I’m cheating to hide the fact that it goes completely straight at the waterline. So you should’t look too closely at it compared to a movie prop!”
The straight angle was essential to allow 10365 Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship to do something no LEGO version has ever done before. The finished hull can basically split in half to offer two display options. “I’ve wanted to design a ship that separated at the waterline for at least eight years,” says Mike. “You could display it majestically as a full ship or also have it as a playable toy that emulates a classic LEGO pirate ship. This is why I had to build a completely custom hull, where you can control the split to create clean segments and make this transition as seamless as possible.”
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