Ahoy!

My name is Jared Le Cras, a.k.a. ‘jazlecraz’ for anything LEGO brick related, and I have been a huge LEGO Pirates fan for as long as I can remember. As a child, I was captivated by the sprawling pirate layouts seen in my LEGO product catalogues from the early 90s. Amazingly, these catalogues survived my lengthy ‘dark ages’ period and were a key inspiration in the creation of Ominous Isle.

Since returning to the way of the brick, I have received the most joy from designing and building my own creations. I’m fond of all the classic themes beyond pirates, especially western, castle and underwater. You might even have spotted some of my other BPD submissions in these themes. Building within these worlds is great fun and it has been wonderful to see the LEGO Group recently give us some sets with modern reinterpretations of these classic themes.

Ominous Isle is the pirates set I always wanted as a child. Although pirate ships are cool, it was the idea of a secret pirate base on a tropical island that I always found most enticing. I wanted the set to capture the intrigue and trepidation you would feel while approaching a location known to be as dangerous as it is beautiful. I found that increasing the verticality of the build most provoked those feelings, and Ominous Isle was born!

The defining feature of the set is its ability to be rearranged in many unique ways since each islet has multiple standard attachment points for bridges. I’ve always struggled with limited display space for LEGO sets, so a model that can be displayed in many possible configurations is very appealing. I’m sure there are other builders out there who will appreciate this aspect of the model too!