Creating a charmingly crooked castle

It’s one of the contradictions at the heart of LEGO building, that we love to see the rectilinear brick subverted. Bravo to jaapxaap, who has centred his latest model on some seriously wonky geometry. There’s no doubt that Falcon Castle is suffering from years of subsidence, its central tower quaintly leaning at the most acute of angles.

Falcon Castle

Of course it takes real talent to do this, which you pick up again in the embellishments that have been added: the ingot bricks used to simulate wear, or the golden tower painstakingly formed form telescope pieces. In the end though, you just have to marvel at the way the imperfections of the ramshackle fortress have been so perfectly built.

1 comment on “Creating a charmingly crooked castle

  1. Purple Dave

    Okay, I have to admit that I don’t really see the “wear” in the bricks. In real life I’ve seen instances of unmodified fieldstones, cleanly cut cuboid blocks, and decrepit masonry that’s clearly seen better days. In terms of LEGO builds, going for the clean look is super easy, since the System is really geared towards that. Doing abandoned ruins is usually pretty obvious because large chunks will be missing. Aside from the canted tower, this looks to be in relatively sound condition, and all of the range of parts used for brickwork could just be meant to represent irregular, natural stonework.

    The problem is, unless the builder comes right out and says one way or the other (he didn’t), or you’re intimately familiar with their building styles and how they may or may not have changed over time (I’m not), something like this could go either way. And whichever way the viewer sees it will affect their reaction to it.

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