Some LEGO fans gravitate to greebled fleets of spaceships, others to cunningly engineered trains and trucks, but it’s epic castle creations that will forever have my heart. Brett, who builds under the moniker BDD Builds, has been creating massive medieval scenes to share online and at conventions for several years now. After Brett revealed his most ambitious work to date, a recreation of Fort Dawnguard from The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, we reached out to learn more about the builder’s epic LEGO journey.

TBB: Congratulations on your amazing Dawnguard MOC. Before we get to that build, let’s rewind to the start of your LEGO journey. When did you first start building with LEGO? Do you remember your first set?

Brett: I started building with LEGO as a kid in the mid-late 90s. The first set I remember receiving was 6850 Pizza to Go from 1994, but my fondest memory was in 2000 when I received set 6098 King Leo’s Castle for Christmas! I had a fairly long “dark age” from around 2007 (when I started high school) until about 2017, at which point I had my own house and my parents brought my childhood LEGO collection down, rekindling my love for the LEGO hobby. Kudos to my parents for holding onto it all for those ten years!

TBB: The builds that you share are all castle themed. Have you always stuck to castle builds? Do you ever work on MOCs in other genres?

Brett: As a kid, I did have mostly castle MOCs (and Lord of the Rings), but I did also have plenty of city sets in a city layout. But as an adult MOC builder, I have pretty much focused exclusively on castle MOCs. The castle theme is what I am most interested in, and with a full-time job and a wife and three kids at home, my time to build is fairly limited, and so I tend to focus on building castle with that time.

TBB: Do you have an all-time favorite castle set from LEGO?

Brett: I was too young to truly experience the vintage castle sets from the 80s and 90s. Knights Kingdom I was my introduction to LEGO castle, and so the aforementioned King Leo’s Castle holds a special place in my heart. But even with the nostalgia there, nothing quite compares to the Lion Knight’s Castle from 2022, and that definitely is my all-time favorite castle set.

TBB: Which is your favorite castle faction and why?

Brett: My favorite castle faction is the Raven/Crow Knight from the CMF series 20. But if we’re only including official factions that came in sets, I would have to go with Black Falcons, as they were my first LEGO faction that I collected when LEGO re-released the Black Falcon’s Fortress set in 2002.

TBB: LEGO just released two new castle factions as part of the vending machine set – Krakens and Griffons. Which faction would you rather build for?

Brett: I’m a sucker for Nordic/Viking builds, so I would choose to build something for the Krakens over the Griffins there. But really, all of the new factions (including those in the new 3-in-1 creator set) look so good!

TBB: In recent years, you’ve been building large castle displays to show at conventions. Can you speak about how you went from being someone who builds LEGO sets to someone who works at large scale for display?

Brett: Oddly enough, my love for castle MOC building as an adult sprang up because there were no official castle sets on store shelves at the time I exited my dark age. There is also something more satisfying to me about building something myself that I don’t always get out of building with instructions. I also credit “Beyond the Brick” for inspiration for building displays for conventions, as my kids and I always enjoy their convention interview videos. Also after creating an Instagram account to share my creations, I received so much positive support for bringing my creations to conventions.

TBB: Your current masterwork is a recreation of Fort Dawnguard from Skyrim. What drew you to this location as something to recreate in LEGO?

Brett: I do not play a lot of videogames, but Skyrim has always been my favorite videogame since it came out in 2011. And while I do often see plenty of castle MOCs on both social media and at conventions, I never really saw any large-scale Skyrim-specific MOCs, and I sought to change that. And Riverwood specifically was just a passion project of mine, given how iconic the location is in the game. But after Riverwood, I really wanted to build another castle, and Fort Dawnguard always impressed me while playing, so I thought it was a location worth building.

TBB: This is your second large-scale Skyrim model after last year’s Riverwood. How was that build received when you displayed it at Brickfair? Did that lead you to want to return to the world of Skyrim?

Brett: My Riverwood MOC was received better than I could have ever expected. The sheer number of folks who instantly recognized it was amazing to see! And that “instant-recognition” is honestly one of the best compliments I could have received. But even for those folks who did not know the source material, I did get a lot of compliments on the build, particularly for the level of detail with the plant life and interiors.

TBB: How does working from a video game inspiration affect how you go about building a castle? Did you have to adapt your usual style?

Brett: In the case with Fort Dawnguard, I did have to adapt my building style. When castle building, I often like to include more texture and weathered gradients, mossy looks with including either sand green or olive green parts, as well as adding vines and other foliage to the walls. But Fort Dawnguard is such a clean looking castle in the game, so I was unable to include those details if I were to be game-accurate, which I was going for.

TBB: Skyrim is famoulsly huge in scale. How close is the fort to the scale found in game, do you think? How did you figure out the scale for your model?

Brett: The castle itself is about as close to minifigure-scale as I could have made possible in LEGO. The actual castle itself is a bit longer in the game, but I had to trim down its length in order to make building and displaying it realistic. I did wander around the location in the game to get as close to the right scale as possible. And as with Riverwood, it was just another excuse to play the game again!

TBB: This is your largest project to date. Were there any challenges in sourcing the parts you needed to make it a reality?

Brett: The biggest challenge was knowing how many of each part category I was going to need. I had never built this large of a castle before, and I thought that I was going to have enough medium stone gray bricks to build it, and if I needed more I could take apart the Lion Knight’s Castle. But even after taking that set apart, I still had to order plenty more… That’s pretty much how it went with multiple part categories (slopes for mountains, plant parts for trees, etc.). Sourcing the parts wasn’t too difficult, as I have plenty of experience with both PAB and BrickLink. Mostly I just had to compare prices, and factor in the free shipping from PAB.

TBB: How much of the interior did you build?

Brett: The interior of the Fort is not as well-fleshed out as in the game, but I did build all of the main rooms you can visit, including the main entrance room, sleeping quarters, dining room, and the forge and alchemy/enchanting areas. I would have loved to include some of the interior cave areas within the fort where the Dawnguard hold their armored trolls, but there simply was not enough space to make that work.

TBB: Is there a part of the build that you’re most proud of, either for the building technique that you used or just the looks?

Brett: The part of the build I’m most proud of is probably the rockwork in front of the fort itself, and how I achieved the look with SNOT (studs not on top) building techniques. But for the MOC overall, I’m most proud of how I managed to keep the same high level of detail while still building at this large of a scale, from the plant and animal life, to the snow on top of the fort walls, as well as including a lot of variety of trees.

TBB: What was the most challenging part of recreating the Dawnguard? Were there any aspects of the build that you had to cut?

Brett: The most challenging part was being able to create the castle in its entirety. As I mentioned earlier, I had to shorten the length of the castle to make it realistic to build. Similarly with the overall landscape, there is more winding pathway in between the frozen lake and the fort itself present in the game than what I was able to realistically fit into this build. Building the curved towers, while not very challenging per se, was a very tedious process of stacking 1×2 rounded plates in groups of three to make the bricks for building the towers… thousands and thousands of those 1×2 rounded plates.

TBB: What is your relationship to Skyrim the game? What platform did you first and most recently play on? Do you use mods, and if so, any favorites? What race/class/build do you most identify with?

Brett: I have played Skyrim pretty regularly since its release in 2011. I initially had it on the PlayStation 3, and currently play it on the PlayStation 4. I do use some mods, but only those that improve the game textures and graphics, or add lore-friendly locations/content. I am not a big fan of game-altering mods or those that feel like cheat codes. One of my favorite mods is the “man those borders” mod, which add small guard outposts at the entrances of all of the Skyrim holds. It’s still lore-friendly, but those little details add so much to my playing experience. As for the race/class/build, I tend to go with Nord or Breton, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy an archer build, but I do like archery in real-life, so I have an excuse there!

TBB: Are there any easter eggs for fans of the game that you can share?

Brett: Not as many as I would like. I do have a courier in the build (the same one from Riverwood, as he’s still got something to deliver), a vampire lair (which does not exist there in the game, but I thought it was a neat addition), and my own and my wife’s Dragonborn characters. We will see if I can manage to add in some more easter eggs for the convention!

TBB: Have you considered building a dragon to accompany your Skyrim display?

Brett: I did not really consider a dragon for this build or for Riverwood, since I have little-to-no experience building creatures… but I have some possible future projects that might have to involve making a dragon.

TBB: With two major Skyrim locations under your belt, do you plan to return to the world of Skyrim again? Or perhaps another region of Tamriel?

Brett: For sure, I definitely plan on building more locations in Skyrim, it’s just a matter of which locations, since there are so many! And as much as I love these large-scale MOCs, I will likely focus on some smaller sized MOCs for a time before my next large-scale project. I have honestly never played Oblivion or any other Elder Scrolls game, so I do not foresee building any other location in Tamriel, but you never know!

TBB: Thanks for your time, and congratulations on your incredible Skyrim creation.