Tag Archives: Castle

Dragons! Knights in shining armor! Trebuchets & ballistas! From enormous LEGO castles buttoned up for battle to peaceful village market scenes, we’ve got your LEGO Castle needs covered right here.

There is a castle on a cloud

What is it about the persistent fantasy of castles among the clouds, whether it is on a floating rock or built on the cumulonimbus itself? It’s certainly pervasive, even being featured in everyone’s favorite space fantasy, ruled by Prince Calrissian. I’m not complaining, mind you; I have a deep love for the idea myself and have been tempted to build something along those lines one of these days. But LEGO builder Caleb Saw beat me to the punch, creating this stunning castle afloat on the aether.

Now, I love domes, and this castle has excellent domes, including, quite fittingly, half of Bespin. There is wonderful variation among the buildings, and yet they look a cohesive whole, too. The tan and dark tan colors look great together here, and the foliage is top-notch; indeed, the vines and trees look incredibly organic. And then there are the clouds. So many round bits that work so well together to create something light and fluffy out of shiny ABS plastic!

Do you love floating islands and floating rocks, too? Then check them out in the TBB archives!

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Wizards by the Coast

According to LEGO builder Josh, this diorama depicts the abode of the Wizards by the Coast, which has me wondering, perhaps the denizens of this quaint little seaside town are best known for their gaming masterpiece, Dumgeons & Dargons? At any rate, this little village is awash in a magical air, from the crazy twisted tower and giant butterfly to the precariously perched flowerbeds. The little scoops of ice cream, long used by LEGO builders as smoke, find a great use here as sea foam. Meanwhile, the wizards are cooking up a mean fish fry courtesy of a Fireball spell. Someone invite me!

What lies beneath

There’s a lot to like in Carter Witz‘s atmospheric LEGO model of a sunken ruin. Above the waters, we’ve got twisting vines and an excellent selection of parts to create the impression of aged, decaying stonework. And then plunging below the surface, we have a clever change in tone from light grey to dark, with fish flitting between the columns, and weeds choking the lake bottom. This is a well-put-together model, but as with many of the best LEGO creations, it’s the sense of story, the questions it prompts in the mind of the beholder which elevate it into something special. What was this ruined structure? Which ancient civilization built these broken arches? And what terrible cataclysm saw it flooded? Who is the man in the canoe? Where is he going? And what sauce will he cook that chicken in?

Enter the underworld, if you dare

A haunted forest, a ruined castle, an underground cavern — a lost world awaits. Eli Willsea‘s LEGO scene is a masterclass in microscale, creating a sense of epic scale and mystery with a tight colour palette and a small footprint. The forest ruins were a treat to begin with, but the vast underground chamber beneath the structure is where the excitement lies. We’ve got everything an adventurous explorer expects, from arching masonry and rickety wooden stairs, to perilous drops over deep dark water. My favourite detail is the section of the castle, poking from the water beneath the hole its collapse created — lovely stuff. I’ve obviously played too much Tomb Raider in my time — my immediate thought was that a jump to the hanging chain would surely activate some ancient mechanism to drain the water allowing access to a hidden chamber.

Going, going, gondola!

I love immersive builds, where everywhere you look there is LEGO, except the sky (I don’t like brick-built skies, due to the brick pattern). It’s like I’m one of the minifigures, standing in the scene, seeing the sights. It is my preferred building style, at least when buildings and rooms are involved, and one that I (Benjamin Stenlund) used in my latest creation. Set in the Guilds of Historica’s fifth guild, Varlyrio, in the Venice-like capital of Illaryian, it depicts a slice of daily life, with gondoliers poling, shopkeepers selling, families visiting, soldiers guarding, sailors lounging, and rogues prowling.

I tried to vary up the action of the figs to make it lively without being cluttered, and to vary the patterns of the houses to make it homogeneous without being monotonous. All of the buildings have the same roof style, with tiles pressed down on just one end, but three colors are used (you can barely see the lone dark grey roof on the right) to mix it up. Varying the patterns and heights of the buildings helps to make it visually interesting, but basic patterns get repeated. It’s like a block of modular buildings, if LEGO made modular buildings that were just rickety facades with no interiors. I don’t build interiors, unless it’s going to be visible in the shot, since it won’t be seen. That’s just wasted effort for my purposes. Another secret is that the water ends just around the corner under the bridge, where it stops being visible. It’s all about the camera shot, for me. And yet, it looks so nice, I’d like to visit the place myself. If only I were about 1.5 inches tall…

A queen can go wherever she likes

Although castles are some of the coolest things you can design with LEGO bricks, there’s one reason they will never be cooler than mechs and vehicles; they are immovable. Spencer Winson adds just a handful of ball hinges to one of his towers and — voila! — who needs royal carriages anymore? And it’s not only the concept of the mech-tower itself that makes the build outstanding, but also the iconic yellow/red/blue color range. The design of the tower was undoubtedly inspired by the legendary 375 Castle set, but have you noticed that the tower in the background is built of Duplo bricks? I must admit I have never seen this double arch Duplo piece before. It is more than 40 years old but still looks stunning in new creations.

The art and science of LEGO tensegrity builds

The recent trend in the LEGO-sphere community has all been about magical floating compression structures, better known as a tensegrity – a portmanteau of “tensional integrity”. The fad started with a very rudimentary build on a Reddit and soon spawned many more creative iterations. We pick a few of the more outstanding ones that we’ve seen that has impressed us. A couple of them come with build videos and instruction guides for you to build your very own.

Click to see some of the best we’ve spotted around

Don’t leave me hanging

One of the hottest LEGO fads right now is tensegrity sculptures. These builds use tricky physics to create models with sections suspended in mid-air with no obvious means of support. I’ve seen a lot of different approaches, but captainsmog has come up with one of the best. Invocation features a giant flying dragon, suspended in the air by taut lengths of LEGO chain. There’s no Photoshop trickery here. It’s just science. But I’m willing to admit there’s just a bit of magic, too.

Even if there wasn’t mind-bending suspension going on, this would be a great build to look at. The dragon’s belly is constructed of minifigure arms, creating an eerie organic feel to that armor. And the invocation platform is pretty swanky, too. I like the use of minifigure beards to create different versions of drippy candle wax, and the use of glow-in-the-dark tile for lines of mystic power is inspired. There are even tiny little touches, like the candle flames all blowing outward from the downdraft from the dragon’s wings. I love that attention to detail.

In a house in a tree lived a hobbit

Not all hobbits lived in snug little tunnels under the rolling hills of the Shire. Some of them made their homes in the trees. These adventurous souls were probably Brandybucks or Tooks mind you, and the sensible folks around Hobbiton always suspected they were a little odd in the head. This fantastical LEGO treehouse home built by Mountain Hobbit is a cracker. The tree itself is wonderful, all gnarled and ancient with some serious root action going on, and the house set into the trunk is an interesting selection of angles. But it’s the little details which make this model pop — the vines wrapping around the tree’s branches, the window and the lantern, the hanging bunting, and the little basket of possessions. Lovely stuff.

No more milling around!

I hear it all the time from would-be builders that they just don’t have enough pieces in their collections. “I can’t make anything cool,” they bemoan, as if having a billion LEGO elements at their disposal would make building easier. Now, in some respects, that is true; having more parts does expand the horizons of what you can build. But more importantly, building cool things comes from an eye for how to use the parts one has, rather than the parts one wishes one had, and a small collection is as good as a large one in that respect. Take this windmill by Inthert, for example. It’s not huge. It didn’t take a lot of parts. Granted, there are some specialty parts like the green palettes and the green feathers, but most of what is in the build could come from the collection of anyone who has a few sets. It’s in the art of arrangement, the way the parts are used, that the coolness comes. And that comes not from having a ton of bricks, but from using them a ton and getting familiar with them.

For example, who, having the fence piece, thinks to put it into the bottom of a jumper plate? Not I. And the tiny round tower, the artfully placed foliage of all sorts, the grille tile fence…the list of clever constructions goes on. And the little Heroica figures are just the cherry on top. And it did not take a billion bricks! So what are you waiting for? Go get your collection out and start building something, if you aren’t already. With this quarantine, I know you have time.

Deserted in the desert

“Eventually it shall be reclaimed by the sands. But until then, it stands there still — empty and abandoned. A warning to us all.” I love when a LEGO model begs the observer to create a story, when narration springs into the mind as you look over the builder’s work. This excellent microscale castle by Eli Willsea somehow demands the creation of a backstory — its formidable walls and soaring towers seem to require an epic history to explain its emptiness and sense of decay. The model is well put-together, with a nice depth of texture despite a relatively limited selection of bricks and a monochrome colour palette. And its that colour selection which is key to the scene’s appeal, immediately placing the model in a desert environment and conjuring up an atmosphere of decay and mystery and romance.

All is quiet at Springvale

I have just one question for Martijn Valkenburg; how do I sign up for Springvale Watch? I mean, this LEGO diorama has it all; beautiful scenery, peace, and quiet, and a few friends in shiny helmets to talk to. It’s like he tapped into all my good dreams right there. I’m loving the repetitive use of ingots adding texture along the wall and edges of the tower. Curved tiles make for excellent arches over the windows. The use of masonry bricks in the crumbling section at the base of the tower leads me to believe that not all was peaceful at Springvale. But on this clear, beautiful day there is nary a catapult or impending army in sight. For now, the biggest enemy at Springvale just might be allergies.