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.

Time is money, friend! This LEGO Goblin Shredder from World of Warcraft won’t back down

World of Warcraft is still a remarkably popular game considering its age, and it’s no surprise that the millions of players worldwide overlap with the millions of LEGO fans somehow. A case of this combination is Chris Perron with his Goblin Shredder.

The mech piloted by a crazy little green guy seems ready to fell some sacred trees, and it is equipped for the job. The circular sawblade is very well incorporated into the arm and the little chains in the elbow joints give a convincing impression of a fantasy machine. I love the dark red lines at the ankles, but by far the best part is the “face” of the mecha, sculpted with all sorts of polygonal pieces. Its mouth, which uses a cowcatcher piece in front of various translucent orange pieces, even lights up!

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Enter the fanciest crossroad in the kingdom

Magical swirls, bright colours, and mysterious runes might impress you in this portal hub scene by LEGO builder Chris Perron, but with a bit of thought you realize it is just a glorified crossroad, which seems as magical to us as cars would to someone using a portal transport system.

There is so much to love in the scene. The swirling, colourful portals are highlighted in post-production to give an immersive magical feeling. The green runes on the floor add a bit of mystery, along with the eye symbols and other decoration on the walls. The real star is the forced perspective castle in the central, blue portal and how it is lit in beautiful sunset colours.

Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!

LEGO castle scenes are generally static pieces of landscape with some kinds of structures or a little sprinkle of life in the form of a handful of minifigs. This is a tested formula that works best in most examples, but the latest scene by h2brick is not one of them. The builder faithfully recreates a piece of the battle of Minas Tirith from the third Lord of the Rings movie.

The landscaping is nice to look at with flowing layers and colours, as well as some well built yet subtle rocks. One would expect the LEGO horse to start feeling repetitive, but the variation between colours, mold types and posing keeps it fresh. The touches of clutter on both sides give a feeling of an anxious anticipation of battle.

When two warriors meet

2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the LEGO minifigure, and its chunky proportions are beloved the world over. However, as excellent as the minifigure is, it remains stiff and able to strike only a handful of poses. Some builders like √erde’ have turned to sculpting their own characters out of small elements, employing minifigure headgear to give them a lifelike appearance. This pair of warriors, representing brute force on the left, and speed and agility on the right, are magnificent examples. Plus, the photography makes them really seem like they’re on a battlefield.

The mighty walls of Carcassonne

For about the past decade, LEGO castle builders have trended towards what I like to call a ramshackle aesthetic, with precariously towering walls and gravity-defying roofs attached with a song and a prayer. It’s natural that builders would flex their chops in that manner, as that painterly style requires a great deal more skill than the simple, studs-up brick walls of classic castle sets and many early castle builders. However, equally difficult is building more traditional, real-world castles and avoiding the dreaded “grey wall syndrome” of thoroughly boring architecture. Isaac Snyder‘s walls of Carcassonne accomplishes this excellently, featuring a short segment of the French city’s fortifications. The walls and even roofs are no less detailed than any you’d find in the more ramshackle style, yet are thoroughly grounded in authentic style.

Perhaps next time Isaac can include a road though, as I’ve been needing a straight wall segment with a road to complete my city for ages!

A picturesque LEGO micro-castle

There are lots of microscale castles out there. Some just stand out. This one by Isaac Snyder caught our eye for how clean and picturesque it is. The colors and angles work nicely as the castle tucks neatly into the mountainside, with a lovely seaport scene in the water below.

Isaac also built this lovely minifigure-scale watchtower. I’m a big fan of the scattered brickwork as well as the decoration and architecture on top of the tower.

Both builds are entries in the Colossal Castle Contest XVI. If you love building under the castle theme, maybe you should check it out!

Same house, different times

When you’ve designed something as beautiful as Ayrlego‘s Wainwright house, it seems a shame not to experiment with its presentation. It looks right at home in its medieval situ, with its muddy path, city guards, and period timber frame construction.

However, why stop here? Relocate the build half way around the globe to Jamestown in Virginia and you have a completely different enviroment to explore. LEGO palm trees and red coat soldiers have surrounded the timber frame residence, giving the model a fresh colonial feel.

Transparency in business

Builders tackle the LEGO Castle so often, I sometimes wonder if it has been completely exhausted. At times like that, builders such as Jonas Wide prove me wrong. When people move away from the military aspect of castle, they can find an endless well of inspiration beyond just castles and battles.

This glass-blowing workshop scene is as much artful photography as it is a LEGO build. The lighting through the windows and from the kiln is quite immersive, and the build itself is not bad at all. The textures on the walls are just enough and the tiles on the floor use related colours that actually look like variable clay bricks. What I really love is the attention to detail with the minifigs – a little drop of sweat on a minifig’s face is enough to show just how hot the workshop must be.

A castle shot through with a bolt of blue

What makes a LEGO model special often comes down to an inspired design choice. In the case of En Zoo’s Laelariel Hall it’s all about the use of colour. The build is a solid medieval construction utilising many tried and tested stone wall and roof techniques. What lifts it above the average are the exquisite splashes of blue bricks throughout. The main walls are veined with light blue and 1×1 round tiled studs. Layered in sequence, they imbue the building with a sense of magic. Accents of dark blue in the roof echo the marbling elsewhere. It’s a clever choice that transports the scene into its own fantastical realm.

Bizarre crowd gathers in the bazaar

There are a wealth of details worth checking out in Andreas Lenander‘s latest LEGO creation — a busy marketplace in a Middle-East-inspired fantasy city — not least its unusual inhabitants. The city walls feature some nice little touches to break up the expanse of tan, and the detailing around the arch is spot-on. The towers provide a nice backdrop to the action, and the white one has some lovely texturing which delivers the impression of mosaics or elaborate carved screens. Below, the market itself is brimming with people and animals, creating a sense of activity and movement. You can’t look at this without finding yourself waiting on a big fight breaking out!

There are a huge variety of minifigures amidst the hustle and bustle of the marketplace. The mixing of figures from different LEGO themes can sometimes jar, but here it simply adds to the sense of a wider fantasy world and the bazaar as a melting pot of cultures and races…

Where the mountains meet the sea

A medieval town, nestling between the foot of the mountains and the shores of the sea — that’s the setting of John Tooker‘s latest LEGO creation. There’s a wealth of detail on display for a microscale model. The crenellations on the central keep are a nice touch, the rockwork is well done, and those tiny ships are lovely. I particularly like the autumnal shades amongst the foliage, and the tiny offsets on the green tiles creating the angled line between greenery and the beach. It’s the touches like that which elevate the best microscale modelling.

Tax collection by the river bank

If there is a place where even medieval tax collection would look picturesque, it would be Arylego‘s latest scene, depicting a wooden water mill. This unpleasant task is quite often depicted escalating into violence, so Arylego’s creation comes as a breath of fresh air, showing a civil conversation.

The colour scheme is muted, but quite realistic, with a tree in autumn red colours as a contrast to lighten up the scene. My favourite parts have to be the textures and mixing of colours on the roof and timber walls of the building. Welcome uses of parts are the hinge plates with fingers used in the wheel, which makes the shape much more flowing than any other hinge system.