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.

It’s time to get medieval

LEGO fansite Classic Castle’s annual Colossal Castle Contest is upon us yet again. Now in its 16th year, this long-running contest draws out scores of world-class builders. We’ve got our eyes on all the contenders, but the one that caught my eye today is Isaac Snyder with a pair of simple yet elegant medieval builds. While modest in both scale and intent, Isaac has crafted a wonderful slice of middle-age urbanism, with neatly designed houses crowding over a packed street. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Isaac has opted for a refreshingly clean aesthetic, eschewing the now-common jumbled style of bricks at crazy angles and roofs mere moments from collapse.

Next, Isaac moves to the countryside while retaining the same tidy style, bringing us a happy cottage on a streambank. The wattle and daub architecture is expertly accomplished, and the little touches like the chicken coop give life to the scene.

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Wisdom as your sword, knowledge as your shield

In a world where castle means intense textures and exotic part uses, Henjin Quilones brings a breath of fresh air with an all-LEGO library scene.

While there are a few unique techniques like the huge armchairs and nice angles on the roof’s underside, the real quality of the creation is its atmosphere. The composition and posing of the minifigs really set up a great mood. The best part has to be the lighting, with warm sunlight shining through the windows and a lit fireplace. This is one of those cases when a creation is as much a build as an artistic photograph.

Taking a tiny shot at castle

We see many grand castles and medieval scenes built out of LEGO all over the internet, but sometimes it is the little gems that make you go “wow!” Today’s “wow” is alego alego‘s microscale castle series, which focus on interesting parts usages.

We’ll start with the sea castle, as well as some of his other microscale castle creations The latest build is particularly neat, using stud shooters as towers connected by tiny staircases. My favourite part is that the shooters have the triggers inserted, so technically, one could shoot the tops off the towers!

Click to check out the rest of the awesomely tiny castles!

Who stokes the fire in the long-forgotten castle?

Halloween has come and gone, but it should not be the only day of the year when we get to see dark and moody themes. Tymothy Shortell would agree, having built castle ruins that look perfect for the season yet apropriate throughout the year.

All the colours, or lack thereof, make for a great atmosphere, mostly facilitated by the dark gray of the castle wall. While the castle is my favourite part, the landscape is very important too. The whole scene is a round shape, with natural flowing transitions between rocks and grass. The editing and photography are what takes the build to a higher level though, especially a dim orange light shining through a window.

This huge LEGO diorama brings Hobbiton to life

The iconic landscape of Hobbiton is a stark contrast to the majority of other locations presented in the stories of J. R. R. Tolkien, and its unique style is quite the popular theme for LEGO builders to tackle. Coming off the tail of a large Middle Earth-themed collaboration, Jake Hansen has joined forces with Cole Blood in what I hope is not the “Last Alliance”.

The large scale of the diorama–16 32×32 baseplates, or about 11 square feet–really brings the best out of the rolling hills made of stacked plates. Continue reading →

If only all evil spirits were this cute

It is that time of year when many people around the world embrace the spooky and scary, but more often than not combine it with an element of cute. car_mp has captured this unlikely combination perfectly with these two little ghosts.

The expressive faces (more precisely, holes in the cloth) are done with just a handful of pieces, but somehow this just adds to their charm. The shaping is the star of the show here; the builder uses 1×2 wedge slopes to achieve quite a nice round effect, a technique I expect to become more frequent in the coming years.

Basement dwellers and brave adventurers alike

Henrik “teabox” Zwomp‘s adventure-themed LEGO diorama, titled From the Safety of the Basement, is a clever juxtaposition of real (minifigure) world players in their home as they venture forth through the not-so-real role-playing game world, complete with dungeon floor inlaid with the ubiquitous grid system. The wall texturing also provides a nice contrast to the scenes playing out in front of them, not too dissimilar from those achieved in our last D&D post, Mimic Mishap!

It’s a compelling scenario that is played out all over the world by inspiring (and inspired) dungeon masters and their willing victims (er, players), who act out a type of choose-your-own adventure story with an infinite number of scenarios all dictated by the fateful roll of the dice. I especially appreciate that the basement room not only includes standard geeky paraphernalia on the walls but also books, a scale version of the dungeon map, and character sheets.

You can dip into our archives to see some of Henrik’s past work like the microscale bullfighting scene, and sea serpent attack

For those following along at home, I’ve just gotten enough game experience to hit level 3 and got to pick an archetype for my character. Even though I’m often lost in the wealth of information in the game I’m helped along by my adventure companions and mostly-benevolent DM.

An epic battle on a teeny tiny scale

Straight from a storybook, this little build by Lubeee is simple yet adorable. Titled, “Micro Fable” it gives us a window into another world, and I must say it looks nice under that glass. You can’t help but admire the tiny dueling dragons as they soar above the castle and forest below. I’d love to see this continue as a series of small fable vignettes!

Cute kraken is cracking me up

Behold the beast as it rises from the depths! Fear his googly-eyed gaze! Smirk at his cuteness! And bow down before Kelvin Low‘s innovative LEGO parts usage. This giant Kraken menacing a medieval town’s waterfront is a great example of what can be done when imagination meets even the most specialised LEGO pieces. The aquatic monstrosity is built from T-Rex parts! The colours of the dinosaur torso and tails work perfectly as Kraken-skin, and the threatened town is a nice little collection of microscale buildings. This is just plain old good fun with the bricks.

LEGO outpost under construction

LEGO castles have been a fan favorite subject for builders for a very long time, possibly ever since the release of the classic castle set back in 1978. And we here at TBB feature many castles and other medieval constructions every year. Typically, castle models we feature are fully completed structures, but every now and then, we come across a model that shows the long and arduous construction process that went into building the real-life castles and fortifications that so many builders get their inspiration from.

And that is exactly what we have in this outpost under construction by Ayrlego The keep is situated on a very nicely sculpted riverside setting and features two sections in various stages of construction.

The slate roof uses collectible minifig bases and shows an internal structure of brown pipes. The roof even includes a small stack of slates and a section in progress where 1×1 plates and tiles are used to show the installation process.

At the top of the keep, the main turret is incomplete. The star of the model, for me, is the crane with a wheel which uses human power to raise the rocks needed to complete the work.

There are also many great details in the completed portion of the keep, such as the perfect amount of plates and tiles in alternate colors to give a little wear to the walls. Also, sturdy, well-fortified arrow slits on the first floor, balanced by more detailed windows on the second floor provide a blend of form and function.

A beautiful LEGO baroque cathedral emerges out of nowhere

Every now and again, a mysterious builder pops up, presenting amazing creations, often with little to no additional information in tags, groups or descriptions. Italian builder Giacinto Consiglio is one of such examples, as his Flickr photostream is a hidden gem that was just waiting to be discovered. The builder has been around for many months, mostly focusing on modular buildings. His latest creation is a bit of a deviation from that style, but some of Giacinto’s skills from modular buildings have translated into classical architecture very well.

What will probably be the first thing to impress most people is the grand scale, with its base measuring 96 studs in length and width. It is built in minifig scale, but is not a recreation of any particular cathedral.

Modern methods for ancient masonry

Despite LEGO bricks being bricks, sometimes building realistic walls is the hardest thing to do. Isaac Synder‘s latest Castle-themed creation does exactly that, employing a parts-intensive and fiddly technique to create a lovely brick texture with well-defined lines between the stonework. It creates the effect of weathered masonry, and adds real texture and character to the building. I also like the formal square base, and think the angle chosen for the photography coupled with the colour scheme make this look like something from one of the classic isometric realtime strategy games like Age Of Empires or The Settlers. Great stuff.

Even better, the building has an interior — a textile shop complete with rolls of fabric on display…