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.

LEGO Shop reduces free shipping threshold to $35, gives away Classic Castle knight in July [News]

The LEGO Shop online has just reduced its free shipping threshold from $75 to $35, and in July they’re giving away a Classic Castle knight to all LEGO VIPS with purchases over $50.

Hitting both the $35 and $50 minimum is easy this month with the release of some great new sets. 75828 Ecto-1 & 2 retails for $60 and includes 6 minifigs with 556 parts. Read our review, and it will also be this month’s TBB LEGO giveaway.

10253 Big Ben retails for $250 and includes 4163 pieces (you can read our recommendation in our review from a few weeks ago).

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Hair-raising encounter with a troll

Check out this fun scene from aido k—a troll in its cave about to be interrupted by a group of soldiers. I’m not sure who’s going to come out best in this encounter, but I think my money is going on the big guy. There’s fabulous parts usage here for the troll’s hair—that’s an octopus! It’s so good it actually distracts attention from the equally cool use of an upside-down treasure chest as a mouth.

Ready, Set, Escargot!

This past weekend saw one of the world’s great annual LEGO conventions arrive, Brickworld Chicago. With it came dozens of new builds and spectacular collaborations to dazzle the public. One such dazzling display came from the builders of Eurobricks, a popular online LEGO forum, who built a spectacularly intense and hilarious snail race for the ages.

This award-winning collaboration was a truly large and world-spanning operation kept together with tight planning and a singular cohesive snail design made by team leader Mark Larson. His design, which was itself awarded the title of Best Creature at the convention, was used by nine other builders to construct more snails which were individualized with unique colors and themed castles–and then finally placed into an epic race.

See the rest of the layout after the break

LEGO street scene inspired by Edinburgh’s Royal Mile

This street scene by Maarten W was inspired by the architecture of the Old Town in Scotland’s capital city. The Royal Mile runs from Edinburgh Castle on its plug of volcanic rock, down the ridge, to Holyrood Palace. It’s one of the most famous streets in the world and Maarten has brilliantly captured its picturesque architecture.

There are some lovely LEGO techniques on show here. Check out the blend of bricks used on the left-hand and central buildings, creating an excellent sense of texture without looking scruffy. And the details in the arch above the church door are a fantastic little touch.

I’m an Edinburgh native myself, and I used to run a pub right behind the Tron Kirk (the inspiration for Maarten’s church here). As a result, I really appreciate how well this model captures the spirit and character of my home town. Great stuff.

Kiyonobu Military Centre

This Asian-style castle by Henry F. is so beautifully put together that I can’t stop looking at it. At first glance, this build appears clean and simple, but further reflection reveals tons of amazing details like the wooden lattice-style steps with multiple landings, the iron-barred windows, and the amazing texture Henry built into the rock formations. Henry cleverly designed this build with multiple levels, each one stepped up a little higher than the previous level. This results in a terrific photo composition that shows all the details of the build in one clear photo.

You can check out close-up photos (including a shot of that sweet, mullet-rocking soldier) on Flickr.

Fan makes awesome LEGO Game of Thrones house sigils, and Hodor

LEGO builder Omar Ovalle has spent the last two years working on and off recreating the iconic house sigils from Game of Thrones, from House Stark’s iconic wolf of Winterfell, to House Lannister’s majestic lion of Casterly Rock, and on to some of the lesser known sigils such as House Baelish’s mockingbird. The collection is still a work in progress, but Omar has also taken some time to build a few cool LEGO busts of characters from the series, including the ever-faithful Hodor. Check them all out below!

House Stark

Hodor

Click to see the rest of the house sigils

Flying boats make a forest stop-off

Check out this fantastical scene from Brother Steven. We’ve got medieval-style treehouses, a brawl in a bustling marketplace, and a tethering tree for magical flying boats! Excellent work all round.

This model pulls of a difficult trick — creating a scene with fantasy elements which still manages to feel realistic. It’s well worth clicking through to the original image and zooming in to see all the lovely detail on display in the marketplace around the base of the trees.

A swell sellsword swine

Here to break up your boar-dom and your castle, this pillaging pig by 彥碩陳 is a perfect pairing of adorable and menacing. The Bionicle spiked armor is a great choice for a stiff white mane, and the sculpting of the hog’s face is fantastic.

An Elder Scrolls wonder

I consider some computer games to be pieces of art, and Elder Scrolls has always been one of those. You may find many great details in the stories, dialogues, characters, geography and locations, and Tava’s Beak is among those inspiring landmarks in The Elder Scrolls Online. Thorsten Bonsch is apparently very impressed with this ancient statue from an unknown civilization and decided to recreate it with LEGO parts. The result is magnificent! Almost every curve of the big rock is perfectly represented. Here’s a screenshot from the original game to compare with the LEGO version.

Evenfall Castle

This LEGO castle by Tirrell Brown is just terrific! It’s got the perfect combination of stonework, woodwork, and landscaping. I particularly love the blocky crenellation along the walls and the super-close spacing on those rounded windows in the two wooden towers. I wish I could shrink down to minifig size and explore all the nooks and crannies of this beauty.

A pocket-sized castle for a crafty wizard

Microscale creations often bring out the best in builders, forcing would-be architects to look at mundane LEGO pieces in new and unusual manners, seeing a portcullis arch in a shark’s jaw, fortress spires in Technic pins and embellished walls in pauldrons. Take a look at this fascinating floating castle by Marcel V., and observe how all the tiny details crafted from odd pieces coalesce into a menacing microscale fortress.

The age of the Samurai: a stunningly huge mountain hideaway with working illumination

When your 5 year old son asks you to build a Ninjago city, you only say yes. But Ben Pitchford took things a little bit more seriously and ended up with a massive diorama nearly 4 feet (or 121 cms) high! The building process took almost 9 months, which is way over the attention span of a 5 year old. I guess Ben just needed an excuse to build something large. Luckily he had 100,000 LEGO parts laying around so this fortress was no big deal for him. He sculpted the big mountain with absolute attention and mastered the art of rock building. Ben also hid small LEDs behind transparent parts, so it makes a great scene once illuminated after dark.

The rice field, dojo, shinto shrines, cherry blossom trees, numerous caves, flowing lava, amazing waterfalls, grand stairs, mountain zipline and original Japanese characters make up a most amazing diorama. It will take you some time to absorb all the details, but you can see more photographs below.

Click to see more images