Tag Archives: Lake-town

Smaug brings fire and ruin to Lake-town

From The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug comes a scene of fiery wrath by W. Navarre. This build exists for the Middle-earth LEGO Olympics, bringing an iconic scene from the movie to life. Bard the Bowman pauses a moment as his home is set ablaze by the vengeful dragon Smaug, his determination to save his family and fellow townsfolk set by the heat. The fire illuminates some wonderfully crafted LEGO building and buildings. The homes have great details and features, though those sconces are no longer necessary with Smaug’s flames lighting the place. Some of the roofs have printed tiles, but others have the textures of Technic tread pieces. Of course, the town isn’t the only cool thing in the scene–the ice floating in the water is pretty neat too. The ice is brick-built sideways with slopes and wedges to give it those angles and edges. Though, I think most of it will melt until Smaug stops throwing fire around everywhere.

The Desolation of Lake-town

Smaug the brick-built dragon

We’ve seen LEGO Tudor-style buildings before, and quite often the building is the main focus of the creation. We’ve also seen LEGO brick-built dragons before, and just like the Tudor-style buildings, they too tend to be the main focus of the creation. Not so for KitKat1414, however. They built an amazing Tudor-style house to represent one of the houses of Lake Town and it is lit! No literally, it is on fire!

The (New) Master of Laketown

For the woodwork on the house, Kitkat1414 used window frames and filled those in with bars to represent the wooden beams. In other places, the window frames were filled in with cheese slopes representing stained glass windows. Often these types of buildings can be very earth-toned, and while that’s mostly the case for this one, if you look closely you can spot quite a few colours being used. There is a lot of sand blue and even some lavender hidden in the roof, and the house gets a dark green door which complements the dark red Smaug in a lovely way. The dragon itself is a true work of art and there are multiple parts used in very clever ways. One that really deserves a quick mention is the use of the Bionicle minifigure legs for the dragon’s nose bridge and eye sockets. The last part that deserves a little highlight is the angled bar with stud used to represent icicles. And naturally, there are quite a few Tolkien references hidden in this wonderful build. Can you spot them all?

Smaug the Tremendous taking down Lake-town

To this day it still baffles me that they managed to make three movies out of the book The Hobbit. It’s not a complaint, I do love the movies, but it’s just strange to me. Especially since the book is about a third the length of The Lord of the Rings, which also is three movies long. But let’s not get into that for now. Jaap Bijl drew inspiration from the movie The Hobbit for their latest LEGO creation.

Attack on Laketown

Here we see the dragon Smaug setting flame to Lake-town. The atmosphere Jaap managed to create is amazing. Smaug itself is a miniature and the fire he is breathing is done simple yet really effective with bricks, plates and tiles transitioning from yellow to red. Smaug being dark red makes him feel and look like he is part of the fire he is creating. But what’s interesting is that not a single fire piece was used in this creation, and yet it still looks and feels very much on fire. One thing that also contributes to this great model is the backdrop, which to me hardly even looks like it is edited in. Framing the main scene with a dark brick build archway is a really nice and effective way to set the mood and draw your attention to the center of the picture. However, if you zoom in on the arch you’ll find lots of hidden details in the darkness. Last but not least I would like to note the use of round quarter tile to create those great rooftop shingles.