Tag Archives: Robert Maier

The medieval market village gets a fresh new look

If you’ve been a LEGO fan throughout childhood, this situation might be familiar to you: spending hours staring at a set you’ve always wanted in the catalog, obsessing over it until you’d memorized every detail in that set, down to every last brick. For me, that set was the 10193 Medieval Market Village, with the hinge-open village houses and waterwheel powered blacksmith hammer. It was a beauty back then and it still does in this recent Medieval Market Village redux by Robert Maier, aka hellboy.bricks. Drawing inspiration from all the original set’s essential features, this revamp uses more complex techniques yet still holds all the character and charm of the original Medieval Market. The brick-built tree branches have been substituted with Technic connectors, a pumpkin patch has been added in the back, and macaroni tiles now adorn the blacksmith shop’s archways. The classic brick slope roofing on both buildings has also been swapped out with a cheese slope roof for the blacksmith shop and a curved tile roof for the medium blue house. Also, the olive green looks gorgeous on the newly paved cobblestone, a color that you wouldn’t have found in this 2009 set.

Missing the good ol’ days of the Castle theme? Robert has made another set redux (hint: there’s goats) that you can check out here.

Salazar Slytherin’s slithering serpent stalks students

Robert Maier has opened the LEGO Chamber of Secrets and unleashed a fantastic beast of a basilisk! If you’ve followed Robert for a while like we have you’ll note this model, while a bit of a departure from his usual post-apocalyptic fare like a toxic wasteland and a world without trains, displays his typical knack for textured, murky worlds.

Harry Potter - Chamber of Secrets

In this scene you can see Tom Marvolo Riddle (AKA teen Voldemort) near the climax of the book/movie after he has spent months manipulating Ginny Weasley with his diary-Horcrux. Here she’s unconscious just before Harry Potter swoops in to save the day on Fawkes the phoenix in a bit of deus ex machina. The ambiance of the scene is perfect with bones of victims past, rotting plant life, and foggy water. The basilisk model itself dominates the chamber as it slithers out of Salazar Slytherin’s statue. I especially like the vertical nature of the statue against the horizontal striations of the chamber walls. You can check out some finer details of the basilisk itself in the closeup shot below. It’s a far cry from the basilisk we reviewed in the Hogwarts Great Hall!

Closer look - Basilisk