Castle Fun (playing for keeps)
Rediscovering my brother’s old castle Lego inspired me to tinker about with lovely grey bricks and do some castling myself. Initially it was just a bumbling wreck (early versions), but then I stumbled across the quarter circle bricks (dammit, I need proper names for bricks!) and those were the seed pieces for the rest. I soon discovered that building across round bricks is not easy and I’d created a considerable problem for myself. Nothing unusual there. I ended up building both upwards and downwards alternately, holding the castle wall awkwardly in my hand and frequently firing bricks across the room. I’ve very much admired the rock formation techniques displayed by many wonderful builders on Flickr, and so I had a go.
I think it’s turned out well. You can check out all the photos on my Flickr photostream.
As the castle grew I realised I’d built a corner and felt no particular desire to expand it sideways (one day maybe) but it seemed to keep going up; I couldn’t find a top I liked. I finally forced myself to stop, although I’m still not certain that I like it now… I did an awful lot of swapping of bricks and unbuild, rebuild, explode, rebuild until it finally had to be attached to something. From there it all felt very natural. I like the plants with the flowers removed and I really like the various leaf and branch pieces.
Up Above And Roundabout
I soon discovered I had quite a lot of space to play with and decorate. I like models you can see and enjoy all the way around. Building up the rocks gave me a natural cellar and what can you put in cellars but the dead… I also had a proper floor and plenty of flat tiles to play with, so I ended up with some quite pretty effects (I think). The skeletons are almost complete, I had to do quite a bit of messing about with parts to get the chap in armour to stay put (he’s clipped to the floor) and I had only one arm (from the wrong skeleton figure), so there’s a lever pin holding the shield in place and a white droid arm holding the axe. I also decided to build the base up and make a bit of a feature out of it, as well as experiment with fitting the awkward boulder shapes in.
Miniature Ogres
The cyclops ogres that came out in Series 11 are fabulous – they have two one-eyed faces and a helmet head. Brilliant. I wanted to make them a bit cuter and increase the appearance of scale so they all have Hobbit legs. I think they’re adorable. I’m not certain whether they live in the castle or just scavenge in its ruins, but I’m glad they’re there.
Everything, in even more painful detail can be found here: Flickr photostream
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