Subject:
|
Re: Middle Earth Ramblings (loooong)
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.castle
|
Date:
|
Mon, 7 May 2001 08:13:33 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
585 times
|
| |
|
|
In lugnet.castle, Bill Jackson writes:
> As some of you might know, I just came out of my Dark Ages. As my post-Dark
> Ages masterpiece, I'm going to build a replica of J.R.R Tolkien's Middle
> Earth, very very microfig-style. However, I want to build Barad-Dur
> (Sauron's MASSIVE tower in Mordor) and Rivendell (Elrond's home in Mirkwood)
> in minifig-style. I'd like to know how some of you would handle recreating
> Middle Earth's races with LEGO minifigs. Here's some of my ideas:
Yay, Tolkien! If LEGO has to go after licenses, I really wish they would get
a LOTR deal. I would like to do the Prancing Pony one day.
> Wizards: Well, we're out of luck here with the current colors of the wizard
> hats. Gandalf was a Grey wizard before reincarnation and a White one
> afterwards. Saruman's title is "of Many Colors", so no luck there.
> Radagast is a Brown Wizard. There are two other wizards but I haven't heard
> too much about them. Anyways, it would be easy enough to paint a Majisto
> Brown, White, and Silver or Chrome for Saruman. I'll probably use the
> space-themed Ice Planet old man head for Gandalf, as the huge eyebrows fit him.
I have a wizard I made that was inspired by Radagast. I'll put up a pic. The
other two wizards were blue, but they don't enter into any of the stories as
far as I know.
> Dragons: Though there were virtually no dragons in Middle Earth near Lord
> of the Rings, I want a full Middle-Earth environment here, not one from one
> particular time period. Normal Lego dragons won't work here, I'm afraid, as
> Middle Earth's dragons are massive and crazy. I'll build Ancalagon the
> Black out of black, obviously, using the stickers from the old Aqua-Raiders
> sets as perfect eyes. If I get around to it, Smaug will be made from red
> bricks with an underside of painted gold bricks. I don't really have an
> interest in making Glaudrung--two dragons are enough work.
As Mladen mentioned, Anthony Sava's dragon is amazing.
> Orcs: Thinking about using the Bull shields for them, as it suits them
> well. I'll either use the trans-green heads from the old Alien sets or the
> Jar-Jar Binks heads for the orcs. I think the trans-green would be more
> realistic, and it looks like an orcish green when put in a helm. For the
> Black Orcs, I could again use the black Alien head. They'll probably wear
> the dragonmasters Centurion helms, as they look best, I think. Also,
> instead of riding horses, I'll probably mount them on the backs of those
> orange Star Wars creatures, though not many orcs ride.
I always wanted to do wolfriders, but it would have to be an awfully big
wolf to seat a minifig.
> Nazgul and Black Numenoreans: The higher echelon of Sauron's evils will
> sport the Fright Knights shields and will have the heads from the old
> Stingray sets, as they look very very evil. The Nazgul can either ride
> Winged Beasts that I actually BUILD for them, or I can take the Pterodactyls
> from the Adventurers sets and color them black.
A cool idea for the Nazgul would be black hoods on plain black heads. If
actual plain black heads are too hard to get a hold of, Darth Maul heads
turned backwards work.
> Khand, Harad, and all of them: All of the races of the south that are
> barely mentioned in LOTR will wear a tan, brown, black, and red motif, and
> will probably use the Dragon Masters shields and flags. I don't know how to
> make elephants for them, so I'll probably end up using the grey Triceratops
> from Adventurers, though it isn't big enough to have a howdah on its back.
Elephants are pretty easy. I have one,
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=2657
but he's a bit small, especially since the "oliphaunts" are supposed to be
way bigger than the elephants we know.
> Ents: Easy stuff here--use the brown wall\tree pieces included in the old
> Forestmen and Dark Forest sets, construct arms out of brown hinges, joints,
> and plates, and stamp a set of sticker eyes from some set on them.
That's a great idea! Of all the stuff I wanted to do, I've never thought
about Ents, and you're right, they should be fairly easy. Look at some of
the mecha people have built to get some ideas on joints and limbs and such.
> Elves: Not as easy as most people think. I'll be using the original
> Forestmen figs--NOT Dark Forest, with their more roguish and Wolfpack-like
> theme. Since elves are magnificent, I'll probably give them all silver
> weapons including painted bows. It doesn't seem like there's anything
> currently out that can truly embody the Elves the way JRR wanted them to be
> embodied.
Echoing Mladen again, Forestmen would really only represent the Mirkwood
elves. I don't have any good ideas on how to do the rest of them.
> Hobbits and Dwarves: No idea, but Dwarves will use the Majisto beard and
> grey Halberds with the bottoms cut off.
>
> Riders of Rohan: Brown spears, brown horses, grey armor and visor
> helms--standard knights.
Also, they were mostly blond (strawheads), so the Luke tan hair piece and
the new yellow female hair piece will come in handy. If I remember
correctly, their colors were green and white; a white horse on a green banner.
> Gondor and such: A more holy look and feel than the Riders of Rohan--white
> horses and flags--they'll probably use the Royal Knight shields.
Another nitpick: I think their colors were black and white; white tree and 7
stars under a silver crown on black. As far as doing customs, people have
done some pretty neat things with stickers. Anthony Sava recently put up
some good stickers he has done.
> I'm shooting for these numbers:
>
> Riders of Rohan: 30 knights, all mounted with spears
> Elves: 70 soldiers, most with bows, only about 3-4 on horseback
> Gondor and the other forces of Men: 70 soldiers, about 15-20 on horseback.
> Hobbits and Dwarves: Only about 4 hobbits, and probably around 20 dwarves.
> Harad, Khand and the South: about 70 soldiers, 15-20 mounted (2-3 elephants)
> Mordor: Nine Nazgul, around 15 Black Numenoreans, and about 120+ orcs
>
> There's the first part of my rant, here's the next:
>
>
> BARAD-DUR construction
>
> Barad-Dur is the greatest bastion in all of Middle Earth, and it should be
> built as such. My vision of this place is to build it in mostly black, with
> a bit of red, light grey, and dark grey when necessary. It will be a
> fortress with countless towers and bastions, so it won't follow the
> traditional wall-with-a-keep build. I want it to be about 6 feet wide by 6
> feet long and 5-7 feet tall. I don't want to use spires and stuff to
> stretch it to 7 feet either--it will be pure, sturdy construction all the
> way to the peak, which will probably be the size of the gatehouse of the
> Royal Knights Castle. It won't have a drawbridge, but instead a massive,
> gothic iron bridge built over a very large water-less moat about 4 or 5
> BURPS high. On the end of the bridge will be a fortified gatehouse about as
> big as, say, the Firebreathing Fortress, and a fortified wall will encircle
> the entire perimeter of the land across the moat. I'm going for a horribly
> evil, gothic look here.I won't be starting soon, though--first I need around
> 10,000 black bricks of various shapes and sizes, probably 100 black castle
> walls, a huge amount of the smaller doors (or maybe I'll use the gate-style
> door of the Firebreathing Fortress), an amazingly large amount of both the
> straight and curved castle stairways, around 3000 black roof tiles and a
> small amount of red ones, close to 100 BURPS, a large amount of grey\black
> baseplates, and to top it off, 2000 grey and dark grey bricks. These are
> only estimates. But the sacrifice will be worth it to build this huge
> thing--in fact I think I'll build the base of it in LDraw rignt now.
That is one ambitious project. Some advice:
Cut out the stair pieces and just build the stairs out of bricks and/or
plates when possible. Those stair pieces are expensive.
You will need a bunch of slopes; especially 1x2x3 75 degree slopes and
inverse slopes to make cool pointy shapes. Slopes can also be combined to
make neat looking windows.
The small rounded doors require 1x1x2 bricks with shutter holders to hold
them. These are especially difficult to come by in black (I know, I am
constantly searching for them for my half-timber buildings).
An idea I just had: maybe you should build a gigantic red eye into the
tower somewhere, like over a gate or something.
Anyway, good luck with your project. If you get it done the way you want, it
will definitely be something to see.
-Marc Nelson Jr.
|
|
Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Middle Earth Ramblings (loooong)
|
| As some of you might know, I just came out of my Dark Ages. As my post-Dark Ages masterpiece, I'm going to build a replica of J.R.R Tolkien's Middle Earth, very very microfig-style. However, I want to build Barad-Dur (Sauron's MASSIVE tower in (...) (23 years ago, 6-May-01, to lugnet.castle)
|
16 Messages in This Thread:
 
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
This Message and its Replies on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
