Castle Belisaere by MasterChief1

[Bruce N H]

Hey all,

MasterChief1 posted this beautiful Castle Belisaere to Flickr:

[Traveler]

I like this a lot. It has very clean lines, and a nice balance of building and landscaping.

I would, however, stop short of calling it a castle, looks more like a tower to me.

[Ivar]

I like this. It's a bit small for a castle though, more of a tower. The landscape is great, I love the trees. The door and inside are very small, but all together, a great castle.

[eggplant wizard]

I think that this is a great MOC. I've commented several times on it over at MOCpages as it was being developed. Somehow, I wonder about being on the front page of CC though. I remember awhile back when it was a big deal to do that (i.e. DarkSpawns blogging of it as an acomplishment and my own ambition to one day get there) While this is a great MOC, theres nothing really innovative or different about it. Calling it a castle rather than a tower is a further stretch.

The creations page of CC is a legacy of the evolution of lego castle. I have to ask, what does this piece add to that legacy?

MasterChief's have now conquered the legoUniverse!

[Bruce N H]

Eggy,

I think you and I have different views of the front page feature. It's not simply meant to be a catalog of the most awesome MOCs. Instead it is meant to be something new to look at on a rotating basis that will bring people to the front page, based on things that caught my (or another admin's) eye. It's not quite like a blog, though, because I always contact the builder first for permission and for some information, and then I have to edit the photo, which can take a while (especially with larger MOCs). So it's not often the lastes big thing. I tend to have a backlog of people I've contacted but who's MOCs haven't been posted yet (including yours, btw).

As to the MOCs I post, I think they're all high quality, but if you look through the archive you'll see that they vary greatly - it's not just all huge layouts of giant castles. I also do small things like microscale, vigs and customized figs, medium things like this, and of course larger scale MOCs. I try and mix in some less traditional things now and then like a sculpture or a miniland-scale figure. I also don't keep going back to the same people. It would be quite easy to just post everything from a short list of top MOCers, but I'd rather bring in some variety. Indeed, I give some preference to people outside the CC community - I figure that most CCers have already seen the last castle by MrTS, DARKspawn, Jens etc (just to pick some past CCC winners) - but maybe not from a czech builder who doesn't post on English-language forums. I want to use this as a means to encourage all AFOLs to build castle, not just to reconize those at the top of the craft.

Turning to this tower, I do think it's a perfectly balanced MOC. It uses a number of different techniques - the shape, the arrow slits, the stonework - admittedly most pioneered by other people, but it puts them together quite well. The roof, though, is very well done and I'd not seen that done so well before (you also commented on the roof on Flickr). The evolution of this MOC was very interesting to watch, and some nice techniques were tried and subsequently discarded (the earlier crenellation). Finally, this was a first castle MOC, which is particularly striking given the skill displayed.

On the name, yes, I agree. This is not a castle but more of a watchtower. But I go with the names people use for their own MOCs.

Bruce

[eggplant wizard]

Bruce,

Appreciate the reply. I do find myself going to the site more now that there are weekly moc's featured more like a blog. This is an improvement imo over the once every few months stuff from the last years. Just needed to update my understanding of what it is thats all.

I like the variety of MOCs featured and the emphasis you've placed on techniques as thats something that I'm always focused on. This roof is indeed unique and I'll likely be using it sometime in the future.

-Bryan