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The Dragon of Hillfont Castle

Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 8:20 pm
by Gomur
Well, a few weeks back I shared with the forum that right around the time I came out of my Dark Age, we purchased for my son the Duplo Dinosaur Valley set that had the fur pieces I've used in a couple of MOC's and also this cave-like baseplate:

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogColors. ... =31384&v=2

I had wanted to do something different/special with the baseplate since I first saw it, because I knew it would be terrific to site a castle on top of. So here's what I came up with:

Image

Front (High res):http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Gomur ... 0_5439.jpg
Rear: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Gomur ... esized.jpg

The dragon was brick-built just by eye, and it came out ok I think. I couldn't resist putting our brave old Knight and his trusty squire in the MOC. Think that bow and arrow will do them any good?

Also, as per a previous conversation about crenellations, note the minimal use of them here as my ideas for how it could be done unobtrusively and still be unequivocally a fortress-like castle.

Gallery when modded: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=342367

Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 2:11 am
by Muskey15
Great job! You really made the Duplo cave piece look good. They don't have much of a chance against such a dragon, with all the dead bodies in its cave. :wink:

-Muskey

Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 4:41 pm
by legokilt
I like the usage of the Duplo cave. I think it gives more depth to the MOC. The tower looks like some dark wizard should be hiding in the top. Very well done.

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:31 pm
by RocketSeason
This is very cool. The cave piece is neat, and so is the dragon.

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:36 pm
by CastleLord
Really great moc Gomur. I espesialy like the duplo cave piece. :D

CastleLord

Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 2:10 pm
by Ye Olde Republic
Duplo is really an untapped resource, thanks for showing everyone the way. Building on that cave gives the castle and iteresting shape that may not have happened were you just to build in on a flat plate.

That poor squire doesn't even get a helmet!

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:56 am
by Gomur
Hehe, yeah, no helmet for the squire yet! I was thinking of building some sort of knighting ceremony as my next MOC. I'll probably get to that when I finish the LDD designs I'm working on. Thanks for the encouragement. It did provide an interesting challenge to use the shape of the cave and landscape it AND make a castle that still looked somewhat realistically proportioned. I love that someone picked up on the evil wizard tower thing. That design was similar but slightly different from the Summoner's Tower in the huge MOC I did a couple of weeks ago.

Sadly I don't have a wizard. I have a hodge-podge purple guy with no beard that I threw together from the Harry Potter sets I got, but it doesn't really have the same effect.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 6:23 am
by Heir of Black Falcon
Looks pretty neat. Not sure why you did not place crenelation on it still but OK. Love the terrain on it. The contrast of the black and gray also is very nice.

R

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 11:36 am
by Prince Imdol
Very good job. The landscaping is very well done. My only suggestion is to fix the waterfall, and use more trans bricks. It would make it more realistic.


P.I

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 6:25 pm
by Gomur
It was my first stab at a waterfall, and I had fairly limited trans bricks to choose from. I used every piece I had almost. I'll have to study some of the other designs people have used to really perfect that. This one I did pretty much just by eye.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 10:58 pm
by Prince Imdol
Very good job. The landscaping is very well done. My only suggestion is to fix the waterfall, and use more trans bricks. It would make it more realistic.


P.I