zaterdag 7 januari 2017

Building Middle Earth episode 1

In this new monthly column on my small corner of the internet, I`m going to take a look at all (or, if any) work I can do on my plan to build the entirety of Middle Earth in LEGO.

Now, this will appear every first saturday of the month hopefully, and so let`s kick this off with the new year, and hope I get finished by the time episode 1000 ever gets typed up...

Now, I must admit, I started this project out of the idea of wanting to do a big lay out with the few MOCs and displays I`d already done for my favorite Lego theme (yes, I keep calling the The Lord of the Rings theme and the The Hobbit theme just "the Tolkien theme"), Tolkien. 
Then I went to see on the map of Middle Earth what I wanted to build apart from displays for the released sets.



Then it went all downhill as I kept seeing things (both from the movie and book) that I want to build, as I circled their rough locations on the map...

The red ones are done, the other ones I`m either working on or want to do...

Now, in search for additional reference material, I (finally?) started playing Lord of the Rings Online, in it's Free to Play version.  This allows me to wander the whole world in search of nice landmarks as inspiration (picture one, an Elven patio out in the wilds) or visit reknowned locations like Rivendell (picture 2).


Needless to say, with time more circles will appear on my map...

Now, I have been doing some work on two projects since my last random work-in-progress update in 2016, I`m just going to use this regular feature to bundle them all together instead of making a whole knick-knack of randomly posted blog entries.

For my Dwarrowdelf build, I have been working a bit on the pillar of the bridge at the front, as I unearthed some more dark blueish grey masonry bricks in my boxes. 


I also started doing some more work in the first layer of the surrounding rockwork, but this build is currently a bit slowed until I get around ordering a lot of masonry bricks again, or they end up in the PAB wall at my local Lego store.

The second build I have been doing work on is my The Shire set display.  In all honesty, I want to have this ready for Elftopia, a fantasy / medieval convention taking place half of august.  With Bag's End being such an iconic location (and just a downright fantastic set), I find it a fitting build to aim for to display in a castle garden.
I managed to "close up" the entire front grassy slope since it's last wip update, together with the raised road.  This road will serve to place Gandalf's cart set on, while it also includes the Frodo's Cooking Corner as well as 2 limited edition Bilbo's.

Next on the planning for this build are doing the stream and the small piece of land across it, and making some random Hobbits to get an idea where I want to "create hamlet life" on the plate, so that'll probably be seen in next month's update.

On a different matter, I had build a small vignette recently for the Eurobricks Xmas Raffle, a yearly tradition that I entered for the first time. 
You need to build something within the said theme, this year being snow, and then just hope you get randomly drawn.  I came out on the 16th of december, no idea yet what I've won though.
But that isn`t the most important thing.  The little vignette I build, depicting the Caradhras passage, evoked a very lovely compliment over on Twitter:

Well, that's it for the first episode of this new series on the Blog, hope you liked it and I will keep you posted on my progress in a month's time!

1 opmerking:

  1. As a LOTR fan, I will follow what's happening next on your blog!
    If you need inspiration (pictures, artork, background info) you may contact me. I have a huge collection of books, many illustrated concerning Middle Earth.
    I live not that far away from Antwerp. (ex TSA member)
    Groeten,
    Wim

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