The True WINTERFELL according to the books, EPIC 3d model, tour and comparison

[Music] greatings i'm shannon youtuber author and huge medieval enthusiast and one of the things i like to do on my youtube channel is to look at fantasy castles and see how historically accurate they are but not only just that just how well-designed they are from a functional and defensive standpoint and I actually did that for Winterfell from The Game of Thrones TV series well after I did my deep analysis on the overall design of Winterfell many of my own fans were saying Chad you should redesign it and make it proper because unfortunately there were a lot of things wrong with it well in hearing that not fully understanding the rabbit-hole that this would send me down I thought that's a great idea now in the beginning just based on my criticisms of the TV show Winterfell there were some obvious improvements but then I had a thought I thought that would lead to the whole consumption of every free hour of time I had for the next few weeks and I'm not kidding you see I've designed castles before I love them I study them and as a natural result I like to design my own and in fact people tell me my fans they say shad you should design your ultimate castle and I've already actually done that it's called honor guard I've made a full video giving a detailed analysis breakdown and tour of this castle it's basically my tribute to historical castles and fantasy castles cuz it does have fantasy elements in its design and through this process I have become quite adept at using a very basic but user-friendly 3d modeling software called Sketch up this is the program that I design all my castles in vanilla castles swords and everything like that so I actually have the skill set to redesign Winterfell into the best state it possibly could be in historically accurate to the castle like elements that actually go into an overall castles design but also be true to the source material and the thought was this if I'm going to improve the Winterfell design why not make it more accurate to how Winterfell is depicted in the books as especially if the depiction of the books is just a better design castle from the get-go so instead of just improving the TV Winterfell no I decided I'm going to use the book Winterfell as my basis and just on cursory glance it really did seem like the book Winterfell was way better designed than the TV show one and there are some very significant differences indeed the differences are so significant I need to explain some of them to you and this video is going to be epic indeed I decided to recruit the services of a friend and associate of mine who I've been working with to bring on a garden to the Unreal Engine for a future project so a big THANK YOU to Yorick for helping out with this video and I'll link to his art station page in the description below and of course huge thanks to my editor oz we've all put in a tremendous amount of time and effort into making this video this video is going to be one of the most polished most detailed and requiring more man-hours than any video I have done to date I'm really excited for it and I can't wait to show you how this design turned out yet before we get there there are some very important things I want to go over first it's really important to understand the differences between the TV show Winterfell in the book winter felt so I'm going to explain some of those differences so we have a good point of reference then I want to share with you what makes winter Phil's design uniquely different compared to real castles because there are some in like Winterfell is a monster and not only that the game of throwing castles are just insane and then after I build those foundations and we have a good point of reference I'm going to reveal what the true Winterfell looks like a no but that's amazing and after that I'll be sharing with you some of the additional design choices I made for the layout for some of the buildings and a breakdown of all the iconic buildings mentioned in the books and a tour of the layout so you can truly see that this is Winterfell one of the main differences between the tv-show Winterfell and the book Winterfell is size and I'm not like wow that the sizes are so different and honestly it was a little tricky for me to get a good baseline to fiy how big Winterfell actually is because when looking to the official wiki which has a great breakdown of the castle with quotes from the books where the design and information is directly sourced it wasn't any direct reference to the size of Winterfell full footprints but there was a reference to the size of the godswood and on that wiki there is actually a layout design for what Winterfell should look like according to the books according to her weather made this basic image and actually disagree with a decent amount of it some of the design elements are not very good in regards to overall castle design the size of the buildings are completely skewed especially if you're going off the scale that this image gives but it certainly a respectable effort absolutely the godswood as described in the books is said to be three acres in size just just think about that three acres okay so just trying to get a size comparison from the pictures because we don't have anything to directly scale TV winter fall from godswood as shown on TV Winterfell should actually be about twice as big as what you see there now the great thing about Sketchup it's actually a CAD program you can design everything to exact scale and so just working out some very basic math a circle with a diameter of around one hundred and 26 metres gives us a very close footprint of three acres the mass was annoying to figure that out but correct me if I'm wrong but pretty like I'm very certain after double-checking it this is about three acres the thing is there according to the books the godswood is said to be in side Winterfell the ancient gods wood of Winterfell er stood untouched for tens of thousands of years with three acres of old packed earth and close together trees creating a dense canopy which the castle was raised around Earth that means the godswood is inside the walls of Winterfell not placed separate - it's in the side now I completely understand why the people who made the TV show put the godswood off to the side because putting it such a sea and their gods word is only half the size of what it should be right but even putting that inside the wall winterfell would by necessity have to expand the outer walls that encircles the whole thing just so you have enough room for all the buildings and perhaps then Winterfell would have been too big for them but this is how big Winterfell should be and I'm not going to cut any corners so that is exactly what I did to get a rough kind of baseline for how big the overall Winterfell footprint should be and it's huge okay and the circles you see here isn't the shape that I ultimately went for Winterfell I think Winterfell would have a more natural kind of shape in regards to the angle of its outer walls that would follow the land in which it was built on it's not going to be perfectly symmetrical but this gives me something to work on I can compare the sizes of the shapes and make sure that they conform to about roughly the correct dimensions to give you a baseline here is Annika the castle I designed and in regard to the sizes of standard historical castles honor guard is a monster there are other historical castles that come in - about the similar sizes and other castles that have much larger footprints but those are actually the exceptions and if you want a detail breakdown and watch my honor guard video but honor guard in comparison to most historical castles like I said is huge now let's compare honor guards footprint to the footprint size that Winterfell will have do you see the size difference and don't get confused by this outer square of honor guard because that's not on a guards footprint the footprint is right here and that's about the size of just the godswood I grabbed the godswood and bring it around yeah the quads wood is actually bigger in its footprint than all of honor guard so Winterfell just by comparison is a monster of a castle but it's not the only one Winterfell in regards to the castles in game of Thrones is rather conservative Riverrun Casterly Rock and of course Harrenhal which is mostly destroyed but Harrenhal in its heyday are in way bigger than Winterfell or just by the descriptions and personally I love this feature of Game of Thrones and I feel it's missing from the TV shows because the castles in the TV shows do not come nearly close to capturing the insane epicness of these monster castles in Game of Thrones this is like a feature of this fantasy setting that castles are monstrous in size the next big difference between a tv-show Winterfell and book Winterfell are the size of the walls book Winterfell gives us a size that is very specific according to the wiki of Ice and Fire Winterfell is a huge castle complex spanning several acres well I've got that so far defended by two massive walls of gray Granite's with a wide moat between them the outer wall is 80 feet high while the inner wall is 100 feet high with a wide moat between them okay okay so already that sounds really impressive 80 feet and a hundred feet I was not prepared for how big this really is when you make a model that reflects the accurate sizes and I'm not kidding so with the good a point of reference I was able to make as to the overall size of Winterfell footprints I then adapted it to some natural shapes that would conform to the land Winterfell is built on and so this would be like a godswood and the outer wall line would be something like here I ultimately went with this kind of shape and design to begin with to get a good baseline and this is the right size this is several acres okay so when the first footprint is huge but when you add walls to it suddenly the footprint doesn't look nearly as big but that's an illusion created by how insanely big these walls are 80 feet and a hundred feet and the godswood has an inner wall around it - this is crazy again let's compare my castle on a guard as a point of reference to Winterfell in regards to the wall sizes the largest the tallest walls in honor guard is the inner wall okay so if we zoom in here and we go and have a look these inner walls here are pretty down large but but also well within the realms of the sizes of historical castle walls they are 10 meters high now the inner all of Winterfell is a hundred feet that's 30 meters three times larger than the inner wall of honor guard let's now bring in the walls of Winterfell and compare them to the size of honor guard side by size is to get a comparison and do you see the size difference here like oh my goodness winterfell's walls are almost as tall as honor guards on its hill okay and this inner wall being thirty meters high why oh my goodness I'm just gonna grab a section of this wall bring it over and compare the wall size when actually put flat alright let's put it flat right on that wall so this is the bottom of honor guards main in a wall and that's the size of Winterfell in a wall right there this thing is and it honestly creates not only a design problem but a functional problem for the internal buildings of Winterfell because they're gonna be overshadowed by this outer wall it's just so big literally the internal buildings will be dwarfed I grabbed it on a guards gate house doesn't even come to the size of this wall it's not even sitting at the right height if I bring it down and put it on the actual ground level on a guards gate house which is a large gate house on normal castle sizes is literally dwarfed by the outer wall and the inner wall is even bigger now of course Winterfell 's main keep and everything is gonna be larger in size compared to not only honor God but of course castles designs generally but even then they are going to be dwarfed and especially the secondary smaller buildings and things which would of course fill up be all around Winterfell internal Bailey they're just dwarfed and you barely see them from the outside I pasted in honor guards keep inside Winterfell x' walls just to get a comparison of how small in total buildings will look inside these monster walls and remember honor guard is very large when it comes to historical castles and of course yes Winterfell will make the internal buildings a bit bigger but to still and keep them in the realm realms of realism just love this castles completely dwarfed and even the larger Winterfell ones again will be completely dwarfed you can barely see on a god behind these monster walls so my solution to this problem is that the ground level of the internal bailey will actually be on a higher elevation than the external ground level and the way that you justify this is that these walls were simply built around a broad flat hill something like this which is actually the land area I used for my own Winterfell model very broad very flat but don't let the you know perspective fool you this is actually huge like 20-something acres in size and so they found on this broad flat hill and then you dug out the sides of it and added the walls as kind of a retaining wall to this inner portion of raised earth and now look at this the internal walls totaled nearly as huge and they will not do off the internal buildings nearly as much this is far more workable and far more practical let me say as well and also beneficial from a defensive standpoint it doesn't take too long for the internal defenders to get atop these walls from the inside and defend the outside and according to Winterfell in between these two massive walls is going to be a moat and to let you know just getting to this stage on Winterfell to sign already took a huge amount of effort and time to do just like making it the land area ready for it this is the internal geometry well it was fun as well especially when you're working towards an exact kind of result but to get the contour and the hills everything because when develop actually said to have Hills like they're like the internal land was not flattened inside Winterfell there are internal Hills inside the walls ok and so this is actually very accurate to Winterfell internal Bailey you will notice when I give the big reveal as to finish the design the godswood doesn't stay in this location I do need to push it off to the side a bit to make room for the main central keep but also they all keep and all the other important buildings that supposed to fit inside window fells walls so already the book Winterfell is quite different to the TV show Winterfell not only in size the size is a huge difference they layout meaning the godswood needs to be inside and the fact that there are two external walls instead of one line of walls and the walls are just so big according to the box the next divergence in my design comes to the overall aesthetics such as the design of the crenellations the corbels the matriculation z' the shape of the towers and the angle of the roofs well in regards to Winterfell there are a couple of things that actually told me what it should be not my own choice I was informed by my basic understanding and in my very first analysis that the castles from Game of Thrones I criticized Winterfell the design from the TV show for having the angle of the roofs be so low because if this is in a colder climate and need to deal with snow which the whole thing of the Starks is the angle of the roofs need to be much steeper so the snow will slide off the roofs and that is exactly the design I was gonna go for with Winterfell high angled roofs were going to be a necessity and that also changes the look of the book Winterfell very considerably compared to the TV show the next thing to consider was the shape of the towers and generally circular towers are far better than square towers but then when I really thought about the aesthetic kind of feel of Winterfell the nature of the Starks sharp strong angles felt very appropriate through the Starks and Winterfell so I decided to go with octagonal shaped towers eight phases which actually gives you the effectiveness of a circular Tower but has a different aesthetic this shape right here has a very different look and it is more appropriate to the Starks in Winterfell in my opinion and then from there it was a corbels the matriculation and the crenellations these are the battlements of honor guard a very traditional castle-like design with that matriculation being rounded arches the corbels being kind of curved as well as the merlyn's having an internal arrow slit pointed tips on the merlyn's and of course the internal Crennel which gives us the overall battlements this didn't match Winterfell and in fact I decided to actually keep the design style from the TV series as a bit of a nod and try and keep at least some small visual similarity to the TV show Winterfell because most of the other elements needed to change and so this is the design of the battlements of Winterfell very blocky bricky matriculation z' with very sharp angled cobbles holding it up and that is to match the style of the crenellations at the top kind of like double stepped in merlyn's and that's suited quite nicely this is what Winterfell should look like and just look at the aesthetic difference between these types of battlements honor guards battlements and Winterfell 's dis changing this small thing affects the aesthetic considerably and then when you ramp it up to the size of the tower well these are the type of meticulous ins that stepped out upper portion of the tower that you see here as a very distinct look and we'll give Winterfell a very distinct look and hopefully some similarity to the TV show where we can keep it but the high angled roof here changes things very considerably but it's a necessity because Winterfell well it has to deal with winter funnily enough my next job was to design all the internal buildings and that was a job in and of itself I went through multiple different layouts to figure out the best shape for the internal keep but it's not just they keep there is the old keep with the gargoyles lining the top that bran is pushed off of there's the broken Tower there's the library tower there's the internal guard room barracks a Great Hall and all those things needed to be designed and so I ended up making quite a few assets and everything between the designs working with them and then it was a matter of putting it all together to get the final finished result of what Winterfell should truly look like if you were trying to be as accurate as possible to the books but also according to accurate castle design with a consistent aesthetic it is my pleasure to reveal to you the true Winterfell [Music] so I have to tell you guys I am really pleased with the result this is probably my finest work I've ever done in Sketchup and the most impressive castle I've ever modeled it took over a hundred hours to make and I tell you I made it as accurate as I could to the descriptions according to the wiki which come from the books of a Song of Ice and Fire there are some small concessions I had to make and some even additions I put in to just fill it out properly but overall this is like 95% accurate to the books and my even fully accurate because I think some descriptions were vague and I was how do you determine exactly where something needed to go as comparison to what also to let everyone know I've uploaded the Sketchup version of this model onto the Sketchup warehouse where anyone can download it for free and have a close look play around and honestly if you want to repurpose the assets and use it in whatever projects you want you want to model the inside of these buildings be my guest I released this is a free resource to the Internet it is my pleasure to give it to you and not only that separate to this completed model I've also uploaded the assets all these different kind of build assets of Winterfell onto the Sketchup warehouse you can download the free version of Sketchup it's called Sketchup Meg and then just sign up to the warehouse download it directly into Sketchup and then play around have fun you can then export this whole model as a cloud Dae file and import it into other 3d modeling software like blender or the Unreal Engine and do whatever you want with it to give us a full point of reference as to the sheer magnitude of Winterfell have a look at it side by side with honor guard it is a monster the central keep itself is about the size of honor guard and it's mountain together it's just crazy when you go up to have a look at the footprint the footprint of Winterfell 's internal kind of castle which is accurate to the books there's an internal castle that's attached to the key that's about the full footprint size of honor guards footprints sorry what are we looking at here because there is a lot of elements to this castle and a lot to break down first of all speaking broadly you'll see those small aesthetic choices now applied on the macro scale the overall so the design of those crenellations and corbelling when combined and then repeated throughout the entire model well it looks amazing high angle Druce now something you'll also notice because I do point this out generally as a criticism on other castles is that the roofs on these castles are stiring they aren't wood the only way you can achieve this is if the underside of these stone roofs have a vaulted ceiling and that is exactly what's happened here because Winterfell needs to be made to handle huge amounts of snow this is why all the roofs where there are Roose if they're made out of wood are very high angled and when there are not wooden roofs well there's stone floors right at the top here because again they need to be made to withstand huge amounts of weight looking at the layout of Winterfell from above you'll notice that there are many accurate elements according to the wiki there are guard turrets on the outer wall and more than thirty watch turrets on the crenelated inner wall one of those thirty watch turrets on the inner wall it was hard to determine if that was actually referring to towers or act like smaller turrets and to cover my bases I actually added both there should be proper tower walls as a part of the inner wall line and on those tower walls I also added watch turrets and zoom in that's what these are right here so each one of these wall towers has a watched turret attached to them and it says there's more than thirty well on this model there is exactly thirty one we have the wide moat in between the two outer walls and you will notice that I place the godswood opt the side of it this was to Center the inner castle which makes the overall silhouette of Winterfell from the front just look incredible you can actually see the divided parts of Winterfell quite well from this bird's-eye view you'll see the old keep in the Old Bailey the inner castle and the main keep also known as the great key and the internal divisions of Winterfell there are several internal Bailey's or Ward's within the castle specifically seven if you count the godswood as well I was particularly happy with the design of the outer gate house because there are many layers of battlements to it with ramparts and arrow loops all overlooking the main entrance to the castle and because there are two massive walls to Winterfell there is a secondary gatehouse behind the first one which is connected by two draw bridges each one able to be raised I mean the defense ability of this castle is just epic you'll notice that for this design I decide to not do a secondary line of battlements facing the inside there's nothing there that means if any enemy ever takes the outer wall they have no defensive battlements facing the opposite direction to defend themselves from people attacking them from the internal wall each section of wall is separated by consecutive towers so if one part of the wall Falls they haven't taken the whole wall because then they need a battle and fight through one of these towers to just get to another Park if the entire outer wall is taken there a collapsible wooden bridges where the defenders can retreat through to get to the secondary bigger wall and then collapse the bridge behind them so the enemy can't get access and these wooden bridges are placed at regular intervals around four walls there are many very important iconic buildings that comprise Winterfell as a whole so I want to point them out individually because they're all there everything you see here was not put there without reason or cause you actually might be how to pick out some of the iconic building this year if you're familiar with Game of Thrones but I'm going to point out each one and explain why I designed it the way I did mostly to be accurate to the books of course the most important building is of course the great keep I actually went through a lot of different designs to try and find out the best and most appropriate grand keep for Winterfell and there was a couple of you know hidden misses some that was okay some that didn't really feel right and I ultimately settled on something to get bit more authentic to the medieval period a bit more kind of strong military which is basically what you see this design here but of course with high angled roofs on the which is the keep you see here but the grand keep of Winterfell is attached to many other buildings and so I needed to take that into account as well for instance the great keep is actually attached to the armory by a covered bridge that is also supposed to be a window on the covered bridge which you can look out of and see the entire yard so this of course informs me as to the placement of these buildings the armory is right here and it's basically a keep in and of itself going with the size of Winterfell how large and impressive and built up this castle is and then on the other side of this internal kind of Castle this is like a castle within a castle which is accurate according to the books the great keep is the innermost Castle and stronghold of the castle complex meaning it has its own internal defensive system essentially and you can see that here this is the internal castle of the larger castle of Winterfell and as appropriate the Great Hall is right next to it inside this internal castle and the Great Hall is a bit tricky to try and do because it's huge according to the wiki inside the Great Hall can hold eight long rows of trestle tables four to each side of the central aisle and can seat 500 people and so that's what this design is here in actual fact you wouldn't really see it because I haven't designed the inside of this building but the first floor is actually very high goes up to this level and these windows here actually represent a kind of mezzanine walkway platform that circle the entire first floor and then the additional floors above are like fancier guest rooms for people whom the wards want to house with in this in a castle we have the small Sept built by Lord Eddard Stark for his wife Catelyn Tully we also have the library tower which has a staircase that wraps around the outer side and I thought it very appropriate in just designing convenience to have a connection between the library tower and the great keep so people who are living in the keep can walk to the library tower and do their reading and research without actually having to exit the keep itself you have sealed off access to the other walls from this inner castle they see what off it means you actually have to go through doors which means you can barricade and block off access to the inner castle from the outer walls but it also means you do have that direct access and the inner castle has to gate houses that provide access one of the other crucially important buildings of Winterfell is the old keep and broken Tower according to the description the first key is a squat round drum tower I found this very interesting because a drum tower isn't a type of castle that actually exists unless it's a misidentification of what is called a shell keep a show keep is basically a circle keep and that's the most accurate one that I felt they were going for so that is what I designed the first keep as this is a very large and impressive shall keep now as fallen into disrepair and people don't use it but what's very important about the first keep is that you get access to the broken tower through the first keep bran climbs the first keep to get to the broken tower because that's where he likes to feed the Ravens this is also very important to the story because bran is pushed off from the first keep because that is where Cersei and Jaime Lannister is accidentally caught out by bran doing something crawly inappropriate the first keep is lined with gargoyles at the top and is squat for its dimensions it's still fairly big but that is accurate according to the descriptions bran when looking at the first key after something happens Winterfell remarks on how surprised he is that he actually survived a fall around the first keep is what is called the inner ward where the Lich yard is located the Lich shard is actually where the servants of Winterfell are buried and it has access to the underground crypt this oldest space the inner ward is also where archery practice takes place and according to the description this archery practice is located next to the broken Tower which also places the broken Tower inside this in a ward and also next to the first keep which all makes sense because bran climbs the first keep to get to the broken Tower as well the broken Tower was once the tallest building in Winterfell and is currently where the crow's nest is according to the wiki the guard Hall is in line with the bell tower and further back the first keep this able to give me the reference point I need for their position and sorry here we have the main guard room or essentially the barracks a very large and impressive building because the amount of people that would be living in Winterfell this is a small city almost and just to house the amount of soldiers here you need a large and impressive building like this but not only that if there are individual residents of Winterfell who want to have a home for themselves to raise their family well that means there's going to be a lot more building scattered around the internal courtyards which I have added in and I'll get to a bit later and according to the description in line for the guard room is the bell tower and further back the first key according to the wiki the bell tower is connected to the Rookery by a bridge with the maesters turret located underneath the Rookery is where the ravens are raised the bridge is covered and runs from the fourth floor of the tower to the second floor of the Rookery and this is exactly what I've done here we have the covered bridge which actually sits atop the dividing wall between these two Bailey's and glass gardens were an interesting thing to try and design for me because greenhouses didn't exist in the medieval period so how would you design greenhouses with medieval technology because glass that exists and my conclusion was to use archers like we see in Gothic cathedrals diamond pattern medieval glass filling in between of the ancient we would in the center of the godswood overlooking a pool of black water and then across the godswood beneath the windows of the guesthouse an underground hot spring feeds three small pools so this of course then gave me the position of the guesthouse which I interpreted to be like the the most fancy kind of in for people who travel to Winterfell kind of like a country club retreat I mean it's right near those fancy Hot Springs and explains why people might want to stay in the guest house and not the many guest rooms that would be located above the Great Hall or within the great keep we have the dog kennels which is located near the back gatehouse the main blacksmith a brewery where obviously brew a bath does his work and many other buildings as well but what are these additional buildings because even if not stated explicitly just for the general function daily procedure and special events the car so there are some very important buildings that should be present for instance the granaries okay this is where all the food stores would be kept and for a castle complex this massive is gastly gonna need to be several granaries just to hold everything that be stores in the undercroft of the main castle itself the great keep but this castle is supporting the population of a small city there would be thousands of people here which means a lot of food which means you need a lot of storage and so we have a very large primary granary right here one for the inner castle and one located near the stables and horse shod of the castle which would actually hold most of the animal feed and this of course brings me to the stables and horse yard of winter fo we have very large tables here to house the Lords horses and of course chicken coops as well these people are going to be eating a lot of eggs also very appropriate and necessary a tiltyard or jousting arena and a Market Square there's an undercover portion of the market and an open-air section of the market as well we've got a tavern and shelter drinking area which of course is located near the main tool yard because whenever they have a large tournament or joust you're going to be wanting the alcohol nearby for the festivities and of course that is located near the primary brewery so the alcohol doesn't have to travel too far to get to the outside tavern there are also two greatest stables that are located closer to the main entrances of the castle this is so people visiting the castle can just house their horses there temporarily when the Lord wants his horse prepared to be called on whenever needed the horses would be moved to these stables to be on hand and when the other horses for the men-at-arms and the army the soldiers they need a place to graze and move around and so they would be housed in the horse yards and then for the horses that need to be called on hand and ready they stay in these stables and of course there'll additional guest houses and also rooms for the stable master and his family an often overlooked element of castles is the fact that the main warmth of castles is provided by fire and if that's the case there needs to be ample supply of firewood and if you're going to be storing fire would you need it to be under shelter so it doesn't get wet and so there are many firewood stores all throughout Winterfell this is the largest one right here because there will be so many fireplaces in this castle in every main guest room they would want a fireplace to keep that room warm and just look at how many rooms would be in this castle complex let alone the individual buildings where people live but just in the larger buildings as well there would be hundreds several hundreds in fact fireplaces all throughout the place which would consume a massive amount of wood and that is even in the summer because you would want a nice fireplace during the evening where it gets cooler but winter and we know how hellish winters can be in this world setting and so for Winterfell specifically they would store up firewood in every corner so we have firewood store and shelters all throughout this castle with so many people in the castle is going to be those who are more important and less important and you need to fill their needs as well there is one large building that I added in that isn't actually mentioned anywhere in the wiki that I was able to find that needed to be added for visual balance and also just a little bit of additional functionality and convenience and practicality and that is the upper servants quarters just like there is a dedicated barracks for all the soldiers everything if the great keep itself is reserved for the higher up nobility and considering how large the castle is overall the higher servants like the livery maids the Squires and everything like that it would make sense for them to have an impressive fortified and kind of dedicated building for them to live in so I added a building that I call these servants keep or the livery keep and this keep would be there for the higher up servants and it would be a bit of a balance to determine where they would actually want to live in a more fortified kind of fancy keep or would they want their own home their own cottage within the walls where they can raise their entire family and that's what many of these other buildings are individual dedicated homes for some very important people who live within Winterfell I expect some of them would be used a certain storefronts to sell types of trades like it could be a carpentry building Weaver's cottage where does the seamstress live a leather worker remember this is basically a self-contained City and I know there is a town outside of Winterfell called winter town but do remember how large Winterfell is and how full it is of people and so with many different people from many different walks of life there would also be things that they would want to serve their needs for instance a lower level in or tavern they probably aren't important enough to get a drink in the guest house but an inn and tavern that is there to serve the commoner who just travels and is passing by and needs a place to sleep and also for the common resident the average foot soldier who he doesn't have any clout to go into the guest house or the ground keeper anything like that where does he get a drink and so this is why this larger building the inn is located next to the guard house because that's where they go to have a drink every day and of course there are several wells throughout Winterfell including within the main central castle each internal ward of Winterfell is barred off by a solid metal grate through there dividing walls you'll notice that I didn't add any crenellations around the wall that surrounds the godswood and that's because that wall and the godswood itself was never described to me as an actual defensive ward of the castle wall around the godswood seems to be mainly there as a dividing line as a separation here's the godswood here's the rest of the castle not as an additional defensive fortification so it when take it as a whole looking at Winterfell from a distance this castle is truly in epic size and proportions and the amount of soldiers that it would be able to sustain if it has enough food stores and things like that for a full-on siege would be in the thousands if you put a man on every single the square metre of wall you could almost fit maybe a hundred thousand soldiers on those walls now that would be too much to sustain in a long period of time but if there is ever a massive battle and you have an army that numbers in the hundreds of thousands you could actually fit them within Winterfell it is big enough it would be pretty tight and I think you would actually run out of beds for them to sleep in in turn of inside all the buildings but there's a lot of buildings here having said that and there is enough room on the ramparts to fit all those soldiers with bows and arrows and everything this is a castle of truly epic proportions so what we're actually seeing here is Winterfell as it should look not only according to the books but according to authentic castle design its design is accurate according to historical castle design convention and layout but also those accuracies have been balanced against the fantasy aspects and sheer epic size of Winterfell according to the books this is by far the lightest Castle I have ever modelled but I'm so happy with how it's turned out and I really hope you guys have enjoyed this super detailed breakdown and of course as always I hope to see you again so until that time [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 1,212,984

Rating: 4.9469709 out of 5

Keywords: winterfell, game of thrones, a song of ice and fire, george r r martin, castle, castles, design, medieval, middle ages, fantasy, fortress, stark, DND, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, dragons, dragon, knight, knights, sword, swords, keep, gatehouse, the broken tower, the old keep, the great keep, the godswood, godswood, first keep, weirwood tree, weirwood, rpg, roleplaying, game, video, winter fell, maester, winter town, whitewalkers, witewalker, white walker, white walkers, jon snow, asoiaf

Id: dZdbpfcxfSk

Length: 41min 18sec (2478 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/jank_king20]

Lol ya there’s a lot of things George sized too big, almost comically so. Tfw when you make the wall 700 ft high but then have a battle there and archers still shoot up it

[u/justanotherregulargu]

Super cool. Really interesting to see the differences and a good comparison

[u/girusatuku]

MECHECULATIONS!

[u/InternJedi]

With this defense the Ice Dragon is gonna have to blow away the outer wall, freeze the moat for the wights to storm in. Even then there's still a huge chance they would lose by conventional siege defense tactic, no need for THE STAB.

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[u/PlayShoresyMoresy]

Looks awesome. Lets station 80% of the troops outside the walls though. Can’t lose!

[u/Mortarious]

D&D crimes against the books never ends.

[u/enataca]

Thats incredible

[u/lou_dog]

I wish I had as much enthusiasm towards anything in my life, as this guy does towards fantasy castles. Well done, lad!