Top 10 Epic LEGO Castles!

[Music] today from the castle we did last year it's mostly the same the landscape is expanded and if you can see there's a massive siege going on and so I'll start on this in we've got some of the Knights jumping off this boat and they're charging through this line of skeletons here we pick skeletons to be the enemies they stick out pretty well and you can do some fun things you know break them apart and they're all you know like that it's also very easy to tell who they're the good guys and bad guys are because the skeletons aren't everything guys right it's really easy to tell they're here you can see that they've busted through the gate and they've thrown the guy off at the battering ram they don't need it anymore they're charging through and if you can get a shot of the inside you can see much of pikemen ready to defend and one of them's got one ski were down there so yeah we just got some more archers and guys marching this way you have this small house here is somehow unscathed from all this Archer behind it we got some siege ladders some guys trying to pull vault over the walls this ladder didn't make it and this alligators about to eat some skeletons an excellent use the Flex tube there for the pole vault right yeah that was actually a pterence idea I think and we have this area here where they've like entrench entrench themselves they got catapults and their guys planning out stuff and you can see where they've hit like the tower that's kind of slanting over one guy scared and one guys pretty happy about it it's also here we've got to the gold Knights they're like the heavy really powerful Knights and they're staying on the bridge fending off this force going in so yeah we got some skeleton horses and pikemen they're trying to fend off this massive wave of horseback Knights coming in which probably won't go too well but over here we have a trebuchet which is they're launching these flaming boulders in the castle you can see in there where they've hit the house and it's on fire and there's a section here where they've taken out a wall and the guys falling off and then see the trebuchet is a very nice detail here does it actually function if you try to try to use it it looks like it would function but if you push this down it would swing a rock and probably hit this guy and that would be shame we've got a wizard here who's kind of commanding all the skeletons he's like brought them back from the dead or something and they're all charging in so yeah over here this has been relatively untouched we just got some you know farming there's corn nothing interesting there there's a few guys from the back trying to climb out the side this guy's fighting them off armors have had to take up arms here right yeah and there's a couple on the beach here and just they don't really want to fight they're just drinking and having a good time and then you see this like ninja skeleton climbing at the back hopefully getting in where you know no one will suspect yeah yeah I love all that a detail then so it's great to see what you guys have done you know making the whole siege and adding the the more action-packed battle going on here right yeah it's a I did most of setting up than many things there's a lot of fun to do and just trying to give it like a motion to it where you can see where all the movement is kind of like if you unpause it you could tell what was gonna happen next so launching to the the interior then yeah so I'll take that over so we'll first start with our armory you can see we have a little catapult on top of here and if you notice they've been trying to take out the trebuchet and they've hit a couple of skeletons but they've unfortunately missed the trebuchet so they're still working on that there's also a cool little crane here and a group of peasants that are bringing up munitions for the trebuchet or the catapult rather you can see they when we remove the roof we have the first level the armory it's all the archery weapons which makes sense since you're actually up on the wall the second level of the armory is all the pull arms and you can see notice that a lot of them are missing because they're actually being fielded right now inside our Great Hall there's a lot of peasants that are being armed too that are conscripted into fighting so all hands on deck right now because skeletons as you can tell it broken through so it's getting intense it doesn't look very good we wanted it to be kind of ambiguous to who's gonna win this thing next we have our blacksmith they're kind of just busy away you know keep them making weapons even though there's a battle going on I'm gonna continue just taking off different sections here handing them off to my brothers we've got ourselves a pole turner that's a little foot driven lathe so a guy makes all your Spears you've got everybody in here and they're all hard at work to you okay like you said there's a better shot of the house that's on fire and you can kind of see the bucket brigade that's going on from the peasants from the well because they're trying to put out the fire because fires not really that great there's a shot of the wagon with all the munitions for the catapult okay you can see we still have a lot of our vendor stalls in there but they're kind of abandoned you see all the peasants and people running away although the one lady's running towards there maybe she's quite brave and she wants to actually fight the skeletons okay I love the fire effects there on that house and the destruction yeah it was actually kind of a lot of fun to sort of destroy Lego for once instead of build it and let me get this last bakery and then I'll turn you over to Andrew for the gate houses yeah just a little bakery so you can get you some pies and croissants and things and what Andrew described our gate house there come around here to the front then so this is our main gatehouse we have a functioning drawbridge and portcullis so if you see if you want to get a shot right there this portcullis it'll open up like so and then whatever the enemy start coming in you can drop it perfect there you go so at this gate house also as is as everything else in here it does come apart and so we've got the top piece comes out so you can see into the inside we've got our winch system inside there or you have dropped the portcullis and drawbridge and then each of these sides come off and we've got more troops rallying inside they're getting ready for weapons and everything you can see the rest of the gear system inside there and then of course there's one more layer and you can see we've got cross women there's little shoot reports to shoot if anyone's coming into the gate this is incredible the level of detail you guys always put in this eye it's coming back to me the from last year now like how much you put into this it's just so insane I love seeing all this come come apart so the next thing we'll go to or our stables and the first thing you'll see this is a tower where we had the hit and you can see we still have stuff in there stuffs we mocked over you know took took the catapult hit but then the next thing we have we have these stables and I want to show you a view inside this way first so this comes off and you can see inside kind of the horses the you got the little loft up there with a bunch of stuff there but then this also comes off and you can get a better view inside there and of course not all the horses there cuz they're trying to saddle them up and get the get the troops out moving we've even got a guy down here that hatch least or underground you know he's moving down to reposition somewhere else in the castle we have our second gatehouse here and this has been significantly more upgraded the portcullis it does function except that right now it's kind of destroyed they've busted the ruin on the other side you can see the piece of it fell off but similar to the other gatehouse this also does completely come apart so again it's very similar to the other one let's kind of do this pretty quickly I'll go and pull it off and yeah and you can see over there the skeleton the kind of first first victim that fell to the pipe money shot right there but yeah this is again this is just very similar stuff you saw in those the other place so our last building here on the corner we have our church and so we can you can see we've got a nice stained-glass window there that's incredible got our bell tower up top but then inside of it so got a bunch of peasants in there praying you know hoping the battle goes well this time just you know when all else fails pray all right yeah I've got a little organ in the back here priests quarters back here and then on the backside of it we have a little garden you know fenced in gated and garden a little statue water fountain feature they don't look particularly concerned about the horde of skeletons coming you know some people didn't quite get the memo yeah here you can see it's just these are the skeletons that broke through you can see the piece of the portcullis on this one and then on here well we've got our yellow building here open that up we've our tinsmith inside here okay you know it's still working away do you know he can see the last building we've got inside this castle is our Inn and it's a we have an in rooms upstairs so we've got a couple bedrooms up here and then we have a kind of a pub downstairs and you know I guess if you're not praying the battle way drink it away so one way or another I guess one way or another yep so I guess next I'm gonna send you to Trent take a look at it okay great walk back to this side then cumbersome mock here it's quite big so this is the top of the keep you notice the guys aren't particularly worried yet because the skeletons haven't made their way up here we have kind of a nice relaxing room kinda like a smoke grew maybe you bring your ambassador there from another country or castle maybe not go to war that obviously did not happen today the floor below that is sort of the Royal chambers you can see we've got all of the different rooms Kings quarters prince and princess you notice the king is out kind of surveying the battle from a safe position we also have a little monks area for the library and there's actually secret entrance behind this wall that can move which is pretty cool pass this on down the next layer has my favorite room in the entire build it's the war room that has a micro scale version of the castle yeah that's awesome I love that so you can see the old general and a couple of those other soldiers are kind of planning the battle connected to that is the mapmaker room and there's also a throne room which people are arguing about maybe why is the King just standing up there why isn't he out there fighting or we don't know what to do what's going to happen so so the sides of the Great Hall just kind of a guard's area we also have a Black Falcon ambassador room so we were actually allied with the black Falcons in our fantasy because we're fighting the evil skeleton so us humans versus evil everybody has to get on board here there's also a cool little band it's up at the top that's kind of playing music right now for all the people in the Great Hall to try to keep them calm during this very scary time and then lastly we have the Great Hall which normally there's a big feast going on inside there however it's been transformed in sort of the headquarters for the battle and so there's a triage going on in there and there's also the arming of the peasants so we can remove this wall so you can kinda get the minifigure view if you were walking through those doors and then if I can get linen to help me out take the chandelier off you can kind of get a better view of what's going on you can see we have some wounded you see the peasants are all being conscripted and all hands on deck like you said and we have our stained-glass lion in the back thing glass is beautiful yeah achieved so much with that so now you can see that the underground is fully revealed we've got kind of the kitchen area there's sort of a preparation of food perishable goods there's a brewery and an area to store all the extra wine you've got guards quarters or taking rest right now barracks next to that we've got a really cool archives room with all the books there's sort of a statues room from all conquests of different armies if you notice in the middle there we've got an alchemist who's doing sort of potion work and who knows what maybe he caused this today we're not sure and maybe we can swing around to the other side really quickly here and you can see we've got a foundry right here next to that is a Treasury there's a little tax collector's office in there another barracks and then there's a servants quarters and lastly in the back you can see the Crypt which is under our church and you might notice that all the things that are to be dead or not dead they've also been summoned during the battle so there's a it's going wrong there's a few guards they're going oh and they're trying to fight those guys off too and I'm gonna turn you over to Andrew really quickly with for the port so we've got a couple quick things here so our port towers we got you know a large ballista on there to protect the port you know take out any ships coming in but each one of these come off and inside this one you've got ammunition inside here for the ballista the guy can send up through this little hatch here and then underneath it the next layer we have a large winch system for this chain so you can normally you'd have that sunk in the water but whenever the you know doing a block the port off you pull it tight no boats can get through the other Tower is very similar and it has basically the same thing inside of it so I just can't quite reach it you know the ports a great extra kind of added detail in that chain is always a cool effect as well so yeah that's that's crazy you guys brought the whole thing back here and you add it on to it so is there plans then to expand again next year in future years oh yeah we're we're gonna keep doing this for a while we've we've already been talking about our plans for next year and after that so uh we'll keep doing this yeah well thanks so much for taking us through the whole thing is I like the teamwork of you guys taking off the floors and everything working through it all so it's always impressive to see what happens here and I can't wait to come back next year and see what you guys have added so appreciate it thank you thank you hey guys I'm Douglas Johnson from Nashville Tennessee and I have this as part of a collaborative for the classic classic castle collaborative and we've got four people total that contributed to this 30 foot by 4 foot layout this is quite the massive layout here going all the way down it sure is and I really think that we did a great job with the four people doing it in sections and really coordinating I mean we've got some similar trees our landscape is pretty similar some rock work and everything looks great even the castles do coordinate imeem we've got all the crosses on the windows and that actually turned out great we did not plan that we it was my idea to light up all the water and Mark Erickson and I teamed up and did that so hit my section is from this side of the boats over here to the end of the table with the village okay great so then if you want to start here and kind of take us through your section and kind of point out some of your favorite buildings and details along the way yeah I tell you I love this bar right here and it is detailed inside with some musicians and there's guys drunk fighting in there and some dancers I've got a wagon shop there's the post office a narrow shop we've got a potions and spells the fabric shop we've got a little hotel in another bar and then of course our Town Hall for our black my Black Falcon Village Town Hall is such a great design is well the way you kind of almost almost looks like you took several of the smaller buildings and kind of put it together to make one big really impressive building yeah I like it because I used the medium blue on the second floor the bright light blue on this third floor and then going back to the medium blue on the fourth floor and that really helps add contrast helps bring your eye in too especially with the orange color trees it really helps it pop like that and then of course we've got some market area over here and of course we got the gallows with a guillotine nobody's having a bad day well we can't have pirates in here with our castle so we got to get rid of them and then here the appears to be though the most impressive building of this section yeah I love my Black Falcon Castle of course I hear that everybody builds a Black Falcon castle this has honestly got between 27 and 28 thousand pieces in it it is double walled on the inside with solid bricks and each floor does come off there's only one room that's detailed right now is the master bedroom I just haven't had time to go back and detail all of it but it was so much fun doing that texture work and and when I set out to do it I said if I'm gonna do a castle I got to do it like this and I know it's gonna look great and I think it did it turned out fantastic in my mind no it really did and so if you can give some more detail on that kind of some of the pieces you use there and how that came together the wall design there yeah so I pretty I started with like seven thousand metallic 1x1 rounds and of course seven thousands not nearly enough so I ordered another five thousand and then another two thousand but mixing with the light gray the light blue the bright light blue to help with the Black Falcon colors keep it blue I think that helped pull in keeping it with the same faction and then of course with the the brackets I was able to do some snot work and then on the inner wall of the the stonework there's brackets on that pushing up against the inner wall so when you push against the texture wall is not going to go anywhere and like I said every floor will come off yeah the gate does work the drawbridge does work he's definitely a formidable defense here for the rest of the town and what is the the faction or what theme is the soldiers coming out from there yeah so those are my original Dragon Knights I think in the story of Lego they had the dragon Knights as a friend to the black Falcons and I didn't have enough black Falcon soldiers to arm them but I already had my Dragon Knights and I said you know I'm gonna pair them up and team them together and they're gonna come out and make their way to the end of the table to the end of the battle probably one of my favorite scenes of course is the vineyard but then coming out from the vineyard you've got these forest creatures that have snuck through and stolen some wine and they're getting a little intoxicated in the wheat field there I like how you did the path that they took into the into the wheat field the of course and you know they're sitting down so this guy over here that's cutting the wheat he's not gonna see him right now until he gets over there and then they're gonna scramble oh no someone's coming you know and so we've done a lot of work with the forest men in here the pumpkin guys in the back they're stealing pumpkins up here they're still in chickens just a lot of just different work with the forest men creatures we wanted to bring those in and have fun with them then here's some great movement you've incorporated in there how did you get that to work yeah that is of course my windmill I used the large sail blades for the for the blades from the boats and of course it's geared in there but that was really really fun to build and I have a lot of a lot of people enjoy that as say that that's their favorite of the whole thing the mountain in the waterfall I believe you guys have seen before last year and even this year I have the the rock creature motorized where it does come out but I didn't have time to put the motor on it this show and all of the water does light up unfortunately they just did not give me enough power outlets at this show so I can't plug all plug it all in there's a lot of lighting in here though which really makes the build pop I think especially with like the movement of the water yeah there sure is and probably one of my last favorite buildings is actually the the church ruins I've got the dragonknight stained glass window in the back and I wish I had it lit up but that was one layout I did for the classic Castle online contest results still pending but I think I did a pretty good job with the sunken floor and having the the Knights kind of with the white flag surrendering a little bit yeah I'd love to see ruined buildings with Lego because it's not as easy as you think you know you think you could just kind of knock pieces down but really you gotta make it you don't want weird patterns in there you want to make it look natural which isn't always easy with the the rectangular Brett yeah and honestly as I started building that I was like this looks too much like a square building or it looks too good I need to like destruct it more and you're right that making ruins is actually harder than people think it is I love the little throwback to the Islanders there the canoe coming down yeah I saw those in my box this weekend I was like where can I put these oh yeah they're gonna you know panic going down the waterfall so yeah well that is great I think your section turned out really also I appreciate you taking us through that there come and interview me and then we'll move on to mark Erickson who we have right here so we'll bring you in and you can start with I guess the ships in the water here is kinda the start of your section yes this is the beginning of the middle section which is my section I got the fleet here covering the river that's you know separates me in Douglas then over here it goes all the way towards Robert's castle yeah great so if you just want to start with kind of details of the ships and some of the techniques to use there and take us through yeah so um the ships are actually just the basic Lego boat hauls I managed to get a couple of them because I work at a Lego retail store you did a video for a while back and so I got those recently and managed to scrape together enough brown parts to decorate them as medieval cogs which are ships that soldiers back then use to fight you got some Viking ship here that sailed into the wrong Inlet and the lion Knights are all about to chase him out of here so yeah I like and then you've got kind of the island keep there in the main castle exactly uh the main idea for this castle was to have the Keith be super secure and the best way I thought to do that would be to draw bridges two different moats so you have the first which is like the city section and then the second leads up to the key which is on a rock over the ocean separate from the already strong castle so double strong and talk about some of the details in here I love the stained glass pieces and then the kind of houses in there as well yes so um the second most important thing for the castle for me was to have an interesting layout so I have a lower section of the city down below and then above that there's a little plateau of sorts and so the tudor buildings below are on the lower section and at the very top is the church and back in medieval society the church was the highest part of the society so the church is at the very top kind of crowning the entire city as it were so yeah there you go and then remove kind of away from the castle into more the countryside sort of here yes so we were trying to make a nice flat scene compared to our last year's which is a huge mountain an extreme challenge to move so we just have a nice flat countryside easy to transport and set up well for the most part all those plants took a very long time to set up this this convention but yeah we have some houses some agriculture some sheep lots of foresters hidden throughout the scene a few nights if you cows and occasionally you can spot a dragon or two if you look very carefully or a dragon as I've yeah yes so talk about some of the the tree techniques as well because there's all different ways and the different colored leaves and stuff do you have in here yes well some of the leaves are actually alt bricks so that they have the unique colors and they're actually a little bit stronger clutch power so those actually help with some of the unique shapes we've got going on here then we have like different types of trees we have the palm leaves used for the pine trees which is something I've been doing for a while it looks pretty nice and it gives me an excuse to use the palm leaves in an otherwise northern climate so yep and then yeah so there's we tried to just build all the trees on the spot which was a bad idea in retrospect but they look nice because as they're fragile and they wouldn't survive the trip so exactly then you've got this keep here which is the first thing I noticed there's the really cool chrome it's like silver chrome helmets on the soldiers yes absolutely that that castle was built by my brother Steven so it's very fancy and very elegant and the chrome helmets are actually they're Lego helmets but they've been painted by a company in Poland so they're very high quality they're like the Lego has done similar products in the past or special minifigures and whatnot but these are just generic helmets but they've been chromed so that's the story behind those then here's a force man few force men getting attacked kind of fighting for their life down yeah they've just encountered a one of Stephens dragons you have several throughout the scene and so uh they're not sure whether they're about to be eaten or find a friends so we're kind of left it at that and then you got Castle Grayskull here was that one of your builds as well yes and that was actually a combination build with me and my brother he did the front part the nicer part with the skull and I kind of finished the back because he wasn't able to do it so but it's based off of the old he-man TV series from the 80s but uh we never saw it but we thought it was a very interesting Lego build so yeah great source of material then and it looks like we've gotten to the beginning of the large army here and is this start of a new section yep this is actually from this line over is gonna be Roberts section over here but I had a whole bunch of medieval Knights to use so I didn't quite have enough room in my scene so they've all decided to try and take Roberts castle out there all new all offensive very cool then we'll move down to Robert here and if you want to take us through your section talk about what you've got yeah so I just got a big castle I've got a current Church here that I built yesterday gatehouse marks attempting to storm the castle he is going to fail because you can't beat the crown you got to respect the crown you know if you've ever seen Star Wars I've got the high ground so there's not a chance he can make it through there you go so let's start off with the church then you say I know that it was a real recent build for you what are some of the techniques you used there like I love everything Gothic style you know high arches anything vaulted flying buttresses all that kind of stuff is great for me I just really enjoyed for some weird reason I got Okwe in there it's a pretty rare color I like how it turned out with the white yeah you don't see that color used real often yeah so I thought that was pretty unique but definitely underestimated how long it would take me to build it it's been all day doing it and then you've got kind of the gatehouse here leading into the castle yeah yeah it's supposed to deter the guys although I put the drawbridge on the wrong way so once I take the gatehouse I could just lower the drawbridge didn't think that one through but design malfunctions really they can hold off the gatehouse yeah there are you going a little bit of wizardry in here yeah I just had to add that this morning it looks like he's burning the bear I was going for summoning but I guess burning would work too yeah and then the castle itself where did you kind of start from on this build yeah all my capsules I just kind of start off with the base plate and just see where it goes from there definitely made the front first I've been working on it since about October really the last three weeks I've finished it trying to my favorite part about it is the stone statues up there what's the structure like on the inside of the castle they're mostly just like random colorful bricks just a structural support one of these days I'll build a castle with an interior but we ain't got the time for that that's their time in peace intensive to do that and then Steven lent me a dragon to put over there above the church looking part so because those just make everything better you got to have a dragon just pop a dragon or castle put one on Grayskull that makes this thing yeah so when you guys arrived at the show was this the first time that the whole thing had all been put together all your section I actually screwed up the road robe and how to fix it yesterday yeah so I'm pleased at how it looks pleased that turned out pretty good for four days never coming in contact till the day of I got here late cuz I had to work but yeah I'm pleased with the scene looks good market Steven or awesome Douglas is amazing contributor it's just been a good scene good fun yeah all of the sections turned out great but then you put it all together like this and it's just amazing said it was 30 feet long worth of worth of castle builds here in towns and everything so that's really impressive I appreciate you chatting with me thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] my name is ruining and this is my build my castle I call it cervix land and castle so yeah this build is make off me and my pets mostly me it's a massive layout here so why don't we start at this end and will kind of make our way around and check out the whole big layout think every do and if it's not here we have a little battle going on between the dead and the living and that yeah a lot of nights just to make something move you always gotta have the big battle theme in every always at the Pigpen seams so it seems like living a winning this fight so yeah that's the big and 10 we have at a little small farm life we can see here where we have the windmills and the farms behind where you have all kinds of yeah things you can have on a bunk like you use is that the like the white gate piece therefore the the windmill yeah it's good use of them I make it make look like every meal so yeah perfect yeah then we have the sound bone a lot they've all who have to defend the town from a second so there's also cute use of nights and mimic nights and yeah then we can we see you there's some rich houses coming to where we have a little small garden they also have a little pumpkins and everything they need to have in so yeah these buildings are fantastic here this this one in particular we're looking at right now talk about kind of the design of that and and how that came together for us came to the sign of Luke and after in a bow Hema Fantasy 14 Pook yeah freaking aliens by about how to houses a make and then I took some use of their pictures from the book also I have not inspired by I have more playing games and something like that so yeah and then can you inspire every want to make this use of altered small gray pieces I have so that's was just to build it up and then Kim - yeah use of it yeah it turned out great yeah thank you yeah then we came to the Hubble which the ships were going to Megan and even the Hubble and you have all this farm life and how Hubble life so the jugglers clowns down here want to make space Ella something like a fun of the cities they also saw someone going to make living in the city so just normally see the light bouncing light but also for life itself and then we have yeah let's see what is called again notice you got the movement going on here I have mini movie pad now with me listen stairs to go up again and Adam so it's going to get a lot of movement in the layout to make it more attractive so yeah talk about some of the the roofs on some of the buildings here is mostly a use of this slopes price we get a lot of in the big box last year so that was good use of them also to make it look like this normal house we have that old Sam house yeah so very impressive and then we make our way down to the the castle now yeah I think it's time to Carson and yeah I'm fighting down on a block everything amounts and in a castle and I've tried to make it this Carson see you're kind of a list it was like this is everything that my castle needs yeah everything in it's a kitchen in his sleeping quarter it needs a room where I can source the weapons indeed library in these gates and everything let's start on this side then and see what do we have here here we have the bed porter from the men and we have a little outside in the tower where they have the Bell if they're going to add sex and then we have their weapon rooms chamber with old a movie and stuff they can have to be ready to fight yeah and town we have some - both sides - my name's to make it look like they also have some magnetic espinda really and then we have something inside this gates house where you can say gates whoop and down and right now it's group because there are some Knights who have to go out so that's mostly a gatehouse I love the the custom kind of tiled the way you've done the tiling floors here the with your patterns and everything there so it's I think every room almost has a unique looking floor maybe half and you mix some have this headlights bricks here down here we have to hit like things but mostly I try to make good use of their paths I have so yeah I try also to make every room to look unique yeah yeah so now we can watch you tear like we I can see and then we also have this cool use of new floors Synnex and all the proofs in their self to make it look like a really wide and them monks go and sous vide new books because that's what you do that time even the little kind of stained glass windows in there many a stained glass it's like a lot of works to make a look like we list it and I have used a mini cheese loops in this pocket and under the castle is a little secret room Iraq yeah dungeon where they're tracking inside in with his treasure so it's also to make it more like you also have a need to have a dragon text castle of course yeah then we have to start to study room under state so we on the stairs where they plane intersects and gone you got to do this to get it fight this army and then you know that the the a bar and it's a silly foam like Denmark because we are in Denmark I love that raised map there and just kind of how you raised up some of the pieces there to give that kind of elevation look that that's perfect it's also because this slope it don't fit well also I have to make it more quick and bigger and all upstairs we have the visa quarter where they make everything poisons how you make to make poisons and something you have everything you need I think yeah I can be king there's many highways wars everything and we have still depends upstairs the castle they you still can see the Knights are going to be ready if they're going to be as egg it looks very strong lot lots of men men in the walls not so men there is out to fighting if they're not here and as we round the corner here if you can see ya then we stop for the important I can see we have this king stresses whom because pin the king also need stress history s somewhere and there was a dragon into all that stress of him so he cannot have have all his thoughts there and yeah we've says we saw have here the King's pet have the green spats boom with the new Prince who a spawn always wear the helmet the handsome he's already got the helmet yeah upstairs we have the princess room where you can see he said she has a Muir and puffing perfumes and everything to do beautifully and have servants with yeah so and then on this final side of the castle we have to true moon but Queen Rita gem lot of men because maybe the King may be lost of all outside she don't know yet so there's lots of men who came to say hello to the Queen and say Kim's and cool boots yeah and also a lot of Springs going on and the new epic haunted is living in their honor that we have the vine cave and be a room where the source all the fine biome vines and one man has maybe take a little drink he's enjoying himself down there yeah Johnny lot so that's also fun and yeah then we have to stash up to Java for their store you also have to go up in the cars because you cannot just have ruling out okay if you're not get up to it so I figure out the most also P some tires and I think it's an acrylic eight test ass yeah so it's going all the way down from the tangent to the top in the castle then we have to live in quarters I think laughs no yeah eating room where are you going to eat everything and honor that we have the kitchen but also a little bit stairs you can't go to yeah so that's also a lot of things because you are going to Billy also make you men feel good when they going to bed yeah yeah well that's a fantastic series of rooms so as you planned out this castle did you just kind of start building or do you have kind of sketches I know you said you wrote down what you wanted down everything then have it make model and ten times lease more where I have made every room some in small miniature live figure out where one room was just 12.2 big or everything antennae versus ten times bigger you did a smaller scale model first to kind of make a work so everything was and then I also could take something apart that's also by I've make it so every room I can't take out and change me if I want to so it's not just something like this room have to be one pi/2 and fit this place but I can take it and use it other place but mostly there are some doors will not going to fit well together if I want to do that now so that's also something I need to make sure off what's going to be yeah what do we have on the inside of the castle here kind of the courtyard a little horse stable where they can get the horse good food and the places I have only essence to make a pickup because there's going to be more horses but I think that I got was fit bill so it'll spirit just have some series and a little well where they can get bored of fresh water so that also have to don't have to grow about that yeah excellent work with the castle now we'll move back out to the the city part yeah and check out this side yeah didn't we have first we have yeah beautiful mountain landscapes down here but else we have sea dragon boo actually some say Here I am I am and I protect this place so also good and that's my so fix I have it with me every yeah I have taken this dragon with me so kinda in the moat almost protecting the castle it's very good and yeah then we came to the TechSmith we have this moral test taking and make weapons from the yeah a movie and the castle and if you want it so yeah and then we have a little more about City normal skill docks and making a new ships I love the work-in-progress ship there you can see the whole coming together that's very good and you have many different techniques that see me a lot of different ships just not inspired well it yeah also because I want to make it look like there's also something they are building on and moving on yeah then we have two gates outshoot all that pad allow the bowler Kate where the ship can sail out and they can put check the Kazi even more so Josh space bridge sir if someone who came inside cast a lot sound first then take could check that yeah and then we came to the last house I think maybe the news house I've make so that's a lots of cheese slopes and testicles between my me and my dad's I built a roof and mostly of at the roof and the tower met April all other things downstairs and figure out their moving parts in this house so that's and figure out the gates how it has to be so it's very good I love how you got more movement up here kind of lifting the crates up and down the different balconies and everything it's make a good moving and good edge sector of people so there's something moving that's always good I love it my dad also loved it so it's very okay and then we can do to make it yeah well I forgot there also me to Peter local shop stairs main Verte Palma kicked him into the city and sell his pumpkins are other things what he would now make and we have this a little feast going on yeah lots of eating taking place everywhere you haven't well the war goes off everyone here won't you have food always so yeah and that takes us out to the final section here yeah then we go out to to farm again poop up my dad's so it's very firm life three houses yeah and a little pig stable so it's gonna have to have lot of things to quit on a farm again yeah and I will so it's just happy also this farm in life there was that time and was most popular that's yeah well though that whole layout is just absolutely amazing so how long would you say you've been working on the whole thing to prepare it for the show here show a prepare for they to sit up but as building this about a year I think yeah if they hot cars a half year and this you do this a half year so it's a been a lot of time and it's such a such a long way out when you when you're working on this at home you just work on in sections or can you have it all set up together at once mostly about just in sections sometimes I have to all set up in one spot mostly just in sections because that's very hard to get it all up and set up one every time so yeah mostly sections so yeah fantastic work thank you so much for taking us through the whole layout and I appreciate you bringing to the show here at scare back thank you thank you my name's Kevin hall and I'm a professional leg abracada so this is my job to actually design and build models and get commissioned to build them all around the world and this is actually the Disney building a beast castle so it's a replica of the original 1991 movie and it's basically about half a million bricks took six months to build it's 2.2 meters high the tiles and the roof there's 40,000 tiles in the roof and each roof took about two days to actually build so and it's got some animation as well the beauty base actually turn around on the dance floor and it's got lights and LEDs and as well so yeah it's it was about six months my life well well done today it turned out incredible this is this is amazing so when you start on a massive project like this where do you start then as far as kind of the first area that you start and then kind of build from there well it's about a month worth of actually planning and watching the movie over and over again and freeze framing it and look at different sculptures and other models that um you know that you can get at Disneyland and things and then then actually do my own interpretation of it and then planning out where all that short built you know the rooms are going to go and where everything is actually going to sit and then because I'm also a graphic designer and so I can actually visualize what it's going to look like and I'll rebuild it from there and then she built it up and then out all the details to it as well okay yeah that's that's really impressive I know I've talked to people in the past we've done bills like this and they sometimes get the original artwork or blueprints or something like that did you have anything like that it was pretty much just the movie that you base this it's it's based from the actual movie and from different illustrations and things like that the actual mosaic that I've got is actually from the actual new movie that's coming out so that's a new logo for it but yeah everything's based on images photos still frames and everything else from the original movie yeah and so I love what you've done here with the roofs especially how did that technique working out how how did you come up with that well I want to do something different that wasn't brick built it wasn't slopes or anything like that and I wanted to use the actual tar salt like real tiles so I did a few prototypes and this is actually Lego tubing three more tubing and then with Clips literally clipped on so 40,000 tiles put onto a clip and then clipped on which is why it took about two weeks just to do the roofs so and then each one is offset by with the jumper half a brick in so then it goes for those really nice angles and then you get the different curves as well yeah that's that's amazing so I'm sure that took so quite some time like you said how does this build breakdown then for kind of moving it around or how does that work well every roof comes off separately and then that gets bubble wrapped up and boxed and then the actual tower breaks into two and the back tower comes off so everything's all modular and then whole thing splits right in half so the back section and front section and then the sides actually all come off as well so it ends up each main section is only about 600 mils wide so then it'll actually fit through a doorway if I need to and then it's on a block of wood and then it gets crated up and put onto pallets and put on the back of a truck another thing I noticed is a lot a lot of windows in here so what was your technique for that forget forgetting those windows built well there's about 120 windows in there I did a few prototypes first actually ldd first and then that was it I want to do it simple so I could replicate it through the whole thing as well so it's literally just basic windows in the back and then with the artist in the front and it was actually there actually ice creams on top to give that detail as well because it's like a baroque fill which is French Baroque Castle basically that's really neat and I guess you know you've obviously probably done some fairly big size builds over the years as a brick artist and everything what's what do you find is the hardest part of doing builds that are this big well I've actually done a lot bigger than this as well I've done the world's largest flag in Dubai which was 3.1 meters this is only 2.2 so and I've did a replica of Legoland to buy which is 4 meters by 4 meters but it depends on each model it's different so I think the more the engineering and this was hoped because I had to design from the bottom knowing that as I go up I had to support itself had to be modular and everything had to line up and with something that's 1.5 meters wide when I'm doing Windows on one side I had to make sure they had also lined up on the other side to make it realistic so it's believable as well so as a matter of literal order planning a lot of building going that has to line up with here and then putting all the supports inside and making literally building like height sticks so I could take on one side and then bring to the other side so no it's exactly the same height as well while I was actually building this as well which took six months I was in the between I also do workshops as well for kids plus I do other commissioned jobs which one foot I can't tell you about at the moment and I did the latest some models for the latest book for DK for the official Lego book so doing those models and this and that as well so it keeps me very very busy and so was this just a fun project for you or is this a commission or something or how now this is a mock basically yeah so cuz I for the last few years I've been doing lots of Commission jobs and I used to work at Legoland as well and basically I wanted okay I loved I've built lots of calstrs in the past and I'm quite famous for building castles and I wanted to do something and I've got a love for Disney as well as how both of them together and build a Disney Castle and so I wanted to take authentic as well and something everyone's built by Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella Castle I want to do something different and especially the beauty of the beast cars was very iconic so and now the movies coming out next year as well which I didn't I shouldn't play in those I just want to build that no by the way the movies coming out so that worked out we're out there you know and so you mentioned you built a lot of castles what do you think of the new Disney Castle Lego just released as I said oh it's a brilliant set a friend of mine Marcus designed it but the details once I love detail and it's those little details and we the models I build like this that once you build it and then step back if it comes to life and actually becomes real then you know you've done a really good job and with the new Lego Disney Castle is the same it's so much detail in it that it literally comes to life as well yeah that's awesome yeah I think I think it's a great kid as well but you did an amazing job with this so I appreciate you taking the time to talk when they thank you happy [Music] hi i'm dario Bonetti and this is my castle seven towers when i first joined the garden slug about 2011 you know i we don't want to build sets for the for these shows so i was like oh i know i'll build a castle and this is kind of what happened it took me about a year to make it's roughly 80,000 pieces and it comes apart in 28 sections for me to set up here very impressive real quick for people aren't familiar what garden slug is well what is that is that how does that work okay well a log is a lego users groups or an official log and since we're the Garden State look we are garden slug that's kind of where the name of all from there you go and so you've got a number of the builders from that group that are displaced up here at the show that's correct yeah we have a I think we have nine of our builders here today fantastic so let's dive into the build here then so there's so much gray in this in this build which is crazy talk about how you collected that much where you got all those pieces from well a lot of the pieces came from the Lego store where they have the the wall in the back where they you can just buy it buy the cup also when I was building this set it was when Lord the rings was very popular and the Lego had Lord of the Rings sets out so I was buying a lot of the Lord of the Rings sets and then selling the minifigures to help kind of offset the cost of the bricks so I was getting the bricks for free basically perfect that's the way to do it yeah that's how you get a castle this size exactly exactly cuz I don't have that kind of money so once we go inside the walls what do we have kind of happening inside the castle here okay so this is the joust scene that's taking place in the back of the castle and originally when I built the castle there was it was one section less in the back camera guys over there but it was one section less so the back of the castle was much smaller which made the chassis much smaller so when I started building those Knights tents I built several of them so I had to make the back of the castle bigger so I added a wall section to extend the back so I could have a bigger Josie and and make it you know flush it out a little bit I really improved that scene there so what was the tent design like for you I liked how you kind of varied the colors there yeah I based it off all the horse partings that Lego makes so I had to try to get one of at least one of every horse parting that they ever made and then I just tried to match the tent colors to the boardings and I think you captured the colors very nicely so is the castle itself based off any real castle or just kind of something you guys threw out of your imagination it's it's loosely based on a book called castle by David McCauley and he follows a fictitious King on how the whole cash flow creation is done when it would have been done in medieval times so I kind of based the footprint and the layout on that loosely but then the actual design of the walls I just kind of went from my own imagination and as we move further into the defensive structures here what do we have going on inside this section well inside there there is a couple of buildings there's a residence that has the big red and brown roof there and then the grey building with the black roof is like a kitchen dining area and then closest to us when in the yellow is the horse stables you captured a lot of the different details that kind of the castle life in here yes I tried to I tried to make it as realistic as possible I know a lot of the guys in my group give me grief because there's no dragon on this castle but I tried to make it a realistic castle it's not it's not a fantasy castle at all right is there interiors on the towers in the keep area there is not they are hollow just because I wanted to save on that money and it would also be hard to display in a setup like this sure so do you know the dimensions of the whole layout as a whole it is roughly ten by ten it's a little short so maybe ten by nine or so something like that yeah that's quite the undertaking what's setup like for you is that a massive process when you bring this to show or do do you have it in a way that you can do it pretty quickly well like I said it is modular so and I have all the pieces numbered so I know where they go but there's always some damage when I get here that I have to repair and I have to setup all the men and everything so it takes me a good four hours to set it up here at the show that's not bad for a layout of this size you've got a few different kind of armies of minifigs going on here what are the different factions doing well my idea was that this was like a special force here the green archers on the side here or I can start in the front here that that I planned to be just like a visiting King those coming for the the jousting tournament that was my plan there it wasn't it's not really a battle scene at all so that's the visiting King and his little his little army there and then the archers over here I just I just imagined them as being some like special force that you know was it was being trained and set up they're keeping an eye on the water yeah I just like the minifigures to see how can I use these in the castle that is a cool minifig so so what is the biggest challenge for you in building a castle of this size and kind of getting this layout all together what were some of the the challenges you had to overcome with building this aside from acquiring all the pieces I mean it was difficult with you know just I would forget like where I put the archway like how high I put it and you know where the where the openings were for the arrow slits and I'd have I would build and then I'd be like oh my that's off one row so I'd have to go back take it apart and put it all back together so that was kind of the frustrating thing and I made some weird decisions as far as like the dimensions of some of the towers and stuff like they don't fit on one base place so I had a cut base place like I don't know I made I made odd decisions but I guess it all worked out in the end but that's kind of the learning process the more you do that exactly exactly yep so when you have this at your house you have room to keep the whole thing built like this or is it always kind of taken apart in sections no it gets taken apart it gets a box stuff but I tell everyone that asked me that my wife doesn't allow me to do she'll be somebody throw that I said that on video there are limits she's very supportive and understanding too I have to say that in the contract for the record yeah no it gets boxed up I have a one spare room in my house I have to keep all my Lego stuff in so that's that's kind of the deal she's like you can have as much as you want as long as it fits in that one room there you go said you want to expand on this idea in the future with more castle midieval type builds my next big project that I'm working on is one of the castles from Game of Thrones it's the red keep so I'm working on that I wanted to have it done by this show but I just ran out of time so hopefully there for the next show I'll have it thank you so much for putting the time and effort into this massive layout bring it out to the show here I think it's been very popular with the crowd as they walk by so thank you thanks a lot thank you appreciate it hi my name is Joseph zelada I'm 19 years old and I built Hyrule Castle I've been working on it for two and a half years the roof design because of the weird angle and the octagonal round shape it kind of makes it difficult Legos are blocks it's kind of hard to mimic or round shape so a lot of effort and time was put into that also I worked hard in the vegetation to try to get it all to a stick and look as if it was really growing off of the castle and make it organic as possible was there any particular inspiration for this build or how do what did you use to base this off of yeah i'm it's based off of a video game The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess which is my favorite game in the franchise so I wanted to recreate the iconic castle in it very cool and this is such a huge build where did you start with this when you're starting to build like this was there particularly like drawing or how did you decide playing this out I base it off of how many base plates I could get up my hands on and then after that it just grew from there I had to bump up the size a couple of times because when I was working on the towers I made them too big but I liked him too much so it just kept on growing and growing and growing until it got a little bit out of hand so what's the inside of these towers like in the big Tower in there the big towers are made out of the I think four by six are four by five prefab turrets found in the castle sets with the mix of Technic bars and plates and pins on the exterior towers the smaller ones are just hollow and they're connected with qlik hinges yeah and something I know so a lot of the towers is you've got a lot of really nice tile work going on there how did you decide to do that there were a picker brick element at the time and I didn't get nearly as many as I thought so I had to Brooklyn them from a place in Scandinavia so lots of money went into that and too many pieces yeah it turned out really nice and I see you've got kind of the island here with like some rock work is that structurally pretty strong in there yeah it's the rock work is just on the outside then the inside again is more prefab pieces and Technic let this break down like for a movie Natasha it comes the part into about 40 pieces all the towers and roofs lift off and the islands what's apart into four different segments it takes about two cars to get here but it's pretty sound which is nice yeah and this is amazing so what I mean when you first start thinking about this project what is some of the most difficult difficult parts about it because obviously spent like two and a half years on it such a huge build what's some of the difficult parts for you from the very beginning my major concern was the top roof piece because it's such a weird shape and also because it's based off of a game that I love so much I wanted to recreate it that's close to the original design as possible so I think those are the two major difficulties with it you wanted to be is faithful to you know the the source materials possible yeah exactly exactly yeah well that's really cool thanks for telling us about the build appreciate it yeah thank you hi my name is Bob Kearney and I build medieval castles out of Lego blocks offering for brick world 2015 is the castle of the Prince of Wales charles ii inline-four they well actually first in line for the throne of England and the castle is called Carnarvon it's located in the village of Carnarvon in North Wales initially built from approximately twelve seventy seven to twelve ninety-two this is the Eagle Tower unfortunately Lego doesn't make any small sitting Eagles so I consulted with my consultant at cadu in Cardiff Wales and we decided that it would be better to ring the Eagle tower with dark gray lego parrots rather than Harry Potter owls I think that the parrot can Passmore is any kind of bird almost dry exactly yes so the original castle began with the Eagle Tower and went to the Queen's tower the Chamberlain's tower with the Great Hall just across the wall then the black tower the cistern tower the Queen's Gate and the Northeast Tower at the corner over there and that was the original castle until it was captured by the Welsh in approximately twelve ninety three okay very cool so now one of the things about to build this large is that it would be near impossible to transport it together so how does it break down for transit if it does there are six major pieces since the tables here are not particularly level the splits are fairly easy to see not nearly as easy to see at home where my table is completely flat the Queen's Gate was entered through a very tall ramp which I did not reproduce now there's currently a balcony so visitors can look out over the town hi I'm Andrew Spangler and this is my build editor castle and basically I started off I wanted to make a castle and have it be related to World War two and so I searched and there's only a few castles that actually participated in World War two and this is one of them it's actually one of the most interesting because the French Germans and Americans all fought alongside each other against the SS so here you can basically see the SS are all up all along the sides fighting the defenders on the inside interesting so if you can give some more I guess of that back story and why the French Germans and Americans ended up together fighting against other Germans so the castle is in tyrol austria so right when world war ii broke out the Germans invaded all their surrounding countries so they took over the the castle and then they took all the French high up officials VIPs and then they were held in the castle and then towards the end of the war it was about four or some days before the war actually ended French Olympic tennis player escaped from the castle and then the other prisoners they told him go find an American battalion they ended up running into a German battalion but they wanted to surrender so they have both ended up going and finding an American battalion and then the the Germans proved that they'll prove their surrender make themselves look a little bit better they offered their services to the to the Americans and French so they all came back there was only a few guards and such so they took over the castle pretty easily with an SS battalion ended up coming to try to retake the castle and so the battle basically took place I think there's three days before the war completely ended so the SS would have been these more hardcore German troops that didn't want to surrender and they were going to like the last man at the end of the war that the fanatics the ones Hitler completely brainwashed and stuff very interesting so you can take us through some more of the build then it one thing I noticed is the great minifigs you want to talk about kind of the designs those and where that came from so the minifigures are pretty much all custom I took roblins decals i decal basically all I think there's only one brick Mania printed figure all the other ones are decal and then all the brick worms are painted I tried to paint all the brick arms vests as well and then a few of the the minifigures are they have the decal underneath and then I painted on top of that so that's those are more that SS the ones that are have the most paint on them yeah they turned out really great and then the castle itself here and kind of the bridge you can talk about some of your techniques with that there's a lot of little details in there I tried to I've had these three specific techniques or pieces that I used I used the masonry bricks then the 1 by 1 studs mixed with 2 or 1 by 2 plates made a 1 by 3 brick with out of those and then I used the one by one with a stud on the side and then some tiles and I just basically are also with a few other things like 1 by 1 round bricks and I took all those pieces and then I stuck with those and throughout the whole castle just use those those pieces to give it that more detailed look and as you were working on this what kind of like sources and inspiration did you use like photos the castle does the castle still exist today yeah the castle still does exist it's a private castle so there's not quite as many pictures as I would have liked most of the pictures were only of the front up view of the castle so I think that's what I got the most accurate so I basically mainly went off pictures so I think I got the front of it pretty good off of pictures the back was more just trying to make sure it matched the front and yeah yeah what's the interior like sort of in structure inside there the structure inside is completely Hollow the the main keep itself that has the most supports on it's got a lot of filler brick on the inside and then the other ones have some supports but they're mainly leaning into each other are into onto the the main key yeah well very good I think the bill turned out really nice the other thing you've got us some really good kind of landscaping and trees you talked about kind of your Hill technique in the tree technique well I actually I started off I did most of the landscaping partly because I don't want to I was kind of unsure about the castle so I was doing more familiar grounds doing the landscaping so I did a lot of that first so the outside is pretty much just basic one stud high plus a plate or one that one side one brick high with a plate on top and then we'll go as it goes in there's basically just some some plating with columns underneath so and then I slowly just have that step up in about a brick high each going up and then after that there's a lot of just different colors underneath and then I started covering those up with the the color plating and then evened it out on the top and so the top is pretty much just covered then underneath are just columns underneath worked out very nice so for people who are interested how did the story end what could have happened to the defenders and the attacking Germans also the battle went on the Americans and French and Germans they ended up starting to lose but they sent for reinforcements and censors basically the end of the war three days after it the war ended and another American battalion came in and basically just got the SS to leave or defeated them so the Americans Germans French they did end up winning the battle there you go I think it's an amazing build and I love the story behind it it's really interesting kind of one of those small episodes from World War Two that's it's fascinating to study so thank you I appreciate you bringing this bill to brick world my name is Bob Weiss and what I when I start I have no idea what I'm gonna do beyond a very simple I'm going to have a town with battlements around it and in a castle that's actually a castle with room inside and so I stick I laid out the base plates I have a place where I can get it out this big and I looked at it for a month and then I decided I better do a moat so I made the moat leaving enough room here on this side for an attack and then I just start putting in I put the I do it layer by layer I put the walls around and then I put the houses in the first row of houses next to the wall and then I did the second layer of houses and I originally thought I'd have more town and I realized I needed more room for the castle so I reduced that down and then I wanted to keep it low last year's castle was an island that was really high up so kids couldn't see it and so I wanted this to be lower so they could see inside and see what was going on inside the castle too and so then I said okay then I'll make a second round of battlements around it and then you look at it what I'm gonna text okay I want to make some round bastions and I wanted to put a church with the lights have kind of gone out but with stained-glass windows and I wanted to make it you know like an interior of a castle with buildings so I made this next and then this was the last part and I didn't have much room but I knew I wanted to have round towers coming out from the corners that's what I did and so last year was the first year I used a combination of the masonry profile and plates with the sand green in it and so I don't and the snot with tiles of different depths how to get that tile jutting out there yeah and there's two different kinds the the snot and in the one by one with one stud on it so there's they're different depths and so those I leave put together that's how I make my walls and will continue and so when it was done then I looked at it for a while and I put in the landscaping and built the trees and then I only put I didn't know what I was gonna do for the men or anything until I get here so that's what I did it took about seven months and it was fun yeah I like that so you're very much kind of making up as you go along and just kind of whatever strikes you with that whatever point you are in the build I have no idea what's gonna come next that's just well I mean I like I put in these bastions I knew that because I had very specific those are specific pieces and I'm just realizing I didn't finish the way they were supposed to be tiles on top on all of them I never got I never noticed but anyway I you know it's like those are kind of cool-looking the turret tops and so I put in bastions all the way around just so I could use those yeah you've got a ton of cool minifigs here some of these are older Knights pieces and stuff so talk about some of the pieces you use for the different factions okay well I started collecting Lego when my son was six and he's 34 okay it was his Lego originally and so the blue pieces are from 20 years ago and the red here are from 25 years ago and so those were from castle sets I bought for him and then the these Kings whatever they're called are from recent sets I bought a chess set to add to these and I don't know where the green guys came from you know from various sets I don't buy many figures just to buy them to go like some of these guys down here these are just what I sets and I keep but then I like I bought all these helmets to make them more uniform and last year's build the castle that was a castle Islands was supposed to be cold so I bought from my my friend Dave all of these capes and I just figured except for the I to take them off for the archers because it doesn't work with a quiver to have a cape kind of hard to get under the cape and get the arrow out and so I redid those but other and then these are from Jordan Larson who's the co Castle coordinator with me being coordinator he supplied some I don't I don't jam them together like some people do that's kind of more the younger people's style and I like to kind of spread them out and leave room I might have done more but you know this was enough and then take us through some of the different houses in kind of the town portion that's within the walls here they come apart most of them I mean I rely forgot some of the earlier ones didn't come apart so what I've done over the years is collect unusual colors like dark green and there's there's old brown like right there and there's all the old gray so I can vary the colors so every what I'm trying to do with every house is variate and what I did this year because I'd gotten during the year a lot of these decorative pieces you know the round and there's round and kind of angled like Arrowhead and so on every house this year the decoration is something like that almost every house and so when I came here and I brought it the buildings had gotten mixed up and I'm thinking oh no I won't be able to remember how to put them back together but these are wider those are the widest over there so I could sort them by how wide or narrow they were and then you know and then you just mix the colors up so that's and then I was also mixing up the roofs because I use the old slopes but as you can see this is very popular because it's more real and so I was doing some like that and then some not and like I said some of these remove you know and this was the first one where I realized I couldn't build and I wait a minute I can take him apart was because these are as you can see this is where one of the sections is that comes apart and so I realized hey I don't have to fasten them down I can just do that because I did that before a couple years ago that works really well see you referenced your your castle build last year and I believe you've bought a number of castles to BrickCon over the years once again what is it about kind of castle building in that theme in general that it really appeals to you and you just keeps drawing you back every year when I was six or seven I got a metal metal castle set with plastic figures and I'm actually all my college work and graduate work was in history so I always loved castles I don't know maybe it was everything with that set I had a Fort Apache set in a castle set and I was tempted when they came out with the cavalry stuff but I'd already had too much castle stuff and so for me I find it it's there interesting in a sense it combines my interest in architecture and art and Lego because when I when I work in wood with stuff making things if I make a mistake I got to start all over again and I have to go get another piece of wood with Lego I can take it apart and I and that I can't tell you how many times I've been like up to here and then gone all the way back down because I figured oh something's not right and that's what's great about it so when I was in Europe we took a boat trip down the Rhine and I took picture after picture of castles and I had one on the Moselle River that I took about a hundred pictures of and then I realized when I did Mont saint-michel free a few years ago I don't like recreating reality that's much too hard to do it's so much easier to do it with your imagination and and come up with whatever you want so this is completely made-up and I'll do the same I'll do something smaller next year because I've committed to a collaborative build with the pirates to make a fortress that should be cool but I think castles really do lend themselves well to that style you were talking about where you just kind of make it up as you go along because there's so many cool and unique things you can do yes yeah not with this I wanted to have three layers you know the outer curtain wall with the town in between if I hadn't run out of time I would have put more people in there but it's like you can barely see it and then I wanted you know the inner keep and that's where it stops being a castle and it becomes kind of fantasy you know that you wanted things to come out and one of my Styles also has always been to use arches to create that movement out like that so I've really this has been a lot of fun and they're not like I had these pieces that are usually part of space but I I collect them because I know I can use them in round towers and this one is one one bigger and this one's one smaller so I built those just so I could use these pieces for the ropes sometimes you just got that perfect piece and you want to put it in there what to do with yeah I got to do something with it otherwise why do I have it exactly well fantastic layout here I'm so glad you've continued with the castle builds can't wait to see what you do with the Pirates next year as well that should be great so thanks for taking us through the layout I appreciate it thank you my name is Ben pitchford and we're here with arendelle Castle based on the frozen movie got my three kids and this one is specially for my young daughters who are dressed up as Elsa and Anna and then my oldest Olaf here I love it you've got the cosplay to go along with the awesome build here yeah it was totally you know my wife's idea and something my kids were excited for max was a little reluctant and embarrassed at first but we talked him into putting on the ralphie costume look-alike let's dive into the build here as well and kind of talk about the process of building this yeah so it originally was not supposed to be nearly as big but it just kept growing starting with the castle some friends of ours had a Disney book that I had some angles that shed some light especially the back side that we couldn't get from the movie so it is pretty close to what it looks like in the film but we started off with the front gate and and then it just kept growing and growing and then the mountain had had to grow you know proportionately so originally I was gonna have it to two base plates not not as wide but I had to make the mountain kind of surrounding the castle you kind of make the mountain adapt to whatever size the castle ended up correct yeah and I didn't want it to be you know that large originally but it turned out great and we got it here a little hard to transport something like this it's it is a modular build so we have a seam going down the middle of the mountain and then three seams in along the front so it breaks down into six sections and the castle is about six or seven sections as well talk a little bit more about some of the construction elements of the castle I notice the walls they're really stand out and then some of the ways you did the roof elements as well yeah I mean just a lot of hinge plates and wedges to try to tuck up some of the angles definitely a challenge there trying to replicate that because there's so many you know tall arches and towers and it's like holy cow how many towers can that can you build but and then and then the ship was a little bit of a challenge too but we took an old classic Caribbean clipper pirate theme classic ship and then we used the sails and the hull from that so I thought it turned out we could we wanted to do a port and some more ships but kind of ran out of time in space it you know originally the castle was four months to build which it was hook a while and then I kind of crammed the mountain to about a four month build also just because it was like you know we're running out of time for the show yeah the mountain is incredible there is a backdrop to the castle so large if we can maybe go to the back a little bit and kind of look at what that the structure is like so there are five waterfalls and we have it lit up with LED lights and a lot of those waterfalls you might have seen in previous builds you know we do a large build every year last year it was Robin Hood the year before that was samurai code and the three years ago was Rivendell and those were kind of based on you know things that my son was into this one was finally something my girls for my girls because they're you know big fans of the movie and so anyways we took the the waterfalls from previous builds and then just slightly tweaked them to fit this build so we also took if anybody recognizes from last year this stairway was originally in Robin Hood and we were able to piece that into this bill and kind of save some some time by using some larger chunks from previous builds but Wow you know we're gonna repurpose some stuff then yeah exactly so walking around there is obviously a little bit of table just to save on save on Lego but for the most part we have like I said three three sections that you can see the seams running up lots of burps and lips especially lerp slurps and that really is the secret to the structure for this size of a build start with those those kind of standard Lego rock and mountain pieces and then you kind of build off the detailing on the front from there exactly so you you know you can kind of see here or you know we kind of make a perimeter starting on the bottom we have our first lerp which is hard to see because it's light gray but then you take two steps back and you just keep following that pattern and covering it with slopes and wedges to give it that aesthetics but it this is what you know keeps it together and holds that first support there is a a secret hidden Olaf and in addition to the one that's floating up front so the secret you know hidden one for the treasure hunt will bring this to the Children's Museum when we're done in Fond du Lac Wisconsin and then I have a treasure hunting that'll be one of the items that kids will have fun looking for yeah this will be a big here with them so yeah this is an excellent build here how long does it take you to set up a build like this when you get to the show I think we got here around noon yesterday which was late and by the time we were done it was maybe 3:30 but that was only because we had a little bit of an issue with something with some breakage on the castle maybe added a half hour but not terrible last year I think it took me eight hours to set up so I was much happier with this although transporting it is still a beast especially with that humidity but we got it here my name is Frasier and I'm just castles always in my favorite theme since I was a kid so I built this base for another MOC a couple of years ago and I thought when I finished that got done with that I thought man this would make a great base for a big fantasy castle just I thought I wanted something really tall really narrow and as I started building it was surprisingly sturdy and I wanted to see like well maybe how tall can I make this and that kind of became the the big theme is just I wanted like towers on towers on towers there you go yeah so when you first started planning how did you kind of come up with the idea and how did it take shape in your mind sort of oh man you know I did some sketches early on just some ideas I knew I wanted a garden I knew I wanted just a lot of towers and I'd seen some other mocks in the past with like matching blue roofs and then the Disney Castle came out with matching blue roofs and I was like oh I love their turret idea so I kind of borrowed some turret ideas from them I took I took some inspiration from like the Lord of the Rings minused here at the White City for the base pilgrims progress parts of the Bible dinah topia which they have a whole scene down there but I didn't know they were doing but I just there so there's a lot of birds on the back that you can't really see from the front but just inspiration so but it's not connected anything it's not like a TV show or comic it's just out of my imagination so as you build up then how to kind of work did you start building from the bottom up and kind of go from there and then how did you decide on so you've got different styles of towers as well I did and that was one of the things I really was really important to me is that I I didn't want just an angular build of just all right angles so I was like well how do i how do I do something different from that so I knew I wanted at least one circular Tower and I was actually inspired by Alice Finch the famous castle builder where the hogwarts as she did that huge tan Hogwarts tower with the this style of the 1x2 brick and the and the cones so I did that and then I basically angled about half the castle at about a 45-degree angle off the base which was probably the hardest part of the whole build it led to a lot of really complex angling in the back which again you can't see from the front but I got used hours and hours back there like trying to get these and I ended up using cheese slopes on their side going all the way up to accomplish some of those some of those tight angles but really really just a lot of a lot of circular towers using I use the new circular tower pieces from the from the Disney Castle I had to order a few extra those yeah there you go so this thing is massive do you know how tall the whole build is it's almost it's just it's a it's a hair over nine feet Wow and it's just resting on kind of the the clear pieces here in the middle so talk a little bit more about that structure and what kind of holds us all up yeah you know it's one of the common questions I get is like is is there a steel beam and no it's all Lego and it's not solid the base isn't solid in here it's even you know tall oh inside there there's a there's a 4x4 post that I built up the middle and there's no I mean it's just brick stacking it's just I made sure that the center Tower was the center of gravity was over the main base but surprisingly up to this level it's really sturdy I just used lots of interlocking plates and I could I could sit on it when I got it to that level oh yeah well that's good I'm sure needs that strength to hold up the whole thing it's heavy it's 50 pounds so when you bring this to show does it break down into several sections so it's easier to move around unfortunately yes I had to spend about two hours reconstructing it to I'd to break it apart enough to cram it in the back of my Jeep to get it here that wasn't very fun there's like open-heart surgeries like I don't want to take this up exactly I'm actually it's difficult to get the very top put on as well as their ladders and things involved or me my six-foot self on my on my tiptoes just very carefully they were like 15 people watching when I was like assembling it like well I hope I don't trip then did you make this backdrop here as well um sort of I bought the paper my sister painted the clouds and then my dad is in construction so he actually did Roy Ratliff he did the the he just got the lumber and built the backdrop and then my sister is Kelsey Diller she's a local artist actually painter so I don't know how to paint cloud so I just took it to her as like hey sister can you help me out and she was fine to do it family project there a little bit yeah some help from the family yeah that's awesome so any thoughts to expand on this the future may get taller or anything like that or is this about as high as he would go you know my wife's pregnant with our first child and I told her like this gonna be my last hurrah you know go out go out with a bang you know big and then I'm gonna put the brick away in storage for a year and taking just focus on the baby but you know I have had that fleeting thought of could I make it taller thanks for bringing this out to the show it's really incredible and I think it's been a big hit with the public here as well with the Austin build so thanks for talking about it absolutely thanks for the work you guys do I love I've watched you guys on YouTube thank you appreciate ya my name is flynn DeMarco and this is richard board and we built this piece together and it's called treasure of the snake queen the story starts here at the bottom of the mock and goes all the way up the side of the mountain and finishes with an epic battle with a snake queen in the in the top tower room so we running it with two eb threes and there's an Arduino microcontroller to do the sounds and lights so let's go ahead and start the start the show all right here we go so here our adventures are going through the happy village at the bottom of the mountain and they leave the wizard waving goodbye to them and they go into the forest and now they're going to go through the spooky spider forest a fantasy classic the armor and the minifig accessories oh thanks and then yeah and then we now they're in the slimy cave with slime monsters and the slime ghosts and now they're going to take a trip through the spooky crypt and now they finally left the Crypt and they can start in the castle and here they are their little dragon battle here you know we used all the tropes we wanted it to seem familiar and you know fairytale like and then now of course we have the battle with the snake queen and she turns into a skeleton and that's the end of all the treasure there yeah and they got the treasure of the snake Queen that's incredible with all those moving parts so if you can maybe just break you down for its kind of level by level and how this idea came together and then how the build kind of came together for you well after last year we when we found out the theme was animation we really wanted to do something that would move obviously but we also wanted to combine animations like classic animation stuff and we're both big fans of high fantasy so we wanted to create a story and like I said we did use all the kind of the tropes but I think it's what makes it seem familiar and recognizable to people like they can pick that out they don't have to think too hard to follow the story right like it can just like and it can happen so so here we have it's a nine-volt track you can see the nine-volt train and we were able to connect the nine-volt train to the ev3 and control the motor of the train through that and then these little guys walking are actually connected to the nine-volt train with a power functions motor so whenever the train goes they also go then this these two conveyor belts are connected together so that they always stay in sync so they're connected by a chain and they run the same and then this is a third conveyer belt that's run with a sensor we have multiple sensors inside so once this thing completes there's an ultrasonic sensor that reads when the characters come around and then it starts this section and then we have another ultrasonic sensor that starts the top and here we have this the turntable that holds our party and we have our dragons on a swing arm and then for the top turntable it's actually a one large turntable powered by round rack gears the ones they used in the bucket excavator it's like a four piece yellow round two of those sandwiched together with a motor to run it and then there are two smaller turntables inset inside the larger turntable that gives us the the snake queen battle at the end yeah that's amazing so was there a lot of experimenting involved in getting all the moving parts to work out as you moved moved up with the build yes definitely I mean that was one of the reasons we ended up kind of hooking these two treadmills together was just in an attempt to make sure it was always going to be in sync and you know the programming can sometimes be a little finicky so there was a lot of like trial and error and trying to figure out okay how do we get the timing to work out so that everything's gonna be synced especially when you're talking about three completely separate brains which is what we're doing here we tried daisy chaining the ev3 S together but didn't have a lot of success with that so we decided just to add a couple extra sensors and use it and so the two ev3 s are complete separate entities from each other and one controls the the bottom up to the two up to here and then the the second one controls this whole top area so then talk a little bit more about what the structure of this is like because you've got to incorporate obviously all the mountain and the cliffs and everything with all those moving parts so how did that come together well so we built a structure out of Technic and we just started building a skin on it you know we put everything on we made sure and use to leave lots of outward-facing studs so that we'd be able to stick plates on there and everything was really just sort of like we cobbled it together and then said okay how can we cover the spaces where you know so we didn't I have to say we didn't put a lot of like forethought into how exactly what I'll go together we just kind of said okay here's these two things let's make them hook up yeah it turned out great night I love the the whole look of it with the outward facing cliff pieces and everything and then the castle looks amazing as well so was there any particular kind of castle inspiration for that or was it just kind of make something that you thought fit well with the overall scene a little of both we were definitely heavily inspired by Maleficent's castle from Sleeping Beauty that was a big inspiration and we also just looked at a lot of like you know drawings and paintings of scary castles and we we went with the classic Disney villain colors of green and purple and black again you know we were trying to evoke thoughts and emotions from people which is why we chose the music that we chose as well we wanted music that would speak to people and make them feel a certain way when they saw everything coming by and I think Peter and the wolf is so great for that and also we use Night on Bald Mountain which was used in Fantasia which was another heavily big influence for us and then the Carmina Burana at the end because we decided we needed whatever the most dramatic piece of classical music we could find and that was certainly it the whole scene turned out perfect when you bring this to show what's set up like for you guys and getting this doll work together this is the first time we brought it anywhere and it was a bit of a difficult process I think we would probably I think our plan is to once we're done here to get it home and start thinking about how we could improve its modularity and if that's a word but you know um in you know in our ability to be able to take it apart and move it but this is actually comes apart in four pieces so these side walls here here and this front area here are three separate pieces the whole top of this comes off and that's a separate piece and then it comes down to a three by three base plate square which is fortunately able to fit in our car it's always an important detail we were driving with our knees in our faces but you know it was we got it here so huh and then um and then just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the the arts stuff we both come from theatre backgrounds so we used a lot of old theater tricks and theme park tricks you know in here and we decided we kind of wanted to do this light side dark side kind of opposite thing and we we thought a lot about color palettes and how you know the how those would affect the way the things look so everything here on the light side is like tan and brown and green and then we sort of went for an afternoon II sort of palette here and then a nighttime palette over here with dark greens and dark grays and oranges and we tried to be pretty meticulous about you know not using certain colors in certain places and all like you said it kind of all adds to that scene then and with the music and then the movement it all adds up to create a really nice scene for people to stand here and watch what's one of the reactions been of the public so far oh they seem to be very delighted and surprised I think cuz they just come by and they're like oh this is really cool and they take pictures and I'm like you want to see the show and they're like there's a show and you know we give them the show and I think probably the most surprising for people is that the Upper Room turns around and that there's the big snake back there they don't expect it so I always like standing here and watching people's faces and all this on their eyes get really big and they smile and yeah it's really it's been wonderful yeah and especially seeing the kids really really are excited by it which is great well it's very impressive I really appreciate you taking the time to put this together and to bring it out to the show thank you so much for chatting with me about it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] name's andrew schultz originally i came up with the idea about two years ago when they had the invasion theme the first thing I built was the round tower which I actually had two years ago but I couldn't figure out how to fit in the display so I held it off for this year and there's just start building the castle and once the castles built build the base around it and then I would have gone all the way across but I kind of ran out of gray bricks so that's why I have the slope okay and then if we moved down this way we've got what have we got the moat here and then what else do we have yeah well we have the villagers yell what's left to the village with the soldiers attacking through it I decided to add the three predators as you know gods to help out the the soldiers and but they're not gonna survive I've got about a minute before they get overwhelmed here it looks like it yeah so talk a little bit more about the techniques in some of the different parts of this castle area like you've got the towers coming off and some of the cool roof tech right well the towers here I had to to get the thing I had to do them upside down so because they they have no slants like that and originally I built the castles with the towers with the windows all the way around and then I added the smokestacks and I realized that you can't have windows where the smokestacks are so I had to go and take out all the windows and the same way to keep you know I probably built it twice before I finally got that you know the thing and so yeah it's just a matter of I build and I put it and sometimes it works and sometimes it don't so you take it apart and rebuild and you have a lot of grey brick here where do you source all that from well originally when the Lego store used to sell boxes I got quite a few boxes but then they stopped selling boxes so which is unfortunate but and what's the hardest part of doing a build like this is a pretty pretty sizeable build especially the castle here what's the toughest part of that for you trying to figure out how to build it so I can take it apart and bring it here because you have to be able to move it and boxes are only so big so you gotta figure out to build the basis and that will fit in the boxes I already have and then bring them up here so so is it kind of modular the way it breaks down or how does that work then yeah the base plates are modular in sections of four 2x2 base plates and then of course the walls are separate from the towers and this this actually whole part pops off in the bottom so in each building is you know you can take apart so it's really cool and then I really love your design on some of these houses here was there any particular inspiration for the look of these or how did that work well as you can tell from the the three middle buildings those are based on the medieval village and the the big one I just kind of went online and googled you know medieval inns I found it kind of a picture that kind of look cool so that's however the Red Roof Inn came up and the barn over there that's just straight off of one set I kind of got tired and lazy so just oh this barn looks nice and just plopped it on there I really like what you've done with the landscape me too kind of the rock work and all of this slope till and all that is that tough for you do you enjoy that type of building well I kind of I do kind of enjoy doing the landscape the way I did here is I knew it since I didn't have enough grade to go straight across I had to do the slope and I knew it's going to be a you know a jagged slope so that's why all these the three leaves are used to kind of camouflage the steppin part of it [Music] [Music] it was Bob Weiss I am a member of arch lug I have been building castles for six years coming to BrickCon and I've been wanting to do ma st. Michelle ever since I started coming to BrickCon because I think it's one of the most beautiful places that combines outstanding geography and it was very challenging because I had to get the right shape and I had to make the houses and the whole thing easy to move so the houses are all on a on a little flat made out of tiles so they can go in boxes because the when I made other castles everything was connected and it was hard to move and I've gotten better every year because the set there's three sections and a fourth the Cathedral sits in the middle and they fit on tiles again with little plates every once in a while to tie them down and there you could drop these and they wouldn't completely break apart their inside there I'm trying to make them bulletproof to move so I really had fun doing it but I much prefer making castles that are just out of my imagination because it's a lot easier wait a minute it's not what I just did were you able to visit it in person too I have not but I had a friend bring me back a bunch of guide books and I bought some guide books but I'm hoping to go in about two years I just keep going down to places in Europe unfortunately right there's so many cool castles to see there so when you started on this where did you kind of first start and like build out from okay well I had a map and I put down grids so I had little you know one by two black tiles here and so ABCD one two three four five six seven eight and then I take I took the overhead and made the outline of the island recreating as well as I could what it was and then then I made these walls along here and then I started right here and this didn't turn out real well this should have been steeper but I started making this and then I kind of went around to here and then I then I went start at the other end and built up to about this level and then I had to block off the the monastery church was in the middle so in the future some of these are our these are 32 by 32 stud base plates and some of them are connected and I'm gonna make them all just 32 by the if there's so much easier to move when you make something like this so it's gotten a lot I've gotten a lot better at this every time I do it so I was very pleased with this yeah it turned out really amazing so these house designs then it seems like you kind of use a similar design for a lot of a source size and stuff how did that yeah yeah well I had to have run them on rails it's like see that's the edge of a base plate and so yeah I would have liked to have them staggered more but only about a third of the village that's there is here so you gotta you gotta change it where I could recreate the monastery you know somewhat similar to what it looks like this is you know it's very small in comparison so I had it loses a little bit of reality because they're in such close rows and what I did was alternate I tried to alternate I've got black new gray old grey dark blue dark brown old brown new brown tan so I've got different colors the houses were very plain so I couldn't make them look real like most people doing castles and architecture have a lot of fine detail but you look at the pictures they don't have them so I added a little but so it's it's just more recreating the look of what they had and this friend that brought back a guidebook was like I had three guide books and I keep looking all blown up pictures and put them on the wall and then he brings buck back one and it's got a better view of right here and I realized oh my gosh there's a church there you know I didn't they didn't have a good view of it anywhere else and so I put that put the church in and this the this is last year's model that was sold to participants made by Britt Kahn and I thought that was kind of cute and it's it's madness was everybody's running away and they're just here as tourists so they're their lemmings if you look around back there they're jumping off the back into the ocean but this is a real place and it it's an island at high tide and then a causeway connected to the mainland I mean this is covered up that's high tide okay so there's water over it we have like 12-foot tide differentials here there they have 60-foot so anyway that's amazing and so what what would you say you know build of this size this many pieces what's kind of the toughest part for you when you're approaching a build like this well for this it was it was recreating the shape that to fit reality and then underneath that was getting the engineering right so this part would be sturdy I've made castles every year and they were kind of flimsy and this fits just like a glove it's just amazing so and then I saw and kind of enjoy the engineering of it you know aside from you know and this I like to do freeform I thought of coming to the computer brick link has a new computer program and I thought I don't want I like to just sit down and it's like I can't carve and wood cuz I make too many mistakes that's why I like Lego I can make a mistake and I can take it apart and start all over again exactly and it seems like you've been doing castle building for a while now what makes that so attractive you versus space or whatever other the theme that might be at one point I wanted to be an architect I had a castle set when I was a little kid I made out of metal okay and I've always liked castles when I go to Europe I go to places and take pictures of them and they fascinated me I I studied history in college and for particularly military history and so I read about fortifications so it can't combines an interest in architecture and history and just having a inclination for this particular stage of history I just think they're beautiful but this is unusual most might all my other castles are like his gray on dark gray and this fits the colors which was very different was it hard to get all those 10 pieces where'd you source those from well the hard ones worthy the dark brown tiles I mean slopes I started buying tan and dark kin on brick link for this two and a half years ago just knowing I was going to need a lot you know and so it took a while to get even then I ran out I kept running out of things that I didn't I ran out of those those Brown windows I ran out of just tan bricks I ran out of gray roof tiles and I thought I had enough to build five you know it just you know I think I spent 2,000 bucks on parts because you know I just didn't get it didn't have as much as I thought and I have some left over I got too many of other yeah can't win [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Beyond the Brick

Views: 2,249,229

Keywords: adult fan of lego, joshua hanlon, beyond the brick, model, legos, podcast, interview, builder, LEGO, AFOL, Convention, MOC, Custom, lego collection, bricks, pieces, minifigures, brick convention, art, amazing lego, awesome, castle, knight, village, medieval, middle ages, king, queen, best, biggest, tallest, frozen, movie, film, alien, attack, battle, tower, keep, itter, zelda, hyrule

Id: hsfmkiVNx8k

Length: 133min 15sec (7995 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2019