Custom Forestmen's River Fortress and Camouflaged Outpost using parts from the Forest Hideout gift with purchase

[Warbinator]

I was fortunate enough to be able to pick up a couple of extras of the Forest Hideout set and I used them to build updated versions of other classic Forestmen sets. My goal was to retain the same design style and palette, use mostly just the included bricks for the tree elements of those sets, and supplement the other castle parts based on currently available parts that were in my existing stockpile.

Here is the Forestmen's River Fortress, which I just completed today. I'm particularly proud of the tree roots and the working gate. More images are available here: https://imgur.com/a/DfEn1Ji

Here is the Camouflaged Outpost. I was able to keep this one fairly close to the footprint and dimensions of the original, just like with the Forest Hideout set. More images are available here: https://imgur.com/a/Obh3wUs

 

 

[icm]

Very nice, very believable extensions of the GWP Forest Hideout's style to the rest of the classic Forestmen sets.

[TeriXeri]

Looks great, the rounder more modern parts really do make it a lot more tree like.

[Lyichir]

This is really neat! The contrast between the rounded shapes of the newer trees and the chunkier, more angular castle shapes really works well.

A part of me thinks making the water dark azure like in the Lion Knight's Castle would provide some nice contrast with the blue used for the door, but that's just preference, and understandably dark azure is still a rarer color for large bases to build on.

[Warbinator]

Just now, Lyichir said:

This is really neat! The contrast between the rounded shapes of the newer trees and the chunkier, more angular castle shapes really works well.

A part of me thinks making the water dark azure like in the Lion Knight's Castle would provide some nice contrast with the blue used for the door, but that's just preference, and understandably dark azure is still a rarer color for large bases to build on.

If I had the bricks on hand, I definitely would have used the lighter colored dark azure rounded plates to substitute for the baseplate. That would have really helped give it a more modern, up to date look. I wanted to use what I had on hand so that I could build it now rather than waiting on parts from bricklink though, and I had this perfectly good blue baseplate still in the shrink wrap that I finally found a reason to open and use.

[MAB]

The way the tree grows out of the water with little plants around it and the attacking BF can appear to walk over water suggests it is very shallow and more of a large puddle than a river. Putting some land under the tree and better placement of the figures might help it look more like a river. There isn't really any need for a drawbridge if attackers can walk up to the castle.

[Warbinator]

12 hours ago, MAB said:

The way the tree grows out of the water with little plants around it and the attacking BF can appear to walk over water suggests it is very shallow and more of a large puddle than a river. Putting some land under the tree and better placement of the figures might help it look more like a river. There isn't really any need for a drawbridge if attackers can walk up to the castle.

I guess I took the approach that this is sort of a marsh or swamp area and not a particularly deep river. 

[SirBlake]

Really nice job on these. I think you adapted the newer style to the old sets quite well, though I too miss the watery prisoner cell. It always struck me as a particularly dastardly form of detention. 

Is the crossing set next? The rope bridge done in a new way would be an interesting challenge. Maybe something like the Ewok village. 

[Warbinator]

2 hours ago, SirBlake said:

Is the crossing set next? The rope bridge done in a new way would be an interesting challenge. Maybe something like the Ewok village. 

Maybe. I do have one more Hideout set, but I was hoping to leave it unopened. I'm not sure the river crossing set is quite as iconic as these three though, and as you said I'm not sure how I would do the rope bridge. If inspiration strikes, I might try and tackle it. But probably not.