Help! How to start/build a VIKING Housing/Village?

[Linebacker]

Hello all,

I hope I am here in the right categorie and such a post doesn't exist already.

I want to introduce myself real fast. My name is Ragnar, I am 62 years old and I live in Germany, so please excuse potential misspelling. I promised my grandson who is 8 years old and actually living in the States to build an authentic and big Viking Scenario for a local Lego Contest. I started some researches on Lego Viking Sets and found the ones from 2005. I bought the Sets 7015, 7016, 7017, 7018, 7019, 7020 and also 7021, some extra Figures like Thor and Loki from the newer Sets "Marvel's The Avengers", nearly 40 other Viking Figures and some items like weapons, shields, etc. It took me nearly two month to get them all together - brandnew. I was a little bit surprised by the prices that I had to pay. It seems that Lego Sets are actually a good investment.

I was a little bit disappointed that no buildings for a Viking-Village-Scenario were available, so I made more researches and found this MOC-Community with all these great ideas. My idea is to combine these original Sets with some Mythologie topics and of course with these own created buildings.

So my questions are, how to start such a MOC? In my age the power of imagination is not that high anymore. Do I have to buy from every single available brown and grey Lego-Piece like 100 to get a start? Do I get a kind of construction manual from a helping hand, or is this forbidden as a "MOC-Member"?

Greetings and in advance Thank You.

[Littleworlds]

Hello Linebacker!

Sounds like you have stepped really into quite some adventure here I surely don't have an answer for all your questions, but there will be more and more competent people reading this topic.

One thought comes to my mind though: since you are going to ship this village to the USA, you might want to pack it into smaller, easier to handle sections. Which likely don't break so easily and are easier to repair when damaged. Maybe single houses that can be put on baseplates. Since Viking-era houses were mostly the same, you could just start with one "ideal" model house and make the others variations of it.

Shopping at Bricklink will be surely needed too, but first I would look at some MOCs and plans for them, if available, to see which parts in roughly which quantity you are going to need.

I also assume you have a bit background knowledge on Vikings, otherwise you might not have made such an offer , so that will really help to create a authentic layout.

I mentioned shipping before and apart from models breaking, there might also be issues with customs, if the value is exceeding a certain amount. Hard to say really how they are going to treat plastic construction toys. Probably not as strict as if you would ship Iphones

[BrickCurve]

Yes, shipping the model in one piece would be very, very difficult! At the very least, there would be a significant amount of repairs to do to the MOC once it arrived.

Brick link is the best place to shop for specific parts, with many of the stores based in Germany having an excellent range in all sorts of parts, including ones for use in your viking layout.

I also recommend going to an official Lego store where they have Pick a Brick, (or PAB as it is sometimes called), where you can buy bulk lego by the cup full. It is luck of the draw for what parts they have there at the time though- there may be some there that would be useful to you, and there may not be.

From a quick search of Flickr, (where most of the images of MOCs are hosted), these might make good inspiration for techniques to use: (Note, none of them are mine, click on link to be taken to the image page, where ether is a place to comment / ask questions).

The Green Goblet by Isaac S., on Flickr

GoH: Findolfia (main) by Simon Schweyer, on Flickr

Viking Fortress by Lukasz Wiktorowicz, on Flickr

Wykeham Farmstead by Mark E., on Flickr

Life in Nordheim by Isaac S., on Flickr

Also, make sure you post work in progress photos so that we can give you advice on how you are going. Another thing that might be useful si getting in contact with a local Lego user group, (or LUG for short), a map of where they are located can be found here- https://lan.lego.com/lugs

I hope this helps!

[thetang22]

One of the most important things to do is find visual sources of inspiration. That can be other MOC viking buildings, as seen above, or pics of viking-like buildings from anywhere in media. For instance, you could look at the buildings in the video game Skyrim for inspiration, as many of them are viking-inspired.

Once you find your inspiration, depending on how familiar you are with the MOC building process, I'd simply do some research on Lego building techniques. You'll see all sorts of ideas for different types of walls, roofs, etc...

Good luck!

[Athos]

Vikings are a great project.

I can tell you what I did. Decide to write a Johnny Thunder adventure involving a lost tribe of vikings. Start with a building or two. Fiddle with expanding it to a large set. Decide your photography/photoshop skills aren't up to the task. Scrap the whole project. Dabble in other stuff for a couple of years. Decide to restart again with a large display piece. Build a bunch of buildings. Decide you don't have enough bricks to do what you have in mind and put all of the buildings aside for later. Get interested in building Egypt and start playing with that. Then get really obsessed with Egypt and cannibalize all your viking buildings for tan to build Egypt, all while promising to get back to the original Viking story someday.

Anyhow, I would advise that you just start building. Then supplement that with a flickr search or a brickshelf search for inspiration... I also would suggest to do a google image search of viking houses for more inspiration. Maybe netflix that history channel Vikings show to watch while you build?

I am a shameless copier of other people's designs, though I do try to put my own spin on them. I am not sure what you mean by construction manual, but I don't think utilizing the resources available is a bad thing.

I'd also gather a lot of brown, dark brown and tan. You're going to need a lot more than 100 to really get anything of size. I don't think you need to buy the sets, to be honest, apart from the figures (and the ship), there isn't much to them that would be useful for MOCing a village. I think this would be a good set to get brown at a reasonable price.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with...

Steve

[Linebacker]

Hello from Germany,

thanks to all of you for the replies. It is really good advice and I am really thankful for that.

I did find some inspiration during my trip to Scandinavia. Here are a few examples from Sweden:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Foteviken3.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Foteviken1.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Foteviken2.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Foteviken6.jpg

But of course to put these images into a Lego-MOC, that is why I am here in your community.

I wasn't sure if I am allowed to post MOC-Pictures of other peole.

Greetings

Edited August 12, 2016 by Linebacker