Barnaby's Escapade

[Garmadon]

Spoiler

Previously:

Barnaby's Outlaw Training Camp

It was a beautiful day in Mitgardia.  

Sir Uridius Dratiphe was standing one of the towers flanking the gatehouse - the taller one; he always made a point of only standing on the taller one - he liked feeling the wind and sniffing in the healthy, bracing, northern air.  Plus, he liked keeping a look out for Algus and other brigands and suchlike.

Suddenly a cart turned up the road and came into view.

 A couple of fellows - one of them pertly waving up at them - walked up with it to the drawbridge, where, curiously enough, the cart stopped, and the two chaps started unloading and rolling in their wares.  

"Most intriguing!" remarked Sir Uridius to the guard besides him, "I do believe I've never seen a merchant stop right outside instead of actually coming in the town before."

"You think it's suspicious, sir?" inquired the guard, "shall I go down and check what's up?"

"Exactly," returned Sir Uridius, "and if that Barnaby fellow we've heard of recently has any of his dreadful schemes up again, make sure you stop them in good time."

The guard headed down accordingly, putting on a most important air.  Suddenly there was a bit of a scuffle in the court, and Barnaby himself (who had rode up under the cart, and who had managed to sneak in to do the dealing when no one happened to be looking) came flying out toward the gate.  

"Raise the drawbridge, shut the portcullis!" exclaimed Sir Uridius excitedly.

The order was too slow, however (and the other fellow on guard had spent too long waving his sword at the outlaw...)

And Barnaby rushed up the rising drawbridge and leapt out to freedom - and as the portcullis had slammed shut just in front of the other guard who was pursuing them, the outlaws made good their escape, much to Sir Uridius and his guards' chagrin.

"What was he up to?" the former asked as the rather crestfallen guard came up.

"Oh, nothing much - only selling smuggled Kaliphlin oil to the cook and housekeeper."

"What!?" exclaimed Sir Uridius, utterly put out - "selling untaxed oil in this castle?  That's enough to put a man in the sulks all day long!"

"Yes, and he charged double for it," the guard ventured hesitantly.

"This must be taken care of!" exclaimed the knight again, ignoring the guard.  "A smuggler in this castle?!  Bah!  We have a time-honored tradition here of paying taxes, and it won't go be messed up with impunity!  Come along, sirrah, we must concoct a plan..."

Figless, and with the portcullis down:

Another build from me!  Just a freebuild for GoH as it happens - it is also the exterior of a different scene I uploaded a few days ago on Flickr, though, and a slightly changed version of my functional castle for the LCBTC.  The portcullis and drawbrige both actually work, though unfortunately I had to scrap the collapsing wall and moving road functions when removing the base and finalizing this smaller build.  Credit for the cart design (slightly altered) to the tutorial over on brickbuilt!

Here's a shot of all the figs together:

Thanks for viewing, C&C are welcome! 

[Kai NRG]

  Hurrah for brave Barnaby and his brigand band!  Very nice keep Garmadon, I really like the two towers.  It does kind of feel like the style of the rounded section clashes with the rest of it, since there's so much added texture due to the 1x1 round bricks... but then, I can't say I see a way to avoid that!  Cool job on the moat though!  And that's a great cart, as it always has been! 

[Alfadas]

Awesome figures and cool story! The castle itself looks very nice too! Great work!

[TitusV]

Nice build! :thumbup:

I really like the wall texture, though I have to agree with Kai that the round section looks a bit out of place.

However upside-down fences work amazingly well for the gate, and the minifig-posing is great, especially on the seventh image!

[Tezclatipoca]

Great gate !

I really like the way you built the flag ! Is it a Ninjago printed glass panel ? Brilliant idea !

excellent job !

[Gunman]

Really nice "clean" build, I like the simple landscaping and the sides of the walls. Grea job

[Garmadon]

Thanks all! 

12 hours ago, Kai NRG said:

  Hurrah for brave Barnaby and his brigand band!  Very nice keep Garmadon, I really like the two towers.  It does kind of feel like the style of the rounded section clashes with the rest of it, since there's so much added texture due to the 1x1 round bricks... but then, I can't say I see a way to avoid that!  Cool job on the moat though!  And that's a great cart, as it always has been! 

 Thanks Kai!  I love that water technique!  I'd have to agree somewhat about the round tower - somebody really needs to come up with another easy way to do it that doesn't require so many of those! 

5 hours ago, TitusV said:

Nice build! 

I really like the wall texture, though I have to agree with Kai that the round section looks a bit out of place.

However upside-down fences work amazingly well for the gate, and the minifig-posing is great, especially on the seventh image!

Thanks Titus!  Necessity is the mother of invention, they say (I don't have one of those portcullis pieces)!   Glad you like the posing as well, it was rather fun!

3 hours ago, Faladrin said:

Great gate !

I really like the way you built the flag ! Is it a Ninjago printed glass panel ? Brilliant idea !

excellent job !

Thanks Faladrin, and yes, that's the NINJAGO panel   The castle was originally going to be more oriental - hence the flag and Japanese over the entrance way.  Glad you like it!

1 hour ago, Gunman said:

Really nice "clean" build, I like the simple landscaping and the sides of the walls. Great job

Thanks Gunman!  I was quite happy with how the landscape turned out - simple terrain variation can really work well!

[Niku]

Lovely little moc and well photographed too.
The minifigs have lot of charisma.

[mrcp6d]

Great gatehouse!  I really like that the two towers aren't the same height, nice variety. 

[en_zoo]

really nice, Garm. awesome water and funny story

[Garmadon]

On 7/4/2017 at 11:31 AM, Niku said:

Lovely little moc and well photographed too.
The minifigs have lot of charisma.

Thanks Niku!  Glad you like them! 

On 7/4/2017 at 2:29 PM, mrcp6d said:

Great gatehouse!  I really like that the two towers aren't the same height, nice variety. 

Thanks mrcp6d!  It was actually originally an accident that one arrow slit ended up higher than the other, but I happened to like it so just went on from there! 

On 7/5/2017 at 4:56 PM, en_zoo said:

Really nice, Garm. awesome water and funny story

Thanks en_zoo! 

 

[Blufiji]

Nice! Great texturing all around.

[soccerkid6]

Superb gatehouse, the 'mini' towers are quite lovely Very fun and engaging storyline as well Funnily enough, I didn't notice Barnaby under the cart until after I read the story

Great to see you found our tutorial useful

[Slegengr]

Lovely build and story, Garmadon!

I particularly like that water technique!  The clean look to the wall and landscape is refreshing for a short story like this, as we often see so much heavy vegetation and very textured walls.  That is a neat little cart design and amazing that it allows for such a well-hidden minifigure!

Your well-written stories leave me looking forward to more of Barnaby's escapades!  I really like the dark red/dark green color combination.  That is something I have considered for quite a while and will probably use in the future, especially after the introduction of the rogue CMF.

[Henjin_Quilones]

The story is very enjoyable, and the build is, too. I will echo some others about there being too many 1x1 round bricks in the round section versus the rest, but of course that technique requires that. Perhaps using a few more in the rest of the wall would have evened out the balance. That portcullis is an excellent use of the gate parts, and the fact that both the drawbridge and the portcullis work is great. Well done!

[Garmadon]

On 7/7/2017 at 3:22 PM, Blufiji said:

Nice! Great texturing all around.

Thanks mate!  Glad you like the texturing, as this was rather a bit more than my usual! 

On 7/11/2017 at 10:57 AM, soccerkid6 said:

Superb gatehouse, the 'mini' towers are quite lovely Very fun and engaging storyline as well Funnily enough, I didn't notice Barnaby under the cart until after I read the story

Great to see you found our tutorial useful

Thanks a lot, SK, glad you like it!  I really liked the way the towers stuck out that little bit too - but it took an awful lot of parts to do that!  Ha, ha, yes, I found that he fit down under there pretty snugly!  (I'm not sure but that he may have bumped his head a few times on the road, though! )

Yep, just discovered those recently, and I'll definitely be going back and checking through them when I need some inspiration again! 

On 7/12/2017 at 9:33 AM, Slegengr said:

Lovely build and story, Garmadon!

I particularly like that water technique!  The clean look to the wall and landscape is refreshing for a short story like this, as we often see so much heavy vegetation and very textured walls.  That is a neat little cart design and amazing that it allows for such a well-hidden minifigure!

Your well-written stories leave me looking forward to more of Barnaby's escapades!  I really like the dark red/dark green color combination.  That is something I have considered for quite a while and will probably use in the future, especially after the introduction of the rogue CMF.

Thanks Sleg!  Yes, I love this water technique too - all those awesome new blue colors under the trans-clear are just so good at adding a dash of brightness to a scene!  Glad you like the less heavily textured style as well - the super textured stuff can look great at times, but cleaner textures and techniques definitely have their place too!  Just compare my usual build to my brother W. Navarre's 

Happy to hear you enjoy the story and figs (yes, I love that color combo too!)  Writing is one of the other things I really enjoy doing, and I've wanted to get a GoH storyline going for a long time!  I've been here way too long without developing my sigfig much at all - time to fix that!

58 minutes ago, Henjin_Quilones said:

The story is very enjoyable, and the build is, too. I will echo some others about there being too many 1x1 round bricks in the round section versus the rest, but of course that technique requires that. Perhaps using a few more in the rest of the wall would have evened out the balance. That portcullis is an excellent use of the gate parts, and the fact that both the drawbridge and the portcullis work is great. Well done!

Thanks HQ!  The build was originally planned for the functional castle category (of the LCBTC...? - something like that ), but I found out that those were a bit more complicated than I thought and I had bit off a bit more than I could chew (especially with a bunch of pieces tied up in another project)!  Having moving parts is a fun - though complicated! - new challenge, though, and I hope to have some more working builds in the future!  

Hmm, I agree about the over-textured tower, but I do think finding some way to reduce them round bricks over there would probably be better than including that many in the whole thing - just seems like that would be a bit overdosed to me!  A lot of these pieces or similar might be the key to a less textured tower in something like this technique... but it will be a long time before I get that many!    Thanks again!

[The Maestro]

Excellent landscaping and figposing. The texturing is awesome and you were a ver tough opponent, well done.