[MOC] "The Lord of the Rings" Skylines

[thenightman89]

For the last month I have been designing skylines for the three "The Lord of the Rings" movies/books!

"The Fellowship of the Ring" features the Shire, Bree, Weathertop, Ford of Bruinen, Rivendell, Moria (behind Rivendell), the Doors of Durin, and the Gates of Argonath. 

Moria is hidden behind Rivendell :)

 

"The Two Towers"  features Edoras (with the Golden Hall), Fangorn Forest (with micro Ents), Isengard (with Orthanc), the Dead Marshes, and Helm's Deep.  Helm's Deep has a play feature built it that allows you to launch part of the fortified wall into the air to reenact the explosion.

Here is a view looking down over the Dead Marshes:

"The Return of the King" features Minas Tirith, The Black Gate, Barad-dur, the Tower of Cirith Ungol (with hidden Shelob on the back), and Mount Doom.  Mount Doom's tiny play feature allows you to drop the ring into the top and it will come out the backside.

And here is a view of all three of them lined up together.  Anyone interested in seeing additional views can check out my Instagram page (@BenBuildsLego).  Instructions are also available for all three on Rebrickable and via the link in my Instagram bio.  Let me know what you think of them!

 

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by thenightman89

[The Brick King]

These are fantastic! The detail is pretty incredible, and everything is instantly recognizable. 

[thenightman89]

15 hours ago, The Brick King said:

These are fantastic! The detail is pretty incredible, and everything is instantly recognizable. 

Thank you very much! It was a fun challenge!

[Aliencat]

These are amazing! Great job capturing the iconic locations from each film in such detail, everything looks spot-on!

[thenightman89]

18 hours ago, Aliencat said:

These are amazing! Great job capturing the iconic locations from each film in such detail, everything looks spot-on!

Thank you very much! Very appreciated!

[The_Chosen_1]

Wow, I'm speechless! The attention to detail in these is incredible. Hats off to you!

[SteampunkDoc]

Fantastic! You did a fantastic job with making these recognizable and incredibly detailed.

For some reason, I'm drawn particularly to the FOTR "skyline." Perhaps because it has more locations and while Weathertop seems a bit oversized, it still fits well enough. Each location feels distinct, yet with the nooks and crannies fitting together and flowing from one another. The others, while obviously limited by the book content, seem far more dominated by completely separate models that happen to share a base. 

That's not a bad thing, but it does make the FOTR model shine a tough brighter as a whole display. 

 

 

[Borex]

Outstanding! Looks like real lego sets to me. The path that starts in the shire is a good choice. That makes you want to ‘travel’ to all locations. Kudos!

[thenightman89]

15 hours ago, SteampunkDoc said:

Fantastic! You did a fantastic job with making these recognizable and incredibly detailed.

For some reason, I'm drawn particularly to the FOTR "skyline." Perhaps because it has more locations and while Weathertop seems a bit oversized, it still fits well enough. Each location feels distinct, yet with the nooks and crannies fitting together and flowing from one another. The others, while obviously limited by the book content, seem far more dominated by completely separate models that happen to share a base. 

That's not a bad thing, but it does make the FOTR model shine a tough brighter as a whole display. 

 

 

Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I agree with your assessment of how "Fellowship" flows together the best.  I suppose as the journey becomes more epic with each book, the set pieces become larger and more distinct. 

[corasaur]

oh wow. I love them all. they are so, so good. i need to see if i have the pieces to reverse-engineer any of these. I want them up on my wall with the real cities' skylines.

RE: the matter of Fellowship's skyline flowing most smoothly: that book has the whole party together going straight through in one journey. it's much harder to smoothly squeeze all the major scenes in when the group is splintered into 2 or 3 pieces. Fellowship lended itself most naturally to this format, I think.

Two towers and RotK also have major stretches of movie that are in open fields. it's hard to make the plains of Rohan an interesting part of a skyline, and they're what would be needed to smoothly transition around Two towers. Return of the king could only be smooth if it were super-huge: pellenor fields could be an interesting build with oliphants and corsair ships, and you could smoothly transition into Moria with empty space before the black gate, or minas morgul and more mountains, and then have a barren blasted Moria plain flanking Barad-dur, buuuuuuut that would be like a triple-length skyline. This feels like the best collection of buildings that could fit in a reasonable footprint.

 

Edited October 6, 2019 by corasaur

[thenightman89]

On 10/5/2019 at 7:50 PM, corasaur said:

oh wow. I love them all. they are so, so good. i need to see if i have the pieces to reverse-engineer any of these. I want them up on my wall with the real cities' skylines.

RE: the matter of Fellowship's skyline flowing most smoothly: that book has the whole party together going straight through in one journey. it's much harder to smoothly squeeze all the major scenes in when the group is splintered into 2 or 3 pieces. Fellowship lended itself most naturally to this format, I think.

Two towers and RotK also have major stretches of movie that are in open fields. it's hard to make the plains of Rohan an interesting part of a skyline, and they're what would be needed to smoothly transition around Two towers. Return of the king could only be smooth if it were super-huge: pellenor fields could be an interesting build with oliphants and corsair ships, and you could smoothly transition into Moria with empty space before the black gate, or minas morgul and more mountains, and then have a barren blasted Moria plain flanking Barad-dur, buuuuuuut that would be like a triple-length skyline. This feels like the best collection of buildings that could fit in a reasonable footprint.

 

Thanks for all the kind words and thoughtful comments!

[Jerry McGlade]

I love it!