Rakath Mountains Border Tower

[CptMugwash]

Greetings from Kaliphlin,

I present to you all my second tower for this challenge, as Kaliphlin has fewer members then the rest it is only fair.

High up in the Rakath Moutnain range to the far north near the border to Nocturnus stands a great tower built of locally sourced solid obsidian with help from our friendly dwarves. The tower looks Nocturnus in color but this is due to the local materials as the tower sits on top of a valcano surrounded by a moat of lava.

More photos on my Flickr

C&C Welcome

Thanks

Kcaj

[I Scream Clone]

Hard to believe no comments yet?! A nice creation complete with the lava flow The watch tower is nice though a little boxy looking. Great job.

[Captain BeerBeard]

Why no minfigs? It needs some life added to it. I think it wouldn't look boxy at all if something was going there.

[NiceMarmot]

I really like the situation of this MOC on the slopes of a volcano. That lava flow is great; good use of an orange antenna. I wish I had more trans-orange bricks! Back to BrickLink I guess... I also really like the way this build is modular; really nice to see inside, and improves playability. But I'm not sure I'd want to keep my ale in the cellar; that lava stream right under it would heat it up too much!

Couple of minor suggestions, but in general this looks pretty good as is:

• I'm not a big fan of red, but in this situation it works OK with the black; dark-red might look better, but those bricks are a bit harder to come by. If you have some dark-red slopes, you might want to try them.
  
• I'd put a few orange/trans-orange plates or maybe two cheese pieces back-to-back on the lava river plates across the bottom, just so it's not so flat. See how it looks with a bit of texture, or try to create ripples in the lava.
  
• I'd like to see how it looks with a more lived-in look, like with a few minifigs and some clutter, like food, weapons, cups, etc.
  
• You might want to consider putting some long 1 wide plates on the ends of the roof, to hide the blocky ends of those red slope bricks. Look at Derfel Cadarn's medieval village building guide for examples. They're a bit of a pain, but really do make the roof look a lot better.
  
• You're getting a really good white background and base under it for the photos (probably using foamcore). If you add another light source from another angle, like from the right on the main photo, you won't get shadows like you have now. Not only will the photos then look a bit better, but if you ever want to wipe out the background completely in an image editing tool, it will be a lot easier.
  
• Maybe just a bit more of a story: who built it and when, what's the volcano named, some more about the dwarves, etc...
  

Keep up the good work! We're really seeing a big push of Kaliphlin watchtowers here in the homestretch!

[Angeli]

I was speaking with one Drow tracker, and I said to him "how are we going to invade the Kaliphlin? All that sand, gaze of the Sun etc..." and he said to me: "Just follow the lava flow" ;)

[CptMugwash]

Hey folks, thanks for the comments and critiscism, agreed it is a bit blocky, I could have added a few minifigs in to liven it but didn't for some reason, guess I was just itching to get some photos done and up before I left for holiday. Right now I'm replying from Lanzarote, yay. If I had spent more time on it I could have fine tuned it but my deadline was the 10th. With my mocs I work with what I have so sometimes I'm unable to add more texture or extra bits, but in future I'll add a few more pics to our guild forum to get some feedback to finish them.

Cheers

Kcaj.

PS Angeli, was the drow tracker called Johnny?

(I'm itching to build something now...)