Kai NRG

Thanks for the comments! I did indeed make some adjustments to the water; I went for trans light blue for the fall instead of trans clear mostly because I always find a transition from transclear to trans light blue to be a little unreal (also because there are blue lights behind the top fall) but I got rid of the blue background on the lower fall and I think that helped a lot. Anyways, without further ado! It's kind of hard to present this MOC in photos, actually, since it was designed for the 360 and it's impossible to get all the good stuff in one angle! My favorite part is probably the lit balcony, but of course the big tree is really the star of the show so I couldn't make this the first photo. It's more of a tower than a castle, but I've built so few castles that I'm going to count it as one anyways and say that it's probably my favorite minifigure scale castles I've ever built. I gave a good bit of thought to the color of the roof. I wanted to keep with the earth theme (blue water, green vegetation) so I ended up with light blue as kind of a good sky color. The whole build started with the theme of "Earth" for a collaboration with several other Eurobricks builders for BrickWorld Chicago this year. I tried to sneak in details everywhere I could--sometimes for the sake of the detail, sometimes, as in the case of this cave, because I didn't feel like building more rockwork. As for the tree! I cannot say enough good things about how well this challenge technique worked for a tree. It was super easy to work with, very modifiable for difference sizes and even easy to integrate into the tower wall. I wish I had thought to take some pictures of the internal structure as I was building. But it's pretty simple really, I did just one layer of 1x2 rounded plates, rather towards the top, and then extended the dark brown plates from there. Probably I should have done two rings for stability's sake... but I didn't. I have this habit of doing flimsy connections to see how things look and then never strengthening them because they work well enough. I also really enjoyed getting some gothic detail on the tower. These windows were quite fun, maybe the whisk is a little silly but I like it. And gargoyles! You can't beat gargoyles. The idea is that this was once a chateau, but fell into disrepair (and the boughs of a tree), and has now been taken over as a base of operations by a band of merry rogues. The inside of the tower, though somewhat ruined and exposed to the weather, still shows signs of luxury. Besides the balcony on the left, there's also a small outpost over the tree, which primarily serves the function of saving me from having to use quite so many leaves, but is also a good spot for the forestmen to hide while shooting arrows at an approaching enemy. As I already mentioned, the balcony is my favorite part. I've always wondered how these cheese slope cone roofs work, and the answer is, pretty well! Mostly I used flex tube to get varying sizes of circles, and then I used the new "ring pop" piece--a clip on bottom, stud on top--to attach the cheese slopes. So I guess I still don't know how people did cone roofs back in the day. I'm thinking the ring pop makes it a big easier anyways. Towards the top the tower gets more and more rickety, but the Forestmen like their dwellings well aired (I hope). They also love to play Nine-Men-Morris (I used to play this game a ton when I was little and was so excited when I found the sticker at my local used LEGO brick shop!). And in case you are interested in a bit of behind the scenes, the build breaks down into two for "easy" transportation, access to batteries, etc. As tall as it is, it's pretty top heavy assembled, so having it split in half was a real life saver though, of course, a bit of a pain during the planning stage. Well there you have it! Shout out again to Grover for an awesome technique that was really fun to work with. Something tells me this will not be the last tree I build like that. Hope y'all enjoyed the build, comments and critiques are, as always, welcome!

Great warm colors. I love the subtle difference between the dark orange further out and the nougat in the background. Those printed tiles look perfect here too.

But of course! And what a beauty, I know I commented on Flickr but I can't resist commenting again. Great textures, such a cool road/path. I love seeing these closer photos too, get a better look at some of those buildings in the back. You certainly didn't skimp, they look great too. A really pleasant scene, fantastic work.

Great introductory build! I love how you threw us immediately into the middle of the story, I'm super curious to know how your character got here! While minimal, the vignette you've built does a great job introducing the story. Looking forward to seeing what you build next! As Grover mentioned, I used natural light almost exclusively for a long time, and it can certainly be made to work. That said, it's a bit fiddly and inconsistent. You definitely don't want direct sunlight (unless you're going for some specific effect), but the shadow cast by say a house can be too blue. Light cloud cover is best, but cloudy days don't always come by exactly when desired. If you do go for an indoor set up though, a bit of diffusion can work wonders--a thin sheet held between your light source and the MOC, a white backdrop that will reflect light--these simple things can help a lot. White bulbs (as opposed to warm white) also help keep the colors true. And a bit of post process editing with free software like GIMP can also works wonders, there are some good tutorials available online for that sort of thing.

Halfway stage! I struggled a lot with the layout of this castle. It's on a turntable, so it needs to be 360 viewable. The water in particular was complicated, I couldn't figure out where it came from! I should have gotten a shot of the internals of this tree, but basically what I did was open up the ring of 1x2 rounded plates and attached both ends to the square tower, which worked really well. Starting to add some leaves to get a feel for the framing. Speaking of leaves... I always struggle to figure out what combination of plant parts to use. I'm toying with those seaweed parts here, but not too happy with how bare they leave the 5x6 leaves above them. I actually only used one ring of 1x2 rounded plates (toward the middle). Two would for sure have been more stable, but even one worked okay. At this point is when I realized that if I'm going to take this to BrickWorld, I had better make it split apart. So I came up with the idea of making a platform/part of the castle on this part of the tree trunk, and continuing with leaves branching out of the next segment of the castle.

As a guild leader I'm not eligible for prizes for this challenge--which also means I'm not obligated to abide by the rules So while we wait for results, I'll trickle through some WIP photos of the round build I've been working on. This was built as part of a BrickWorld collab which is why I didn't share WIPs publicly while it was still actually in progress. So the build is totally complete already, don't go crazy giving me advice... that said, maybe I could incorporate some advice into the next build, and I do always appreciate constructive criticism!! Anyways, without further ado... That is where the build sat for about four months. Then this challenge came along and I got inspired to keep going... First stab at a tree using this technique. Super impressed by how smoothly it makes a circle and how adaptable it is to different sizes. I wonder where it will go from here (hint: it gets a lot bigger...)

This turned out lovely, the butterflies are a sweet touch to add some life and color. I really like your tower too, as I said before, it's got the right amount of architectural detail to make it interesting but not chaotic. Great take on the category!

This is a pretty cool novel take on the technique, it might be fun in a labyrinth build or something of that sort.

Too bad this is not going to be finished in time but it looks like it'll be a real beauty whenever it's done, both the tower and the tree are looking special!

Welcome to the guilds! As Grover said, take all the time you need to develop your story, GoH moves at a pretty relaxed pace especially when it comes to individual projects like free builds. I recollect the profile pic needing to be unbelievably small, although like Grover, that was many years ago for me.

I'm late but I have to chime in with how much I love those dark red vines. Goes great with the rest of the colors here. Nice textures on the stonework as well.

Looking beautiful so far. I love the details on the arches and right around where the tower changes diameter.

I love how massive this is! White feels like a great choice to pop against the blue water. Looking forward to seeing where you're going with it!

What a massive build, the interior is so impressive (love those colored windows!) and I really like the layout with all those towers of varying heights. I always love flying buttresses too, very cool to see them integrated into a castle like this.

Some really neat multi-level stuff going on here! I love your light blue trees too.