LEGO Ideas: Castle Outpost
Castle Outpost by User xXgGhostXx
LEGO Ideas
I had a chance to catch up with the project creator for Castle Outpost, Gerrit (xXgGhostXx)—whose project is rapidly approaching the 5k Supporters mark. We discussed his background, influences and also covered some of the unique build techniques that were used in this project. Read the responses below, and check out the links to the Ideas Site to show your support!
Q & A with xXgGhostXx, Project Creator
Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Gerrit, I’m 20 years old and I’m a student from Germany. Aside from LEGO, I also enjoy going to the movies and listening to all kind of podcasts and music—mostly while building.
A lot of the style and techniques used in this build are pretty unique—were you inspired with your project by any officially licensed sets from the Castle or Lord of the Rings themes?
As both Castle and Lord of the Rings are quite a few years old now, I didn’t get inspired by their designs and building techniques, because I wanted to create a fortress that fits modern LEGO sets with many small pieces for detailing, rather than using bigger and more simple pieces that can be found in the Castle era sets.
However, for weapons and smaller details like catapults, I looked up some of the sets for inspiration.
You’ve launched a few medieval projects, and a lot of them use the torso and legs assembly from Series 20 Tournament Knight—is that one your favorite Castle Minifigures? – or is that just part of a larger theme you’re going for?
First of all, I love the color-scheme of the new Tournament Knight and it was never used in any castle set in the past, so I thought using it would be a nice way to introduce a more recent and detailed version of that theme.
At the same time, Studio (which I usually use for building) has not that many knight outfits that I like, so I used Part Designer to create the Tournament Knight’s prints myself. As this was time consuming, I decided to reuse the same parts for my Medieval Watchpoint. I also consider it to be kind of a trademark for my medieval builds, as castle and medieval submissions are very popular on Lego Ideas.
Tell us a little about some of the building techniques you used and which ones you’re most proud of.
Actually, I didn’t use many special techniques in here, as the walls are pretty straight forward: Masonry bricks, different tiles on headlight bricks and some colored parts in dark bluish grey and dark tan and that’s it.
The round tower was much harder: The round shape is created by hinge bricks forming a ring (blue) and the floor of the prison (bright light orange at the top, green for the bottom) needs to match the inner diameter of that ring, which measures exactly 9 studs (because of the vertical plates attached to the ring on the inner side). At the same time, to hold the ring, the base needs to connect to the ring at 3 points (dark red).
These cannot be the 2 sides connected to the castle walls which need to attach to the prison/tower floor as well. So I needed to create a platform (bright light orange & green) that doesn’t use much height and connects to the walls at 2 points (angled at 45 degrees to each other) but also sandwiches a turntable with studs on 3 sides (dark red, angled at 45 degrees to each other as well) at a width of uneven 9 studs rotated 30 degrees off the platform itself.
That took a lot of time to figure out and I hope the picture helps to understand it a bit better.
Are you currently working on another project, and can you give us a hint about what it is?
I’m always working on more ideas and I have submitted five to this day already. While I enter as many contests on LEGO Ideas as possible, I don’t think any idea submissions will hit the light soon. But, as castle and medieval builds are a lot of fun to design, I will probably create more stuff fitting that theme in the future, I guess.
What’s your favorite LEGO Set/Theme?
I love Creator Expert (or what ever LEGO wants to call it now) and Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts. The Modular Buildings feature incredible details, building techniques and part usages and are probably the most inspiring for my builds. As a Harry Potter Fan, the LEGO theme comes with sets that are surprisingly detailed and displayable, while being simple and playable at the same time.
When it comes to my favorite sets, I think the 76139 1989 Batmobile is the best, as it is incredibly accurate to the movie version and has some clever functions, for example the steering and the slide-open cockpit. I am going with 75192 UCS Millennium Falcon, 10265 Ford Mustang and 75978 Diagon Alley as honorable mentions here.
From The Project Creator
The Raven King’s territory has grown and villagers in farer lands around the castle are hard to protect. Therefore, the king sent his best knight, Sir Marcus Briggerton, to build an outpost in the new lands. Together with his best fighters, Sir Marcus now defends the newest fortress against old foes.
The Background:
It’s been a few years now since we got the last Castle/Kingdoms sets.
Always offering great play sets, the line never gave us a castle that is designed mainly for display.
Therefore, I tried to create one myself.
The Model:
My goal was to build a fortress that has highly detailed walls and a round bergfried (donjon).
The Castle Outpost is built stable and modular, while using only common and recent pieces in also current colors. It measures approximately 43x56x37 studs.
Only the Knights are custom made and inspired by the new CMF Series 20 Tournament Knight. I think the black/bright light orange color scheme is a fresh touch to a classic theme.
The Features:
The Castle Outpost has interior spaces with kitchen, dormitory, lord of the castle’s room, armory and prison.
The towers come with functional and rotatable catapults and the castle courtyard, accessible through the openable gate, offers a horse stable and a functional well.
Comes with 9 Minifigures: Sir Marcus, 7 of his knights and a farmhand
I hope you like it. Feel free to comment, share and – of course – support the Castle Outpost.
What do you think?
What do you think about the building techniques used, or overall modularity of the build?—we want to hear from you! Post in the comments section below and remember to Subscribe at the bottom of the page if you haven't done so already!
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