BDP9: The Northern City Gates
Posted by CapnRex101,
Castles are abundant in the BrickLink Designer Program and Bolt.Builds discusses his creation, The Northern City Gates, in today's article:
Hello there! Lucas from Bolt.Builds here, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of my design process for my first BrickLink model, ‘The Northern City Gates’. I also share more design progress on other projects on my Instagram page here. This medieval city is a hub of trade and culture. That’s not to say it doesn’t have very strong defenses, with working portcullises, high ramparts and supplies for a long siege. The Griffin Knights are manning the walls, and the Kraken faction is running all trade in town. However, roles can be reversed if they suddenly decide to attack from within!
Similar to my fan design for the LEGO Ideas Dungeons and Dragons set, I wanted to give builders many options for stories, different ways to get in and out of the space, and for characters to move around. To achieve this I designed modular walls and houses can be arranged depending on how you would prefer to display it, as a straighter wall with many facades visible, a more compact and round layout, or perhaps an S shape? It’s up to you!
The modular sections can be rearranged easily, as shown in the video below.
The Inspiration
Like many of you castles have always been a fascination, and the medieval castles and cities where I grew up were built from red bricks. After some development, these baked bricks were easier to make than to import natural stone from far away mountains, and so, many cities of Northern Europe were now using bricks for their defenses and houses. Natural stone would still be used, but often in decorative corner stones or sculptures, something I added on the corners of buildings here.
Large trading cities like Bruges, Lübeck, Gdansk (Danzig), Kampen, and large castles like the Teutonic stronghold of Malbork, perfected the art of the brick (baked bricks in their case, haha) to make incredible buildings in warm orange and red colors with limestone accents. These cities were also part of the trading network called the Hanseatic League, which certainly also had troubles with pirates and smugglers! Another inspiration was one of my favorite game series, the Witcher.
I really wanted to propose a city in this setting for the LEGO Castle lineup, so I visited several towns in the Netherlands, looked at many photos, an old city map of Bruges, and paintings showing city gates before they were destroyed.
The Design Process
After gathering reference, I like starting my designs using miniature sketch builds that I create in BrickLink Studio. This is a great way to quickly try many different shapes, layouts, and colors, without having to create and modify a large model. It also means you can easily make copies to compare different versions, or combine sections of each version to get to your favorite design. When a design looks good in small, it will likely also look great at a larger scale with added details!
The modular city walls are an important feature of the layout, they should allow for many different setups of the city and still look organic. Ideally the corner pieces could be used in both front and back orientation so you can modify the layout even more.
I physically tested many versions of corners on different wedge plates, 2x4, 2x6, and 3x12 but the best compromise was the 2x3 wedge plate. It then became easy to flip the corner both ways, and only the top section of the wall can be easily swapped around. Also this angle avoids the attached house from intersecting with another section when they are attached to two straight sections with a corner in between.
This angle also allows for two corner sections and a straight piece to form a Pythagorean triple with lengths of 9x12x15 (multiples of 3x4x5), meaning this wall could continue ‘on-grid’ after bending back and forth.
Because this build is more a city wall instead of a castle, I decided not to make the model close fully into a circle. That would also have meant the corner pieces wouldn’t be usable in both directions, and likely have bigger gaps on opening them.
The straight sections of wall, and the tower sections are all 10 studs wide, and have two clips at the base, that clip into the houses, theatre, or market stall, so they can be attached however you like.
The two houses needed to fold open for play access, and at the same time the opened houses can be displayed either to suggest more facades along the wall, or to create a wider street when viewed from within.
Other important considerations were having the main gate be tall enough for a minifigure on horseback, and wide enough for trading carts to pass through.
The octagonal towers were also a fun challenge, and after many tests with cylinders I found the 1x1x2/3 slope bricks were actually perfect for this goal because they are great for 45 degree angles. It did become quite part intensive however, but it perfectly captures the shape and tan colored limestone cornerstone accents. The gatehouse roof is removable as one piece to access the interior.
Normally I build alternatives using only parts from one or two sets, so working on a Bricklink Designer Program set meant there were suddenly a huge amount of parts to choose from! Fortunately, the Palette feature in Studio makes it easy to see which parts are available in which colors, and I was certainly grateful to use that feature. Still, it’s a good idea to re-use more of the same parts efficiently to keep the number of unique pieces low where possible, while aiming for more visual impact.
I also tested sections of the build in real bricks during development, to see how big the build would become, and to make sure the portcullises would work properly.
The Build
The final build required some cutting down on pieces to end up at 3916 pieces, as I initially wanted to stay around 3000 pieces. I considered making the houses open on one side, or even cutting a whole house, but that meant the houses wouldn’t work as standalone models next to other houses from 10332 Medieval Town Square. The water gate as an alternative smugglers way into the city was important for the story and the blue water looked great next to the walls in Dark Orange. The corner towers make the walls look more imposing, and offer more options for different layouts.
The inhabitants of the city are made up of the noble Griffin Knights; their sigil represented in their shield and a statue at the heart of town. The Kraken faction succeeded in running trading goods, fish and bread. The remaining peasants are stone masons working on expanding the city walls, and two actors!
The townsfolk enjoy going to the theatre to watch plays by two legendary stage actors! They feature plays based on the old castle themes of Forestmen and Fright Knights. I designed two stickers for the background panel, that can be rotated around to change the mood. Backstage you'll find several different costumes and attributes.
The wooden house contains a bakery, and smuggled weapons in the attic. The wealthy actors manor contains fancy carved furniture, fireplaces, and attributes of different plays. Is the lady acting or does she just happen to have all the attributes of Willa the Witch?
To test the functions and see how the model would look in person, I also ordered all the parts from BrickLink. I had lots of help from my amazing partner assembling the model in real life using the 3D model, and without her I wouldn’t have been able to bring it to Skaerbaek Fan Weekend, or to take photos and videos of the physical model. It was also just really cool to see and touch a 3D model finally in person!
Hopefully this insight was inspiring and if you would love to build this model, please consider voting on BrickLink. I’d also like to thank all of you who voted already, and Huw for letting me feature the build in an article here. And good luck to all amazing creators and their submissions out there!
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19 comments on this article
Definitely one of my favorites.
Immediately thought of Malbork (one of the inspirations) when I saw the colour scheme.
The original is worth a tour btw. if you're a history/castle buff!
It is beautiful, the European architecture is novel and heavily reminds me of playing the Witcher III.
Very nice one! This nougat colour looks great and is fairly accurate to actual castles from the Lowlands and Germany. Maybe nice to include the micro-scale model as well, if it gets made.
I love the approach of the miniature build to see what combination of shapes/layouts work the best!
Christmas gingerbread castle!
@Norikins said:
"Christmas gingerbread castle!"
Such an American thing to say... ;-)
@ToysFromTheAttic said:
" @Norikins said:
"Christmas gingerbread castle!"
Such an American thing to say... ;-)"
Nah. We do gingerbread houses, mostly. There aren't a lot of castles in the US, and I'm not sure if there are any that are fortified like this.
@PurpleDave said:
" @ToysFromTheAttic said:
" @Norikins said:
"Christmas gingerbread castle!"
Such an American thing to say... ;-)"
Nah. We do gingerbread houses, mostly. There aren't a lot of castles in the US, and I'm not sure if there are any that are fortified like this."
I meant the comparison to gingerbread houses in general. But this nougat/brown hue is in fact a pretty common colour for castles in Northern Europe. There are actually some fortified castle-like buildings in the US, but most of them are pretty modern:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_the_United_States
Interestingly, the first picture you see on that page is Cinderella's castle. :-)
I absolutely LOVE this one.
This looks like an official set; the amount of details is perfect. It beats official sets in the color scheme though, so striking and unique.
To top it all off, it's a real build and not only a render!
Here's the link because I can't find it in the article:
https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-9/3521/The-Northern-City-Gates
@ToysFromTheAttic said:
"I meant the comparison to gingerbread houses in general. But this nougat/brown hue is in fact a pretty common colour for castles in Northern Europe."
Funny that, since gingerbread houses originated in Germany. They're only an American tradition now because of German immigrants moving to Pennsylvania and bringing their traditions with them.
"There are actually some fortified castle-like buildings in the US, but most of them are pretty modern:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_the_United_States
Interestingly, the first picture you see on that page is Cinderella's castle. :-)"
First of all, Cinderella's Castle is not fortified. It has no perimeter wall from which to mount an armed defense. Second, it is widely considered to be the most famous and most photographed castle in the world (except by those who refuse to count it as a castle). Third, I don't think there are any _REAL_ fortified castles in the US because we didn't exist during the days when castles were a regular part of society. Most castles in the US were built in the early 1900's, and most that were built in a fortified style were only done that way for appearances, not with the intention of fending off an invading army.
Most of the buildings on that list were built between the US Civil War and the Great Depression, so the vast majority of wars fought on US soil during that timespan were small ones involving no more than a handful of native tribes. Of the rest, there was one involving cattle rustlers from Mexico, one that involved Fenian rebels in Canada (which spilled over into the US), and a handful that were fought in places that ended up becoming US territories as a direct result of those wars. And of course, post-WWI, a fortified castle was no longer seen as a viable defensive structure in the US.
really nice to see a colourful castle set!
Looks amazing! The style of houses is what I would have wanted from the market village set - which was a huge disappointment (and skip) for me.
@PurpleDave said:
" @ToysFromTheAttic said:
"I meant the comparison to gingerbread houses in general. But this nougat/brown hue is in fact a pretty common colour for castles in Northern Europe."
Funny that, since gingerbread houses originated in Germany. They're only an American tradition now because of German immigrants moving to Pennsylvania and bringing their traditions with them."
I'm well aware, yet I've never heard a German refer to any of their castles as Christmas gingerbread houses. At least, not the ones I've come across. I was just trying to point out that it's interesting how someone (in this case from the US) compares something they don't see very often (or at all) to something that they're familiar with. So, the comparison was unexpected and kind of funny to me, as someone who's used to castles not being grey (apart from LEGO's). Love me some gingerbread (or Lebkuchen) though!
@PurpleDave said:
"First of all, Cinderella's Castle is not fortified. It has no perimeter wall from which to mount an armed defense. Second, it is widely considered to be the most famous and most photographed castle in the world (except by those who refuse to count it as a castle). "
If it's not fortified, by definition it's not a castle. Also, it's a theme park attraction, so very much not real.
Lovely colorscheme. Beats the dreariness that comes with the overdone grey castle. I also love the way it's laid out, the variety and details. And I love that there's a Fright Knights reference that goes beyond the symbol or Basil the Batlord :)
Oh, and how it's civilian focussed and actually uses a city wall, which is not something done in lego before (at least not focally of a set) which is a staple of the late medieval experience when cities are involved. So, something quite important for peasant and noble alike :)
Phenomenal work, thank you for the tour!
That being said, I’m running out of room for castles. :o(
I just came by to see what the pics of yet another castle would be, and then i saw Haarlem and Dutch houses. Wonderfull! The cool thing about a set like this is that this would be very great way to make a city wall and expand your castle city. I like it a lot.
Love the little play scenes, that's fun. Very well done, good luck to you!