Designing Skylines, part 2
Posted by benbuildslego,
In my first article, I discussed my philosophy for designing LEGO skylines by forming basic silhouette shapes.
In this second part, I provide some important practical tips for designing your own skyline.
Match the Aesthetic of the Official Sets
One of the first questions you may have is, “How long are LEGO skylines?” The official LEGO sets actually vary in their lengths. The first wave of sets in 2016 (Berlin, New York City, and Venice) had a standard length of 32 studs across. However, the subsequent sets have varied between 28 studs (Chicago, being the shortest) and 36 studs.
When it comes to the depth/width of a skyline, the official sets vary between 4 studs and 13 studs (Paris, being the thickest). The thickness of the skylines is not constant all the way across the back – in most cases, the necessity for a larger surface area to accommodate a big icon (e.g. the Eiffel Tower) contributes to the extra stud depth. The remainder width of each skyline tends to average between 4 and 6 studs.
If your imagination gets carried away, like mine did for my “Star Wars: A New Hope” skyline, I can confirm the LEGO police won’t arrest you if you have a larger 7 to 9 stud thickness across the entire skyline.
The hallmark of the official Skyline sets is the sleek black tiles that run from one end to the other. Except for the Sydney Skyline set, the front tiles of the official sets form a completely flat front surface. This effect is neatly accomplished with the use of several of the Modified 2 x 6 x 2/3 with 4 Studs on Side Plates, which only just made their first appearance in 2010. Once you have your basic base plate assembled, you have a blank canvas upon which to build your famous landmarks – speaking of which…
Choose Your Landmarks Carefully:
The official sets tend to incorporate between 4 and 6 famous landmarks. How many you choose to include really depends on your imagination and the innate constraints of the LEGO brick. I find it useful to list out all the icons of the setting I am looking to build. From there, I attempt to whittle the list down to the absolute essentials. It can be a painful process to omit some icons, so despite having no artistic ability whatsoever, I often find myself making (extremely) rough sketches of a skyline layout.
For example, for my “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” skyline, I faced an extreme surplus of iconic locations. Once I began making sketches, I realised that it simply was not possible to include them all in the detail I desired (forgive me, Lothlórien!)
If you are like me and you want to design skylines based on your favourite works of fiction, you can use landmarks to retell the story from left to right, as in my skyline for “The Princess Bride.” Be sure to select the locations where the most memorable scenes take place!
Or if time is a bit funky in your story, you could even choose to show how a single location changes through time, like I did with the famous Hill Valley Clock Tower in my “Back to the Future” skyline.
Let me know if these tips were helpful and tell me what else you would like to know about designing skylines in the comments!
You can see all my geeky skylines on Instagram @BenBuildsLego.
If you are also on Reddit, I am also the moderator of /r/DigitalLego, where everyone is invited to share and discuss LEGO built on the computer!
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18 comments on this article
Excellent!
Three chapter of BttF ordered in timeline I like the most.
LotR One journey, Argonauts are superb, nice colorsheme for Elvendale.
Homes of Skywalkers, Leia's rebel base I did catch slowly.
Why, oh why, can't LEGO bring back LotR?
That LOTR diorama is drop-dead gorgeous! There's so much going on and yet in such a small model, what a great and clever design!
Like the Star Wars one the most, although all of them are cool.
@Leg0liver said:
"Excellent!
Three chapter of BttF ordered in timeline I like the most.
LotR One journey, Argonauts are superb, nice colorsheme for Elvendale.
Homes of Skywalkers, Leia's rebel base I did catch slowly."
I don't see an Elvendale. Did you mean Rivendell?
Yes, Princess Bride!
Fantastic work throughout. Inspiring stuff.
I need more princess bride LEGO.
These skylines are ridiculously good!
Also I'm only just now seeing The Princess Bride logo and realizing that you can turn it upside down like that...
Now that we are here can we all say we arw a bit dissapointed that LEGO didn't make an Episode IV diorama for this May 4th promotions?
Good tips, but I'm just happy these got showcased, so I can buy them. 2 down, probably many to go. We finally have some alternatives to Lego Ideas books to build other stuff from our bricks. Wasn't that what Lego was about? Yes, of course you can MOC, and I do, but building from instructions is just relaxing.
I'm also building a lot of KeepOnBrickings Speed Champions alternate builds.
The fellowship of the ring one is nothing short of gorgeous! I love the princess bride one too
Thanks for the tips. The Princess Bride one is so awesome!!
Love the Princess Bride skyline
(Especially with the clever reversible title text!)
I love how you made the Princess Bride one look like it's in an open book! Lots of inventive ideas here for using a landscape to tell stories: it's always interesting and challenging to express the passage of time in a static model.
So, if you turn the Princess Bride skyline upside-down, does it still look the same?
The BttF clocktower holds a special place in my heart because I actually saw the real one on the Universal Studios backlot tour, years before it was destroyed in a fire. I really like the skyline itself...but I'm not thrilled with the DeLorean. I think I'd lean more towards using a 1x1 tile or plate. But the smallest I was ever able to come up with for a recognizable DeLorean was 2x4.
@Robot99
That logo comes from the center of the 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition DVD cover. When viewed right-side-up (as determined by looking at the back of the case), it has Princess Buttercup and the Dread Pirate Roberts standing face to face with the castle on the left and Vizzini's ship on the right. Flip it over, and it's Westley and Buttercup with the farm in the background. And then there was a slipcover where the cover image was flipped upside-down (again, determined by looking at the back of the cover), so if you didn't realize what was going on when you bought it, you got a pretty solid hint to that effect. The logo in particular is _very_ popular. I've seen it pop up in the AFOL community before. VirtuaLUG did a Princess Bride group layout last year at Brickworld Chicago, and someone designed a giant LEGO version of that logo.
@PurpleDave
I'm of a younger generation who didn't see the movie untill recently - consider my mind blown!
@Robot99:
Very few people ever saw it in theaters. The marketing people didn't know how to advertise the movie because it didn't fit any of their strictly defined categories, so they punted and the movie more or less flopped. And then they released it on VHS. _That_ is when it developed the cult following. People who had seen it the first time (or who were just intrigued enough to spring for a copy) bought the VHS and made everyone they knew watch it (that's how I first heard of the movie, at college). Now, I own almost every R1 release they've made. I don't have the VHS version, but I have a sealed copy of the original "no frills" DVD from 2000, a Special Edition DVD, two copies of the limited 2-disc Dread Pirate Edition DVD (one sealed), a sealed copy of the limited 2-disc Buttercup Edition DVD, the 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition DVD, a sealed copy of the newer "no frills" DVD from 2012, a sealed 25th Anniversary Blu-Ray (same cover art as the 2012 DVD, but with a bunch of special features), a sealed MGM 90th Anniversary edition (2012 DVD, with what almost looks like a purple greeting card shrink-wrapped over the original cover art), and a sealed 30th Anniversary Edition Blu-Ray. Never found a DVD release of that last version, but in about two more years I'll probably have to start hunting for a 35th Anniversary Edition.
Oh, and I did finally see it in a theater...twice. The historic Redford Theatre (built in 1927, and still has its original pipe organ in working condition) showed it a few years back, so I of course went to watch it. And then a year or two later, a group called the Goblin King Players did a shadowcast of the movie there. Tickets cost 4x the regular showing, but they had people on stage in front of the movie screen, in costume, acting out (most) of the action along with the movie. The one bit they pointedly skipped was the acrobatics from the sword fight above the Cliffs of Insanity. The two players who were playing the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya each looked like they were preparing to jump up, grab the bar, and actually perform the acrobatic flip from that scene...then they turned and shrugged at the audience before hopping down off the box they were standing on.
I can’t wait for Ben’s Star Wars sequel trilogy designs.