Iron Builder II: Riverside Kingdom

Hullo again, and sorry for inactivity on the blog side: Iron Builder takes lot of time, and posting stuff on Flickr is the main priority for now. Jonas is one build ahead of me, but I'm on his heels... We'll see!

 This MOC, Riverside Kingdom, was posted last Sunday, I think; On the third day of the contest. There seems to be at least one micro-scale build in every IB and this one is mine. The DUBLO grass part seemed to work nicely as a polished SNOT landscape, and rest of this was build around few of them as a river banks. The landscape became medieval, so I went with a little fortress. I've never posted a proper micro castle before, but it was a fun little challenge. The corner towers are based on those of Olavinlinna, the northmost medieval stone castle still standing.  The main tower was inspired by Tampere Cathedral, beautiful national romantic church of my hometown. I particularly happy with the transition between the corner towers' 3x3x3 cone and the walls. They use 1x2 grilled cheese slopes, which I unfortunately had only two in light bley; therefore the side walls have some dark bley tarnish.

Next to the castle lays a simple farm house with a partially plowed field. I was going to use grill tiles at first, but I didn't find them in brown (that happens sometimes) so I went with some 4l bars side-by-side, not properly connected. There's also some inverted bush trees. Stoned road leads to a bridge, as a river scene deemed one. The original design had a big arch done using rigid tubes, 1x1 clip tiles and 1x3 plates, but the scale looked wrong; it was too big. The second version was akin to this, but had two small arches and six posts; I went with longer arch and added some plates on the bottom to create a vault pattern.

The other side is more rural with some shrubbery, big brocolli-like tree and a wizard's tower, probably inspired by Discworld. I wanted to make it very tall to create some contrast on the build. The grill tiles represent tall Gothic style windows. The base seems to be somewhat banana-shaped, like the tower would have grown from the land by itself.

That's it for now. I've posted four entries for now and the fifth was finished today; I'll try to photograph it tomorrow. I'll write more here when the time is right. See you!

-Eero