Would you like the Vikings theme to return?

[Alfadas]

A-ma-zing. Just amazing. I really like the ring fort, and the longhouse ofcourse. They could be 2 different sets, as an add-on to the larger set (TLG did that with Helms deep and Dol Guldur, and probably a lot more sets). That would mean more Vikings! To be honest, I don't really like the fleshie. To give you feed back on the front of the house, I think it would be better if you shorten the round bits sticking out of the roof a bit. They do look cool, but a bit too much. Otherwise, great!

[Sir Walter Maugham]

Wow, that is a fantastic build! The front gate looks so imposing. Now I want Vikings to comeback even more.

I actually like the oversized decoration on top of the long house. But, if you're going for a mostly realistic longhouse, I guess it should probably be downsized.

[The_Cook]

I'd be happy to post fleshie versions of the figure designs, if you'd like? I used yellow because, as an unlicensed theme, that's what TLG would do. But here's an example if you like, the first fig design re-done in light flesh:

I'd stick to yellow. TLG rules are fleshies to represent characters played by real actors, yellow for TLG's own ideas. They are rigorous at sticking to that, look at the recent Exo-Suit from Ideas; submission was a fleshie, became classic yellow en-route. That is the rule, so we might as well stick to it!

I've also been working on the design of my big Viking ring fort. It's sort of wound up moving away from a real set concept and became more of a MOC, I think. Certainly the part count would be way too high for an official model. This saddens me, because I really do want to try to make it authentic to the spirit of a real set. But nevertheless I enjoyed making it so much, and I'm very pleased with the outcome. So in the end, it's a half-MOC, half-official-styled hybrid - a Viking MOC in the style of the 80s castles perhaps?

What is the piece count at the moment? Are there any areas where you think you're using too many bricks? Share them here and the wider group might be able to find a way to reduce the build complexity for you.

I wound up scrapping the blast-apart cell on the right wall, even though it had that "action feature" box checked, I was just never happy with how it looked. I replaced it with another shop to compliment the fish stall opposite, this time it's herbalist's hut:

A nice little hut. But...

• Does it really need 4 barrels? could you get away with 1 maybe 2. This would be a saving of 4 to 6 bricks.
  
• Same for carrot stalks? Could you get away with 1 knowing that a second will be included as a spare? This would be a saving of 2 or 3 bricks.
  
• The 2x2 45degree slope and 1x2 cheese wedge within the structure, are they actually doing anything? Could you swap those 4 bricks for a single plate or hook at the top that both roof halves can rest on? Saving another 2 or 3 bricks.
  

The official sets designed by TLG go through many revisions before they're fit for production, critiques such as the above help make a better set at the right price point.

I would also reconsider the decision to drop the prison. As you've already noted it ticks the action feature box, but more importantly it provides a key play point. A prison represents a rescue or an escape; ie. conflict, and it's conflict that helps drive play. All sets need some degree of conflict or storyline.

Attached to the back wall of the fort, and occupying most of the space inside, is the Jarl's Longhouse or Meadhall:

I'm thinking the curved beams coming out of the roof are just too over-the-top, and may change them to be duplicates of the ones seen at the opposite end of the hall. Any thoughts on this?

I can't take credit for the idea of using barrels in the pillars, I saw someone do that in a LOTR MOC, but can't seem to find it again to give credit. If anyone knows please tell me!

The Longhouse is hinged to open up for play, with bench seats down both walls, a throne for the Jarl, a fire bit for heat and cooking (including red light brick! ), and plenty of supplies in the rafters to last out the winter:

I don't think that those curved beams would pass a technical review at TLG, they're just too flimsy. Smaller ones might be more appropriate and would involve less bricks!

Again, do you need quite so many barrels and boxes on the upper half of the building. Reducing those down to 2 barrels and a crate would reduce the brick count significantly whilst retaining enough pieces to enable play.

I think the roof structure itself could do with a bit more work. You've got a mix of 2,4 and 6 wide plates to form a roof whose width is a clean mulitple of 6, why not just use a line of plates 6 wide? The strapping underneath using big plates is a bit naive, perhaps using a 2x16 plate across the top and a similar one across the bottom might be more appropriate. On the outside there are 21 pieces (on each side, so 42 total) to form the snow effect! I like the snow effect but could it be done with a quarter of those pieces? Rather than utilising two new elements, the 1x8 tile and the 2x2x round tile could you re-use elements that are already present in the build such as the 3x8 wedge plates? Another thing that TLG would be looking to do is to reduce the number of unique elements in a build. I've just spotted that you've got chests in brown, grey and black, could you standardise on a single colour and reduce it to just the two chests either side of the throne? There's a stray black barrel too, lose it or change it to brown.

On both side walls I notice that 2/3rds of the wall (nearest the throne) is built from pallisade panels and the last 1/3rd (nearest the front) is brick built from pallisade bricks. Fix that and you've saved a huge number of bricks. I suspect that that will cause plating issues below making it difficult to attach the front white wedge plates, however that's the sort of challenge that TLG designers face on a daily basis and that forces them to be creative and inventive. I would also suggest that the stack of 1x4 pallisade bricks either side of the door become a single pallisade panel; the doorway would still sit infront of the pallisade panel but it would push the corner columns forward; although in turn that might help the plating problem that we've caused ourselves by changing the sides to panels. You'd lose the printed tiles but those could in turn be moved up to be either just above or just below the blue plate that runs horizontal; it keeps that part of the theme whilst allowing a simpler build below. I'd even suggest adding two more tiles to form a band 8 wide; unless of course there is a suitable 8 wide tile in which case we should use that or maybe consider stickers.

Does the shield on the front need a grey circular back? What is it adding? If it doesn't have that backing would it be possible to build a simpler attachment mechanism on the back rather than the layering of 1x4 plates around a bracket?

The columns are nice but they involve 4 circular plates, could this be simplified to a plate and a 2x2 round? To do so would be to lose an interesting part of the design aesthetic; personally I'd build a couple of columns of differing designs and numbers of bricks to look at them and see whether the look justifies the additional 12 bricks that it requires.

Why the 2x4 in the fire? Is it a light brick? Either way lose it. More expense and it looks odd. The construction of the fire on the long plate attached only at one end probably wouldn't pass technical review, the build will be just too unstable. You could also shorten the fire-pit by half which would help reduce the number of trans-red, orange and yellow rounds that you need to make up the coals.

As always, any feedback is most welcome!

Lots there. It's all intended as constructive criticism. I think you've got a great starting point that's pretty close to a real set and that with a bit more effort and refinement you could have something that truly does look like a real set. Hopefully the members of the forum also recognise that designing sets is very, very different from designing the intricate MOC's which are more common around here.

To all those that want to complain that I'm suggesting that all the parts be taken away, I have to point out that you wouldn't get those extra parts for free, you'd be paying another $20 for all those extras!

[ED-209]

Thank you everyone for all the compliments!

My initial crack at the longhouse was rather disappointing, so I started over and came up with this one. So we're already on the Mk 2 version here!

That's just beautiful! Will you build it in real bricks? I really like the over the top accents too.

Yes, I certainly plan to build it, but even once I've ironed out all the kinks in the design it will take a while to get all the parts ordered from Bricklink! I really enjoyed the process of designing the little Blacksmith's forge set, then making it in real bricks, and I'm betting the fort will be a hell of a lot of fun!

A-ma-zing. Just amazing. I really like the ring fort, and the longhouse ofcourse. They could be 2 different sets, as an add-on to the larger set (TLG did that with Helms deep and Dol Guldur, and probably a lot more sets). That would mean more Vikings! To be honest, I don't really like the fleshie. To give you feed back on the front of the house, I think it would be better if you shorten the round bits sticking out of the roof a bit. They do look cool, but a bit too much. Otherwise, great!

That's a good point actually, would the sets be more "realistic" if the Longhouse was separate from the ring fort? I hadn't realised the LOTR sets were built like that - I was taking my inspiration from the old 6040 and 6062 castle sets!

On a side note, would it be worth me publishing a Lego Digital Desiner .lxf file of a blank section of wall for others to play with? See if anyone else wants to make a compatible "add-on" set?

Yes, I think the shorter crossbeams will be better too.

Wow, that is a fantastic build! The front gate looks so imposing. Now I want Vikings to comeback even more.

I actually like the oversized decoration on top of the long house. But, if you're going for a mostly realistic longhouse, I guess it should probably be downsized.

Me too! I'm really getting into this project a lot more than I expected (and I expected to get into it a fair bit!)

I like the kind of craziness of the giant beams, but I agree that realistic is probably for the best.

I'd stick to yellow. TLG rules are fleshies to represent characters played by real actors, yellow for TLG's own ideas. They are rigorous at sticking to that, look at the recent Exo-Suit from Ideas; submission was a fleshie, became classic yellow en-route. That is the rule, so we might as well stick to it!

Oh yes, I certainly keep my (non-licensed) figs in yellow as TLG do. But I realise not everyone follows that convention, it was just a response to the requests to see a fleshie version.

And thank you for insights Cook, this is exactly the kind of thing I need to work through to try and streamline the design! This is really only the second iteration and there's plenty of room for improvement!

There are lots of areas where the brick use isn't efficient, but they're almost all there because of some other engineering problem which I'll need to be solved in another way.

The most obvious one is the huge number of 1x1tan cones along the walls. The problem here is that I can't think of a lower-part method that wouldn't completely lose the look of the sharpened points of the logs. I tried having cones only on every second or third stud, but it looked worse than no cones at all!

I do want to keep the idea of a prison cell, but I think I'll need to play around with real parts to get the trigger/explosion mechanism to work. And then build the look of the cell around that. But as the walls are all modular, I can drop that in later without a problem.

I've made several of the modifications you suggested, fewer barrels and boxes, fewer parts holding up the roof of the hut, more panels in the meadhall walls, etc.

The snow on the roof of the meadhall has also been altered to save parts, and I've replace the underside with 2-wide plates. In fact I made them brown to suggest rafters! Those are very good ideas and "quick wins"! The roof was intended to be made of multiples of six, but I had an unforeseen problem. It may be hard to spot, but there's a 2x2 cutout in the roof above the hinges, hence the jumble of 2- and 4-wides instead of another 6-wide. The geometry is such that the roof overhangs the side walls slightly and prevents the hall from swinging open. The only other solutions I could think of was to make whole roof pop off like a Modular (but that seems unlike a normal set to me), or to bring the hinges out by one stud (but that would make the hall a lot flimsier). Maybe make the whole hall two studs longer, and replace the 4-wides in the roof with 6-wides? That would use more parts though. I'm sure there's a solution, it'll just take some more fiddling to work it out!

So anyway, here are the updated less-MOCish pics:

Thanks again for all the suggestions!

[Alfadas]

On a side note, would it be worth me publishing a Lego Digital Desiner .lxf file of a blank section of wall for others to play with? See if anyone else wants to make a compatible "add-on" set?

I say, sure. But I can't really do much with it, as my pc can't handle LDD unfortunately. But it would be nice for others, I imagine?

[Jan_sh]

I would love to see a (hornless) Viking revival. I am recently out of my dark ages and not really much into buying sets - but I would snap viking sets up in a hurry.

I really like your designs - there are a lot of good ideas there.

A thought on the long house: Would you not need some more roof support when the house is open? The "inner" edge seems rather flimsy to my eyes.

[ED-209]

I say, sure. But I can't really do much with it, as my pc can't handle LDD unfortunately. But it would be nice for others, I imagine?

Oh no! What about something like MLCAD? It's not as slick as the official LDD software and can be a pain to set up initially, but it does have much lower overheads?

http://www.ldraw.org...win/mlcad.shtml

For anyone who is interested, here's a "blank" section of wall to play around with. Feel free to do whatever you like with it, and please share anything interesting you come up with!

www.deviantart.com/download/466999057/viking_wall_blank_by_edward_the_red-d7q1es1.lxf?token=393a8992484d979e184f230e721c4b5644ee7326&ts=1404990001

I would love to see a (hornless) Viking revival. I am recently out of my dark ages and not really much into buying sets - but I would snap viking sets up in a hurry.

I really like your designs - there are a lot of good ideas there.

A thought on the long house: Would you not need some more roof support when the house is open? The "inner" edge seems rather flimsy to my eyes.

Thanks! It was the Viking range that brought me out of my Dark Ages - I still think that's a tad ironic.

I think you're probably quite correct about the strength of the roof, but as I'm trying to keep the part count as low as I can, I'm thinking that I'll wait until it's built to decide. If it's still too flimsy, then I'll build up some support above the pillars.

So in an effort to further reduce parts, I'm trying to come up with an alternative to the design of the pillars. Here are some that use fewer parts, with the original on the left:

I'd be interested to hear what people feel about them. Are any of them better than the original? Or at least a good compromise? Or any other suggestions?

[Alfadas]

Oh no! What about something like MLCAD? It's not as slick as the official LDD software and can be a pain to set up initially, but it does have much lower overheads?

http://www.ldraw.org...win/mlcad.shtml

Well, that requires 512MB hard drive, I have 448MB. So, that wouldn't work. But I am saving up money for a new PC, so in a while I should have a PC that can handle LDD. I can always download it now and see if it works, but I doubt it.

About those pillars, I like the 2nd one the best, blue blue blue white brown brown. Just my opinion though.

EDIT: I tried to download it, didn't work. So I guess I got to wait till I get a new PC.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Alfadas

[Blakstone]

I like the third column as it has the narrow band of white surounded on both side by a wide band of blue.

[Darth Caedus]

Personally, I feel strongly that any revival of the Vikings theme should not be Vikings per se, but "Norse" - and feature heavily Norse mythology in the sets. Besides mythic versions of Thor and Loki, you could have Odin, Freya, Hel, Nidhogg, Baldr, Tyr, Skadi, Valkyries...the list goes on. We never got Thor sets and it doesn't look like we will anytime soon, so why not get a full Norse line?

Alternatively, if Lego wasn't keen on mildly overlapping with their Marvel stuff, make a Vikings theme a Beowulf theme. It's public domain, it's got recognizable big names. Beowulf. Wiglaf. Hrothgar. Grendel. Grendel's Mother. The Dragon. You could spin several sets off of that easily.

[The_Cook]

The most obvious one is the huge number of 1x1tan cones along the walls. The problem here is that I can't think of a lower-part method that wouldn't completely lose the look of the sharpened points of the logs. I tried having cones only on every second or third stud, but it looked worse than no cones at all!

Yes, those ends are hugely increasing the part count at the moment, but as you say they form an important part of the aesthetic so it would be wrong to take them away. If we were TLG we could try putting in a request to have a new mould produced...

The roof was intended to be made of multiples of six, but I had an unforeseen problem. It may be hard to spot, but there's a 2x2 cutout in the roof above the hinges, hence the jumble of 2- and 4-wides instead of another 6-wide. The geometry is such that the roof overhangs the side walls slightly and prevents the hall from swinging open. The only other solutions I could think of was to make whole roof pop off like a Modular (but that seems unlike a normal set to me), or to bring the hinges out by one stud (but that would make the hall a lot flimsier). Maybe make the whole hall two studs longer, and replace the 4-wides in the roof with 6-wides? That would use more parts though. I'm sure there's a solution, it'll just take some more fiddling to work it out!

Ah, I didn't spot that when I made my original comments. I'll have a think. There is precedent for extending the hinge line out away from the wall, look at the Mill in the Mill Village Raid.

So in an effort to further reduce parts, I'm trying to come up with an alternative to the design of the pillars. Here are some that use fewer parts, with the original on the left:

Third pillar also works for me, could use either the white plate or the orange plate. The logic seems to be same colour around a thin band of alternating colour then the brown on-top. If we assume that dark blue is our base colour, then the choice of the alternate colour for the thin band should be white as it's the opposite of dark, or orange as that's opposite blue on the colour wheel; which happen to be the choices you've already made whether you understood the theory behind those choices or not. Working up the stack I would also suggest trying Blue Brick, Alternative Colour Plate, Blue Brick, Brown Brick, Brown Barrel, Brown Brick and also Blue Brick, Alternative Colour Plate, Blue Brick, Brown Brick, Brown Barrel, White Brick. I think there's merit in trying some alternative options with the white capping the column but there needs to be a sufficient amount of brown in the column to offset the other colours and that's lacking when it's just the barrel.

Edited July 11, 2014 by The_Cook

[ED-209]

Well, that requires 512MB hard drive, I have 448MB. So, that wouldn't work. But I am saving up money for a new PC, so in a while I should have a PC that can handle LDD. I can always download it now and see if it works, but I doubt it.

About those pillars, I like the 2nd one the best, blue blue blue white brown brown. Just my opinion though.

EDIT: I tried to download it, didn't work. So I guess I got to wait till I get a new PC.

Thank you, I'm leaning towards either the 2nd or 3rd myself. But I'm always keen to get others' input!

I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work!

I like the third column as it has the narrow band of white surounded on both side by a wide band of blue.

Cool, cheers!

Personally, I feel strongly that any revival of the Vikings theme should not be Vikings per se, but "Norse" - and feature heavily Norse mythology in the sets. Besides mythic versions of Thor and Loki, you could have Odin, Freya, Hel, Nidhogg, Baldr, Tyr, Skadi, Valkyries...the list goes on. We never got Thor sets and it doesn't look like we will anytime soon, so why not get a full Norse line?

Alternatively, if Lego wasn't keen on mildly overlapping with their Marvel stuff, make a Vikings theme a Beowulf theme. It's public domain, it's got recognizable big names. Beowulf. Wiglaf. Hrothgar. Grendel. Grendel's Mother. The Dragon. You could spin several sets off of that easily.

While I'd have no complaints about figs of the Norse gods, I think the bigger problem is that Lego take a pretty strict stance against religion, don't they? I mean, the Lego Ideas project guidelines specifically state that "Religious references including symbols, buildings, or people" don't fit their brand values. That's why you never see churches in the Castle sets (or even in the City sets I suppose). The figs of Thor and Loki from the Avengers might blur the lines a little, and I suppose the Ark of the Covenant from the Indiana Jones sets does too.

The policy is perfectly fine with me mind you, but I think it would be unlikely to see such religious content.

Beowulf on the other hand would work, but I don't really know if it's any more marketable than just Vikings in general (either "Vikings vs Vikings" or "Vikings vs Monsters".) They could certainly take their cues from the saga though. But as I've said earlier in the thread, quite literally any Viking sets at all would be fantastic IMO!

Ah, I didn't spot that when I made my original comments. I'll have a think. There is precedent for extending the hinge line out away from the wall, look at the Mill in the Mill Village Raid.

Thank you, I'm still scratching my head over that one!

Third pillar also works for me, could use either the white plate or the orange plate. The logic seems to be same colour around a thin band of alternating colour then the brown on-top. If we assume that dark blue is our base colour, then the choice of the alternate colour for the thin band should be white as it's the opposite of dark, or orange as that's opposite blue on the colour wheel; which happen to be the choices you've already made whether you understood the theory behind those choices or not. Working up the stack I would also suggest trying Blue Brick, Alternative Colour Plate, Blue Brick, Brown Brick, Brown Barrel, Brown Brick and also Blue Brick, Alternative Colour Plate, Blue Brick, Brown Brick, Brown Barrel, White Brick. I think there's merit in trying some alternative options with the white capping the column but there needs to be a sufficient amount of brown in the column to offset the other colours and that's lacking when it's just the barrel.

Well spotted, yes the colour choices were indeed intentional! Cheers, I'll try out the patterns you've suggested and post the results.

I've also done a design for a witch/sorceress/seer/herbalist minifig. I think I'll just refer to her as a witch for the sake of simplicity! But she'd ply her trade in her little hut against the fortress wall, selling medicines and telling people's futures:

[Alfadas]

Looks amazing! Always good to get more female figs. But how do you make this figures? Is there some kind of program?

[clonebricksNL]

Wow i love your designs! i loved the old viking sets when they came out i hope lego will make a new theme based on the hairy guys from the north.

[Blakstone]

Since the CMF Series 12 has the Battle Goddess which is Athena, TLG might only avoid 'modern' religions and would not have any issues doing Norse deities.

[Venkefedo]

Since the CMF Series 12 has the Battle Goddess which is Athena, TLG might only avoid 'modern' religions and would not have any issues doing Norse deities.

It'd be pretty fun to see TLG's take on non-Marvel Thor & Odin at least, and maybe Freya & a Valkyrie. Odin's crazy horse (Legend-Beast-style!)… brick-built Frost Giants… ah, it could be so much fun! And, most importantly, at least SOME non-horned helmets

[The_Cook]

I've also done a design for a witch/sorceress/seer/herbalist minifig. I think I'll just refer to her as a witch for the sake of simplicity! But she'd ply her trade in her little hut against the fortress wall, selling medicines and telling people's futures:

Great design, too many colours...

Some research that I've been doing as part of a project over in the Pirates Forum leads me to believe that the machines at TLG are only capable of printing 4 colours onto the base plastic.

Your design has:

• Dark Blue : The base plastic
  
• Black : Outlines and hip inserts
  
• Yellow : Neck
  
• Silver : Buckles and brooches
  
• Dark Tan : Neckline and Sleeves
  
• Light Tan : Bones
  
• Brown : Belt
  

You could probably loose the yellow at the neckline (which will keep the Fleshie lovers happy) and change the buckles and brooches to light tan that way you're down to 4 colours on-top of the dark blue plastic.

[ED-209]

Looks amazing! Always good to get more female figs. But how do you make this figures? Is there some kind of program?

Thank you kind sir! And I agree, you can always have more female figs.

Answering your question about the programme, I use Adobe Illustrator for my figure designs. I wrote up a bit of a tutorial a while back detailing the techniques I use:

http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=67532

Wow i love your designs! i loved the old viking sets when they came out i hope lego will make a new theme based on the hairy guys from the north.

Thank you, I loved them too! Speaking of hairy, I'd love to see the beard/hair combo from the CMF caveman released in other colours. I think it would be perfect for some unruly Viking characters!

http://www.bricklink...Pic.asp?P=87999

Since the CMF Series 12 has the Battle Goddess which is Athena, TLG might only avoid 'modern' religions and would not have any issues doing Norse deities.

I've only seen the Japanese catalogue that had the six figures displayed, but have TLG ever actually stated anywhere that it's Athena? Or any goddess for that matter? I mean she's certainly a warrior woman from Greek or Roman antiquity, but how do you know she's not Hippolyta, Penthesilea, or anyone else? I'm sure TLG could do a nameless muscular Viking warrior with red hair and beard (like the caveman piece I just mentioned!), and arm him with a hammer... and just let people draw their own conclusions as to who he might be. That approach might be more palatable for them?

Or as you say, it could be that they're just less concerned with dead religions.

It'd be pretty fun to see TLG's take on non-Marvel Thor & Odin at least, and maybe Freya & a Valkyrie. Odin's crazy horse (Legend-Beast-style!)… brick-built Frost Giants… ah, it could be so much fun! And, most importantly, at least SOME non-horned helmets

If they were do a more fantasy/mythology based theme, I'd love to see giants, trolls and other beasts built out of those new joints! I wonder if they'd consider using a LOTR warg as Fenrir?

Great design, too many colours...

...

You could probably loose the yellow at the neckline (which will keep the Fleshie lovers happy) and change the buckles and brooches to light tan that way you're down to 4 colours on-top of the dark blue plastic.

LOL, thank you and yes, I know I'd gone "over budget" like I always do! But I was trying to be more concious of limiting the palate this time, and with a little more tweaking (raised the collar like you suggested, and removed the broaches) I've brought it down to only four printed colours now:

I also tried out the pillar ideas you suggested and I agree there should be more brown than just the barrel, but I think I'm still favouring number three from the earlier batch:

I'd also like to thank everyone for being so supportive and helpful with these designs, I really appreciate it!

What do you guys think, if I had to pick one model to put forward as a Lego Ideas proposal, should this be it?

[Alfadas]

Why pick one set? Just enter all sets as Ideas, who knows all sets get produced. If you want one set, I think I would go with the fishing boat and hideout thingy, a few pages ago. I like this ringfort very much, but it might have to much pieces for Ideas.

[Blakstone]

I recommend having one ideas entry to consolidate support. However, you could show several sets in one entry. You then would pick one of those once you get close to 10k supporters. That is what other successful submitters did.

[Ardelon]

Amazing projects, ED-209. About the collumns, having just one barrel in it really makes it stand out like, well, a barrel. Have you considered including two in each column, or ditching them altogether in favor of the 2x2 round bricks?

I recommend having one ideas entry to consolidate support. However, you could show several sets in one entry. You then would pick one of those once you get close to 10k supporters. That is what other successful submitters did.

Isnt that a bit dishonest? Then the voters arent actually getting what they voted for, and the submitter is kind of leading them on with multiple possibilities - with no guarantee that what this or that voter actually wants from the set will actually be submitted (or made, which is out of the submitters hands anyway). From this POV, I suggest making each set its own suggestion, and see which idea takes off.

[Blakstone]

The way it has worked for the others is as they approach 10k, they engage all their supporters to help pick. After all for many they continue to revise and update as they gain supporters.

[ED-209]

The problem with the fishing boat set, at least to me, is that the boat itself is not really any different to the one that came in 7016 (Viking Boat against the Wyvern Dragon) or 79013 (Laketown Chase). So while I like it, I don't think it really makes the strongest case for an Ideas project.

http://www.bricklink...ic.asp?S=7016-1

http://www.bricklink...c.asp?S=79013-1

I also don't think you can have several sets in one entry. The project guidelines page specifically states "One project = one LEGO set". I think you could have multiple builds (a building and a vehicle for instance, or two freestanding buildings, etc) if the intention was for them to both be part of the same set.

It may be possible to include other sets like the boat and the blacksmith's forge in the background of some of the images, in order to give an overall sense of the spirit or flavour I'm aiming for?

Amazing projects, ED-209. About the collumns, having just one barrel in it really makes it stand out like, well, a barrel. Have you considered including two in each column, or ditching them altogether in favor of the 2x2 round bricks?

Thank you very much! I did try it with all 2x2 round bricks, but it just looked too plain to my eye. The idea was that the pillars would be both carved and painted, with the barrel representing the carved area. Plus as the barrel pieceis five plates high, it allows a single plate of a different colour, without increasing the part count.

[ED-209]

An update on a few new models I've been tinkering with.

Alfadas' suggestion of deer in the forest led to the idea of a girl gathering mushrooms and coming across a fawn. Basically because there's already a fawn from the Friends range, and I don't have the heart to include a hunter with a bow and arrow stalking Bambi!

I'm not sure there's really enough of a story here, but I thought it would make a cute set nonetheless. The fawn doesn't have a printed face in LDD (at least for me it doesn't!), and likewise the red radar dishes would be the ones with the printed mushroom/toadstool spots.

I also had the idea of a little Viking campsite. A small tent, with perhaps the outlaw minifig I posted on page five. Again, I'm not sure what else would round out this set; a faithful dog, a turkey leg for the fire, a chest of silver and an enemy attacking perhaps? I'm posting the bare frame of the tent, and I'd imagine a simple fabric piece printed with stripes would fit over it, so I Photoshopped that into the second pic.

And finally, a couple of siege engines that could perhaps be part of a new set idea, or possibly come with the Ring Fort. (As if its piece count isn't already high enough!)

A simple battering ram (reinforced with a technic axle down its core), and a firing ballista (based around the new Star Wars spring shooter, with the prod arms inspired by Captain Braunsfeld*). Now, I hear you asking "Gee Ed, did the Vikings really use siege engines like that? I thought they were basically just raiders, looting and pillaging and getting out of there before anyone knew what hit them, not settling in for long sieges?" Well, you're right. While it's probably they would have known about this kind of weaponry, it didn't really suit the type of warfare they typically engaged in. The only evidence they used siege engines comes from the writings of a monk named Abbo Cernuus, who was witness to the Viking sacking of Paris in 845CE. Some historians are sceptical of the reliability of his account, but I figured I'd use it as a tenuous excuse to build some new stuff!

*I really liked the simple but effective technique:

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=90468&hl=

[Alfadas]

Once again great builds. I really like the campsite and the fawn with Viking girl. Indeed, an archers hunting a cure little fawn is kinda brutal. I do like the battering ram and ballista thingy, great for pushing up the piece count! And they look cool.

For the campsite, a few outlaws resting for the night, with a dog for protection. Then all of a sudden, a couple of other outlaws appear and start killing. Then the new outlaws enjoy a peaceful night at the camp, sleeping with a "roof" over their heads.