Of Mice and Modeling: Building a sand red Redwall Abbey in LEGO [Guest Feature]
Today we’re joined by Evan Crouch, AKA evanceltlego, to walk us through his newest LEGO build, a large recreation of the Redwall Abbey.
As a tween in the 1990s, I loved the Redwall book series by Brian Jacques. The books’ stories followed anthropomorphic medieval-era mice, hares, otters, moles, badgers, and other woodland creatures on various adventures around Mossflower Wood. Once I came out of my LEGO dark ages in 2018, one of the first MOC builds I tried was a Redwall Abbey. There were lots of design challenges to overcome at that time – not only did I not yet have many LEGO pieces in general, but the only affordable colors I could find on Bricklink that approximated Redwall’s sandstone color were dark red and medium nougat. I knew at the time that the out-of-print sand red color was the one I actually wanted for the build, but it was out of reach at the time. During that earlier build I did come across some great anthropomorphic mice heads created by Crazy Bricks for the Mouse Guard series. Those mouse heads would stick with me as a great resource for Redwall mice.
Over the next five years I slowly started accumulating sand red bricks, knowing that eventually I’d revisit the idea of a sand red Redwall Abbey. For the uninitiated, sand red was only featured in a few sets for a brief period in the early 2000s. This means it’s rare and as a result, it’s very expensive. Most Bricklink stores only had a few pieces of it, so to get it in bulk required lots of small orders, which meant shipping costs added up. But slowly and steadily I accumulated hundreds of the bricks, slopes, plates, and other specialty elements in that color. Notably, when I began accumulating sand red 1×2 bricks, they were ~$1 each, and when I wrapped up the build that cost had risen to $6 per brick!
Sand red is an interesting color. It’s very desaturated and in some yellowy lights it appears almost identical to sand yellow / dark tan. As a result, not all of the modern colors offered by LEGO look good next to it. For the rest of the color palette for this build, I opted to use the older (and less bluish!) dark gray color alongside desaturated sand red, bright spring green for the ground vegetation, and dark orange for the abbey roofs. Bright light blue for the sky, bright green for the tree tops, and white for the tree trunks and clouds added some color pops to the final build.
The abbey itself is a pretty basic structure, with ornate windows flanking a big arched entry way created by connecting plate clips together with flextube. I built a tall belltower on one of the ends of the abbey, featuring arrow slits made from minifigure legs, topped by more ornate windows. On top of the tower, I built a weathervane out of black minifigure utensils (paint roller, axes, hammers, etc).
I knew a plain brick wall would be kind of boring, even if it was all sand red. So for the walls, I interspersed grille tiles on end to add tiny holes in the wall, and attached plates with SNOT bricks for some horizontal texture. Finally, I threw in a couple of my Rocky Mountain Minifig’s masonry bricks that had been carved into original LEGO sand red bricks. The top and bottom of the outer wall were capped with dark gray elements to add some variety. And to allow the outer walls to angle in at the edges of the build, I stacked hundreds of sand red wedge plates to create transition pillars.
I knew that eventually I’d be taking this build to LEGO conventions that had “lights out” events where the exhibit hall dims the overhead lights to allow lit MOCs to show their illumination, so I built a few light elements into the display. First, there are a dozen or so candle-colored LED lights inside the abbey great hall and tower. I also added a mouse holding a lit lantern toward the front of the build, unsure if little kids would be able to see over the outer wall to the inner abbey.
Because so much of the abbey itself might be hidden by the outer wall, I knew I wanted to add a tall-ish background behind the abbey that kids could see from a low angle. To make the background interesting, I angled the bricks at 45 degrees and capped the left and right sides with 1×2 regular and inverted slopes. The 45-degree angle was accomplished using Technic bricks and resulted in a sturdy mount to the base, which has so far withstood some bumpy crosscountry highway driving to cons.
The angled orientation allowed for some unique SNOTed cloud structures. Boomerangs were added to indicate flying birds, and a fancy ‘R’ letter was put in the upper left corner to drive home the Redwall connection.
Closer to the ground, multiple layers of wall and terrain added to the effect of depth. Dark green Bionicle Visorak feet were used to represent distant pine trees. Finally, I added a square black border around the sky to highlight how the 45-degree bricks weren’t actually perfectly 45 degrees.
Because the main ground color was the washed-out sand green color, I wanted to add bright spring green ground cover to give it a little pop. I used the color search on Bricklink to find what elements were available in that color and then sprinkled them in among leaf plates. In the end, the ground vegetation included saxophones, sabers, keys, pickaxes, hands, fish, and revolvers in green tones.
To add even more visual interest, I built the round front corners of the display using brickbending 1×2 plates, and the river using sideways 1×2 transparent plates. The trees also utilize a ton of different bright green pieces, including stems, clips, strings, leaves, and blades. The white birch trunks use the printed aspen dinosaur tail element.
Finally, to make it clear that this red-walled building was Redwall, I needed animal minifigures. While in previous builds I’d featured a big badger, I didn’t break that one out for this display. Instead, I used a variety of the aforementioned aftermarket mouse heads alongside rabbit heads to approximate Long Patrol hares, and Splinter rat heads to approximate otter heads. Because it was cute, I also made a mole head poking out of the outer grounds.
Because this has been a labor of love over the past five years, I’m sure I’ll continue tweaking and adding to the build, so it may appear altered at upcoming shows!
The post Of Mice and Modeling: Building a sand red Redwall Abbey in LEGO [Guest Feature] appeared first on The Brothers Brick.
