The Dark Tower - The Interior

WARNING: This post may contain spoilers from Stephen King's The Dark Tower (series of books).

As much as my goal is to make the Dark Tower gargantuan and looming in scale, I also want to spend as much time and energy paying attention to the small details.

I want to be able to show Roland's ascent through the seemingly endless spiral staircases, hallways and rooms of the Dark Tower.



For me, the most stunning LEGO creations often look amazing on the simple basis that you have to look closely to realize that the building medium is a simple modular brick. Some of that trick has to do with careful construction and using advanced building techniques. A lot of it has to do with tiling.



LEGO "tiles" are simple flat LEGO pieces without studs on them. They act as the final ingredient in a secret recipe to round off the look of a set of LEGOs. They can also add a lot of texture to the final look.



In the case of the Dark Tower, I've opted for a mostly light bluish-gray tiled floor with dark red (note that the pictures don't quite represent the actual color of this red) and black decorative accents.

They turn an otherwise normal-looking LEGO piece into something else entirely.

The Dark Tower - Building the Walls

After more than a few Bricklink orders and a complete organization of my collection, I've finally put together an outer wall that I'm satisfied with.



The technique is actually rather simple and fairly common, at least amongst the AFOL community. It involves interchanging 1x1 Bricks and 1x1 Bricks with Stud on 1 side and carefully placing tiles over the studs to create an effect much like actual laid bricks.

The only real trick for me here is being careful with how the bricks are seated in my overall structure, as it does mean that the walls are less stable than they would be using longer bricks. With two walls using the technique, I've not yet noticed any structural integrity issues, even while moving the entire tower, but I am worried slightly about some "wobbliness" when all 7 base level walls (not counting the main entrance/staircase) are similarly decorated.



The new look certainly beats the old one (pictured above) where I was merely laying random tiles to give the structure more texture.

I should have enough pieces now to finish off the first "level" and maybe enough to add some texture to portions of the wall that will have windows on it. Even so, the cost of the project is quickly adding up and I am probably going to have to come up with another decorative technique for the higher levels if I am to do this without substantial additional cost.

Still though, the final look is impressive and leaves me very satisfied.

Recording Session in the Bathroom

This little vignette came to me as a sudden inspiration tonight as I took my evening shower.



As an amateur musician, I've spent many an hour trying to capture unique sounds, and some times that might mean recording in the bathroom, where the closed area and flat surfaces can sometimes make for interesting reverberation.



Having recently acquired a Brickforge.com acoustic guitar, I had intended to make a model of my room as a child, with the guitar as decoration to the room, but then this much more unique and interesting idea came to me.



Our central character here has got his laptop and a microphone stand (with a mic each for guitar and vocals!) as part of a crude recording setup.



But it works for him, and the end result is something he is proud of.



And I feel the same way about this MOC!

The Way Station - Stables Interior

WARNING: This post may contain spoilers from Stephen King's The Dark Tower (series of books).

My side project (to fill the time while waiting for specific bricks to arrive to continue work on the Dark Tower itself) is also inspired by Stephen King's magnum opus: The Way Station.

The Way Station is first mentioned in The Gunslinger (book one), and is comprised of a stables and a small house (perhaps an inn). Exhausted after chasing the Man in Black through the desert, the Gunslinger comes to the Way Station and meets Jake Chambers for the first time.

Both the stables and the small house are described as being run down and decrepit, and I feel like I still have a lot of work in terms of exterior design and landscaping to convey that, but I'm happy with the shape, approach and colors so far.



Most of my work so far has been on creating the interior look and feel, with particular attention to the sink/water pump that is the most prominent item in the stables itself.



A few stalls for horses, a shelf with canned and preserved food, bales of hay and a few barrels and containers of horse feed make up the rest of the interior.







As mentioned, I still plan to work on the exterior to give it a more run down feel and I do also have to work on the small house, including a basement where Roland speaks to the demon and gets his jawbone.

I leave you with a very scared Marion Ravenwood (of Indiana Jones fame) who has somehow woken up and found herself in Roland's world.

The Dark Tower - Principle Characters

WARNING: This post may contain spoilers from Stephen King's The Dark Tower (series of books).

As much as I would've been happy with focusing entirely on the Dark Tower itself, it would've done a major disservice to the work to ignore the lesson we're taught from Roland's epic journey, which is that it is the experiences, relationships and basic human connections that matter more than the destination itself. That is to say, the Dark Tower wouldn't be the Dark Tower without the principle characters.

Minifigure customization presents a whole different set of challenges compared to regular MOC building. Because minifigures often add the most detail and finishing touches to any set of LEGOs, minute things like facial expressions, accessories and torso printings can bring a minifigure, and therefore an entire creation, to life.



With the Dark Tower, naturally, I had to start with Roland. LEGO hasn't produced a whole lot of Western/Cowboy sets, but enough that I was able to find his torso, hat and pistol fairly easily. To that, I added dark blue pants to be true to the descriptions of the Gunslinger being in blue jeans.

But the real challenge was finding his face. I found it finally in the face of Captain Rex (Star Wars). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to properly represent Roland's blue bombardier eyes, but short of that, everything else spoke out to me as the closest representation I was going to get of Clint Eastwood, the original inspiration for Roland Deschain.

Finishing off Roland's look is the custom-made trenchcoat by MMCB from Australia.

Roland set the tone (pun not intended) for the rest of the principle characters. Since Roland himself was flesh-toned (rather than the traditional yellow LEGO minifigs), I was able to limit my face search for the other characters to flesh-toned faces typically available only in licensed LEGO sets (like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Prince of Persia, etc.).



The Man in Black was my next easy target. Another custom-made wrap around robe was acquired to really give him an aura of mystery. Initially, I started with a sinister looking face, but eventually settled for the much more appropriate hysterical/chaotic evil smiling face appropriate to the character of Walter o'Dim/Randall Flagg/Marten/etc.

I'm still tinkering with the Man in Black's staff/walking stick (which is definitely described in the books, lest you think I am taking a creative liberty) which may end up being the Wizard's Staff I ordered from Brickforge.com.



The remaining characters are much more a WIP, but I like what I have so far.

Susannah is tricky not just because of her physical condition, but also the fact that LEGO has yet to print any dark-skinned female heads, but a feminine lock of hair over a neutral-looking face can help with that. I'm not sure I'm happy yet with her lower half, but it certainly works for now.

For Eddie, I tried to picture Casey Affleck as a drug addict, and eventually settled on the torso of Fenrir Greyback (Harry Potter). While his chest is a little TOO hairy for my tastes, I did like how it lined up with the description of Eddie when we first met him as having an open shirt.

Finally, Jake is dressed in a simple plaid shirt, but I'm still searching for a brown sweater that he is described as wearing. Jake is carrying what I intend to be one of Roland's water pouches over his shoulders.

I'm fairly happy with the way the orizas (plates used as weapons by Jake and Susannah) look, but I think both those characters could still use a little more customization. Susannah definitely needs a scarf to cover up her incorrectly colored neck area and Jake's shirt as mentioned could be better.

Still to do:

Since my big scene is the Dark Tower itself, I need to come up with an appropriate-looking Patrick Danville complete with pencil/paper. The trick there will be to distinguish Patrick and Jake sufficiently.

My biggest challenge though will be the Crimson King himself. I need a hulking presence for the main balcony of the Dark Tower, so it'll have to be more than a simple minifigure. I suspect the Crimson King will be haunting my dreams over many nights while I try to figure that out.

The Dark Tower - The Foundation

WARNING: This post may contain spoilers from Stephen King's The Dark Tower (series of books).

I'm taking on a rather daunting task for my first MOC: Stephen King's The Dark Tower.

The Dark Tower naturally has been portrayed and can be imagined in a variety of ways, and this flexibility was something I found very desirable for my first project as an AFOL. I have found myself paying very close attention to Stephen King's descriptions of the Dark Tower, rather than just focusing simply on a piece of artwork inspired by it.

The first challenge naturally was deciding the foundation and shape of the Dark Tower. While towers in history typically are circular, and indeed, while the Dark Tower is described as having a spiral staircase, I determined early on that a truly circular tower would be too daunting a task for me, and would require too many pieces.





So I have settled for an octagonal shape using Hinge Brick Swivels to connect eight 1x16 bricks, which while seemingly simple, did bring several design challenges along the way.

Most importantly, to maintain as close to a regular octagon shape as possible, I had to use 2x1 Jumper plates to make it so the overall shape of the octagon would fit in a 40x39 stud square (not counting the 5 steps leading up to the entrance of the Dark Tower).



My plan was to use that foundation to build hallways, rooms and spiral staircases going up 4-5 levels, with perhaps 1-2 points where the Tower could be separated in order to appreciate the inner workings.



Front to back (from the entrance to the back), the Dark Tower was very stable, being supported by bricks underneath and connected by plates, but side to side, because of the jumper cables, I had to take extra precautions as I built higher, ensuring that jumper cables were used at ideal locations to reinforce the structure, and that there were sufficient support bricks below it so that the floors and spiral staircases wouldn't bend or break.



The build's working fairly well so far, especially considering the fact that due to limited work space, I must transport the entire thing in one piece from the table where I build to the top of a shelf (out of reach of the kids) where it rests during the day. The entire piece so far can be moved without breaking, and can even be layed down on its side to work on the support pillars underneath.

My big challenge from here will be figuring out how to add on a 2nd module of roughly the same shape (or slightly smaller, to give the Tower a more striking visual effect) that will sit on top of what I've already constructed.

From there, the Dark Tower would sit on top of a hill, surrounded by a field of roses.