Building Middle Earth MOCs

[fossilrock]

I started a project over the holidays with my son.  We decided to start building scenes from each of the six tolkien films into modularized sets of about 4 to 5 baseplates each.  All of those plates will be modularized for easier transport and use technic pins..  This will probably take me 2 to 3 years to do all six scenes, and require a lot of different parts, and techniques to build them, since all six scenes will be different and showcase different sets. 

We started with "An unexpected Journey.  There were 4 sets from that film made by lego (Unexpected Gathering, Gobling King Battle, Riddles for the RIng, and Attack of the Wargs).  I figured, we could combine 3 of those from the "From the Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire" scene at the end of the movie, by building a mountain around the Goblin King with cliffs and tunnels that lead down the mountain where the Dwarves climbed up the tree that was built on a cliff. 

This is our first moc of the layout.  It will combine 3 modular 32x32 baseplates, and more than likely a 16x32 for the tunnel section.  I managed to score a big bulk lot of castle wall pieces, so it helps build the cliff structures.  Eventually i'll add some snot pieces, and smooth tiles to fill it all in, but that all takes time.

[fossilrock]

A few more photos from phase 01.

[staggs9696]

Wish my dad would have done stuff like this with me :3 Not that I wouldn't have been able to do it alone, just that I'd have appreciated doing something more than shopping with him Congratz on being a great dad!

Regarding the builds, I like the way it looks right now, I guess choosing to do it on such small plates must have been reconsidered a few times during construction as you started to feel the limited space, but it all seems to have come out pretty nicely in the end. For cliff and rocky walls, I actually prefer the rock chunks that come in sets such as the old bat-cave, that old Bionicle wall/gate set from way back when they tried to make Bionicle sets at minifig size, or even I believe there were some with the first harry potter castle but I kind of doubt that which makes me wonder where I got those smaller ones... Anyway, I usually mix those with slopes, ramps, doubled and thin pieces and try to never have a prolonged surface over 2 pieces as I immidiately feel like it looks fake. I see that you're also mixing a bit of mega bloks in there, is it because you happened to have some and figured it would be easier, or did you also acquire some mega bloks specifically for this. If you did, I recommend getting a Warcraft Stormwind and use the castle wall bricks as parts of rocky things, they really did a great job with that, and that set now costs very little compared to the 80€ I paid for it... 

I look forward to seeing how this pans out