The ballistas were the most difficult portion of this model, and my first thought was to make them functional with the assembly shown below. Soon I realized that would require a big investment in time, and would likely compromise the aesthetics so I switched to display only weapons.
I wanted the carriage of the ballista set at an angle to the chassis which made for some fun design challenges.
Black elements were used to simulate metal reinforcing on the front of the ballista.
Once I had a design I was happy with I planned to duplicate the build so I could have two ballistas in the scene. Then I ran into the issue of not having enough pearl dark grey carriage wheels.
Which I solved by using different wheels on the second ballista. It’s not very obvious, but you can see the switch easily if you know to look for it. Since this was an entry for the CCC, I needed it to fit in a 64×32 or 48×48 area. Laying out a couple base plates confirmed that I could fit both ballistas in that space.
Next I roughed out the shape of the irregular landscape base with green and black plates.
The base is two plates thick, and then I used brick modified with stud and headlight bricks all around the edges to attach the dark brown elements.
This stage of a build can be one of the most frustrating as I try to establish the style of the whole scene, but don’t have enough completed to easily tell if I’m pleased with the designs.
2 stud wide filler brick and black plates gave a solid base to build the olive green landscape onto.
We have a good amount of 1×2 olive green plates, but I also mixed in some larger elements to make sure I would have enough pieces to cover the large area. Here you can also see that I’m making one end of the base considerably thicker than the other to give slope to the scene.
Which added a bit more work, but was certainly worth it! The car hoods stick out a bit here, but I figured with grass, minifigures, and the ballistas in place they would blend in much better.
Besides olive grass, I added some brown friends flowers and spiky plants made of cow horns
And there’s a look into the build process for Dwarven Ballistas.
If you have any comments or questions, we would love to hear them!
Dwarven Ballistas: Build Log
The ballistas were the most difficult portion of this model, and my first thought was to make them functional with the assembly shown below. Soon I realized that would require a big investment in time, and would likely compromise the aesthetics so I switched to display only weapons.
I wanted the carriage of the ballista set at an angle to the chassis which made for some fun design challenges.
Black elements were used to simulate metal reinforcing on the front of the ballista.
Once I had a design I was happy with I planned to duplicate the build so I could have two ballistas in the scene. Then I ran into the issue of not having enough pearl dark grey carriage wheels.
Which I solved by using different wheels on the second ballista. It’s not very obvious, but you can see the switch easily if you know to look for it. Since this was an entry for the CCC, I needed it to fit in a 64×32 or 48×48 area. Laying out a couple base plates confirmed that I could fit both ballistas in that space.
Next I roughed out the shape of the irregular landscape base with green and black plates.
The base is two plates thick, and then I used brick modified with stud and headlight bricks all around the edges to attach the dark brown elements.
This stage of a build can be one of the most frustrating as I try to establish the style of the whole scene, but don’t have enough completed to easily tell if I’m pleased with the designs.
2 stud wide filler brick and black plates gave a solid base to build the olive green landscape onto.
We have a good amount of 1×2 olive green plates, but I also mixed in some larger elements to make sure I would have enough pieces to cover the large area. Here you can also see that I’m making one end of the base considerably thicker than the other to give slope to the scene.
Which added a bit more work, but was certainly worth it! The car hoods stick out a bit here, but I figured with grass, minifigures, and the ballistas in place they would blend in much better.
Besides olive grass, I added some brown friends flowers and spiky plants made of cow horns
And there’s a look into the build process for Dwarven Ballistas.
If you have any comments or questions, we would love to hear them!