Now to start building!

 

 

Where to start?  Home in on what you think is the most important part of the structure.  Usually it will be either the central keep or the gatehouse, possibly a tower.  This is where you need to make the next big decision - what building style are you going to use for your castle?  Is the creation going to be primarily studs up or out?  Do you want a more traditional look with large, bleak stone walls, or a mottled look?  I drew on my strengths here.  I've never been particularly good at colour mottling and to tell you the truth, in spite of the skill required, I don't really like the look of mottling in most cases.  Personally I find it both distracting and it limits your options when it comes to architectural features.  So I reverted to what I know best, Gothic architecture with Roman arches and plenty of SNOT features.  

You should now have a pretty good idea how you want your castle to look.  The next big decision is whether or not you want an interior.  Interiors can be difficult for a number of reasons.  Firstly you are going to have to determine how these areas are going to be accessible or at least viewable.  The most common solution is to use hinges to create a dollhouse-like design where either a wall, a large section, or even an entire half of the structure swings open to reveal the inside of the MOC.  Another option is to make your structure come apart at every floor level or even using sliding panels.  In the end any kind of opening is going to require some form of compromise between your original vision and the mechanisms required to open your creation. It's a good idea to try to implement these features right from the beginning, otherwise you're going to have a lot of rebuilding to do later down the track.

The second consideration is time.  Building an interior obviously adds considerably to your workload and increases the demands on your collection.  Only a small percentage of people are likely to view more than one image of your creation so if you do decide to take the time to build an interior it will largely be for your own sense of completion.  But really, if you're not building for yourself, the you're doing it wrong.  Outside of a commission, of course.

That being said, I'm going to ignore my own advice and build an interior.  I intend to use a combination of separating floors and sliding panels.  Wish me luck.

If you have a feature in mind that you want to get into your creation don't try to fit it in, it's better to build that feature and let it help you determine the scale of the overall project.  In this situation I built a window with surrounding arches that I wanted to include in the central keep.  The windows themselves feature old school black fences placed sideways and required a little jiggery pokery to meet perfectly.  Once completed I simply replicated the design and connected them together.  

After I had the facade of the top level constructed I could better judge the size of the connecting towers and I added one to the model.  At this stage I have a working prototype which will serve as a basis for the scale of everything else that follows.

At this early stage I am very willing to pull things apart and rebuild them to ensure I get things right.  It's important that things aren't simply tacked on to your creation unless it's absolutely necessary.  Structures of this size tend to be really heavy and structural integrity is important.  So unless you enjoy seeing your efforts irreparably collapse in upon itself try to keep both the walls and floors as strong as possible.