Welcome back! Today we meet bricks_fan_uy, a.k.a. Gonzalo Carro, and his fantastic MEDIEVAL SEASIDE MARKET. From a love of the Castle theme, Gonzalo has created this fantastic new take on the theme! Show your support for him in the comments!
ABOUT YOURSELF
- Who are you?
My name is Gonzalo Carro.
- Where are you from?
I’m from Montevideo, Uruguay.
- How old are you?
I’m 36 years old.
- What do you study or do for a living?
I work as a mobile network engineer.
- What hobbies do you have?
Apart from designing LEGO MOCs, I play guitar and sing.
- Do you have a personal LEGO portfolio website that you can share with us?
Of course, my Instagram account is @PrettiestSophisticatedLeg, you’ll find pretty much everything I build there.
- Have you created any LEGO MOCs (my own creations) that you’re particularly proud of? What is it, why are you proud of it and do you have a photo of it?
I am particularly proud of a series of MOCs I designed around the Vikings theme, the inspiration for them came from a video game I play called Valheim. Another series of MOCs I really like is one I called the Modular Castle series, the Keep in particular is the one I’m most proud of. That Keep is the castle’s centrepiece and the back swings open allowing access to the interior. It features a variety of different windows, balconies, a wattle and daub section, a kitchen, a throne room, a study, a bedroom and a bath section too.
- How and when did your interest in LEGO products come about?
As a kid, I got a number of LEGO sets, mostly Castle and Pirates sets. I played with them all day long and went to bed with the little pamphlets that came in the sets, searching them for new ideas to build with my collection. Recently I came back to LEGO building during the 2020 world pandemic. There I stumbled upon an incredible AFOL community on Instagram and also discovered Bricklink while searching for a few parts I found were missing from my Red Beard Runner set from my childhood.
- What is the LEGO hobby to you? What does it mean to you? How does it fit in your life? E.g. build, display, meetups, play the games or 'just' watch the cartoons.
My LEGO hobby is about sitting with my PC and building whatever comes to mind with Bricklink’s Studio. From mini-builds to larger MOCs I like to share them with the online community. From time to time I build my favourite designs by me or others in real bricks and then display them at home along with official LEGO sets. There are no meetups in my area that I’m aware of, but I enjoy the digital community experience a lot and chat with AFOLs from around the world daily.
- What is your favourite LEGO theme (current or past)? Why? And has any theme inspired your building style or preference in any particular way?
My all-time favourite theme is Castle. My very first Castle set was 6034, full of amazing parts for the time (brown doors, the knight's armour and helm, the ghost, the grey bird), then 6030 and 6055 followed right after. Those three little sets made for hours of play and inspired epic stories in my head as well as tons of builds.
- What is your favourite official LEGO set ever? Why?
My favourite set has been the 6086 Black Knight’s Castle since I can remember. The use of the raised baseplate, the imposing gatehouse, with the yellow wattle and daub living quarters, the dungeon and escape door at the back, and the combination of round and square towers in black and grey… that build is just brilliant from every angle. The dragon knights in all different colours, especially the white ones are top notch too. The last castle the LEGO Group released is another amazing set, the 10305 Lion Knight’s Castle, it just doesn’t have the sentimental value of the 6086.
- What is your favourite LEGO element? Why?
That has to be the grey masonry 1x2 brick (98283). For the style I like to build in, that brick is somehow perfect to add the right amount of details to a castle build without going overboard with greeble. Just a couple here and there go a long way.
- Is there a LEGO designer (official LEGO designer or fan designer) who you are inspired by and look up to? Who and why?
There are many of them, to be honest, I get inspiration from almost every single member of the Instagram community. I could mention a few by their Instagram profiles so readers can go and check their work: @peter.g.keith, @wes_talbott, @sleepless_night_bricks, @jonaskramm and so many others I feel I’m being a bit unfair for having to choose a few. What gets my admiration is the clever parts used, beautiful irregular buildings, interesting mini-builds or play features, the use of bright colour schemes and the overall style of each builder, which is, I think, very unique.
- Is there one or more particular LEGO-related websites (not official LEGO websites) that you visit often and/or are inspired by?
Not really, I draw inspiration mainly from conversations with other AFOLs, googling images of the things I’m planning to build and my own imagination. Sometimes I check LEGO official instructions to learn how certain things are built in certain sets.
ABOUT YOUR PROJECT
- Where did your interest in this particular model come from?
Being such a Castle theme fan I’m always looking for different interesting types of castles to build. Back when I was a kid, LEGO released a lot of medieval boat/ship sets but we never had a big castle by the sea to dock all those. I was born and raised in a city by the sea, with a natural harbour so I guess it was natural to me to combine all of this in a model. From a product idea standpoint, I think this could be particularly interesting to Pirates theme fans out there as well. Finally, castles are arguably rather similar to one another regarding the different elements they include, so making it a seaside castle with a market in it was a great way to part from the quintessential LEGO Castle set.
- How long was the process of making the project, and what did you have to research as well? What kind of prep, research and design phases did you go through to produce your creation?
I searched Google images for castles by the sea. I was interested in those who had an open side towards the water because that would allow the model to be very playable on that side. I talked to many other AFOLs from other countries which are all things medieval aficionados and asked for their opinions to make my model make as much sense as possible. The first version of the model I submitted must have taken me a month to build in Studio.
- What special challenges did you face creating the model? What was the most difficult part to recreate?
The initial model was larger and included a lot of panel pieces which are not in production anymore but were really popular when I was a kid. People left comments that pointed that out, but I was reluctant to change it in the beginning because vintage panels had strong connections to the great LEGO sets from my childhood and also I didn’t think I could come up with a better model than what I already had. As time went by and I learned a few different techniques and more modern styles of building, so I finally decided to redesign the whole model to make it a tad smaller, more colourful and use mostly LEGO bricks that are currently in production. In the end, I think it was a change for the better. The evolution can be seen in the ‘updates’ section of the project’s page.
- If you could talk to yourself before you started on this project, what would you tell them? What do you know now that you wish you knew then?
I would tell myself; 'man, this is a marathon, not a race'. I submitted this a while ago, in January 2021. One month after the project reached 1K supports and I thought it was doing really great so I got excited. After almost a year it had just made it to 5K, the supports had slowed down so I had lost hope of it reaching 10K supports and quit promoting it. Almost an exact year after, I checked the project and to my surprise, it was closing in on 8K without any promotion on social media, so I got back to working on it. That’s when the redesign took place and got back to promoting it on my social media.
- How long did it take to complete the model? Did you finish it fairly quickly, or did it take a long time? And how did the build time compare to the time you spent promoting your Product Idea to reach 10,000 supporters?
I didn’t keep track of the times, to be honest. The build time was spread across several sprints, each one as an update in the projects page. The promo time wasn’t a lot, but it was a lot of times that I had to post the project in different online groups.
- How did it feel when you reached the magic 10,000 votes and how long did it take?
It took almost two years, as I said before I had lost all hope and when I noticed how close the project was I dedicated a lot of time to redesigning the model. So I spent the last weeks of the gathering support phase so into the details of the rework, I almost forgot about the goal itself. It felt really awesome to realise I had accomplished it though, and made me feel a lot of gratitude towards the online community that was behind the achievement.
- Approximately how many LEGO bricks did you use to create your model?
The model is about 2300 bricks.
- What is your favourite building technique or part/section that you’ve incorporated into your Product Idea?
Probably the fact that there is no back side to the build, it is very playable and displayable from both front and back. Also, I like the brick-built stands, boat and wagon a lot.
- If you built your model digitally, what software did you use to build and render your model?
I used Bricklink Studio.
- If you used custom stickers or prints for your design, how did you create them or where did you get them?
I used a Pegasus emblem on the knights. That’s the emblem for a custom Castle faction I invented back in 2020 called the The Order of the Guilded Pegasus (aka Golden Stallions).
ABOUT LEGO IDEAS
- Do you have any useful advice about creating a successful LEGO Ideas project?
Avoid ideas or concepts that have been made before by the LEGO Group and go for something that people would want to have in their own collections. Don’t use the platform to submit ‘your’ ideal of a LEGO set but keep in mind that you are submitting a ‘product idea’. If the theme has a community of fans behind it and the model isn’t similar to others done before by the LEGO Group, I think you’ll have a better chance.
- What (if any) methods did you use to advertise and attract support to your Product Idea?
I shared it on social media, mainly Instagram, Facebook and Reddit.
- What is your favourite LEGO Ideas Product Idea (besides your own of course)? Are there any Product Ideas you think have been overlooked?
My favourite Product Ideas are usually the ones related to Castle. One I really wanted to be picked but it wasn’t was CASTLE OF LORD AFOL AND THE BLACK KNIGHTS by SleeplessNights.
- What is it about the platform that attracts you? What tips would you give to anyone who is thinking about uploading an idea?
I think it is cool to give people the chance to be involved in the development of certain sets, I value that. As I said before, my advice is to not just submit a build that you would like to buy, but a model you think many people would want to buy.
- Do you have plans to submit any other Product Ideas in the future? If yes, can you give us a hint what that might be?
I have a few ideas, but I haven’t started playing with them. Probably something related to Vikings or Pirates.
