Dream Big!

Imagination and creativity have no boundaries: when you dream, dream big! :-)

A group of friends is playing outside a beach house built on a rock: one is having fun with her dog and a balloon, another one is playing with her kite... but the third one has made an incredible discovery: over the rock there is an old, wrecked galleon, which makes his fantasy travel far away in space and time, as he imagines a fantasy world where castles are built on the clouds.

The model started as an homage to my favourite LEGO themes when I was a kid (City, Pirates and Castle), but while I was building it the idea of the whole dream that glued all together became stronger and stronger.

The main challenge was of course to keep the cloud steady, without losing its appearance of flying lightly in the sky: I used some transparent LEGO Technic lift arms to hold it up, mixing some "tensegrity" techniques with more standard ones. The cloud is a world itself, with a microscale castle and a village around it: the main inspiration for the castle is, of course, the Medieval era, but I tried to make the village timeless (being it a dream, it was easier). :-).

Another detail I cared about was the wrecked hull of the old ship: the challenge was to make it stable and natural-looking, when placed in the sea, even if the construction was not perpendicular to the bottom studs. I used some hinge bricks to hold the hull to the bricks of the sea, while the mast hides LEGO Technic lift arms for greater stability.

I had a lot of fun adding details to the model: the interior of the house partly dug into the rock, the figurehead of the ship, the games of the kids... and yes, the dog having its moment of relax.

I hope you like this set and enjoy how all the parts blend in a single story, and if you do, please support it. :-) Thanks a lot!