金崖寺

"Some say there is a temple on the peak of the mountain, not many dare go searching for it. Follow the torii gates over bridges, through clouds and you should discover a temple covered with gold holding all the answers you seek."

GENERAL:

After a lot of work I finally present to you my Golden Clifftop Temple. Overall build time was about 2-3 months. The idea came from a sketch I made inspired by various Japanese/Asian arhitecture and nature from different media, like video games, movies and art (ukio-e). The whole idea is for you to create a story in your mind, there is a lone samurai on the bridge, is he waiting for his challenger? guarding the temple? that's up to you to decide.

MOC IDEA:

I wanted to make a unique twist to the MOC, instead of having it sit on a normal base I wanted to make it seem like it's above the clouds, that's why I used the white pieces around the edges of the cliffs. I also wanted to build a bridge connecting two traditional Japanese gates (torii) showing that it's not easy to get to the temple. There's also a large orange tree on top of the cliffs creating a nice contrast to the other colors. In front of the main temple there's an abstract statue as well as a pathway to a small cliffside dock where you can sit down to eat or meditate.

THE TEMPLE:

Building asian temples is always a challenge, especially when you want to try to do something different than the usual stacked temple look, which was my goal. The color scheme was also quite tricky to figure out, my biggest problem was not using red which usually helps a lot to convey the “asian feel”. I decided to use white, dark brown and light bluish gray, since the torii gates which I created first were made using those colors. At the start I was afraid the temple would look too similar to a medieval building. One thing I wasn’t planning to do, but that helped a lot to make it more asian/unique was to slant the side walls. I didn’t have enough light bluish gray pieces to do the angled roof therefore I had to mix a few different pieces, including the hammers. I also wanted to continue the theme of using catapult pieces as stairs and minifig leg pieces, which I used as a door and windows on the temple. Overall I’m quite happy with it, I feel like I managed to capture the Japanese feel.

CLIFFS:

For the rockwork I use a mix of light and dark bluish gray pieces. I tried using some new and unique pieces in different ways to achieve an interesting look. For example the larger quarter domes and other round pieces. I tried to blend the rocks with the greenery as well as I could so I used some different shades of brown and green. The many vines add a lot of character as well.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures of my build and reading the description as much as I did building this idea. I'd really appreciate if you could support the project with your vote and by sharing it with your friends and fellow LEGO builders ! Follow me on here for updates on this project and my other builds. Thank you and keep bricking!