Terrain Building for LEGO® Star Wars™ Dioramas

Are you ready to bring your favorite movie to life with this clever terrain-building technique?

Create depth, realism and one incredibly impressive display with this inspiring brick-built landscape – the perfect way to exhibit your LEGO® Star Wars™ minifigures!

We asked LEGO building specialist @farawaybricks to share their expertise in building complex terrain and rockwork for the iconic Star Wars planet of Tatooine. From choosing the color to creating gradients and bringing in levels, here’s all you need to know…

Making a LEGO® terrain

As Star Wars fans know, the terrain on Tatooine features dunes and vast desert wastelands. So, naturally, there’s a lot to consider, from emulating sloping desert dunes to creating realistic sand textures. Even C-3PO’s footprints in the sand requires some experimentation for our fan builder!

The fascinating background of Tatooine offers many movie moments to choose from – such as the Binary Sunset, the duel of Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn or even pod racing, perhaps? Or you could even choose to create multiple scenes in one. Just like our expert fan builder @farawaybricks says: “I opted for a more deliberate ‘split screen’ showing R2-D2 and C-3PO on their diverging adventures across Tatooine, as seen in one of the first Star Wars scenes.”

It’s all about technique

Don’t be afraid to try out different techniques, even if they are challenging at first. From stepped plate texturing for the sloping dunes to the studs-not-on-top (SNOT) technique for the cave mouth rockwork, @farawaybricks used a variety of challenging, yet visually rewarding, methods to adapt each brick to suit each terrain.

When building this LEGO terrain for the first time, keep it simple. “I recommend choosing common or basic colors, and designing it in a way that utilizes common parts, like plates and bricks,” says @farawaybricks. “Complex angles and advanced techniques aren’t everything when creating large, realistic scenes – sometimes simplicity can go a long way.”

How you display, pose and position your characters will not only help you emphasize the depth and dynamicity of the terrain, but will also bring the whole scene to life. As @farawaybricks explains, “placement can be more than just aesthetically pleasing – it can be very meaningful, too.”