As with my custom Black Falcons torsos, I wanted to update and create new torso designs for the Forestmen (I am calling my version The Forest Guard for my upcoming build).

I started by looking at the existing Forestmen torsos, and there are officially eight versions available, the four original torsos from 1987 (two designs, one with three different colourways), the three Dark Forest versions from 1996 and a revised version from Collectable Minifig Series 1 (2010).

The two original 1987 torso designs are pretty iconic, and for me looking at them takes me straight back to my first – not to mention THE first –  Forestmen set 6066 Camouflaged Outpost. I have fond memories of building and playing with this set as a seven or eight year old on the floor laying on the carpet in the lounge room at my Grandma’s place. I have to say that I am not at all familiar with the Dark Forest Forestmen torsos, as I was 17 when they came out and well and truly into my dark ages, I do however remember the 2010 collectable minifig series one version however looking at him critically I reckon he looks more like a 1938 Hollywood Robin Hood than a medieval warrior.

I decided to (the same as I have with the Black Falcons so far) design three custom torsos for my Forest Guard figures. Unlike with my Black Falcons torsos I am not going to use the torsos for specific units, but rather I will have them all mixed up. My three custom torso designs are inspired by the original Forestmen torsos as well as taking some inspiration from existing castle and fantasy torsos.

Above you can see my three The Forest Guard torso designs, the first one would be printed on a dark green torso, the second one on a dark tan torso and the third on a green torso hopefully giving a lot of flexibility and variation opportunities for the makeup of my units.

So what do you think of my designs? Do you think they suit an updated Forestmen faction?

In my next post I will be showing my Forest Guard shield designs, so make sure you signup to the mailing list if you would like to be notified when it is posted!

The second faction that will feature in my Castle display is what I am calling ‘The Forest Guard’, my own revised version of the classic castle Forestmen faction.

As with my take on the Black Falcons I have given the Forestmen a new slightly revised name, this is because I wanted them to have a name that refers to who they actually are – they are not just some men who hang out in the forest!

They are, like Robin Hood and his Merry Men who the faction is based on, the very definition of freedom fighters – common people outlawed by a corrupt ruling class who have joined together to fight back against oppression and tyranny – the forest is their fortress.

Given that I have revised their name I also wanted to give my forestmen a revised emblem that is more suggestive of their role as protectors and guardians.

You can see the original forestmen shield above on the left featuring their one and only emblem from 1988, and then my revised version to the right. I have kept the colour scheme and overall theme exactly the same as the original and though the original version is probably more traditional in its illustration style and the use of a stags head dexter erased (facing to the left with a ragged edge) I wanted to make their revised emblem stronger, more representative of what they stand for.

My version features a stags head, a representation of protection and the forest as in the original, but my version is pictured in an affronté couped form (facing the viewer cut cleanly at the neck). The stag has an arrow in its antlers referring both to the forestmen’s skills in archery but an arrow is also a heraldic symbol conveying a readiness to take up arms. I think that having the stag look directly at the viewer makes for a stronger representation of protection and guardianship.

So what do you think? Do you like my new version? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

In my next post I will be exploring new torso designs for this faction.

One of the most iconic elements of the classic LEGO castle sets (1978-1997) would have to be the shields with their pad printed coat of arms designs, and whilst they are all pretty iconic designs, my first castle was 6073 Knight’s Castle so the original Black Falcons shield design is the OG as far as I am concerned.

As you might have seen in my previous posts I am currently working on a large display (hopefully for Brickvention 2021 if it is accepted) exploring everything I love about the castle theme, and as part of that I am hoping to refresh and update the designs of the Black Falcons. So far I have shown my revised name and emblem and my torso designs and today I am going to post my shield designs.

I started off my design process with the iconic ‘triangle’ shaped shields, creating the three versions that I have already shown in my Knights of the Black Falcon post (designs a-c) and from there I looked at other ways to explore the shield shape  but perhaps indicate some different sub-factions or units (designs d-h).

I want my units to feel related and yet have a variety of designs to feel more like a realistic army, rather than all units just carrying exactly the same shield.

Below you can see various shield variations that might be used to flesh out my units, I am envisaging that the tall (norman style) shields (I-P) will be used for different knights and that at least one of the round shields (Q-T) will be used by my crossbowmen.

So what do you think? Do the varied shield designs read enough like Black Falcons? Let me know what you think by commenting below.

My next post will be about the second faction that will feature in my display, the Forestmen.

The first faction for my Castle display will be what I am calling the ‘Knights of the Black Falcon’, my own revised version of what are commonly known as ‘Black Falcon Knights’ or ‘Black Falcons’.

So I suppose the first think that people might ask is “why the name change?” and my answer to that would be that I have storytelling reasons as to the slight name change, I feel that the name “Black Falcons/Black Falcon Knights” is purely descriptive in that they have black (and silver) falcon heraldic arms. But in thinking about how to explore the faction further I did a little bit of digging and found that their current ‘name’ derives from the name of their second castle set from 1986, 6074 Black Falcon’s Fortress.

My first thoughts upon finding this out is that ‘Black Falcon’ almost could be a title of a person, maybe the lord of the castle is known as ‘The Black Falcon’. This idea set my mind going and I reasoned that this would make the faction more like the real world, making them a legion of knights aligned with a particular lord and therefore taking up his arms in battle, literally the knights of the Black Falcon.

Once I decided on the name alteration I started to look at the heraldic emblem itself. The original design is pretty iconic and I think it stands up really well today and does not really need to be refreshed or redesigned. However, I am going to do just that, because being that I am a graphic designer in my day job, I love exploring how things might evolve and change over time. Also, I really want to design new torsos and a range of shields and flags for the faction as whilst we have seen some beautiful varied castle torso, shield and flag prints over the years the poor old Black Falcons have only ever had the one design since 1984.

I started by looking at the renditions of the Black Falcon emblem that have appeared in sets between 1984 and today and found pretty much three designs, the original from 1984, a more abstracted version from the mid-2000s (I actually contemplated leaving this one out, sorry Jayko!) and the more faithful refreshed version from 10223 Kingdoms Joust (2012).

I don’t know what you think but to me the 1984 original and the 2012 Kingdoms versions are the most convincingly ‘heraldic’ of the three designs. I reckon the 2005/6 Knights Kingdom II versions look a little too modernised.

For my version I took inspiration from both the 1984 original and the 2012 Kingdoms version as there are qualities in both designs that I like.

You can see my version above, it has the stronger thicker wings of the 2012 Kingdoms version however I have completely redrawn it with more rounded/organic feather shapes. You can also see that I have drawn more realistic heraldic feet on the falcon (the other ones were a bit too chunky and geometric for me) and given it a more defined head shape (its head looked like it was all beak in the 2012 version!).

In terms of colour scheme I am sticking firmly to the original 1984 colour palette, however I will also include a version with the black and silver border like the 2012 Kingdoms version as it faithfully recalls both the original 1984 Black Falcons flag and torso emblem.

There is one other element that I am sure you have noticed, and that is of course that I have added a crown to my version. Once again this is there for purely story reasons as in my Castle build the Black Falcon has seized the throne of the kingdom.

So, what do you think? Let me know! Next up I will be showing some of my Black Falcon torso designs.