Despite this being the model of a palace, I decided to put this in the
"Anime and figurines" section because it originates as part of an anime.
This is a little something I did to get away from other projects and to clear my mind a bit.
It is the Moon Castle, home of Queen Serenity and heart of the Moon Kingdom, as presented in the Sailor Moon Crystal anime series (2014-2016).
This one differs a lot from the design that was seen in the classic Sailor Moon (1992-1997) series. And it is also very different to the one from the 1991-1997 manga.
But I prefer the newer design from Crystal.
After settling on some arbitrary (and quite probably wrong) measurements based on the height of the girls from the screenshot,
I spent some time gathering documentation and making several drawings of the main plans and elevations to understand it.
During my research for similar structures I found that the design used in the anime borrows a lot from the
Lalitha Mahal palace in Mysore (India),
which itself gets inspiration from St Paul's Cathedral in London.
(Lalitha Mahal in India)
I based my design on the above screenshot from the anime, and most importantly on this production sketch that shows the underwater structure as well:
My original intention was to make a 1:250 model.
But soon I realized that would be too big and would take more time than I'm willing to devote to a "simple" project.
So I decided instead to go 1:1000, making each millimeter equivalent to 1 meter of the "real" subject.
All parts were drawn by hand, corrected and refined in Corel, printed on cardstock, and assembled in a couple of days.
The end result is a Moon Castle of 15X13X6.5 cm.
I used a lot of imagination to fill in the gaps and unknown details.
I specially liked the idea of adding scenery from the classic 1992 series to the back of the castle.
The flower garden with fountain and the columns are from Episode 35 of the 1992 series:
https://mireiprismpower.lima-city.de...n-1/035/page/5
And the water mirror, big stairs and balcony of the other wing are from episode 44:
https://mireiprismpower.lima-city.de...n-1/044/page/3
I know those are wrong, as they never appear in SMCrystal.
And in the original series the flower garden and the ballroom were most probably
parts of other different buildings of the Moon Kingdom, outside the Castle.
But I added them to my model anyways just because I didn't want to have a boring back yard.
And also decided to put 4 inner towers (instead of the original 2 of the production design)
because, you know: 4 inner guardian planets who protect Queen Serenity.
The base is a letter-sized sheet.
There are many small details that can (must) be improved.
And some proportions of the towers and windows are a compromise between what's seen in the anime and what can be physically done in the kit.
I probably will fix them in the future.
Or maybe not.
Since this was just a personal project to be used as basis for a bigger scale kit, I may not release
this kit.
Besides, I know the Sailor Moon fandom is among the worst in terms of piracy and re-sharing everything Moon-related without proper attribution or credits.
So they'll never have this one.
If I ever correct the mistakes and decide to release it, will probably be as a limited run of printed kits.
Thanks for reading!