Work on my 3D model of the Prisoner of Azkaban castle continues! The area that corresponds to Durham Cathedral’s north transept is now complete:
I shifted my way attention to the adjacent walls that correspond to the cathedral’s nave and north aisle, otherwise known at Hogwarts as the Long Gallery. I was surprised to notice that the windows and buttresses are not evenly spaced. In fact, the upper windows don’t even align with the lower windows. I fought this briefly, thinking I must be mistaken, but nope, I’m pretty positive none of this stuff lines up in the miniature – and not in ways that match the imperfections of Durham!
I wanted to match the miniature as closely as I could, so I started by adding placeholders for the bell towers at the other end of the Long Gallery to help me lock in my spacing:
At this point I discovered that my entire Long Gallery area was about a foot too far east, so I took a few minutes to shift it over and swivel the viaduct accordingly (a whopping 0.25°). A foot’s not a lot – at 1:24 scale, that comes out to half an inch in the miniature – but it helps to line things up as closely as I can.
With that done, I blocked in the walls and roofs of the long gallery:
Then came the details, with all their subtly variable spacing. Here’s an orthographic view from the side – a perspective-less elevation view, in other words. All the misalignment is totally intentional, and it should be pretty accurate (although I made further tweaks after this render).
Of course, it’ll look better once the far side is enclosed as well; I’m not working on that courtyard side yet.
In the meantime, my next task was to create the 15-foot-wide octagonal tower on the roof of the Long Gallery. This was added in Chamber of Secrets; my guess is that it was a purely aesthetic decision, perhaps motivated by the fact that the establishing shot of the greenhouses shows that area more clearly than we had seen in the first film.
Pretty quick add, and it never changed in any of the later films. Just gotta make sure I exclude it from the eventual Sorcerer’s Stone version of the model!
Next up? The bell towers! While the central tower isn’t very similar to the one at Durham Cathedral, the bell towers have a lot more in common with their Durham counterparts, the North and South Galilee Towers. In fact, the basic impression of the original design in the first two films is that they’ve simply knocked a few of the pinnacles off and added a conical roof to each tower. (Closer inspection does reveal some subtle differences in the details, as with all the Durham areas.) In Prisoner of Azkaban, the conical roofs were replaced with taller belfries and octagonal spires that echo the redesigned central tower, but the lower sections still bear a striking resemblance to Durham Cathedral. They also get a lot more intricate than the central tower, which makes them a little intimidating. I decided to start with the bottom portion, which is all based off stuff I’ve already made:
Now for the hard stuff! Okay, it’s not exactly hard…it’s just…a lot.
Halfway there:
The openings are tricky. In some shots in the early films, you can very unambiguously see straight through from one side to another, but in some photos of the miniature from the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, it looks like there are interior walls. After finding other photos that seem to show straight through in the Studio Tour as well, I decided to keep mine hollow, as you see above. Hopefully that’s still accurate to the later films.
Next time we’ll finish the bell towers, add the wall between them, and continue around this northern part of the castle!
Hogwarts 4D 