The village buildings reside on a large platform that rests on a substructure comprised of numerous connected cross-braced framework or trestle-style parts that form a wharf with a lower level dock and an upper level pier. The majority of parts that comprise this custom platform are no longer available in current Playmobil sets. To collect enough for this substructure, we had to place orders with many eBay.com and eBay.de sellers who often had just one or two of these parts to sell at one time. We soon realized it was faster and easier to purchase a bunch of the 4305 Freight Terminal and 3433 Safari Station sets, as each contains several of the parts we needed. It took about two months to track down all the required parts, and then a weekend to assemble them into the elevated village platform.
As you can see in the photos below, there are two levels to the substructure. The first level consists of over 200 parts, not including the many little brown “gap fillers” (or “lückenfüller”). The second level has closer to 300 parts as it is comprised of another collection of cross-braced framework pieces in addition to wooden rail and floor parts. Here’s a list of the primary Playmobil parts that were used: large house foundation (3003972), small house foundation (3003973), foundation flat end-piece (3003978), foundation braced end-piece (3003975), foundation top-piece (3003979), four-way connector (3003974), wooden railing (3002916), railing connector (3002917), short stairs (3003976), long ramp (3003977), large floor (3003980), small floor (3003981).
The village houses and buildings that were added fit on top of the connectors that protrude from the second level cross-braced framework parts. This project came after the Medieval Playworld projects and we made an effort to make the building designs somewhat distinct from the similar styled buildings used in the Medieval Village project. Specifically, given the dubious visitors a village in a pirate-centric land will tend to attract, we wanted to make the buildings appear a bit more stark. Instead of the red roofs, green windows and multi-colored tudor-style walls used in the Medieval Village, the buildings in the Village by the Sea has dark roofs and windows and mostly monotone wall designs. The Playmobil set used for the village tavern, supply store and imperial captain’s office was 7479 Yellow Framework House. The shipbuilder’s workshop was custom built.
The “Making of the Pirate Village by the Sea” part of the following video starts at the 3:00 minute mark:
