Robinson Posted November 21, 2009 For other photos, please visit my flickr page. Thanks for viewing. Comments and critics welcome... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bonaparte Posted November 21, 2009 Very cool and original idea, I've not seen this been done before Seems to me those pirates are having a great time Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MetroiD Posted November 21, 2009 (edited) Seems to me those pirates are having a great time I know I'd be if I were in their shoes!!! Pity that making intricate sandcastles is such a daunting task though... Robinson, welcome to Eurobricks! Or should I say - hos geldiniz, komsu! Congrats on entering the contest with such a wonderful entry - we all love summer and the beach (or at least I do!) and you've combined those two with an interesting third element to get a wonderful result here! I really love your sand castles - they look very nice, believable and detailed (and if I were a sand castle judge, I'd totally vote for the one on the right :D). I like the "yellowness" of this MOC - most people would go with tan as the sand colour and whereas that might be a bit more realistic, it is also much less cheerful. The yellow colour is very vibrant and works really well here! I would suggest a couple of things as minor improvements here... First off, I'm not really sure about the plants/ flowers along the shore. While I know that's a common sight along the beautiful Aegean shores of Turkey, I still don't think many plants can be seen that close to the water. I'd suggest placing those in the background instead - or perhaps replacing them with a palm or some other nice tropical plant. I also feel that you should replace the musket and the sabre in the cask with a couple of shovels and brushes instead - after all, that's the kind of utensil which would be much more useful given the present scenario :) I'm also not sure about the gold trophy - while it is a nice idea, it is just lost in all the yellowness around it... I'd suggest trying to come up with a brick-built cup/trophy instead, that would stand out more and look even better! Your SNOT base is a very nice option and I feel it gives you great potential to improve the MOC even more - I'd love it if you could add actual "ripples" along the shore (by using trans-clear / trans-blue and white plates in the base) - that would really look fantastic. Perhaps you could even try placing a few trans-blue plates/bricks so that they cover up the yellow bricks underneath them - I think that would work nicely and add tons of depth here! That way the water wouldn't look so generic. Here's a quick mock-up I made to help you visualize what I had in mind - I'm sorry but that's all the trans-blue bricks I have :/, I hope you still find it useful though. Oh, and covering up the studs at the end with a few blue tiles wouldn't be a bad idea either. Last but not least - the beach itself... As I said, I like your use of the yellow colour here, my only suggestion would be to add some more "curves" to the shoreline to make it look more realistic - regardless whether you use yellow wedge pieces or just more plates to break it up (as I did with that mock-up), just try to make it look less straight... I'd really love to see the final result of combining that idea with the above approach for making the water look more "believable" :) Best of luck in the competition mate! Edit: Added pic. Edited November 24, 2009 by TheOtters Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
badboytje88 Posted November 21, 2009 Welcome to eurobricks. Very cool of you to kick of here with a very nice MOC for the pillage the village contest. There are some things I really like, and some things I think could be improved. I like the use of yellow bricks for the sand. Though I would use tan bricks, I really appreciate the classic feel of yellow sand an yellow beaches. Using SNOT for the water is very clever too. The scorpion steeling the cup is precious and the sand castles are really nice. The things I think could be improved are: - The beach is to flat and to straight. It would look better if you made the beach more curvy like this: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/higdon/b...ut/im003032.jpg Credit goes to Higdon. He made the line where the beach and the see are separated more curvy and added plates on the beach to suggest hight difference. - The water is too lifeless. I like the use of SNOT but it looks to still. If you look at the pic above you can see Higdon added trans clear plates to suggest waves. - I have to agree with TheOtters about the plants standing so close to the water. - Finally I miss an animal a crab or a clamp or something like that. Or maybe a parrot which has landed on one of the castles. You could give one of the pirates a scared/angry face. He could try to scare the parrot away or something like that. You got a good thing going on, it can only get better. Good luck in the competition. ~Bart Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Robinson Posted November 21, 2009 BonaParte, thanks for your nice comment. I'm very happy to hear that from you. TheOtters, thank you for your great effort and really impressive critic. I really amazed by your critic. I'll try to evaluate my MOC with your amazing ideas and publish the result if I spare some free time for this MOC. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MetroiD Posted November 21, 2009 TheOtters, thank you for your great effort and really impressive critic. No biggie, I'm totally enjoying this - and besides, your MOC is quite inspiring I think I'll try out that trans-blue technique myself sometime later on ;) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
