Inspired by Those Who Have Gone Before

[Basiliscus]

Hi all,

After a busy start to the year, sadly I won't be able to enter the embassy challenge, but I have been working on this. I wanted to do something a bit different from the Sudites faction - I imagine this as an Avalonian style church in Stone Town, Isle of Gorr.

There's only one shot, so enjoy what little there is!

*****

Inspired by Those Who Have Gone Before by Cuahchic, on Flickr

A young knight visits the tomb of his ancestors to pray for their assistance on the eve of his first battle.

[Khorne]

Very beautiful, both the MOC and the photo. There's something really peaceful about this. The light radiating through the stained glass window is very, very nice. Your recreation of the lion symbol in stained glass is pretty spot on as well, much better than anything I could do.

[SkaForHire]

Very beautiful, both the MOC and the photo. There's something really peaceful about this. The light radiating through the stained glass window is very, very nice. Your recreation of the lion symbol in stained glass is pretty spot on as well, much better than anything I could do.

After looking at all your mosaic pieces I have determined my next purchase needs to be cheese wedges... Are they just placed in there unsupported? How long does that take?

[Hyler Talliwell]

The window is fantastic, but the floor is what gets me. Such a simple technique, but it looks great. Beautiful work.

[Maxim I]

Wow, very amazing! Also great technic for the thomb!

[Rogue Angel]

WOW! The big window looks great, I can't imagine how long it took you to get those in place. The floor and the side windows are amazing! I may need to borrow the side windows for my church when I eventually build it. The lighting is well done too - Great job!

[Nightshroud99]

Oh wow, the way you photographed this; the MOC itself, just makes this have a haunting feel to it. Odd for a LEGO model to inspire such a feeling.

[Ecclesiastes]

Gret job on the window, it almost makes you forget the floor. Because the floor also has a great design!

[Evil Stu]

Wow. Just wow

Flawless.

[de Gothia]

The floor, the tomb, the windows are all so great! But nothing can compare to the lightning of this moc! It´s just brilliant and adds so much life to your abs bricks! How did you do that? A regular lamp?

[Cij Daoke]

Absolutely fantastic!

[CptMugwash]

Beautiful Basil, awesome stained glass window and the smaller ones too, the lion is very well done. The tomb is very good and the whole lighting and photography is spot on

I'll have to try a stained glass window sometime.

[Angeli]

wow, beautifull, nice floor ;)

[Basiliscus]

Thanks for all the comments everyone!

Very beautiful, both the MOC and the photo. There's something really peaceful about this. The light radiating through the stained glass window is very, very nice. Your recreation of the lion symbol in stained glass is pretty spot on as well, much better than anything I could do.

Thanks for that. I did notice a couple of areas on the lion where I could have done a bit better, being a perfectionist and all! I included the shields on the stone guards at either side to ensure everyone would know what it was supposed to be! There are legs for the lion but sadly you can't see them due to the statue!

PS - I love your new avatar - it looks great!

After looking at all your mosaic pieces I have determined my next purchase needs to be cheese wedges... Are they just placed in there unsupported? How long does that take?

There is a mixture of cheese wedges and trans plates. Basically, how it was done was behind the main window there are a load of 1x6x5 panels in trans-clear. These allow light through but, if you arrange them as in the photo on Bricklink (i.e. with the flat bit facing the camera) then they provide some stability for the window itself. Then, on each side there is a row of 1xN bricks, so the window is held in place on three sides.

Gravity is your friend here - some of the window is attached (the more you can attach together the more stable it is) but unfortunately I didn't realise how rare trans-clear tiles are so I had to improvise and use trans-clear cheese pieces (that was the hardest bit - where a tile would have done the job I had to rework some of it to take cheese slopes). Most of the upper part of the window is purely held in place by gravity but you'd be surprised at how stable it is - a little bit of friction goes a long way!

In general I dislike cluttering my Flickr photostream with WIP shots etc but if you want a better look PM me your email address and I will send across some photos. Hope that helps!

The floor, the tomb, the windows are all so great! But nothing can compare to the lightning of this moc! It´s just brilliant and adds so much life to your abs bricks! How did you do that? A regular lamp?

I hope this won't ruin the magic but I cheated and did it in Photoshop!

I could have tried to get a shot like this naturally, while I am not lazy I am very impatient so I didn't bother. I use two lights - one set placed higher up to illuminate the interior and another one behind the window but at an angle so as not to oversaturate the window (I wanted the interior to be dark so it was always difficult to get a good range of light).

Then I did the same technique used to do High Dynamic Range imaging. I used this same idea in a previous MOC (for the left-hand light). Basically, what you do is you choose a single photograph taken by the camera. Then in Photoshop you take this image and make one copy which is under-saturated (very dark) and one which is over-saturated (very light). Then I put the lighter image behind the darker image. I then turned the darker image into a layer mask and etched out the centre so that you could see through to the lighter image. I discovered that if I only made the brush 50% transparent at this stage it gave it the eerie "misty" look shown here. It was a bit of trial and error to get right, I won't lie to you! If you have Photoshop Elements 10 if you PM me your email address I will happily send you the .psd files.

Sorry if that wasn't what you imagined - it wasn't as skilful as obtaining this naturally but hopefully it looks ok!

[Gabe]

Stunning work Basiliscus! The lighting is sublime and i can't imagine how difficult that stained glass lion would have been to create. Such a shame you haven't had the time to produce an embassy, but this is a magnificent free build.

[brickie]

Basiliscus

That is a fantastic stained glass window. It is really attention grabbing.

At first I thought it was a dragon but the clever use of the shields with lions corrected my thoughts.

The tomb of his ancestor is great.

A wonderful build.

[mephistopheles]

Wow!

I love every piece of this MOC. Absolutely flawless!!!

[NiceMarmot]

Then I did the same technique used to do High Dynamic Range imaging. I used this same idea in a previous MOC (for the left-hand light). Basically, what you do is you choose a single photograph taken by the camera. Then in Photoshop you take this image and make one copy which is under-saturated (very dark) and one which is over-saturated (very light). Then I put the lighter image behind the darker image. I then turned the darker image into a layer mask and etched out the centre so that you could see through to the lighter image. I discovered that if I only made the brush 50% transparent at this stage it gave it the eerie "misty" look shown here.

Thanks for sharing this method! I'll have to try it out sometime. Sounds like a great way to highlight certain areas of the image. When you say under-saturated / over-saturated, are you talking about the color saturation, or the value/brightness? Under-saturating normally just washes out the color, leaving the image grayscale, while lowering the brightness or value will make it darker.

[de Gothia]

I hope this won't ruin the magic but I cheated and did it in Photoshop!

I could have tried to get a shot like this naturally, while I am not lazy I am very impatient so I didn't bother. I use two lights - one set placed higher up to illuminate the interior and another one behind the window but at an angle so as not to oversaturate the window (I wanted the interior to be dark so it was always difficult to get a good range of light).

Then I did the same technique used to do High Dynamic Range imaging. I used this same idea in a previous MOC (for the left-hand light). Basically, what you do is you choose a single photograph taken by the camera. Then in Photoshop you take this image and make one copy which is under-saturated (very dark) and one which is over-saturated (very light). Then I put the lighter image behind the darker image. I then turned the darker image into a layer mask and etched out the centre so that you could see through to the lighter image. I discovered that if I only made the brush 50% transparent at this stage it gave it the eerie "misty" look shown here. It was a bit of trial and error to get right, I won't lie to you! If you have Photoshop Elements 10 if you PM me your email address I will happily send you the .psd files.

Sorry if that wasn't what you imagined - it wasn't as skilful as obtaining this naturally but hopefully it looks ok!

I still love it!

Now I´m just a bit angry cause I don´t have Photoshop! But I´ve to try it on GIMP instead. Thanks for letting us know how you did it cause it looks perfect!