Book II, Challenge I, Cat A - Ambush from the Waves

[Tomsche]

"Come and meet me near the beaches of the Goolaf Archipel. Nocturnus is in danger, and we are looking for all our allies to face off against the incursion of the Black Spire..." the message had read.

Hagen had decided to answer the call for help, and had a small ship set sail for the tropical beaches. Nocturnus. It was a long time since he had heard from his friend, and now he could only decide to help out. peace with Mitgardia was fragile at best, and he did not want to think of the consequences should another ruling body mount the throne.

An all out war was the last thing he had on his mind, he thought when walking the small planks that led to the beach. The waves gently crashed against the sides of the rocks, as he suddenly heard a splash.

The moment he turned around, the water broke and a hideous fish-man thing jumped out, aiming a vicious harpoon towards Hagen.

"30 seconds he thought, I`m here for bloody half a minute and already it seems the Black Spire has send agents to stop us from all gathering and defend the capital..."

Here is my entry for the first challenge, better late then never to the party, ZC has sided me with the Nocty boys themselves (though he does need to update the list still it seems ;-) ) and I decided to give it a try on having something watery for the duel.

With the 2k of mostly small transparent bricks I hauled out of the PAB wall this week, i now have the materials compared to my earlier MoC`s to try my hand at some more things, like the gentle waves of the water and the breaking of the surface by the appearance of the antagonist.

Hope you like it!

For the university of Petrea Doctorate program, I am looking for the credentials on the following themes;

Hydrology - flowing water

General Building - minifig posing

[Gunman]

nice entry Tomsche! gogo nocturnus need us mitgardians!

[Lord Vladivus]

Nice entry! I like the water, and the story is great too!

[Gideon]

Nice minifig posing, the knight really looks surprised

The foilage and water of the vignette are also look good, but I think you should cover the rock piece a bit more (especially the hollow studs).

I also think the photography could use some improvement, the pictures don't look very sharp.

What camera did you use?

[Infernum]

Nice! Love the water!

[-Carson Haupt-]

Nice! But... Where are his pants!!

[Tomsche]

Hagen likes the new trend of yellow hotpants ;-)

It was about the only way I could include the green and yellow into my sigfig, hence I went for the flesh colour head.

@ Gunman; an old beast, Panasonic DMC-LZ2, but the problem is more the lackt of a decent picture area, I have a (cheap) light tent but no space to put it open, so I`m dependant on box arobatics and daylight which in these days ain`t that abundant

[soccerkid6]

Cool fig posing and I like the landscape I agree with Gideon that some 1x1 tiles, cheese slopes, or such like on the rockwork to cover up the hollow studs would look nice

[Simon_S]

Good work Tomsche! You improve very fast... I already see a talented Moccer who will join Avalonia in Book 3 .

Keep building!

[Tomsche]

Sorry Simon, but Avalonia was never on my shortlist, is was either Kaliphim or Mitgardia ;-)

Thanks for the compies though all! I`m glad I didn`t screw up for the Nocty boys hehe

[Gabe]

Hey Tomsche, if you want to get the Kaliphlin ppl to vote on your UoP claims then you should add this topic to the rego thread! That way we can easily see which mocs need assessing.

Ok, with that said, i'm happy to give you +1 on minifig posing - both figs here really look the part with some nice action. However, i would rather see something more descriptive for flowing water... what you have here could be anything - calm ocean, lake, river etc. (The splash from the fish-man i read as part of the minifig posing, not the landscape in general) To give you some more ideas, flowing water generally has a gradient, or flowing direction lines, or sections of broken water that read as moving from one place to another. The trick is less to do with what techniques you use, and more how you put them together.

With regards to your photography, it looks like you are getting plenty of light, but you are still getting out of focus and grainy pics. Are you taking pics handheld? Unless you have super steady hands or some kind of image stabilisation on your camera, a tripod might be the way to go. This will let you drop the shutter speed so you don't have to shoot at super high ISO's, and hopefully that will help to fix the grainy look as well. Also, a good photo editing setup is pretty important - what do you use?

[Tomsche]

Freehand aye, but nothing to edit, just the direct thingy of the picture to HD

[Gideon]

UoP +1 for minifig posing, but I'm not certain about flowing water? Isn't this supposed to be a shoreline?

[Tomsche]

I wasn't actually to sure about which part of the hydrology to register it for, but no worries, I'll settle that (hopefully) in a future moc :-)

[SkaForHire]

I am actually of the opposite opinion

+1 for Hydrology - flowing water -- I think it is simple but the bubbling around the mini looks nice.

I would like to see more dynamics for minifig posing, or more minifigs in the composition.