LoR: Rumble in the Shade

[mccoyed]

In the hand of Spymaster Perricus Plume,

Magistrate, I hope this letter finds you in as fine of form as ever. As you have no doubt read in my reports, the whole of The Shade has erupted into chaos. The Lower Districts are flooded with violence as the gangs prey on each other. Very little can be done to reign in the bloodshed, though thankfully it is for the most part affecting only the criminal element of the city for the time being. You'll no doubt wonder if there is any element besides the criminal element in The Shade, and if I am honest I must confess even I doubt it in times such as these.

Recently I have heard of an intensifying dispute in one of the border streets between the Lower Districts and the High Streets. A gang calling itself the Grey Grifters, rumor has it a splinter faction from a larger gang known simply as The Vipers, has been attempting to encroach on the High Streets territory. Particularly, they are interested in the territory claimed by the aforementioned Queen's Dandies. As I related previously, encroachment by the more lawless and uncivilized gangs into what's left of civilized space in The Shade would be disastrous for the Queen's interests in the city.

Luckily, the Grifters are not so wild as to deny a seemingly sacred pact between all the gangs of The Shade. My spies tell me that many gangs will declare their intent to settle a dispute by combat, a "rumble" in the street vernacular, and that battle will be arranged on agreed upon ground, with agreed upon terms for the victors. It's all quite civilized and supported by traditions older than the city itself, or so I'm told.

I remain in the service of the crown as I await to report further news of these events.

P.P.

Hope all well. Recently witnessed street rumble between two rival gangs. First gang "Grey Grifters". Little more than thugs but strong numbers. Second gang of personal and professional interest to you "Queen's Dandies". Small but sophisticated. Lately been repelling incursions from Lower District crews which serves our purpose and that of Q.

Positioned as Bannergirl and observer of rumble. Trusted to judge outcome and prevent violations of rules. Quiet, dangerous crossbowman as companion. Present to shoot down any man or woman deemed in contempt of gang compact. Still not clear on rules or who enforces them. Thankfully they like a pretty face to wave flags of fighting gangs.

Regret to report that outcome potentially undesirable: Grifters suffered heavy losses but likely to recover in time due to volatile leadership customs. Dandies lost leader as well, with membership likely to disband according to current rumor and on own speculation around character of their organization.

Casualties as follows:

Grifters:

Three dead, including leader.

Two gravely injured, uncertain fate.

One lightly injured, fled scene.

One lightly injured, remained until rumble concluded.

One uninjured, remained until rumble concluded.

Dandies:

Two dead, including Kenly Walberg.

Two lightly injured, including sister of Kenly Walberg, who lost her right eye.

Two uninjured.

Will report again when the streets settle. Emphasis on whether the territory controlled by Queen's Dandies will be lost to new gang.

Yours,

B.

Flickr Album w/ more pics!

Read more: http://merlins-beard...e#ixzz3Er7wRSaK

Edited October 1, 2014 by mccoyed

[mccoyed]

No comments? That's odd.

Edited October 2, 2014 by mccoyed

[Slegengr]

Sorry, I thought I commented on this earlier.

I really like this build. It has a nice amount of detail without overdoing it. I think the incorporation of the main building and the small huts and common people is very interesting and adds to the build.

I also really like the roofing structures. The sparser pieces across the black roof give a nice texture. I am also personally fond of the cheese-slope roof style, especially in the incorporation of multiple fitting colors.

[TheRedViper]

Nice looking build.

[mccoyed]

Thanks guys! I appreciate the love.

[Sir Gareth]

Great build. My favorite parts are the sand green building and the red roof. Keep up the good work.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Wildspeaker

[Venkefedo]

Those shanties are great! Nice rumble, too... lots of good stuff in here.

[IenjoyLego89]

Nice build, I like the Tudor section on the main building, the little huts are cool as well :)

[MKJoshA]

Great cheese slope roof! I also like your choice of sand-green for the building. What dress is that that the lady with the red Ninjago shoulder pad is wearing?

[Venkefedo]

That'd be Narcissa Malfoy's dress, if I'm not mistaken (from the HP Forbidden Forest set)

[Lord Vladivus]

Nice wooden huts! I like the figs too!

[mccoyed]

Thanks again everybody! LoR is a lot quieter in terms of comments and criticism than EB is. Glad I posted here.

[LordDan]

Great scene! The story is neat and the build is great, especially the larger stone and tuxdor building! I don't realy like the shack's roof, the studs feel a little out of place and I think it would work better if there were actual gaps in the roof, and if some of the brown plates extended a little farther than others. The minifigures look good, almost good enough to excuse all those aftermarket parts ;)

[mccoyed]

Great scene! The story is neat and the build is great, especially the larger stone and tuxdor building! I don't realy like the shack's roof, the studs feel a little out of place and I think it would work better if there were actual gaps in the roof, and if some of the brown plates extended a little farther than others. The minifigures look good, almost good enough to excuse all those aftermarket parts ;)

Appreciate that, especially the critique of the shanty roofs. I agree about the studs. In retrospect I may have been able to just use the smooth plates but not sure actually if I have enough or not or if that was even the reasoning when I built it. :P

As for the aftermarket parts, well, I'm no purist. :P

[MassEditor]

Man, since discovering GoH I tend to forget this forum exists over here... I really need to keep an eye over here!

Anyways, great build man, one of your best for sure I think. A lot of little details here with some good techniques. The off-angle wall looks good and gives some nice dimension to the build. Booth roof sections are nice too (I would like to see the smaller, lower roof overhang further, and maybe with only one row of dark brown on the sides of the roof border.) Also, the figs are great as is the fighting scenes!

I like the timbering as well but it could be stepped up a notch. Studs and tiles are great for the corners and make those sections match the depth of the other timbered parts (plus it's an easy and part-efficient technique). I wouldn't extend the corners out from the rest of the house either.

Two more things - and this is something I constantly forget or screw up, so please don't mind the hypocrisy - but I think pictures of a MOC should go really only two ways: For story shots or a facade-type build (like a few of the recent builds by peggyjdb's builds), it's good to show little to no background, if at all possible, to really make the scene immersive. But, for an overall photo, get the whole build in the shot with plenty of background to really make it pop (like Kai suggested in my Swamp Outpost build). A distant but full-profile shot of the build (usually at a corner angle, showing two sides and the top of the MOC) will let viewers see the whole thing and make them want even more to look at the smaller, close up shots to spy all the details. Finally, I like putting bits of the story at the top of the topic, with pictures further below. Keeps the suspense up!

In any case, this is still a nice build. Each one of your builds seems more detailed and expertly crafted than the previous, so I'm always looking forward to what you post next!

[mccoyed]

Man, since discovering GoH I tend to forget this forum exists over here... I really need to keep an eye over here!

Anyways, great build man, one of your best for sure I think. A lot of little details here with some good techniques. The off-angle wall looks good and gives some nice dimension to the build. Booth roof sections are nice too (I would like to see the smaller, lower roof overhang further, and maybe with only one row of dark brown on the sides of the roof border.) Also, the figs are great as is the fighting scenes!

I like the timbering as well but it could be stepped up a notch. Studs and tiles are great for the corners and make those sections match the depth of the other timbered parts (plus it's an easy and part-efficient technique). I wouldn't extend the corners out from the rest of the house either.

Two more things - and this is something I constantly forget or screw up, so please don't mind the hypocrisy - but I think pictures of a MOC should go really only two ways: For story shots or a facade-type build (like a few of the recent builds by peggyjdb's builds), it's good to show little to no background, if at all possible, to really make the scene immersive. But, for an overall photo, get the whole build in the shot with plenty of background to really make it pop (like Kai suggested in my Swamp Outpost build). A distant but full-profile shot of the build (usually at a corner angle, showing two sides and the top of the MOC) will let viewers see the whole thing and make them want even more to look at the smaller, close up shots to spy all the details. Finally, I like putting bits of the story at the top of the topic, with pictures further below. Keeps the suspense up!

In any case, this is still a nice build. Each one of your builds seems more detailed and expertly crafted than the previous, so I'm always looking forward to what you post next!

Wow, thanks ME. This is exactly what I look for in a build comment. Some praise, some criticism, some deeper discussion on technique! Thanks a lot for this.

So the timbering on the green-painted building has too much depth as is? If I did it again, you suggest making it more or less flush? Or using SNOT to keep the depth thinner? I'll check out that link and see if I can glean some techniques from there too.

I'm definitely very much still learning the best way to present a build with and without story. You're very good at it so I appreciate your perspective but I'm not 100% sure what you mean with the photography tips. I'm not sure I trust how I'm visualizing it, if you know what I mean. Again, I'll check out that link though and I'm sure I'll get something out of it for this issue.

And again, thanks a lot. One of my favorite comments I've received on EB.

[kabel]

Wow, this is quite a moc you put together there and a shame you didn't do it in the context of GoH.

I really like all the roofs I'm seeing here, especially the black one, although one can't really tell how it was put together since black is a pain in the megablock to be photographed. As for the woodwork, I'd have to agree with ME. I usually don't space the timbers more than four studs apart, but I suppose it's a lot easier to be familiar with the dimensions when you have grown up in a medieval German city as I have. So if you want some more good examples of what half timbered (I really hate the term tudor as that limits half timbered houses to England only) houses can look like, I can post some pictures of the city that I've grown up in.

[MassEditor]

So the timbering on the green-painted building has too much depth as is? If I did it again, you suggest making it more or less flush? Or using SNOT to keep the depth thinner? I'll check out that link and see if I can glean some techniques from there too.

I think SNOT is definitely the best way to go, like you did with the diagonal 1x8 reddish brown tile. My main suggestion would be to match the rest of the timbered sections (the corners and bottom edge where the cheese slopes are now) with that 1x8 tile. For the corners, using tiles and 1x1 stud bricks seems to be the standard and very nice looking method, like here:

This corner is done using the two 1x1 plates + one 1x1 stud brick + two 1x1 plates + one 1x1 stud brick method. (I'm at work now but I could post you a pic of this method later, if that equation is as clear as mud ).

I'm definitely very much still learning the best way to present a build with and without story. You're very good at it so I appreciate your perspective but I'm not 100% sure what you mean with the photography tips. I'm not sure I trust how I'm visualizing it, if you know what I mean. Again, I'll check out that link though and I'm sure I'll get something out of it for this issue.

Thanks Mccoyed! To clarify my suggestion on the photography, I suppose the main point is that there's no overall shot of the MOC. The first one is close, but we're missing some of the bottom part and we're only seeing one side of the build. The rule of thumb is that the overall MOC photo should show at least three sides of the MOC (usually two sides and the top).

So, at first impression it doesn't look like your MOC has an overall photo, which leads me to believe this is a "story build" (I apologize if that's not the correct term or your intention with this MOC, but I'm talking about builds like some of peggyjbd's or my most recent Lagash Ur MOC, which has story photos but no photo of the full MOC, since it's just a giant facade and showing the whole thing would take away from the presentation). In that case, when you're doing a "story build," I think its best to leave out as much of the white background as possible. Build your own backgrounds as peggyjbd has so that the scene is as immersive as possible. For instance, I think the action photos you posted would have really benefited from a brick-built background. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, especially if you're shooting with a short depth of field. Maybe just a stone wall or some simple store fronts. Again, those don't take much to do, since these facades don't have be any thicker than a row of bricks (and who cares what it looks like on the other side, since no one but you will ever see it!). Whatever you can do to reduce the amount of white background will end up enhancing the immersion of your story photos/builds.

That being said, these two types of MOCs - the full MOC ala builders like Vitroleum, and the story builds (perhaps cinematic is a better term?) like those by peggyjbd - are of course not incompatible. A lot of it depends just on how you shoot the MOC. As an example, I offer another of my Lagash Ur MOCs. You'll see that the story photos show a Lego background, but I also included a full photo of the MOC at the end of the post to show this was in fact a complete build.

I hope this rant makes sense man! Clearer than mud I hope!

Edited October 6, 2014 by MassEditor

[kabel]

there are two things I don't really like about your solution ME, which actually looks good.

1. The rock section on the bottom doens't have wooden support on the outside. Or you do the entire lower section in half timber, just like the upper section.

2. When doing snot timbered sections it always looks like there is a board on the outside. Normally the timber is flush with the rest of the wall though. Examples from my hometown:

sometimes the crosswise sections are entirely filled with wood like in the first pic. So far I've come up with this solution:

[mccoyed]

Wow, this is quite a moc you put together there and a shame you didn't do it in the context of GoH.

I really like all the roofs I'm seeing here, especially the black one, although one can't really tell how it was put together since black is a pain in the megablock to be photographed. As for the woodwork, I'd have to agree with ME. I usually don't space the timbers more than four studs apart, but I suppose it's a lot easier to be familiar with the dimensions when you have grown up in a medieval German city as I have. So if you want some more good examples of what half timbered (I really hate the term tudor as that limits half timbered houses to England only) houses can look like, I can post some pictures of the city that I've grown up in.

Thanks Kabel. And yeah, I hear you. I had a hankering to do something a bit darker and more urban and LoR had the right contests and stuff going on. I'll be doing some more GoH very soon. It's been sort of an off-Lego period for me these last few weeks in general. The timbers are meant to be more inspired by tudor/half-timber style than strictly emulation but I can see how closer emulation would look way better. Especially the framing.

I think SNOT is definitely the best way to go, like you did with the diagonal 1x8 reddish brown tile. My main suggestion would be to match the rest of the timbered sections (the corners and bottom edge where the cheese slopes are now) with that 1x8 tile. For the corners, using tiles and 1x1 stud bricks seems to be the standard and very nice looking method, like here:

This corner is done using the two 1x1 plates + one 1x1 stud brick + two 1x1 plates + one 1x1 stud brick method. (I'm at work now but I could post you a pic of this method later, if that equation is as clear as mud ).

Thanks Mccoyed! To clarify my suggestion on the photography, I suppose the main point is that there's no overall shot of the MOC. The first one is close, but we're missing some of the bottom part and we're only seeing one side of the build. The rule of thumb is that the overall MOC photo should show at least three sides of the MOC (usually two sides and the top).

So, at first impression it doesn't look like your MOC has an overall photo, which leads me to believe this is a "story build" (I apologize if that's not the correct term or your intention with this MOC, but I'm talking about builds like some of peggyjbd's or my most recent Lagash Ur MOC, which has story photos but no photo of the full MOC, since it's just a giant facade and showing the whole thing would take away from the presentation). In that case, when you're doing a "story build," I think its best to leave out as much of the white background as possible. Build your own backgrounds as peggyjbd has so that the scene is as immersive as possible. For instance, I think the action photos you posted would have really benefited from a brick-built background. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, especially if you're shooting with a short depth of field. Maybe just a stone wall or some simple store fronts. Again, those don't take much to do, since these facades don't have be any thicker than a row of bricks (and who cares what it looks like on the other side, since no one but you will ever see it!). Whatever you can do to reduce the amount of white background will end up enhancing the immersion of your story photos/builds.

That being said, these two types of MOCs - the full MOC ala builders like Vitroleum, and the story builds (perhaps cinematic is a better term?) like those by peggyjbd - are of course not incompatible. A lot of it depends just on how you shoot the MOC. As an example, I offer another of my Lagash Ur MOCs. You'll see that the story photos show a Lego background, but I also included a full photo of the MOC at the end of the post to show this was in fact a complete build.

I hope this rant makes sense man! Clearer than mud I hope!

I hear you. I'd like to do more cinematic shots for sure. It can be difficult with my photography setup. The reason my angles are sometimes sort of "straight on" is due to trying to keep edges of my background out of the shot. I also crop pictures to remove that and sometimes they end up having funny dimensions as a result. Something to work on. I think you're explanation of the different ways to photograph builds is apt and an interesting discussion topic in itself.

I think these builds aren't quite "story builds" the way you define it. I like your distinction and can see what you mean about the way a "story build" should be done to immerse the viewer. These are more diorama style than that, I suppose. Still need to do a better "overview" shot for any large-size builds I do. If you browse through my Flickr feed, maybe you can help me by pointing out specific builds I've done with shots closer to what you mean or point out how they could be improved?

Edited October 7, 2014 by kabel
: please do not quote pics!

[Captain Braunsfeld]

Great!

Your gangs, especially the "Queen's Dandies" have turned out well.

You must have put a lot of effort into these minifigs to give them a coherent, but still individual look.

Excellent!