"Dead Men Tell No Tales" Vignette Contest - Discussion

[Norrington]

I also enjoyed Norrington's chase scene, and how it was the "classic" version... Just wondering though, do they not chase through the buildings in California? in Florida the chasers are all on balconies in the buildings.

Well, in both they are chsing through buildings on balconies, but I ran out of bricks after the chase (The burning town was built first) .

Athos, as long as you entries stud length is in multiples of eight.

I might withdraw my grotto, and enter a new version with a captain's qaurters scene. I really like the scene, It even has "Yo-ho" on the harpsichord! I love yours, and mine may be slightly based on your wonderfull work ;-) Also, I have never been to the California, only Florida, but as I said, I have a book wiht lots of California pics.

[SirNadroj]

I might withdraw my grotto, and enter a new version with a captain's qaurters scene. I really like the scene, It even has "Yo-ho" on the harpsichord! I love yours, and mine may be slightly based on your wonderfull work ;-) Also, I have never been to the California, only Florida, but as I said, I have a book wiht lots of California pics.

I'm flatterd. :'-) I, too have only been to Florida, not California, but they are extremly similar from the research I have done.

[Norrington]

I don't have a rug, so I'm going to try A brickbuilt bed (Im rebuilding the caverns right now) But I ran out of blue tiles for water, so I hope no one holds that gainst me in voting...

[SirNadroj]

I don't have a rug, so I'm going to try A brickbuilt bed (Im rebuilding the caverns right now) But I ran out of blue tiles for water, so I hope no one holds that gainst me in voting...

Yeah, I used dark red tiles for the oriental rug on the ground. (the rest I slavaged from oriental expedition sets) But underneath the cloth on the bed is bricks (purple ones to be exact). You could always gather up a bunch of capes and see if you can postion them just so. I used capes as blankets at the foot of the bed to cover up the hole in the middle of the oriental 'sheets'. As for the water, I used transparent blue ones for the town, and used transparent plates to create a rippling effect. But I have absolutley NO water in my grotto scene, so I don't think that will be a problem for you.

[Norrington]

Well, scince the treasure scene and Cap'n's qaurters are next to eachother, they'll be together, but I also made dead men's cove, so I put that on the other side of the canal to go with it.

[Norrington]

Well, I emailed the CC admin, and this is what I got:

You are welcome to post about your contest in the Classic-Castle.com forums. Please post in the General LEGO forum and I will sticky your announcement for a few weeks. This should reach a wider audience.

On CC, we only call a contest a contest if there is a prize. If not, we call it a "Building Challenge". We have found by sponsoring the most successful and longest running AFOL contest that a contest is only as good as it's prizes. I would highly suggest a small prize, even if it is only Pirate set worth 5-10 Euros.

Other thoughts:

The image size requirements seem very small. This will limit many entrants. The largest problem we have with the Colossal Castle Contests and other contests are entrants with giant images. The time period is too short. Even for a vignette contest I would suggest a minimum of one month to get a decent amount of entries. A baseplate size limitation should be given for the vignettes. Many people have different ideas of what a vignette is. Giving a few contest restrictions makes grading easier and forces builders to be more creative.

Even more thoughts on the current website:

The rock background is too busy and distracts from the rest of the site. A light blue sea background would look better. The menu system takes up too much space on the page. Making this smaller would be beneficial to the user experience. I am also not in favor of the advertising. There are companies which probably would host CP for free ( http://www.northcomp.com/ )

Classic-Pirates desperately needs independance from EuroBricks. Really there is no point to starting a site which is just an extension of EB. EB will still be fine if all of the Pirate discussion moves. In reality, EB is the younger, hipper European version of Lugnet, not a theme specific site. Trying to have it both ways will likely fail. All one would have to do is gather their own pirate admin team and start a site with great content and complete forum independance.

I would suggest forming an 6-8 person administration team. Each admin would be dedicated to one part of the site: forums, sets archive, mocs, events/contests, building techniques/tutorials, etc. CP will likely grow to be a huge and well established community site in the future. I am looking forward to that day.

Kind Regards,

Ben Ellermann

CC Admin

Well, who wants to post it there? I refuse to sign up seeing as I don't like Castle enough to post regularly.

[Mister Phes]

This is your competition Mr Norrington so its upto you to advertise. And are you going to offer a prize?

But what did you tell Mr Ellermann to make him think you had anything to do with the administration? It seems odd he give that kind of feedback to the average user.

[Mister Phes]

Mr Norrington, let me know if you want me to move these latest posts to the Content Discussion Thread so as it keep this thread clean for entries.

[Norrington]

Sure, move them I guess.

[Norrington]

I just told him that his "Friends" at Eurobricks (From what I've read while browsing their threads they seem to hate us) had a contest and that we were wondering if he could post it in his site so we could attract more contestants.

[Mister Phes]

Who is "us" Eurobricks or Classic-Pirates.com?

Sure, move them I guess.

Ok, we discuss the competition and vignettes in this thread and submit them in the "Dead Men Tell No Tales" Vignette Contest - Entries thread.

That's not too confusing is it?

[oo7]

1. So if you're making two entries one must be a section of grotto and the other must be a section of the town?

2. Will it be town vs. town and Grotto vs. Grotto in the poll? That means you would need two threads.....

3. At the current pace by the time the week's up and you might not have enough entries to make a 'top five' (which seems fairly irrelevant to me).

4. Are the Pirates in the cell part of the grotto?

5. Where did you get those non-Lego lanterns?

2. Perhaps you could talk the admins into giving the winner a special banner on his profile, as a prize?

I second this.

[SavaTheAggie]

Posting a private email between two people publically without the consent of the author is VERY bad form. I'm rather shocked that this was not only done here, but repeated in another thread.

Also - why would Classic *CASTLE* advertise a pirate contest on the main page? That seems a rather odd notion to me. And I would especially be against advertising your contest if you dislike castle so much as not to even be willing to sign up for an account.

Dirty pool.

I just told him that his "Friends" at Eurobricks (From what I've read while browsing their threads they seem to hate us) had a contest and that we were wondering if he could post it in his site so we could attract more contestants.

You ARE aware that many members here at Eurobricks are also members at C-C, right? 'They' don't hate Eurobricks. 'They' are a large group of people with diverse opinions, and no one person speaks for the whole.

--Tony

[oo7]

AND it

[Bonaparte]

You ARE aware that many members here at Eurobricks are also members at C-C, right? 'They' don't hate Eurobricks. 'They' are a large group of people with diverse opinions, and no one person speaks for the whole.

Indeed! I'm a member of CC and I don't hate myself.

Any statements or actions by Mr. Norrington are on his personal account and don't reflex the idea's of the EB community. I also think it is not a good idea to post a private conversation on a public forum without permission. As moderator of the Pirate forum, part of the blame is on me. I assure you that this won't happen again!

I've sent a PM to Ben about this matter.

[Norrington]

1. So if you're making two entries one must be a section of grotto and the other must be a section of the town?

2. Will it be town vs. town and Grotto vs. Grotto in the poll? That means you would need two threads.....

3. At the current pace by the time the week's up and you might not have enough entries to make a 'top five' (which seems fairly irrelevant to me).

4. Are the Pirates in the cell part of the grotto?

5. Where did you get those non-Lego lanterns?

I second this.

Sorry, busy week, so I havn't been able to post.

Now,

1.You see, if you choose to enter two then they will have to be a grotto and town, but will all be judged in the same poll.

2 .No, as stated above.

3.The top 5 was canceled.

4. No, they are in the town, the grotto is where the skeletons are.

5. I'm not really sure i found them digging in my bin for peices, so they could be anything.

[Mister Phes]

Posting a private email between two people publically without the consent of the author is VERY bad form. I'm rather shocked that this was not only done here, but repeated in another thread.

When I posted this information in the other thread I was unaware consent hadn't been given, rather I assumed it had. Though, as the administrator of the forum I should have personally double checked with Ben Ellermann before doing so.

Also - why would Classic *CASTLE* advertise a pirate contest on the main page?

Unless Norrington has stated otherwise privately, I believe he meant advertising on the main page of Eurobricks. I instructed him to contact Ben Ellermann to ascertain what would be appropriate for Classic-Castle.

[Mister Phes]

- Image size may be no larger than 320 x 240 (landscape or portrait).

- File size may be no larger than 100 KB.

Mr Norrington in your rules you've stated that the image size may be no larger than 320 x 240 yet your images are all 640 x 480. You've also stated a maximum file size of 100KB, yet many of your images are over 200KB.

So I must ask, why aren't you abiding by your own rules?

For example 640 x 480 and 215KB...

[Norrington]

I'm afraid I don't know how to resize, I tried your tutorial, but it didn't work 8-o I would need some help resizing...

[Mister Phes]

I cannot possibly give you instructions that are more comprehensive than what is provided in that tutorial - not short of going to your place and give you a demonstration.

If you do not figure out how to perform a simple task like resize an image by the time the competition closes then there will be no choice but to disqualify you.

[Norrington]

No, I did everything in the tutorial perfectly, but the images turned out the same as before! Absolutley no difference. So it would seem to be unfair to disqauilify me becuse the images would not resize properly for me. I tried to resize them more than once!

[Mister Phes]

You're in violation of your own rules so it would be unfair not to disqualify you. If you break the rules you get disqualified - no excuses, no exceptions.

I suggest you re-read the tutorial again, this time more carefully, because it has worked for everyone who has used it before. So it is not the fault of the tutorial.

What I suspect you're doing wrong is not specifying a new image size.

[Norrington]

Well, I don't know what I was doing wrong before, but it worked this time. COnsider them resized.

[oo7]

Here's my not so progressive work in progress.

The whole subterranean gallery once moderated.

[Norrington]

I like it. I would take it you mean you want it entered?