The pillage of Groenby

[Gideon]

The peaceful town of Groenby in southern Avalonia has been invaded by the Hand of Corruption, and even Victor Revolword himself is there to perform some dark rituals with his acolytes, involving the sacrifice of innocent villagers. The sturdy pallisade was no match for a well-aimed fireball from Victor.

This is the town ruled by Sir Derrik of Groenby, who himself managed to survive the destruction with some of his men and join forces with his old friend Sir Gideon to continue the fight against Revolword. Right now they are going towards Queenscross, hoping to aid in the coming battle there.

A peaceful town, but something is definitely wrong...

A sinister gathering in front of a burnt-out house

Victor is leading some kind of ritual, his staff glowing golden

Meanwhile, Hand of Corruption forces are seeking out survivors

I adapted this MOC a bit to fit in the GoH world, and since it is showing what has happened to the home of one of my side characters I am posting it as a Kaliphlin freebuild, even though the setting is in Avalonia.

[Legonardo]

wow, great! the wall and tower and burnt buildigns are perfect!\

keep it up

[SkaForHire]

Entrails!!!!! HAHAHA! Awesome. Great MOC!!! I like the wheat too, that was very clever. As someone who has done a lot of "scorchmarks" building lately, I can really appreciate what you did here, nice work. Glad to see some more excellent MOCs from you!

On another note, sources confirm that Sir Derrik made it to Queenscross in time to meet in the general's council and participate in the early stages of the battle. The only missing member of Gideon's party so far is Mr. Farstrider.

[soccerkid6]

Wonderful burnt effect on the building The tower looks very sturdy and I like the fence around the field

[-Carson Haupt-]

Wow! Looks creepy and dark! Well done my friend.

[Maxim I]

Excellent pallisade and tower you made here!

It looks really dark and desolated.

And the ruins give the gathering a sinister feeling

[Infernum]

I love the dark atmosphere! Nice work with the tower and burned house!

[Ecclesiastes]

Great scene, all the burned down effects work really good. Also the minifigs and posing is excellent, especially the skeleton hanging with handcuffs!

[mrcp6d]

I really like the burned building, I'll be filing some of those 'burned' techniques away...

Also, it seems to have been a bad couple months for peasants in Historica!

[Evil Porkchop]

Great!!! I love MOCs that mix stone works with wooden structures.

[robuko]

Beautiful use of colour and tone to show the burned sections. The minifig posing is superb, I especially like the guy in the barrel and the dark sacrifice. Great build.

[Mike S]

Great landscaping and burned out look! Nice build!

[Gideon]

Thank you all for the encouragement!

I would also appreciate some feedback on how to improve my building/presentation (on this or in the future). After all, isn't one of the main drivers for GoH to improve as MOC builders? At least for me it is.

For example: In this case, I cut the edges quite sharp. Would it have been better to make them slightly fuzzier to keep more of the natural shadows, at risk of keeping some of the background material?

And what do you think of this plain light gray background vs the graded background I used for Falcon's Nest?

[Pyrovisionary]

Very nice moc, but I think that the roof on the burned house is rather... Angular. And I must ask, How do you get such a good background quality? I usually have to go through a boring quarter-of-an-hour of editing to get something on par with this.

[Gideon]

Yea, I could proably have put some more effort into the edges of the roof but didn't really consider that at the time I built this. At least if I could have bricklinked some black cheese slopes or other useful pieces and smoothed the edges or jagged them in a less blocky way

What I did for the background was to cut away all the background with GIMP (carefully following the edges), which probably took closer to a quarter of an hour. The automatic functions however make it easy to do a decent job in just a few seconds if the backdrop color (in this case a white sheet) is far enough away in color from the objects to keep. I suppose I'm a bit too much of a perfectionist when I've put a larger number of hours into building, setting up and shooting the pictures so I find it worthwhile to do carefully. Anyway, when I'm finished with the cutting (or rather setting of transparency of the foreground layer) I just applied a second layer in behind with the background color(s).

What I find hardest to make nice is not the top edge, there it is just to be a bit careful to keep a good edge, but the forward edge. I still havn't found a good technique to keep the shadows around the object to make it more natural. I would have preferred to have semi-transparent shadows which can look natural on whatever background nuance I choose.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Gideon

[Esurient]

Great MOC there Gideon! I like the shattered ruins of the burnt out house and the wheat field! That is really creative to use tan sticks! I also like the part where the guy hid in the barrel. Hope he's safe!

[Pyrovisionary]

Yea, I could proably have put some more effort into the edges of the roof but didn't really consider that at the time I built this. At least if I could have bricklinked some black cheese slopes or other useful pieces and smoothed the edges or jagged them in a less blocky way

What I did for the background was to cut away all the background with GIMP (carefully following the edges), which probably took closer to a quarter of an hour. The automatic functions however make it easy to do a decent job in just a few seconds if the backdrop color (in this case a white sheet) is far enough away in color from the objects to keep. I suppose I'm a bit too much of a perfectionist when I've put a larger number of hours into building, setting up and shooting the pictures so I find it worthwhile to do carefully. Anyway, when I'm finished with the cutting (or rather setting of transparency of the foreground layer) I just applied a second layer in behind with the background color(s).

What I find hardest to make nice is not the top edge, there it is just to be a bit careful to keep a good edge, but the forward edge. I still havn't found a good technique to keep the shadows around the object to make it more natural. I would have preferred to have semi-transparent shadows which can look natural on whatever background nuance I choose.

Oh, that's pretty much what I do, but with an art program. I'll try gimp next time.