Grover

As always, your interiors are great. I really like the feel of this--it reminds me of some of the old Black Monarch's Castle builds and such and has a level of detail without going into something that is unrecognizable as a classic castle build. I particularly like the trans blue water, excellent use of the green feathers (although these kind of get away from the classic feel), and the red roof. Very nice work!

Way to set the bar high for these entries! The tree looks awesome, especially the trunk, and I love the flowers. This is a really nice, clean build that captures the lush Avalonian countryside I think. Great job!

Thanks! I had a lot of fun with the stage and the players, getting them looking just right. I tried to include figs from all 4 realms. Thank you, and thanks for letting me depict Conrad! Thank you! I had a lot of fun with the instruments. And thanks for letting me put Gisela in the crowd! I think it will be a great start for her adventures in Prenmôr... I was happy to have had one of the old skeletons with the swivel arms. He was my only one, but it worked perfectly for the drumsticks (Harry Potter wands in case you can't see them well). The lighting was interesting. I took the pictures at night on a tripod, with ambient light from 5 fake battery operated candles, then the main stage spotlight was a LED penlight that was filtered through some trans-neon orange bricks. Finally, the green behind it is a laser pointer run through a diffraction grating that is shining on a black piece of flexible foam I have behind the build as a backdrop. And yeah, this used a lot of my figs. I had fun putting them together, but it was kind of a pain to tear it down! It's a little anachronistic, but it was fun! Thanks for letting me add Lady Eleanor! I think the ladies of the guild should have fun together! Thank you! It took some work, but I think it was worth it. Thanks! I really liked the way you did the same with your build for this challenge as well. It lends to some of the more intimate shots with the figures as you've noted. Thank you! Thanks for permission to use Darion, too... don't know if you caught him in there in front of the Mitgardian family! Thanks, and thanks for letting me use Brandir! I had a lot of fun trying to jam as many sigifgs on the stage as I could! Thank you! It did take some work, but I think was worth it in the end. I think there was something like 95 minis in this--so less than @MiloNelsiano 's build, but perhaps in a tighter area. I tried to group the minis according to area--there's a nocturnus crowd of monsters, a bunch of elves from Avalonia, dwarves from Mitgardia, a few from Kaliphlin and Varlyrio as well. Thanks! I am hoping to get a closer head for Lord Faladrin eventually, so maybe next time he's at an event he'll be a little closer. Thanks for letting me use him! Thank you! I had a lot of fun with it, trying to make kind of an interesting mix of the Stones and AC/DC (noting the bus driver's cap on the singer and the do-rag on the guitarist). I was hoping that the thread wasn't too picture heavy, so I'm glad that folks liked the close-ups! And oooh, we shall have to have fun with puns now. 'bands were well-played'. oooh. *rim shot*

Thanks! I was hoping that the seaweed and driftwood would show up. The dark tan and ocean foam rolling in is kind of lost, but some of the details are there. Thank you! I wanted this to be an evening on the beach since standing around a fire during the day on the beach seems so boring. I reused some of the minis from my previous build with the shrine at the beach. I don't know if anyone caught the crazy fish-killer from the previous build roasting his hard work over the fire! Thanks! Thank you! Thanks! And yeah, it was kind of funny to just use a huge fluorescent light. I didn't have any light bricks handy, so I made due. Thanks! And yes, I agree, living on the coast may not have been the best idea, but at least I said 'to a lesser extent'--they were really more worried about their food supply! Hopefully they'll have a brewery soon...

Thanks! I have been wanting to play with lighting for a while and this seemed like a good opportunity. The size of this was restricted by my other two builds; I kind of ran out of time to make anything larger. I was hoping to leave this open ended enough that I can add to the story later. Thank you! Thanks! Hopefully I'll continue this little mystery. It's technically in front of a food vending stand somewhere at the concert, but you can't really see the background that well. I meant it to be in a crowded area, but kind of ran out of time. I've been having fun with the lighting. I think learning the camera helped, too! Thank you!

I would also suggest you use this for Task 4, the HSS, as the Agriculture: Farm requirement if you wish to put your settlement on the map. The irregular base is great; the dark tan is beautiful. I like the inclusion of dark green and olive as ground cover around it. With the mushrooms, it suggests a rich, thriving soil for plants. The consistent color choice of lavender for the flowers also looks great. I noticed that it's even the same on the moss on the roof, which looks good. I like the roof coloring as well, although it may be slightly too regular for thatching if that was your intent. The wheat is well done and I really like the horse trough! The detail in the walls of the home are present but not overpowering, lending to a good texture that doesn't distract from the scene. I like the inclusion of the small details like firewood, the wagon wheel, the pitchfork, etc. I also really like the mini posing. Putting your riders on the edge of the scene not only gets them out of the way of the build but also lets them become part of the action, just riding up. The fence is simple (which makes sense for a farm), and putting it at angles on the studs makes it look very organic. Overall, a very nice build!

Very nice! I like the batter on the wall base, as well as the color choices for the odd colored bricks--the MDF works well with the LBG. I like the white toothed over the dark green at the tower top as well. Nice job!

So, is this one picture as well? I was thinking of making one build but taking multiple pictures of it from various angles. Is this allowed or will only one picture count?

Fantastic! Thanks for finding that! I remembered reading something, but couldn't remember what or where. Thank you!

Not entirely sure where to post this... does one builder have to build all the stages for a community to be recognized on HSS, or can a group of individuals build for the same town and still have it be recognized?

While likely true, I dislike that they have limited the versatility of the piece. One of the things I like about Lego is that they are able to be used in many different ways. Limiting the functionality by design is disappointing.

Oh wow, the underside of that new plate is terrible! That looks like some crap Megablocks would design! I don't really care one way or the other about the groove on the bottom edge, but those square bottoms are really restrictive. Ugh.

Wow, what a great story and a nice build! When I see builds in Mitgardia or Kaliphlin, I always ask myself "Why would someone build a house there?" There's a lot of these medieval fantasy pictures out there that look neat because there's a castle in the middle of nowhere, but there's no reason for it to be there. You answered that question immediately and simply, with the warm(er) spring to provide water. You also mentioned the village being built of wood, which makes sense for an initial build to keep the cold out, and you showed building the house partly into the ground, which also makes sense for the cold environment. The story is clear, it makes sense, and it is very intriguing--I want to read more! Besides the story, the build is very nice, too. I like the tiling in the floor of the forge room, the dark tan wedges out front to give some elevation to the ground, and the depiction of the spring with stalactites. The snow looks good, even on the roof, despite having run out of bricks. If the points of the tooth pieces on the edge could point down, it might help, as it looks like the snow and ice went sideways, but that's minor. The details on the inside are great, and it looks like a cozy house--something that again makes sense as large, spacious halls are unlikely to be made in the mountains both due to a lack of flat space and the need to heat such a large area. Finally, I would like to complement you on the tree. Its placement on the sloped, snowy hill looks very natural and is exactly what I think something like that would look like. Very well done!

My apologies. I realized that I forgot to answer this. While Prenmôr is not technically located anywhere since it has not yet reached the first stage of the HSS, I plan on placing it at the mouth of the river indicated by the big red arrow here:

Very nice! I really like this section of wall. It's nice to see a section of something that could be a town wall, and realistic at that--the open back of the wall walk looks great, and the wall has enough texture to look like it's been there a while (especially with the olive green) while not being overly textured to the point of distraction. I think you hit a great balance here. I see a number of walls out there that would be great in a fantasy painting but would be realistically useless in real life, providing no defense to the soldiers, and yours is not that at all; it's very realistic and could defend the soldiers easily. The color choices and irregular base are superb, and I like the use of the whips as a climbing vine on the trees. The story is nice, building up, and if you wanted to, you could tie the disease that killed the men into the plague that happened in Book II if it was not super-recent or you have another idea for it: (Scroll down to the Chapter 3 post) Awesome work! I look forward to seeing more of your builds!

Congrats to everyone who submitted an entry! There are some really nice entries for this challenge and I've really enjoyed seeing each of them!

Welcome to all the new members! Some very nice intro builds there! I have been seeing some of Servertijd's builds on the other forums here recently and they are spectacular! We are excited to have all of you joining the best of the guilds. Look forward to seeing more of your builds around!

Thanks! It's just opening, as I wanted to keep the build size small, but you're right, there's not much coming out of there yet! Thank you! My plan is to show through builds and narrative the complete construction of a fortress and city. I'll be very interested to see you do the same and am happy to share my research with you, as I'm always interested to see what people find for historic information! It may be overdoing it, but I'm all about overdoing things. :-) Thanks for the tips on the flora as well. I need to play with the grasses in the future, so I'll try your suggestion! Thanks! I try to keep the builds as historically accurate as possible while keeping a fantasy element to them. Credit for the pickaxe goes to brickbuilt, however. I had to break open my Ninjago City Docks to get that silly chisel, though, as it's super expensive on bricks and pieces at the moment and only shows up in that color in the docks (I wasn't going to use the lavender lipstick from the Friends sets!). Thanks! Thank you! I tried to make the taller weeds grow along the side of the road where the ground was disturbed the most, allowing more light for fast growing weeds to spring up among the more established grass. I also tried to incorporate the dark tan for dry soil and the reddish brown for soil with more water. As for the ISO, I took a series of pictures with ISO from 8 to 3200 and they all looked the same. I couldn't figure it out, so just posted what I had. I later read the manual for the camera and realized I had the settings all wrong, so the ISO was bypassed and I wound up with this. Ha! Live and learn, I guess. I had to use full manual for my challenge build, so hopefully I'll have less exposure on the next set of pics. Thank you! I am working on the lighting. Also, the face on the peasant with the blue cap isn't washed out, just super old and worn. The others are new, however. Thanks! I had originally thought so too, but looking at the quarry pictures, it's kind of the way those things were. I could probably add some 1x1 tiles or shallow angle plates in there to give it some more layering, so I may do that next time. Thank you! I had fun making the wagon and positioning the bricks within (which are actually held on with studs). The hardest part was getting the stupid harness to stay tied to the horse!

I think a lot of us have similar thoughts. Bracari and I both did campfires, and until I saw your janitor pic, I was going to take a daytime shot after my concert build with trash everywhere and the janitor having to clean up the mess, but you beat me to it and what you have is hilarious. I love when there's bits of humor thrown in here and there. Very nice work.

Thank you for permission to use him! I thought it was fun to include spectating sigfigs. Thanks! I wanted to include some Nocturnus element, and the concert had a good opportunity. I had fun piecing together so many sigfigs, but I make sure to ask permission for their use first, as I don't want to mess up anyone else's story by including them outside their story. I'm happy to include anyone's sigfig I have parts for, or side characters into my builds if anyone wants their characters to show up in Avalonia for some reason, so if anyone is interested, just PM me and I'll add the character. Hopefully I'll continue to have some time to build up Prenmôr; I was lucky to have had a lot of time over Christmas to do most of my recent building, so will probably slow down significantly again soon.

Yeah, the last one was edited hastily, so it looked crappy. I put it in the spoilers so you don't have to look at it with the others. I was really happy how the light turned out. Amusingly, there are no light bricks. I put some trans orange and yellow in and under the campfire, then left a hole in the actual bricks and set the base on an upside down full 120V fluorescent light. I had to mask off the rest of the light with a couple of newspapers to eliminate extra light, but that thing put out a ton of power through the bricks to the fire! There's actually so much light under it you can see a light leak in the plates, but I didn't have time to fix it. I had spent all my time on Cat B, so I was in a rush. Oh well.

Thanks! This was kind of a quick throw-together for me, and I wanted to leave the story open to do anything with it that I wanted later, so this is what I came up with! The photography is a little dark, but it was how I imagined it, since these guys didn't want to be seen... we shall see what they were up to in the future!

Very nice! I love your builds. The Avalonia you portray is very lush and vibrant, and you seem to do it without having an insane amount of weird vegetation pieces somehow. It looks great. I think one of the things that really stands out is how you manage to get subtle elevation changes that help give the piece some life. The irregular shaped positioning of the poles and people (i.e., not right angles for everything) helps distract from the studs and the grid they are naturally laid out on. The flowers, plants, and other flora look very natural as well. Very nice job!

LOL! You're killing me with these gnomish names. This invention is hilarious! I love how the gnome is completely unconcerned with the practical and only interested in his invention. The pig being loaded into the catapult with supplies is oustanding. I like how you made the machine functional with chain and gears. It's very medieval steampunk to me, and I love it! Great job!

First, let me say, holy cow, that's a lot of goats! They work really well in the scene. The color choices are awesome--I love the dark brown stems on the dark tan, and as others have said, the tree parts from the city are great in this sparsely vegetated scene. The goats are a great choice, too: orcs don't really care what they eat, and the goats can survive on this land easily. It would not have made sense for them to be driving cattle, for instance. I really like the whole story behind the scene and how it describes some of the culture. Excellent build!