Gideon

I agree with you that natural light is the best if you can have it in a good way (overcast weather in daytime make an excellent dim light source) but direct sunlight tends to be hard for the dynamic range of camera to handle. However I do not agree fully with you that flash should never be used, only direct flash is totally wrong if you ask me. When I take pictures indoors with artificial light (which I have done for the most of my builds since there isn't much natural light in the winter = building season in northern Sweden), for smaller builds I have used a "light tent" with two included spotlights which works fine. For larger builds however, I have obtained the best results by using a flash directed at a white roof above and slightly behind the camera. Unfortunately this requires a quite good flash with adjustable direction (which I was lucky enough to obtain when my father upgraded his photography kit a few years ago). An example of indirect flash lighting is this picture which I took too late in the evening to have enough natural light for, definitely some shadows but dimmer and in a more natural direction than if I would have used direct flash. The flash also helps in washing out the white background (a simple bed sheet), the picture has not been edited. Another useful tool to get good pictures is a tripod. Lately, I have started to shoot my overview pictures with small aperture size to get a full depth of field of the whole MOC...but it costs in exposure time (especially when not using flash) and my hands are way to shaky to get sharp images then without having the camera fixed. For forced perspective a tripod is also great so it is possible to fine-tune the direction of the shoot and the positioning between the objects in front and in the background. Like ZC I also use the delay timer so I have my hands off the camera before it takes the picture. Sorry for turning this into a photography discussion, I just wanted to share my views and some tips. Also I want to say a loud Welcome!! to the new members, looking forward to seeing your sigfigs and builds!

Of course you are allowed to comment on all builds here! There are no open hostilities between the guilds at the moment, and judging by most Challenge VI entries the guilds seems to be working together in fighting the common enemy Victor Revolword and the Hand of Corruption. But there is of course competition between the guilds for gold and who knows what will happen after Ch VI? If you have more questions like these please ask them in the questions thread, it will be easier to find the answers in the future then. Maybe you will even find answers already if you read a bit there?

NIce shop, sweet street design and exterior as well as the innovative minifig! That game board is also nice! But where is this shop located?

First, thank you all for your kind words! One of the reasons I was reluctant at first to make a GoH challenge entry was because I didn't know if I could produce anything which I dared to show in such an illustrios company But hanging around here has already really inspired me and had me push my limits as a MOCer in many ways! The tree was a reused part of my pillage scene freebuild (backstory to Sir Derrik, who fell at Queenscross). After seeing Ska's battlefield I thought it would fit in Queenscross as well I deliberately made a story which would fit in with most of the others so I could assume that I can continue it without having it risked of being one of the stories not making the canon Actually, the whole build and indeed a major part of the story evolved from those windows. I first happened to order some transparent cheese slopes, and then tried some mosaic techniques which ended up being flames, and then made the window frames intended for a small interior which eventually grew to almost the size limit The pillars were a pain in the neck to build, I wasn't happy with the offset if I made the SNOT with 1x1 bricks with studs on one side (either too deep with no plate in between tile and snot brick, or to shallow without plate in between) so I ended up using headlight bricks-plate-tile which grew very unstable (especially the one in the corner where I used less headlight bricks) and ended up depleting most of my spare supply of headlight bricks. The staircases were fun to build, I got those semi-tile pieces a while ago to try this technique but havn't gotten around to making any build with them in. An interior was just what I needed. The microfigs were an attempt to remedy an emerging "big grey wall syndrome" in between the larger details I had already built. I avoided my usual texturing and/or mottling of the walls and floor to achieve a more well-polished look of an important hall. I don't know if it was the right call, it grew a bit sterile but at the same time the clean grey areas don't interrupt the visual impression of the more important elements. Thank you for introducing me to GoH! Without seeing your great builds over the last year or so over at Swebrick, I would never have found my way over here! The photography was almost the hardest part, especially the fp shot took a long time to be satisfied with. I also had a race against time when shooting the interior fighting scenes because the natural light was fading and using a flash didn't work too well with the additional lighting I had directed at the windows. I wanted the natural light especially on the final fighting scene where the UV from outside is better at making the flame pieces glow (only worked with old trans-neon pieces apparently...the newer ones without the side pins were useless in that sense). But in retrospect I am quite satisfied also with the last pictures I took of the interior using indirect flash, since with longer exposure time and less flash at least the flames illuminated with light bricks came out with some glowing as well. The table was my first ever 4-way SNOT build (or 5 if you count the studs ON top) and an interesting exercise. However, I learned a lesson there that even though the tolerances of Lego are slim, SNOT can still create some tensions in the build. In this case it was almost impossible to not have the long side parts separate slightly from the central part. Fortunately it didn't separate more than that you have to look really careful at high-res pictures to see it My inspiration for the pulled boat is exactly from pre-industrial river and canal traffic in Europe, even though I think the mast grew a bit too high because I got a bit overenthusiastic when building the SNOT dirt river bank and had the tow cable from the original boat design get stuck in the vegetation between the boat and the pulling animals...

Nice entry, I especially liked the detailing on the wall and the buildings on the inside. The interior is also great, the broken windows are a great touch!

Nice castle, and I especially like the landscaping. The waterline and the small beach looks great!

Nice landscaping, the snow looks really realistic! Great use of the leaves, I'm probably too careful with my bricks...don't have enough broken ones to try stuff like that :P

Really good entry with top quality builds! I enjoyed the story very much as well, great that you included events all over Historica The photography is also great, I am especially impressed by how you managed to capture the black interior...I hate trying to take decent photos of black bricks. A friendly advice on the photo presentation however: Something which disturbs me a bit is the cutting around the edges. Maybe some other time you should try to either cut closer to the build if you want to get rid of all the background, or at least fade the edges of the cut somewhat?

Great entry with three nice builds! I think I like the celebration scene the most, too few of those kind of builds around :)

Great entry, both story and builds! Taken one by one all of these builds are wonderful, but integrated like this it might be the single best overall Lego work I've ever seen! I'm really lost for words when it comes to your builds, so I'll just say "inspiring!" :) Such a privilege to be part of this great project. I think your entry opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for Book II should you win. Your description of the strife in Kaliphlin was a bit short, but that's probably a good thing so we Kaliphlins would be able to elaborate on that in the future. I also like the fact that there seems to be a good deal of Hand influence still around, leaving us with a suitable enemy for many great plots to come. Edit: Iphone typos...

Impressive with a build of that size while still maintaining that level of detail, true candy for the eye! Well done

Beautiful Nocturnian build, this series of builds is so good! In this one I think I like the base and the details on the walls best

I love this style, and your interpretation of it is really good. Feels Avalonian to the core :) Great work!

The wooden part is definitely the best in this build if you ask me! But I like how you have created some structure to avoid the "big grey wall syndrome", maybe try even more structure in the same color next time or mixing in some other earth colors?

I puposely built something that my collection would support, or at least only with types of pieces I have (didn't check the quantities). That's the reason for the old brown palm trunk ;) I will probably experiment a bit more with these programs in the future, this was mostly a test to see what rendering time I should expect on my computer if I didn't use transparent pieces. This model in this resolution took like 90 minutes, my only serious attempt before was a simple stream with only four 8x8 trans-medium blue and some round plates like my river in ch6, in full screen resoulution...I clearly got a bit too opimistic then, that one took almost two weeks to render on a moderately overclocked i7 3770K. Transparent poeces splitting rays is heavy...but looks good :) But anyway, honestly it's more inspiring to use real bricks.

Experimented a bit with LDD tonight, ended up being a Kaliphlin house. Note to self, avoid digital vegetation pieces (their collision volumes are not as flexible as ABS plastic) to maintain a healthy blood pressure. Kaliphlin House by Gideon_83, on Flickr

Definitely one of the best entries, three excellent MOCs! I think the microscale miniscale(?) castle in the first was a brilliant build, I don't think I've ever seen such a detailed fp background. So many nice details in all three builds to be inspired by as well.

Three really top-class MOCs as expected! The gatehouse and battle is excellent, there is so much suspended action to like there and the throne room and cave are also really good. But the MOC I think have the best overall visual impression is Acirhon's Den, both the towers and the landscaping is so nicely balanced both in form and color palette. Excellent job with your challenge entry!

The interior scene is definitely the best if you ask me, especially the pillars and the wall. But the story is also really fun

I think it would be better to migrate the info to the wiki, I will try to write about all my side characters and update my sigfig page there some time in the near future.

This is just so beautiful! Good luck with building a playable one

Can't decide which of the builds I like the most, they are all so awesome! I mean the tower, the spider, the water... I'm really looking forward to seeing more of the castle the bridge belongs to :)

I really like your MOCs inside the city walls, and the variety of nicely composed minifigs in this makes it really come to life! There is something about the ground however that lowers the impression for me, maybe it's just the fact that the structuring of the brown dirt gets lost on my screen. Maybe some other earth colored patches (dark tan?) would have created more variety.

Looks like it used to be a nice house in the "DG-style", but you've managed to turn it into a beautiful ruin Nice mixture of black and other colors, makes it easier to see the details than all-black burnt ruins as I have discovered... Is that a bent pole I see as well?

I really liked this interior (especially the scriptorium), and it made me think of exactly that movie even before I read you mention it :)