Gideon

Very nice view! Probably the first time I've seen a forced perspective MOC being done digitally. Two suggestions for the background however: I would recommend making the structure of the background a bit more coarse, since the fine structure of the studs are getting aliased when the distance is that great, creating some weird patterns. I would also recommend considering introducing a bit of "out of focus" blur in the background to enhance the illusion of distance.

Nice base and vegetation! Those trees couldn't have been easy to make digitally?

I think Pharos and Île de Tyche are the names I like best.

Very nice tower, the amount of detailing is excellent!

Nice fortified island! Looking forward to the coming (minifig scale?) builds!

Nice vignette! I especially like the landscaping and the sense of purpose the minifig head and pose conveys For the overview shots, I would recommend backing the camera away a bit (as long as possible ) and zooming in instead to make the part closest to the camera less magnified.

Thanks! I've worked quite a lot on my photography since I started MOCing again (when the pictures looked like this: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjzkguiw) I don't think my building style fits the Ideas program, since I'm relying heavily on many small pieces the part count would be out of what is feasible for Ideas models...

Very nice busy feel, and excellent photos One small suggestion for improvement however is for the last (overview) shot that you could move the camera a bit further back and zoom a bit more instead, so you don't magnify the front of the build as much.

Very nice action scenes! I especially like the photo from the back of a gun being fired I probably could nitpick on the technical quality in some aspects of your photos, but the angles and compositions are so good that I'll skip that this time (Except that I'll encourage you to either crop a lot as in your closeups, or make sure that you don't cut off small parts of the builds)

Very nice build with an excellent atmosphere! I agree that the waves are fantastic One nitpick is however that the wooden quay is too reflective in your render for my taste, would it be possible to tinker with the lighting/reflectivity settings to get rid of a bit of that? Otherwise, it might be fairy easy in post-processing to lower the luminousity of the reflections there.

Here are a few pictures I took during the process. As you can see it was a bit of an iterative process where different details have been fluctuating before settling on the final solutions. I wouldn't be surprised if some of you like some of the discarded designs better, give me a shoutout in that case so I can learn for coming Oleander builds Sketch build trying some different window concepts. Final (well, almost at least...) window concept. Gateway sketch build. Fleur-de-lis sketch builds, and final concept seen from behind. Base and initial layout work. Ground floor conceptually takning shape. Balcony and canopy sketch build. Layout work of 1st floor, and trying dbg as the main ground color. Updated door and archway design. Layout attempt for distance to 2nd floor. New canopy sketch build. New canopy in place, progress on 2nd floor. Tried crowbars as handles on the door. Roof completed, but the proportions are not quite right yet... Mezzanine added, trying out some different concepts for the stonework there. Crowd in front of the palace. The perspective causes problems on the sides, where the frame is not filled if I want to include all four statues. Wall extended with a few more windows to fill the frame also when shot from below. Bonus shot with the builder/photographer adjusting the camera angle for the closeup of the king & queen.

Thanks! I don't have a picture of the backside now, but it is only a mess of various protruding backsides of the technical solutions and general sloppy parts usage where I often didn't care to match it at all on the back side. It is reinforced by four 2x4 pillars and I've also added a bunch of bricks with studs on the side aligned with the edge of the base to be able to cover the whole back side with large plates when this goes on some exhibition. Thanks! Since this is by far my most well-documented building process, I think maybe I should make a post here with some of my WIP shots to show how this build evolved? Thank you very much! Great that it is possible to make progress in this game not only by building shacks on newly discovered islands Thanks! Thank you very much! Glad you liked the framing of the lion head, had some trouble making that fit into the rest and finally decided to make something different there instead. The column bases are using "Cone 2 x 2 Truncated" (98100). Havn't thought of that, but I suppose that would have been a nice build to do too! I've never been very into recreating real life or popular culture scenes in LEGO...not that I can't help however trying to figure out how to build every other thing I see when I'm travelling Probably I'm simply putting too high demands on myself to make very good representations so I never get around to actually make a representation of something recognizeable, but instead only steal some ideas from here and there in the real world (or well-known imaginary worlds).

Are you starting to name islands after famous Oleander vessels?

Thanks! Glad that my attempt to enforce the fact that Oleon is the empire with the highest culture has been well received Thank you very much! Vive le Roi!

Congratulations on your new camera! As a bit of a photography nerd I was of course curious what camera you used (body, lens and focal length of your shots), but the Exif data of your edited images was not visible when I tried to spy in it on Flickr Natural light isn't bad as you have done before, but great to hear that you are starting to work with fully controlling your lighting. Especially here in dark Scandinavia... As long as the lights are of the same type it's easy to setup the white balance in the camera or even easier to correct in post-processing. Good luck finding a lighting setup you are happy with! When cutting out the in focus areas and out of focus areas the edges needs to be done separately I think, since you should use different "softness" of the edges depending on the amount of blur. So therefore it's much easier to only use a good backdrop and not cut anything away . And even if you are going to replace the background, using a backdrop with is approximately the same color and brightness makes the transitions much better without getting an ugly "aura" of a different brightness. Here is my backdrop setup (I usually only shoot with the on-camera flash bounced off the ceiling but recently I've begun to experiment with a second one, not least to be able to fill in the areas shaded from the light coming from the "light source" overhead, like by the canopy in my mangrove build in the behind the scenes shot below). I'm using a gently curved TUPPLUR blind from Ikea as my "infinity" backdrop (I've got a white and a black one as well), relatively cheap and easy to store when not in use. I'm hanging it onto the living room table from an old rusty drying rack (which the previous owners of our old apartment had left on the balcony, I'm happy I didn't scrap it as I originally had intended). The whole setup can be put up in about 5 minutes when the kids have fallen asleep

Very nice landscaping! Probably the best willow trees I've seen in LEGO bricks "Parts intensive" doesn't quite cut it for your tree techniques My favorite part of the build is however probably the irregular stone wall and the small gate in it. Brings back a lot of childhood memories from summers in the south of Sweden! Regarding the photography I think you are doing a very good job with the lighting and (what at least seems like) intentional control of the depth-of-field to emphasize individual figures in the close-ups What I'm not as fond of however is the background removal of the out-of-focus areas, you are making the edges of the selection too sharp so that the transition between the photo (shot on a white/gray background?) and the background looks a bit unnatural. I would recommend making the selection "softer" with an increasing transparency of the edge so that there is a smooth transition between the background and the out-of-focus bricks. Of course it is even easier to simply use a good backdrop to save a lot of time with background removal

Welcome to the blue team Captain Becker!

Very nice towers, and great build overall! I love those small islets in front of the fortress Some photography advice would be to cover up the arrow slits from behind (e.g. with some black bricks) to avoid the background to shine through and also to back the camera away at least another meter and zoom in instead. Right now, the camera seems to have been very close to the build which led to the front of the build becoming huge compared to the rest of the build. This "perspective distortion" is remedied by moving the camera away and zooming in. For closeups, how you place your camera will depend on which perspective you are looking for, if you want to empasize one fig and make the background smaller it is of course good to have the camera close, but for blurring the background and emphasizing the figs that way the more zoom you use the more background blur (less depth-of-field) you get.

@all not mentioned below: Thanks for the nice words! I'm glad you liked my first attempt at this period's architecture But I'm always happy to hear your opinions/constructive criticism regardless of what you think of the build as a whole, so please don't hesitate to help me improve! Thanks for the help getting started with this "new ground" for me! Thank you very much for the feedback along the way, it was very helpful to have someone to discuss concepts and WIP pictures with Thank you! I always have a camera angle in mind when I do my builds, and the fact that I wanted to take "100 % LEGO" photos of this was one of the major reasons I wasn't happy with only a 5 windows wide build. It was very close that I widened the whole build a few more windows, but with the need of getting this published for the story reasons I was content with only adding four flimsy windows with surrounding wall temporarily when I took that picture to make it "100 % LEGO". (Btw, I'm curious if no one has noticed that there are too many windows in that picture compared to the shot of the whole facade...? ) Thanks for your comment! I think it's important to remember that these projects like BoBS and GoH are way more than the odd build someone put too much time and bricks into and not create an atmosphere where developing builders feel that they don't dare to post their creations. Ranking is for challenges (and maybe other game mechanics in the future?), this is a freebuild which I only happened to build big because it was fun and because it was going to be part of the first impressions people get of Oleon. For me, the great ship builds some people contribute with here are way more thrilling than a "cut and paste" design like this one Thank you! I wasn't sure about sharing the WIP pictures with potential spies from other countries but at least I didn't include the king in any of those Of course a King with only the Gods as his superiors have the right to make his subjects pay whatever taxes needed to make him able to show his proper station! Thanks! That fleur-de-lis took a while and many failed attempts to get it in a way I liked, and now I can't wait to put it at the back of a ship as well The tiled arch was also a bit of a pain to make, mostly since those half-arches extend quite far so it's hard to put small tiles close to the inner edge... There will of course never be a full interior in a build like this, but I'm not dismissing the idea of interior scenes in minifig scale sometime in the future. I'm constantly trying new things now with BoBS and I'm actually a lot more excited to build in the "old world" than in the colonies so this might not be the last build from Granoleon, Bothnia or somewhere else I build instead of a bunch of small EGS builds. But in line with challenging myself to try out new things I really should give shipbuilding a try soon... Not my call to make

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TL;DR "Too long; didn’t read. Used to indicate that one did not read a (long) text, or to mark a short summary of an overly long text."

Excellent micro build! The last picture also has a great feeling to it For the forced perspective shots I have two suggestions for improvements: First, it would be nice if the burning town was visible to the side of the figures. Secondly, if the background is blurrier so the studs are not as visible it does a lot to the forced perspective illusion. (Best way is to do it already when taking the picture using a large aperture and/or as long focal length as possible but otherwise it can be done in post-processing as well...but that is much harder to make it look natural)

Thanks guys! It's a pleasure to finally have my build be used for it's intended purpose! I would however prefer that we keep this thread for posts related to the mini-challenge. Comments only related to the build can be written in the build's own thread: Palais Royal de Granoleon.

Palais Royal de Granoleon | Gideon | Oleon

L'Aile du Pontis (The Pontis Wing) of the Royal Palace in Granoleon is where King Philip I and Queen Beatrice of Oleon have their residence. I built this for the Oleon introduction and for the Coronation festivities mini-challenge. If you think I've not been very active on the forum or (like me) think my challenge II build were a bit rushed, here is the explanation Finally I get to show this build to you (at least those of you who are not friends with me on Flickr and have already seen WIP pictures there. Thanks to all of you for the valuable feedback during the design phase!) This is my first attempt at baroque architecture, inspired by the the Royal Palace of Stockholm and other similar palaces. Thanks to all of you who provided feedback during the build and I will also give due credit to my fellow LUG member Wineyard for the design elements I've stolen borrowed from his LDD creations. Pontis Wing, Royal Palace of Oleon Crowd greeting the King and Queen outside the palace King Philip I and Queen Beatrice at the balcony of the Pontis Wing of the Royal Palace in Granoleon.

Welcome to Oleon Diego Mpyromaxos de Valdes! Is it 'Diego' or 'Diego Mpyromaxos' (DM...?) we should call you?