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Five new illustrated stories have been added to the
King Saul section of the
The Brick Testament website, and I’m pleased
to report that in this third set of stories we finally get to actually meet the
namesake of this section of the website, Saul himself. Behold:
Israelites Demand a King
Samuel Annoints Saul
Saul Becomes King
Gouged Eyes and Dismembered Oxen
Slaughter of the Ammonites
(NOTE: For anyone unfamiliar with The Brick Testament or the Bible, please take
note of the content warnings for the stories before viewing.)
Enjoy,
-The Rev. Brendan Powell Smith
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Hey Brendan,
Guess I’d better get right on this installment. :)
Israelites demand taxation without representation - Nice face choices for Joel
and Abijah - they look related but not identical. My favorite pic in this story
is Abijah accepting the bribe - great fig placement on that one. Ooh, brown
beard. I’m jealous of your facial hair. I keep meaning to buy a whole bunch of
those Red Bean custom beards to make a dwarven army.
Samuel anoints Saul - Nice solution for a bigger-fig. I do think square plates
might look better for the feet, though. Also the head effect looks better in
the photos that are taken from below, where the cape more effectively covers the
gap between the head and shoulders. I like the landscaping in the second picture
- while it’s flat, it does look very natural. The frenzied prophets is a good
scene - nice simple solution for the harp, btw. My favorite harp of all time is
Jojo’s, but yours is
not dependent on rare (at least to me) hinge colors. Nice fireplace in Saul’s
dad’s home. It reminds me of the
fireplace from Shaun
Sullivan’s great Brickington Manor.
Saul becomes king - LOL on the hiding among the baggage. The arms work well on
the scene where they’re dragging him out. The gifts are nice in the last scene.
Gouged eyes - Interesting bit of information there about the missing verse. LOL
on the eyepatch scene. I also like the gate of Jabesh Gilead a lot (btw, you
should enter something in the Classic Castle Colossal Castle Contest).
Slaughter - Nice hero shot of Saul in the first pic - shades of Braveheart. He
does seem a little laid back about his battling - he kills that one guy without
even bothering to turn his head. Cute punchline scene with the “no one shall be
put to death”. Saul looks a little odd to me in McGonagal’s robes, kind of like
he’s cross-dressing.
Bruce
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In lugnet.announce.moc, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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Five new illustrated stories have been added to the
King Saul section of the
The Brick Testament website, and I’m
pleased to report that in this third set of stories we finally get to
actually meet the namesake of this section of the website, Saul himself.
Behold:
Israelites Demand a King
|
Neat table in the last panel. It took me a minute to realize that it wasn’t
actually attached to anything.
Samuel on the barrel is pretty funny.
The Ammonites’ black and red look is pretty sharp. I like the idea of messengers
brandishing oxen bits to frighten their enemies.
I concur with Bruce on that first shot - very cool. I actually like the green
robes better than the purple ones. Those always seemed a little too much like
bathrobes to me.
And the last panel reminds me of the
end of Star
Wars. Where’s Chewie?
Marc Nelson Jr.
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Hi.
I can’t come up with so much specific points to comment on except what has
already been mentioned by others. I would just like to say that the stories seem
to be up to your usual high standard and that I’m following the new stories with
excitement. I’m not very aquainted with these stories about Saul and the like,
so I was kind of like “Oh my God, the Philistines have got the ark! What’s going
to happen now?!” in between your previous two updates.
I wonder if you missed out on an opportunity to portray a monumental siege scene
in 1 Samuel 11:1 when the Ammonites expressedly besiege Jabesh-Gilead. I mean,
you already had a city wall and tents for the siegers. And as I understand siege
machines weren’t really invented or well developed at that time, so you wouldn’t
have to bother about building much in that way.
On the other hand, the picture of the Ammonite army with their round shields
looks quite pretty in itself, even if you already have a lot of those
(photoshopped? ;) ) army mass scenes in your bible already.
And I understand that it must be a hard decision between spending a massive time
on overworked sceneries for specific stories, as opposed to getting further in
the storyline of this big book. You’ve already come a long way! Soon you’ll only
have the prophets and other less narrative parts of the Bible left.
By the way, I found a kind of weird illustrated version of one of those
mysterious prophetic parts of the bible, the Book of Revelation:
http://www.e-sheep.com/apocamon/ Perhaps it could be inspiring in some way...
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Martin Nilsson wrote:
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I would just like to say that the stories
seem to be up to your usual high standard
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Thanks, Martin.
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and that I’m following the new
stories with excitement. I’m not very aquainted with these stories about Saul
and the like, so I was kind of like “Oh my God, the Philistines have got the
ark! What’s going to happen now?!” in between your previous two updates.
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That’s great. I kind of do consider these King Saul and King David stories to
be “the good stuff” in that they are exciting stories, full of intrigue and
surprises. I’ve been looking forward to illustrating this stuff for years now!
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I wonder if you missed out on an opportunity to portray a monumental siege
scene in 1 Samuel 11:1 when the Ammonites expressedly besiege Jabesh-Gilead.
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You may be right. I did give this matter some thought.
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I mean, you already had a city wall and tents for the siegers.
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Well, to be accurate, I had a very small portion of a city wall and only two
full-sized tents. I did think about what it would take to create a larger, more
involved siege scene. At the very minimum, it would have likely required a lot
more Ammonite soldiers than I have the pieces to make. Even in the scenes I did
create for this story, only the Ammonite soldiers closest to the camera are
fully equipt with the proper torsos, helmets, swords, and shields. The less
visible an Ammonite is, the more likely he’s faking it with a different red
torso, lack of sword or shield, or the wrong helmet.
For the tents, I had only the two full-size ones, and any tents in the distance
are faked with other parts.
So I wasn’t confident I could convingly populate a larger scale siege scene.
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And as I
understand siege machines weren’t really invented or well developed at that
time, so you wouldn’t have to bother about building much in that way.
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My understanding is that siege works of this time period would have likely been
for the siegers to construct an earthen ramp outside the city wall. I thought
of maybe showing something like that being constructed, but I wasn’t sure if it
would be clear to the audience what was going on.
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On the other hand, the picture of the Ammonite army with their round shields
looks quite pretty in itself, even if you already have a lot of those
(photoshopped? ;) ) army mass scenes in your bible already.
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Yes, in the end, I decided that what was most important here was to show that
Nahash was coming to this city with a big, well-outfitted army that would scare
the residents of Jabesh-Gilead into surrernder.
I have very much tried to avoid resorting to photoshop tactics for creating such
large army scenes. I can only think of one instance where I did that, and only
because I had outfitted the army in some pieces that were just too gosh darn
rare to make a line up of soldiers that looked like an army.
By and large when I don’t have a lot of properly-attired soldiers for a
particular army, I use non-digital trickery to get by, keeping the camera
positions fairly close-in on the action of a battle, of by using not-quite-right
looking extras for the background or army scenes where it’s hard to notice their
visual deficiencies.
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And I understand that it must be a hard decision between spending a massive
time on overworked sceneries for specific stories, as opposed to getting
further in the storyline of this big book.
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There’s that consideration too, but I do try to avoid the scenes becoming too
visually mundane. In this instance, I think it had a lot to do with the new red
and black shields adding a lot to the look of this army for me. It’s the first
time I’ve used these new “Viking” shields in an Old Testament scene, and I was
happy with the look of Nahash’s army without feeling I needed to invest the time
and money in outfitting a hundred Ammonite soldiers in an epic siege scene. Not
that that wouldn’t have been awesome too. Perhaps I’ll have another such
occasion later in the Bible. I could definitely see a more extensive scene for
the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem before it was utterly destroyed around 586
BCE.
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You’ve already come a long way!
Soon you’ll only have the prophets and other less narrative parts of the
Bible left.
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Well, not all that soon. I still have just over half of 1 Samuel, all of 2
Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Kings, certain unique parts of 1 Chronicles and 2
Chronicles, the narrative parts of Daniel, all of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and of
course Job still to go. :)
I’d like to go back and add more narrative stuff to Acts in the New Testament as
well. And there’s narrative books that are in some Bibles and not others, like
Judith, 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees that are pretty awesome, so I’d be very
tempted to illustrate those as well. And there’s Ruth and um... Tobit if I’m
really desperate for more narrative.
And then yeah, finally there’s a whole lot of non-narrative stuff, a fair amount
of which I’d like to try my hand at illustrating too, especially the Revelation
to John.
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By the way, I found a kind of weird illustrated version of one of those
mysterious prophetic parts of the bible, the Book of Revelation:
http://www.e-sheep.com/apocamon/ Perhaps it could be inspiring in some
way...
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Heh, that looks pretty cool. I can’t look at it at the moment, but I will
definitely check this out. I could probably use a fair amount of help in
understanding the “narrative” of Reveleation, and it will be nice to see how
someone else who has taken the text “seriously” has visualized all of its wild
and crazy imagery.
-Brendan
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Martin Nilsson wrote:
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My understanding is that siege works of this time period would have likely
been for the siegers to construct an earthen ramp outside the city wall.
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Interesting... that sounds like a total suicide strategy to me. I mean, that
would have taken hours or days, the soldiers having their hands occupied by
shovels instead of weapons all the while being bombarded by enemy fire in the
complete vicinity of the city wall.
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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Even
in the scenes I did create for this story, only the Ammonite soldiers closest
to the camera are fully equipt with the proper torsos, helmets, swords, and
shields. The less visible an Ammonite is, the more likely he’s faking it
with a different red torso, lack of sword or shield, or the wrong helmet.
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Ooh, now it’s a challenge! In
this scene I’m pretty sure you’re using these two torsos in the unfocused
ranks:
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And then yeah, finally there’s a whole lot of non-narrative stuff, a fair
amount of which I’d like to try my hand at illustrating too, especially the
Revelation to John.
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That’s what I’m looking forward to (i.e. poetry and prophecy). Some of my
favorite parts have been when you’ve broken away from straight storytelling to
illustrate things like the Law and Pauline epistles. I’m working on my own
project now that involves illustrating some narrative parts and some more
abstract parts, and those are definitely a creative challenge.
Bruce
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
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Ooh, now it’s a challenge! In
this scene I’m pretty sure you’re using these two torsos in the unfocused
ranks:
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Demonstrating your eagle eye once again, Bruce. Yes, those are the two back-up
torsos I was using for the Ammonites. :)
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That’s what I’m looking forward to (i.e. poetry and prophecy). Some of my
favorite parts have been when you’ve broken away from straight storytelling
to illustrate things like the Law and Pauline epistles. I’m working on my
own project now that involves illustrating some narrative parts and some more
abstract parts, and those are definitely a creative challenge.
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I do enjoy the challenge of coming up with ways to illustrate the non-narrative,
but I think I will be focusing on the main narrative of the Israelites for some
time to come.
-Brendan
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