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The Brick
Testament has been updated today with six new illustrated stories that
kick off a new section of the website called
King David, covering stories from
the Bible’s books of 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles.
(click to view the new stories)
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,
I’ve been meaning to go back and comment on the David/Saul stories before doing
this, but am afraid I’ll just get further and further behind. I do intend to go
back and do those, but for now:
King me: Not a lot to comment on here. I notice here, and in the following
stories, you use a horse barding as a curtain edge. That’s a really clever
idea. I think this one
would be a really nice curtain. The steps for the guy crowning David is a funny
detail. One minor quibble, didn’t you change up the arm colors in previous
stories to denote the different tribes? If so, the elders from “all the tribes”
shouldn’t have matching white arms.
Blind and lame: Quibble with the name here. It seems obvious from the context
that the “blind and lame” is a sarcastic reference to the taunt of the
Jebusites, but your title makes it sound like you’re reading it straight. The
townscaping with the quarter scale white buildings is nice. I’m not a huge fan
of the tan city wall. I appreciate that you’re giving it an interesting texture
with those large panel pieces, but there’s something odd about the mixing of the
panels with the normal bricks and the 1x1x5 bricks. Maybe (and this is being a
really small quibble here) it would look better if the central two columns of
bricks
in this picture had the 1x1x1 on top of the 1x1x5, rather than the other way
around, so that the “brick” portions were matching. Brilliant use of the map
tile, and by far my favorite picture is Joab and the soldiers wading through the
tunnel. Nice face on Joab and torch solution in that pic, btw. Good action
shot on the army bursting out of the well (what are the pieces of that well,
btw, some wheel hub?). The gate built on an angle is really nice, and in the
last pic there is another good use of a horse barding.
David’s wives and kids: Not much to comment here except that great wide shot of
the throne room in the first pic. Putting the throne in the corner there is
really nice, and the overall color scheme of the room is striking. I
particularly like the alternating rust round posts and tan lion heads, and
patterned elements work together really well here. On the rest, it is nice that
you altered up the poses a little. Nepheg has some touching interaction with
David. Freaky makeup on Eliphelet.
War: As always, good action shots (especially
here). Idols before and after burning is nice. Good use of perspective
in this scene. Finally, the joke at the end is funny, and the Japanese setting
is a really nice MOC in its own right.
Don’t touch the ark: As always, great Ark design, and also the oxen. The wagon
seems a little flimsy, but I guess that’s why the Ark almost fell off. I’m not
a fan of the brick-built instruments, but that’s always a problem.
Photoshopping God onto the Ark is a funny detail. As before, I’m not 100% on
the flex tubing as arms solution. The skinny arm seems a little cartoony (I
know, odd complaint for a LEGO story).
Over exposure: I really like that detail on Michal’s balcony with those odd
Technic wing pieces. The switching the perspective on the two halves of verse
16 is really nice. The shot from above seems like it would have been a
difficult photoshoot to get right (or is it photoshop trickery?). I’m not a
huge fan of the tent, but oh well. That detail with the repeated hinge bricks
in Michal’s room is outstanding. The last scene of David leaving with the slave
girls is funny. I think he’s losing his loincloth there, btw.
Bruce
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.build.ancient, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
| |
I’ve been meaning to go back and comment on the David/Saul stories before
doing this, but am afraid I’ll just get further and further behind. I do
intend to go back and do those, but for now:
|
Hi, Bruce. Your absence really made me appreciate how fortunate I’ve been to
have someone so consistently providing detailed and thoughtful comments and
questions on each update to The Brick Testament. If you find time to go back
and comment on the last few updates, great, but please don’t feel obligated.
It’s just great to have you back.
| |
King me: Not a lot to comment on here. I notice here, and in the following
stories, you use a horse barding as a curtain edge. That’s a really clever
idea. I think this
one would be a really nice curtain.
|
Thanks for the tip! I’d never even seen that barding, but I have to agree with
you that it would provide a very nice fringe for a curtain. When I was planning
out these new King David stories, I decided I wanted to visually emphasize the
developed political unity of the Israelite kingdom by the use of more heraldry,
so I gathered together all my LEGO heraldry on hand to see what my options were.
That’s when I first got the idea to try using the horse barding as a more
general decorative piece.
But implementing the barding is a bit difficult. Since it’s specifically shaped
to fit a LEGO horse, the inside is narrower on one side than the other, so it
can’t simply be plonked down into place on regular bricks. With the Brick
Testament’s style of photography I can avoid much of the awkwardness of using
the barding as general decoration by simply having the top half of the barding
out of frame. Those of you who build MOCs meant to be viewed from multiple
angles may have a considerably more difficult time pulling off this sort of
thing in an aesthetically pleasing way.
| |
The steps for the guy crowning David is a funny detail.
|
It’s actually the
same stairs they used to crown Ishbaal. I kind of imagined them carrying down
from Israel to Judah the king-making kit, including the wooden steps and King
Saul’s royal robes. David wears the robes ceremonially in this scene to show
that he is now the king over all that was once Saul’s. But in the next story
he’s got his own royal military garb and his own lounging-about-the-palace
outfit once his palace is built.
| |
One minor quibble, didn’t you change up the arm colors in
previous stories to denote the different tribes? If so,
the elders from “all the tribes” shouldn’t have matching white arms.
|
As in the above example of outfit changes, I did have a reasoning behind this,
but I certainly couldn’t blame anyone for not “getting it” without my explaining
it, so here goes:
You are right about the arm colors denoting the tribe allegiances. From Exodus
through Joshua I had portrayed all the Israelites with tan torsos and tan arms,
because in those stories, the Bible generally talks about the Israelites acting
as a single entity. The different tribes are denoted, but mostly it’s “then the
Israelites did this” and “then the Israelites did that”.
Starting with the stories from Judges, the different Israelite tribes settle in
distinctly different regions, and act semi-autonomously. Since the Bible starts
making a much bigger deal about each character’s tribal affiliation, I decided
to keep the tan torsos to portray their continuing common self-identification as
Israelites, but also began using eleven different arm colors (plus the Levite
priests in their distinctive purple robes) to portray their allegiance to their
own tribe.
OK, that much you already know. Here’s where it gets tricky. Starting around
the time Saul becomes king, the Bible seems to markedly decrease the importance
it puts on individual tribes. Over the course of Saul’s and David’s kingships,
the ten northern tribes seem to more and more often come under the umbrella term
of “Israel” whereas the two southern tribes (Judah and Benjamin) become simply
known as “Judah”. By the time the so-called “United Monarchy” splits after the
death of David’s son Solomon, the Israel vs Judah distinction is the only one
that seems relevant.
To portray this visually, I decided to have the white arms I had assigned to the
most dominant of the northern tribes, Joseph (confusingly sometimes
distinguished between the “half-tribes” of Manasseh and Ephraim), become the
official arm color of the northern tribes, now collectively known (also
confusingly) as “Israel”.
In the south, the blue arms of the tribe of Judah are correspondingly adopted as
the official arm color of the larger political entity of Judah + Benjamin, known
(again confusingly) as “Judah”.
To muddle matters worse from a visual standpoint, I am also using these first
stories of David’s kingship to introduce new outfits for the soldiers of Israel
(that’s Israel as in the United Monarchy of Israel + Judah) distinct from the
non-soldier men and women. My plan as of now is to keep the common non-soldier
citizens of Israel and Judah in their tan torsos, but still keeping the arms
white in the north and blue in the south, as it seems that there never really
was a true melding of the two peoples.
| |
Blind and lame: Quibble with the name here. It seems obvious from the
context that the “blind and lame” is a sarcastic reference to the taunt of
the Jebusites, but your title makes it sound like you’re reading it straight.
|
Honestly I don’t know what to make of the “blind and lame” in this story. I
agree with you in that the best sense I can make of what the Jebusites say to
David is that it is a taunt. Though I must say I do not follow the logic of the
taunt as it’s presented. Is the idea along the lines of “You are so
non-threatening that even our most feeble soldiers could fend you off!”?
If that was the only mention of the “blind and the lame”, I would think it was a
strange taunt, or a taunt that doesn’t fully come across in translation.
But then David makes his statement about attacking the blind and the lame,
adding that he hates them. I admit that the various English translations of
this verse (2 Samuel 5:8) are not entirely clear in their meaning, but as best I
can tell, he is literally calling on his troops to attack the blind and the lame
and expressing his hatred for the blind and the lame.
And finally, to cap it off, this story is supposed to explain the origin of the
common saying, “The blind and the lame may not enter the palace.” Again,
there’s some variation in translation, with the Hebrew word for “palace” also
meaning simply “house” or also meaning “temple”. I cannot be sure which meaning
is intended (how could anyone be sure?), and chose the “palace” interpretation
mainly because the very next story is about the building of David’s palace.
I’d be curious to hear how you interpret this story, specifically what David
says about hating the blind and lame, and the explanation of the common saying.
But that best be taken to off.topic.
| |
The townscaping with the quarter scale white buildings is nice. I’m not a
huge fan of the tan city wall. I appreciate that you’re giving it an
interesting texture with those large panel pieces, but there’s something odd
about the mixing of the panels with the normal bricks and the 1x1x5 bricks.
|
Hmm, OK. I was pretty happy with that as an imposing-looking wall, and did like
the unusual texture. More so, I like that it was built along a diagonal, which
allowed me to add in an interesting
entrance balcony.
| |
Maybe (and this is being a really small quibble here) it would look better if
the central two columns of bricks
in this picture had the 1x1x1 on top of the 1x1x5, rather than the other way
around, so that the “brick” portions were matching.
|
Wow, that is some serious nitpicking! But that’s awesome. :) When I’m
building, I do sometimes wonder how much little things like that will get
noticed, or even if not consciously picked out, how much they effect people’s
impression of a scene. I do think I could have done something more interesting
with the tops of the city wall, but since this is Jerusalem, I figured the walls
are going to get gussied up a bit under David and Solomon, and eventually
destructed and rebuilt a few times over, so I’ll get more chances to do
something more interesting. Here I mainly just wanted them to be tall enough
and imposing enough that the Jebusites would seem justified in their confidence
that they were safe from David.
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Brilliant use of the map tile,
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I’m so glad LEGO has made a few map tiles available. Otherwise I don’t know
what I would have done for those scenes where God and/or the Israelites are
planning out their attacks
here,
here, or
here.
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and by far my favorite picture
is Joab and the soldiers wading through the tunnel.
|
Thanks. For this story, I really wanted to show the sneak attack in progress.
In fact, I would have liked to have added another illustration of Joab and his
men crawling up the well. But with my methodology of only illustrating the
exact text of the scriptures, there just wasn’t enough text for me to work with.
As it is, the text really doesn’t line up so well to what’s being shown.
There’s no Bible verse saying “And then Joab led his men through the underground
water tunnel” or “And then Joab and his men emerged, catching the complacent
Jebusites entirely unaware.” That stuff is just implied through the Bible’s
briefest of accounts.
For the visualization I was inspired by Andrew Summersgill’s amusing recent
vignette. His has the neat trick
with the water illuminated from below, but I felt more compelled to stick with
my blue tile water standard. I also remembered liking the lighting on one of
your cave scenes, and tried to get something similarly nice here. It’s tough
because I can’t (without excess photoshoppery) get “realistic” lighting by
having the torch be the light source. And in general I allow my cave scenes and
outdoors-at-night scenes be far better lit than they would be in real life,
just because nobody wants to look at an illustration that dark.
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Nice face on Joab and torch solution in that pic, btw.
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Joab’s had that face since he first appeared in The Brick Testament way back in
this group shot (he’s blurry in the second row, just behind Eleazar son of
Dodo), but I do like this little torch design I came up with a while back but
haven’t had a chance to use until now.
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Good action shot on the army bursting out of the well (what are
the pieces of that well, btw, some wheel hub?).
|
Yep, that’s the side view of these wheels.
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The gate built on an angle is really nice,
|
Oh, OK, yeah, that’s the gate with the balcony I mentioned above. This whole
built-on-a-diagonal thing started because I was trying to solve the perennial
problem of trying to make a
good
pointed arch doorway out of LEGO. I’ve seen it pulled off nicely on a larger
scale on some cathedral MOCs, but I have never figured out how to make a decent
one on a smaller scale. For this gate, I tried a new strategy (to me at least)
or using two half-arch
pieces at a 90 degree angle to create something like a pointed arch. If anyone
has suggestions on a better way to achieve this feat, or links to a MOC where
it’s been done well, please do tell!
| |
David’s wives and kids: Not much to comment here except that great wide shot
of the throne room in the first pic. Putting the throne in the corner there
is really nice, and the overall color scheme of the room is striking.
|
Thanks. Had to break my own rules about the maximum width of a Brick Testament
image just to fit in this unusual wide-angle shot.
| |
I particularly like the alternating rust round posts and tan lion heads,
and patterned elements work together really well here.
|
David is totally obsessed with lions. And crowns.
| |
On the rest, it is nice that you altered up the poses a little.
Nepheg has some touching interaction with David. Freaky makeup on
Eliphelet.
|
I usually choose not to illustrate the long lists of genealogies that have
earned the Bible its reputation as impossibly boring read. But this
only-somewhat-long roster of names gave me a chance to capture some of the humor
that can come out of the Bible’s sometimes awkward storytelling style. I also
think it’s far more striking to see David’s long string of wives and concubines
depicted visually as different actual people rather then merely implied through
a one-sentence description followed by a string of funny-sounding names.
Just as a nitpick to your comments though, the names given in this story are the
names of the sons born to David. The mothers’ names are not specified here (or
anywhere else in the Bible, so far as I could tell) except for Solomon’s mom who
later turns out to be Bathsheba. So that’s Eliphelet’s mom with the freaky
make-up. :)
| |
War: As always, good action shots (especially
here).
|
Thanks. I was happy with that shot. I have to admit, I’m getting a little
worried about my continued ability to give these endless stories of wars and
massacres some personality in my depictions without simply repeating the same
old tricks.
One of my main motivations for illustrating all these stories is that I think
that seeing them visually depicted lessens the ease by which people can simply
group them together in their mind as an undifferentiated mass of ancient
violence and sweep them under the rug, thinking, “sure there’s some violence in
the Old Testament, but that’s not what it’s really about.” The idea is to get
people to see just what an unbelievable amount of the most brutal sorts of
violence makes up the bulk of the Old Testament. But I sometimes fear that if
my illustrations all start to seem too similar, it will again start to blur
together in people’s minds, and thereby somehow making it more easy to
rationalize or ignore.
| |
Idols before and after burning is nice. Good use of perspective
in this scene. Finally, the joke at the end is funny, and the Japanese
setting is a really nice MOC in its own right.
|
Thanks, that one was fun to plan out and execute. I’d wanted to try my hand at
a Chinese landscape scene ever since my trip to China back in 2001. But I got
distracted with the Bible and whatnot.
| |
Don’t touch the ark: As always, great Ark design, and also the oxen. The
wagon seems a little flimsy, but I guess that’s why the Ark almost fell off.
|
Heh. :)
| |
I’m not a fan of the brick-built instruments, but that’s always a problem.
|
Yeah, those aren’t perfect by any means, but as you might guess, I haven’t come
up with or seen better solutions.
| |
Photoshopping God onto the Ark is a funny detail.
|
Yeah, I’m kind of confused about how seriously or not the ancient Israelites
believed that Yahweh was enthroned atop the ark. When they later speak of
building the Temple, they talk of building a house for Yahweh. It’s very
anthropomorphizing. Except Yahweh is apparently invisible. Except when certain
people talk to him “face to face”. There’s a lot of inconsistencies in how
Yahweh is presented and how he communicates to people in the Bible. I don’t
want to impose some sense of consistency that’s not in the text, so I just try
to capture things visually in the same inconsistent way the text presents it.
| |
As before, I’m not 100% on
the flex tubing as arms solution. The skinny arm seems a little cartoony (I
know, odd complaint for a LEGO story).
|
Heh, I still agree with you, but still don’t have a more reliable solution.
Later in
this scene I used my other trick where a rubber band laces through the arm
holes and holds two normal minifig arms out to the sides. But for that you need
both arms out.
| |
Over exposure: I really like that detail on Michal’s balcony with those odd
Technic wing pieces.
|
Yeah, I’ve been wanting to work those oddly-shaped pieces into a MOC somehow,
and somewhere around the third iteration of building Michal’s balcony I tried
them out and it was a nice match.
| |
The switching the perspective on the two halves of
verse 16 is really nice. The shot from above seems like it would have been a
difficult photoshoot to get right (or is it photoshop trickery?).
|
It ended up being a composite of two separate photos taken from the same angle,
one with the focus on David and the other with the focus on Michal. I was going
to go with one photo or the other, but the out-of-focus person in each was just
too darn blurry.
| |
I’m not a huge fan of the tent, but oh well.
|
Oh, well. :)
| |
That detail with the repeated hinge
bricks in Michal’s room is outstanding.
|
Thanks. I got inspired to play around with different pieces to find hidden
patterns after seeing this vignette on Brothers Brick by one of my
favorite builders, Michael Jasper.
| |
The last scene of David leaving with
the slave girls is funny. I think he’s losing his loincloth there, btw.
|
Well, considering the amount of women he’s been impregnating, it’s obvious the
man has a problem keeping his loincloth on.
-Brendan
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.build.ancient, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
| |
In lugnet.build.ancient, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
|
| |
Hi, Bruce. Your absence really made me appreciate how fortunate I’ve been to
have someone so consistently providing detailed and thoughtful comments and
questions on each update to The Brick Testament. If you find time to go back
and comment on the last few updates, great, but please don’t feel obligated.
It’s just great to have you back.
|
Nice to be appreciated. I’ve started in on my missing commentary.
| |
I kind of imagined them carrying
down from Israel to Judah the king-making kit, including the wooden steps and
King Saul’s royal robes. David wears the robes ceremonially in this scene to
show that he is now the king over all that was once Saul’s. But in the next
story he’s got his own royal military garb and his own
lounging-about-the-palace outfit once his palace is built.
|
I was wondering about the green robe. Very well thought-out. Of course, David
somehow got several inches taller for the coronation. :)
| |
| |
If so,
the elders from “all the tribes” shouldn’t have matching white arms.
|
|
-explanation-
I should have known that this was well planned and not a mistake. Seems like a
very sensible plan.
| |
I’d be curious to hear how you interpret this story, specifically what David
says about hating the blind and lame, and the explanation of the common
saying. But that best be taken to off.topic.
|
I really do think it was an insult referring to the Jebusites going back to
their taunt. It doesn’t make sense to me otherwise.
This whole
| |
built-on-a-diagonal thing started because I was trying to solve the perennial
problem of trying to make a
good
pointed arch doorway out of LEGO. I’ve seen it pulled off nicely on a
larger scale on some cathedral MOCs, but I have never figured out how to make
a decent one on a smaller scale. For this gate, I tried a new strategy (to
me at least) or using two half-arch pieces at a 90 degree angle to create something like a pointed
arch. If anyone has suggestions on a better way to achieve this feat, or
links to a MOC where it’s been done well, please do tell!
|
Well, I’ve seen someone make gothic arches by cutting arch bricks and putting
them together, but that offends my personal building ethic. You can do use two
1x2x3 inverse slopes, two 1x2 inverse slopes, ad two 1x3 inverse slopes, which
will give you a shape 8 wide at the base with a point at the top, but it’s not
quite the right shape (I did this
here, the top half of
the right hand doorway, when I was trying to come up with some shapes for Arabic
architecture).
| |
Just as a nitpick to your comments though, the names given in this story are
the names of the sons born to David.
|
D’oh!
| |
Thanks. I was happy with that shot. I have to admit, I’m getting a little
worried about my continued ability to give these endless stories of wars and
massacres some personality in my depictions without simply repeating the same
old tricks.
|
Perhaps I should be worried for myself that I continue to appreciate LEGO
violence.
| |
The
idea is to get people to see just what an unbelievable amount of the most
brutal sorts of violence makes up the bulk of the Old Testament.
|
I’d disagree with this characterization, but would rather focus on the brick
than argue this here.
| |
Heh, I still agree with you, but still don’t have a more reliable solution.
Later in
this scene I used my other trick where a rubber band laces through the arm
holes and holds two normal minifig arms out to the sides. But for that you
need both arms out.
|
You did have a nice optical illusion once where you hid a second figure behind
the first and you showed the arm of the second figure. I do wish that the ball
joint on a fig arm was a standard size (e.g. bar diameter) so that arms could be
more easily incorporated as build elements.
I love that scene of Michael’s. Such a clever use of the Two-Face torso.
Bruce
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
|
Hey Brendan,
I’ve been meaning to go back and comment on the David/Saul stories before doing
this, but am afraid I’ll just get further and further behind. I do intend to go
back and do those, but for now:
King me: Not a lot to comment on here. I notice here, and in the following
stories, you use a horse barding as a curtain edge. That’s a really clever
idea. I think this one
would be a really nice curtain. The steps for the guy crowning David is a funny
detail. One minor quibble, didn’t you change up the arm colors in previous
stories to denote the different tribes? If so, the elders from “all the tribes”
shouldn’t have matching white arms.
Blind and lame: Quibble with the name here. It seems obvious from the context
that the “blind and lame” is a sarcastic reference to the taunt of the
Jebusites, but your title makes it sound like you’re reading it straight. The
townscaping with the quarter scale white buildings is nice. I’m not a huge fan
of the tan city wall. I appreciate that you’re giving it an interesting texture
with those large panel pieces, but there’s something odd about the mixing of the
panels with the normal bricks and the 1x1x5 bricks. Maybe (and this is being a
really small quibble here) it would look better if the central two columns of
bricks
in this picture had the 1x1x1 on top of the 1x1x5, rather than the other way
around, so that the “brick” portions were matching. Brilliant use of the map
tile, and by far my favorite picture is Joab and the soldiers wading through the
tunnel. Nice face on Joab and torch solution in that pic, btw. Good action
shot on the army bursting out of the well (what are the pieces of that well,
btw, some wheel hub?). The gate built on an angle is really nice, and in the
last pic there is another good use of a horse barding.
David’s wives and kids: Not much to comment here except that great wide shot of
the throne room in the first pic. Putting the throne in the corner there is
really nice, and the overall color scheme of the room is striking. I
particularly like the alternating rust round posts and tan lion heads, and
patterned elements work together really well here. On the rest, it is nice that
you altered up the poses a little. Nepheg has some touching interaction with
David. Freaky makeup on Eliphelet.
War: As always, good action shots (especially
here). Idols before and after burning is nice. Good use of perspective
in this scene. Finally, the joke at the end is funny, and the Japanese setting
is a really nice MOC in its own right.
Don’t touch the ark: As always, great Ark design, and also the oxen. The wagon
seems a little flimsy, but I guess that’s why the Ark almost fell off. I’m not
a fan of the brick-built instruments, but that’s always a problem.
Photoshopping God onto the Ark is a funny detail. As before, I’m not 100% on
the flex tubing as arms solution. The skinny arm seems a little cartoony (I
know, odd complaint for a LEGO story).
Over exposure: I really like that detail on Michal’s balcony with those odd
Technic wing pieces. The switching the perspective on the two halves of verse
16 is really nice. The shot from above seems like it would have been a
difficult photoshoot to get right (or is it photoshop trickery?). I’m not a
huge fan of the tent, but oh well. That detail with the repeated hinge bricks
in Michal’s room is outstanding. The last scene of David leaving with the slave
girls is funny. I think he’s losing his loincloth there, btw.
Bruce
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Now, Bruce, you can’t go making up for lost time just by double-posting. :)
-Brendan
| | | | | | |
