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Subject: 
Re: The Brick Testament: Tumors and Death
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.build.ancient
Date: 
Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:25:05 GMT
Viewed: 
11336 times
  
In lugnet.build.ancient, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
   I can’t believe I somehow let this slip by without commenting. I would claim that I was busy, but in the interim I commented on Barbara Werth’s Rembrandt MOC, so that excuse won’t fly.

I was honestly starting to think this would be the first update you’d miss! My thanks as ever for taking the time to comment, Bruce.

   God tortures the Philistines: Great temple of Dagon, and the use of the mer-person as the idol is a good choice,

It might be a good choice. There seems to be some serious uncertainty about how the Philistines pictured their god Dagon. It has become sort of traditional to portray Dagon as a half-man half-fish, but this may be inaccurate, as their is also good evidence to suggest Dagon was a wheat harvest god and not a fish or sea god.

I actually had this other version of Dagon built that was kind of cool, but HUGE by comparison, and though it looked cool from the front, it wasn’t very recognizable as anything when face-down in front of the ark, so in the end I went with the simpler merman design (which had actually been the reason I purchase that merman figure a few months back).

   The tumors are funny, though I do wish there was a solution for this that didn’t involve cheating.

Amen to that.

   I see what you said upthread about the disputed verse about the rats, and I think it might have been okay to put some LEGO rats here and there in the pics, even if you didn’t quote the disputed verse.

You’re probably right. Even with what is in the Bible, it’s clear that the rats were part of the plague. I cut this dialogue from the script for the sake of succinct storytelling, but the Philistine priests and diviners do say “You should make impressions of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the land.”

This tends to be an occasional difficulty with the my methodology of illustrating only direct Bible quotes. It’s entirely clear from context that the rats were part of the plague, but since they are not mentioned in the part of the story that describes the plague actually happening, they got left out.

I remember this being a frustrating problem back when I was illustrating the Ten Plagues in Exodus. My favorite plague has always been the Plague of Frogs, and I was so excited to have all these LEGO frogs to use for it. But the way the Bible tells the story, all the detail of the frog plague is given when God is telling Moses what is going to happen. When the frogs actually show up, little detail is given. One can presume that the frog plague happened exactly as God said it would, but the Bible doesn’t actually spell it out.

In that case I took one of the larger liberties I’ve ever taken with the text, and worked in God’s description of what was going to happen into my telling of what did happen. I wasn’t happy about resorting to that tactic, but I just couldn’t let all those details of the frog plague slip away. Of course, anyone who doesn’t constrain themselves to direct Bible quotes to retell the stories would do the same thing without batting an eye. But they would also take all sorts of other liberties in the retelling that I chose this methodology to avoid.

There’s an interesting new dilemma I faced in illustrating one of the new stories I put up today, but I’ll leave discussion of that until later.

   50070 Israelites killed by God: Nice cattle - I’m sure I’ve commented on their design before.

Thanks. I thought my original cattle were decent, but when I had the idea to rebuild them studs-down so that they have visible eye dents, I thought that gave them loads more character. The neck joint was another improvement thrown in at some point.

   Too bad you couldn’t gold-plate a rat to throw in the box.

Yeah, I couldn’t think of anything to represent that. We’ll just have to assume the golden rats are in the box beneath the golden tumors. Or the rat models are “life size” in minifig scale, so a 1x1 round is really the best anybody could do to represent something so small.

   One thing I dislike is the wheat - it really looks like they’re harvesting bamboo. I’ve seen others use antennae for wheat, as in this by Jojo,

Oh, as I think I said before, I agree 100% that Jojo’s wheat looks much better than mine.

   though getting tons of tan antennae might be painful.

They’re about 6 or 7 cents each on Bricklink, but same as last time, it’s more a matter of failing to plan ahead. Hopefully by the next time I have casue to illustrate a wheat field, I’ll have ordered a shipment of tan antennae.

   Samuel becomes judge: I love all of the idols being dumped into barrels. What is that yellow fish behind the blue fairy?

That’s um... some sort of DUPLO or Scala fishing rod with a fish attached to the line. I liked the fish, so I hid the rod behind the barrels so that only the fish part is showing.

   Also what is the dark gray lumpy element in the very front barrel?

That’s the head of a Star Wars EpII Geonesian figure. The guy on the left is carrying another one over with some matching dark gray battle droid legs attached. :)

   In the burnt sacrifice scene, turning the altar upside down works very well, as does sticking the flames through the grid piece.

Thanks. I was glad to have figure out a way to use the flame pieces in a way so that only the top half is showing. Seeing the bottom part can kind of diminish the fiery look.

   For some reason I’m unhappy with the modified face in this scene - it just looks a little unfinished and Mister Bill-esque.

Yeah, though I guess I was looking for a Mister Bill expression in that shot. I’m just sad that LEGO still has not come out with a fairly generic shocked-looking expression. It’s the original reason I modified a minifig face for The Brick Testament five years ago when I illustrated Adam & Eve realizing they were naked.

There’s the face I used for Eli the priest, but it’s so distinctive I can’t use it too often (though I’ve used it a lot, I know!). Every time new minifig faces are released, I hope and hope, but so far I’m left with my own crappy drawn-on slack-jawed expression. :/

   Nice punchline in the last pic.

Thanks. I don’t remember offhand if the Israelites do indeed get around to truly wiping out the Amorites. I keep confusing the Amorites and Ammonites. I hate when I do that. The Ammonites are seen again in today’s update.

   BTW, I like your use of the black beard and modified hairpiece.

It’s a nice combo. I had to specially cut that hair to accommodate the beard.

   I shelled out the extra cash to bricklink a black beard a while back and have been looking for a distinctive-enough character to use it on.

Heh, yeah, for a while the black beard piece was so rare that I was reluctant to use it too, and for the same reason. What character is so important he gets to use this ultra-rare beard?

But once I broke it in, I feel like there’s really no reason not to use it as often as I’d use the gray or white beards. But just today I finally got my hands on another ultra-rare piece: white standard male hair! Again, this brings me back to the whole reason I first modified any LEGO brick--to make God’s hairpiece out of a white helmet.

So of course the first thing I did was try the standard white hair piece on God, and I have to say it looks very odd to me now. It looks like God combed his hair all neat for a special occasion or something. I don’t think I’ll be switching God’s hair at this point, but there’s a couple of minifig faces with white facial hair that this white standard hair looks great with. Can’t wait to use it! Can’t believe LEGO still hasn’t used it in a commercial set! (Found this one on Bricklink for $6.)

Off to post the new stories...

-Brendan



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: The Brick Testament: Tumors and Death
 
Hey Brendan, I can't believe I somehow let this slip by without commenting. I would claim that I was busy, but in the interim I commented on Barbara Werth's Rembrandt MOC, so that excuse won't fly. Anyway, great work as always: God tortures the (...) (18 years ago, 14-Nov-06, to lugnet.build.ancient, FTX)

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