Lighting a Lego scene - lighting a minifigure

Blog

March 1, 2018

I hate minifigures… sometimes

Sometimes I despise Lego-minifigures! There, I said it! “Why?”, you ask? Well, for two reasons actually, so keep reading to find out.

Many people believe that the problem with Lego-minifigures is their limited movement capabilities and minimal possibilities of conveying emotion. It is true these two issues sometimes pose a problem. However, they don’t NEED to be problematic. It actually forces you, the photographer, to be creative in order to get the most emotion as possible out of your minifigures. I like that.

How to get more emotion into photos of minifigures? There are many options; the one I’d like to discuss now is lighting the subject; in the studio.

Three point lighting principle

You probably know about the three point lighting principle. This principle can function as a basic template for lighting your subject. They created this concept for the theater. Every actor on stage was lit by three lights, one 45 degrees to the left, the other 45 degrees to the right and one behind the actors. The primary reason was that everyone in the audience would see the actors optimally, no matter where their seat was. This principle is still used a lot in many variations.

In many pictures I tried this too; however, it almost never looked very good because I didn’t have the proper lights. Nevertheless, I kept trying and now that use a range of daylight-lamps combined with lights from the company Brickstuff I’m finally getting there.

Lighting your subject this way brings it to life, conveys different emotions, brings depth to your pictures and many other things.

The three point lighting system dictates the use of three lights:

A key-light: the brightest light hitting your minifigure. This is also the light that needs to look like it’s coming from a logical source within or outside of the borers of your frame/ scene.

A fill-light: a softer light that will fill the shadows produced by the key-light.

A back-light: a light at the back of the subject, opposite of the key-light. This will separate your minifigure from the background.

Variations

There are many variations and additions, dependent on what the scene is about. Sometimes more lights are added to light the actors, though some of these are useless for minifigures. An example of a useless light for minifigures is the eye-light (I sometimes add this subtle effect in Photoshop). A kicker (a light that hits the shoulder/ side of the head) should be used with care. A costume-light (self-explanatory) might be helpful for lighting the torso and legs of the minifigure.

Sometimes one or two lights are enough, a dark side of a head introduces a different sentiment in a scene than a head that is lighted frontally, for example.

 

In practice

Some of you saw I was quite happy with this photo. The main reason was that it was the first time I successfully lighted Dwaas exactly as I wanted out of the camera and didn’t need Photoshop to adjust lighting at all. I used three lights, a key on the left frontal 3/4, a back-light straight behind Dwaas and a small kicker on the left of him.

There were two versions, the one published, is the one without the kicker. One reader mentioned in a comment that he found Dwaas was a little too dark. I agree. There should have been more lighting from the front/ side.

Even though the kicker adds a little more lighting from the right, separating Dwaas from the dark, it needed more. Story-wise, I can explain the fact that Dwaas (who LOVES the dark), is mostly in the dark, like the mystery he is to most people around him. Below, you can see the difference with or without the kicker.

With kicker Without kicker

In the comic

lighting comic

Of course, this image is very conceptional. So I am trying to incorporate variations of this principle into the comic. You may notice these principles in, amongst others, panel 4 of season 2 – episode 138. The key-light from the left front is a little lower on Dwaas’ head to express dark thoughts. There is a fill-light frontal above and a back-light from the store-window. There is also a kicker from the right with the same warm light from the store. In each panel I adjusted the lighting a bit.

So, do I really despise Lego-minifigures… sometimes?

I started this article stating that I despise Lego-minifigures sometimes. Can you guess the reasons? Well, the minor one is that there are no shapes, so the shadowing mostly falls flat. The other (really annoying thing) is that minifigures reflect like crazy! That messes with lighting setup and is the main reason for using Photoshop. I avoided reflections in the dark photo of Dwaas, but that was difficult and I still need to refine techniques for that.

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

Brick photography - boy goats medieval

Boy meets goat

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


Dwaas befriended a rat in his house

Lighting a scene; white-balance part 1

Blog

February 22, 2018

Disclaimer: this is an outdated article!

White-balance red

I never considered myself a good (Lego) photographer, there are so many great toy-photographers out there. Yet, I am slowly getting there. This year I will write some blog posts on the things I learned over the past five years I’ve been photographing Lego. This first episode is on white-balance. It is very basic; but at the time it was a real eye-opener to me… showing how little I knew about photography. Makes me wonder how many basic things I am oblivious to.

To me, the hardest part of Lego photography is lighting indoor scenes, composition of a scene coming in as a close second. There are so many factors to consider before you can take the shot. In the beginning, I didn’t look at specific lighting at all. I just arranged that my subject wasn’t too darkly lit, and that was about it. At some point I started paying a littlebit more attention, using the lights I had in and about the house, lightbulbs, leds, iPhones, etc… The photos back then didn’t come out of my camera the way I wanted. So I would turn to Photoshop and correct them as much as I could. However… I couldn’t get them right. I had no clue what I was doing. Shadows everywhere, uneven lighting, reflections… etc.

The problem: white-balance

One thing I found very annoying was the fact I couldn’t get the color temperatures/ white-balance right, At first I thought I could solve that problem by just shooting in raw and post-processing the white balance in Photoshop…. again, it didn’t work. Even two photos that were lighted approximately the same way gave completely different results at exactly the same settings for color temperature in Photoshop.

I considered that a tremendous problem for the comic. In those times I shot each episode the day it went up and for the better part I couldn’t get them consistent (just look at the first comic and you’ll see).

The crucial finding… providing more problems

It took me some time to figure out that not every light had all colors incorporated. For the comic episodes, I used over one type of lamp, all simple home lamps, all with different lightbulbs. For each episode, the scene was lit differently because I moved the lamps and did not distribute their light evenly. I didn’t notice with the naked eye… but, as a result, in post-processing I couldn’t get the temperatures the same.

To solve this, I bought daylight lamps. And that solved most of that problem! At least I lit the scenes the same regarding temperature. So most of the time I shot all photos in those lights (I became afraid of all other types of lights) and then corrected the white-balance in Photoshop, coincidentally introducing more problems. It was a lot of work. I had to remember all kinds of settings and mostly these photos looked artificial even when I longed for a more realistic look.

Solution(s)

Nowadays, I don’t let the lights control me anymore, I control the lights! I still use the daylight lamps, but added smaller lights with different colors and temperatures whenever necessary (I got them at Brickstuff – check them out!). That means more consistency and less post-processing and more time for the shoot itself. Yay!

White-balance mood
Two different moods, in one scene. Is Dwaas inviting the rat from its cold and lonely hideout into his warm and cozy area?

At least now I know how to get the white-balance right. However, there is so much, less basic, stuff to now and learn. I’m working on that and hopefully take you along for the journey.

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

lego photo- alternative world recreation

My world!

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


Computer crash

Disaster...

Blog

August 30, 2017

Computer crashComputer crash

My computer crashed two days ago… not a small crash… but a disastrous one. Repair would cost me almost 1000 euro’s… and of course my laptop is out of warranty since a few months. Needless to say this wasn’t my best week. Luckily I have a complete backup of all data so nothing is lost. Yet, I can’t work on Foolish Lego as long as I don’t have my computer (or the replacement) back, I need the specific software setup on there and I don’t have other Mac in the house.

Before I decide to fix or replace it I have to discuss a few legal issues with Apple… there is a chance the price will go down substantially. This discussion + repair/ replacement will take some time, but I don’t know how long…. I will keep you posted on the progress in the comments. I’m really sorry and Foolish Lego will try and return as soon as possible!

 

Addition (23-09-2017);

I’m finally back! Luckily, Apple was so kind to extent the warranty and replaced the motherboard and casing of my laptop. Almost feels like I have a new computer 🙂

Anyway; I got my computer back on Monday but needed the week to get everything back on track at work (yes, a loss of my computer had quite the impact there too). Today, a new comic episode!

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

Lego old antique store storefront

The antique shop

photoshop lego photography enhancement

Photo enhancement

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


Dwaas is working out

Foolish Lego - origins

Blog

August 17, 2017

Dwaas is working out

Foolish Lego

First off, I’d like to introduce myself; In the real world, my name is Danny. Yet, ever since my first steps on the Internet – somewhere in early nineties – I am Dwaas. I am the keeper of foolishlego.com, the home of my Lego photography and webcomic. ‘Foolish Lego’ and Dwaas are special to me. Both partly born out of the feeling of wanting to escape (or make sense of) reality and for the other part born out of wanting to share stories.

Have you ever felt the desire to do something whilst knowing you just couldn’t do it? I used to feel like that. I had many shards of stories in my mind; images, words of wisdom (or quite the opposite), small scenes, undefined thoughts, etc.

As a kid, I got the ideas out of my head by playing in my own little childhood world. As an adult that world broadened and I couldn’t figure out how to give my ideas form anymore; I’m not a gifted writer, nor can I draw any good. I tried a personal blog (in Dutch), talking about all kinds of things that were on my mind but it just wasn’t it.

Then, in late 2012, I ran into the brilliant site of a guy called “Dan of Action”, one of the Lego photography pioneers. Actually, I think he might have been the first one to do a Lego 365-project (go check it out!) and I instantly loved his brilliant work! At that precise moment, everything came together.

This was it! The perfect way to express myself besides being fun. Furthermore, I finally found a use for my Lego collection and this was the perfect opportunity to do something with my photography. Up until then, my camera was only collecting dust mainly because I had no inspiration for photography. Also, I was convinced I sucked at photography and didn’t make the time to learn. I’ve been told It’s always easier to learn something if you know where you’re going. Now I had found that goal!

I stopped thinking and just started. To put the bar up high and force myself to search for inspiration I decided to do a 365. In the real world, it’s easy for me to simply ‘forget’ to relax, a heavy workload as a medical specialist can do that to you.  So, to give me some extra pressure to keep going and prevent life from getting in my way, the 365 would have to be a public one. January 1st 2013 felt like the perfect starting date and so it began.

The toast

LEGO 001: the very first one. January 1st 2013. I made this one in front of the TV. No clue about lighting, or any other technical possibility of my camera for that matter. No clue about color-correction either. And while you can’t see it because of the color-problems; I used flesh and yellow parts in one photo… even within one minifig (a sin to me these days, I only use yellow).

A 365 turned out to be more challenging than I expected. Overall, shooting one photo per day was okay. Yet, there were the busy days and stress was detrimental to my inspiration. Looking back through my photo’s I instantly recognize the uninspired ones. Other challenges were vacations and business-trips. My minifigs travelled the world with me; Nepal, Turkey, The U.S., etc. By the way, I t was always a fun moment watching the looks on the faces of customs-people at the airports, pulling the bag filled to the brim with minifigs out of my hand luggage.

View from Poonhill - Nepal

Lego 330: NEPAL! (I love the people and that country btw) After climbing 3201 mtrs (!) Dwaas reached the top of Poon hill to watch the sun rise and light up Dhaulagiri (a part of the Anapurna mountain range in the Himalaya and the highest one in this photo). It was so early and absolutely freezing cold… Dwaas kept falling over because of the wind and I had no good place to put him either. The stone is placed on an old, rotten bench. And my wife is standing right outside of the frame trying to hold the wind back.

Despite the challenges I (mostly) absolutely loved doing a 365! So much that at the (first) end I had completed a 730! I learned so much. A lot of technical stuff about photography & cinematography, and about all kinds of communities (a. o. Lego, photography, Lego-comics and toy-photographers). I learned photoshop, which also comes in handy in other areas these days. I also learned Lego-photography relaxed me, dissolved irritations and put some issues in perspective. Besides, it forced me to take time for my hobbies; It’s quite nice to only worry about a photo for a short time each day. I learned about how other people looked at me, always surprising to see people laugh at first, eventually becoming intrigued and quite impressed. I learned to see small, secret worlds within the world we live in. Also, I learned about myself. Each photo shows something of myself and I noticed that if I combine a couple of (recurring) characters on Foolish Lego… well… they are me!

Lastly, I learned about telling a story within a single photo, loving the fact that many of my photos can be interpreted in different ways. Nevertheless, these fragments or sparks of stories within the single photos weren’t enough for me. More on that a next time.

Dwaas

lego steven bookbunny bookworm book reading

Lego 022: 2017 A recent appearance of Steve the Bookbunny (he never understood the concept of the ‘bookworm’ 😉 ) This photo shows part of the progress I made if you compare this one to the photo from his very first appearance (photo 12; 2013).

Cool Chef

Lego 006: 2013 The very first appearance of Cool Chef; one of my frequently featured recurring characters. My wife went out of the kitchen for a second and I swooped in and put the minifigs in her ingredients. That surprised look when she returned and saw me fumbling with Lego… my camera… in her ingredients 🙂

Lost Teddy

Lego 150: 2013 One of the early times where photoshop played a large role. Many possible stories in one photo… To me personally a photo about a boy dreaming he lost his beloved Teddybear… unreachable high…. but even in his dreams he’s not able to think out of the box.

Lego happy new year

Lego 001; January 1st 2016; My favorite photo of Dwaas. He’s throwing out the X-mas tree. It took me half a day to set this one up in the basement and I was very proud of the lighting and atmosphere at the time. The snow I would differently now.

inner peace meditation monk lego fun

Lego 161: 2017 A recent one making me wonder what is going on here and why is the monk looking at his guest like that ? (on a personal note, this photo is the result of the fact that i meditate, and this expresses my feeling of wanting to find the rest of a monastery (for a couple of weeks) learning more about meditation, whilst knowing I’ll probably never go there).

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

brick photography - Wizard in the woods watched by monsters

willies walk

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


Man screaming in fear because a caterpillar is one him

Life of a minifigure

Blog

May 11, 2017

Somedays, the minifigures living in and around my house don’t have the easiest life. Take for example the guy from yesterday’s photo (here). Sadly our yard is infested with these beasts, and not only our yard, but the whole neighbourhood and probably the whole city. These ‘things’ kill all boxwood-bushes they get their sticky little paws on.

Anyway, usually I have it pretty easy. Minifigures are very patient and know how to stand still for extended periods of time (except when it’s windy that is). However, anytime a living being is involved, things change. This little guy had to go through a lot to get you yesterdays photo.

Oh and me too btw (not that I’m complaining) Lying in the front porch, people walking by probably wondering what I’m doing, lying flat on my belly on the ground before my house, the occasional dog sniffing along. Wrestling my new camera because I can’t find the right buttons (in time) yet, my wife complaining that my clothes could go straight into the laundry, the caterpillar moving faster than I hoped for, focus locking wrong and pain in my neck because I needed to look through the viewer (close to the ground) and I couldn’t figure out how to adjust focus in liveview (now I do 🙂 ). Well… it turned out a funny series and me and wife had some chuckles over the poor Lego minifigure.

set of photos showing man with caterpillar on him

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

brick photography - wizard magical cave

The red orb

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


photoshop lego photography enhancement

Photo enhancement

Blog

September 2, 2016

Disclaimer: this is a (severely) outdated article!

Over the past few years, my photography skills have improved a little. As you all know, photography is about light and of course the one thing that is most problematic for me, is the lighting of my photos. I can’t seem to get the right lighting conditions in most of my photos shot with studio lights. So, my favorite source of light is – and always will be – the sun.

Currently, I’m still looking for the perfect lighting setup for in my small basement studio. Not solely for the larger lights but also regarding the smallest of light sources. So if anyone has any ideas/ tips on lights; please share them in the comments.

Because of this, I use Photoshop, to try and correct color, lighting and small imperfections that disturb me. Periodically I use it for special effects too.

For example:
– In sunlight I don’t have to enhance photo’s that much;
The original right out of the camera

The end-result. I only applied a graduated neutral density filter and corrected the necklace a bit.

– This next photo took a bit more work, unnatural light

These are the two originals. I need two because of the ghost-effect. The only part of the first photo that will be used is the background of the ghost (and wire holding the ghost up), everything else will be the second photo.

First I removed some irritating reflections (the couch, tv, Dwaas arm, etc.) and I removed the brown brick in the left upper corner.

The second photo is layered over the first photo and a mask is applied over the ghost, making the ghost transparent showing the first photo underneath (same goes for the wire holding up the ghost; this one is completely masked, showing the first photo underneath). Also I removed the reflection on he forehead of the bear. Another detail is something nobody will really notice I guess but I reconstructed the upper part of the remote and put that underneath the ghost his hand. A detail ‘m very happy with by the way 🙂

Making the photo a bit darker.

I’m still not happy with the light, so I darkened the edges in the hope that the central part looks lighter.

Still not completely happy…. I darkened parts a bit more. Still not happy though. It looks a bit to smooth for my tast. For example; it almost looks like Dwaas’ hand is glowing.

 The final photo; I optimized the contrast and darkened many parts in the photo. I wanted this photo to have a bit of a dark, gritty feel to it. It is Dwaas’ house after all, and he still lives like some kind of gloomy monster.

photoshop lego photography enhancement

So that’s it. Just two examples of my photo-enhancement techniques. I hope it enhances the feeling I want to transmit about the world Dwaas and his ‘friends’ live in.

I like the possibilities of enhancing photo’s without changing essential parts and hopefully in the (near) future) I can use less and less of it by enhancing my lighting-skills.

So, do you enhance (some) of your photos? Why (not)? Some people feel cheated by this kind of enhancement; do you?

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

Lego dispersion photoshop teleport effect

Teleporting Amida

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


Lego comic stage

Stage-design of the Foolish Lego comic

Blog

August 18, 2016

Now that the first episode is done and over with, I recently took down the sets for the first comic. I don’t systematically keep track of how they are built, so all I have are a few photos of the sets taken from a couple of different angles. If I should need one of these sets in the future, I can hopefully recreate them pretty accurately from these photo’s.

I’ve already shown little bits and pieces of these sets, but now that they’re really gone, I’ll share most of them with you. Wistfully, some sets have already been lost, without photos (the cafe-set from one of the early episodes, or the escape-tunnel with entrance and exit for example). A couple of other sets are existing Lego sets, sometimes with a few tweaks (for example, the very first episodes on the street).

Looking back, they are quite small and simple. As I understand from some readers, they imagined them to be (a lot) bigger. That’s nice to hear because -mainly later in the comic, I tried to make the sets a little more extensive than needed so there is a feeling of space outside the panels. It also helps to make different angles of shooting the individual scenes more diverse when necessary. Most of these sets have one or two walls. For most shots that is sufficient, but sometimes I needed a wall on the other side, so I quickly put something together and put it behind the ‘actors’. (an example is the last panel in episode 18 of the first season).

As I am always complaining about time, the set-building was an important issue. Many times I wanted to move on in the comic, but I just didn’t have the time to build these sets I needed for the new scenes. It didn’t help that I didn’t have a complete script either. This kept me from the possibility of building when I had the time and using the set when necessary in a future episode. Thankfully, Eno was a very green planet… Grabbing a green baseplate, and just sticking flowers, trees and plants on there has helped me on a lot of occasions… simple, quick and effective. That explains the many forest-scenes :).

In the new episode, I have no such luck; most, if not all, of the story does not take place in some kind of forest. However, I have a general script this time around and I already built three sets! This weekend I will start on the fourth (important) set, whoho 😀 ! That feels so liberating!

One thing I have noticed is that the set-design has changed for the new season. They are larger and technically more difficult. Complete environments, and a lot of elements that can be removed, returned and changed. This makes it I can shoot from all angles. I did not do this for the first scene though, and I noticed I was missing two walls, so the next scene will be different concerning angles. Also, this time there really IS off camera space with some details no one will probably ever see in the comic. When this episode wraps up, I will post pictures of the sets.

So here they are:

The front of Strabo’s little shop…

Lego comic stageAnd the inside, one of the few (if not the only) set in this batch that uses both sides of the wall.

Lego comic stageStrabo’s shop

Lego comic stageand his library..

Lego comic stageand the basement, I used this one for a single photo once btw…

Lego comic stageAmida’s celldoors

Lego comic stageThe inside AND the outside of Amida’s cell!

Lego comic stageThe portal. The trees and green are all re-used

Lego comic stageThe cave entrance. My favorite set! I loved sculpting these rocks…

Lego comic stageThe backside however…. not so nice 😉

Lego comic stageThe second portal, with lighting under ‘Willy’s eye’

Lego comic stageAn elaborate set, very underused. A complete backstory attached that was never used in the comic. Many different things are going on in this set. Oh and did anyone notice a picture of Dwaas on the wall? 🙂

Lego comic stage

The largest set, but also quite easy. A tweaked existing ‘hobbit-set’, used for the sequence in the past (one of my favorite parts of the comic, but also the part that cost me the most time because of all the photoshopping).

Lego comic stageThe dragonshrine. This one I did not take down, I like this little build too much. Actually the shrine was build for a 365-photo with Willy before I even thought of putting him in the comic if I remember correctly.

Lego comic stageInside the sanctuary…

The hallway inside the dragon-shrine…

That’s it for now. Do you recognize all of them? Are they different than you imagined them to be? And if you’d like to create your own comic, be sure to read the definite guide to create a Lego Brick Comic.

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

Toy photography - Ranger Skunk Forest

… and Putor

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


The workflow of the Foolish Lego comic - Season 1

Blog

April 15, 2016

Many readers asked me what my workflow is on the Foolish Lego comic. This post will bring you a general answer to how I worked on chapter one. These days I have a very different workflow.

The Foolish Lego comic has been a learning school for me. One thing that in hindsight didn’t do me any favors was that I didn’t have a clear script for this comic. I had a general idea of where it is going and of specific plot-aspects, but I didn’t know where the comic was going from episode to episode. The biggest problem with this was that the comic turned out to be pretty unbalanced and sometimes dragged. Besides this, I sometimes started a mystery without knowing where it was going. On the other hand, it gave me some freedom shooting each episode and I notice some jokes came to me the moment I was working on the episode.

Oh, one other problem the absent general script gave me, was that I had little time to build sets… that got me in trouble from time to time so sometimes I stayed in a scene too long because I had to find time to build a new set.

For the next installment of the comic, I will have a script though (more on that in another blog-post). Well, enough on this, now on to the workflow.

The workflow was straightforward.

  • The evening before publication:
  • I wrote the script for one or a few episodes
  • I put together the panels in text, without the images
  • I shot the photos
  • I did a bit of post-production
  • The photos went into the comic
  • Some resizing
  • Upload with a brief text

The writing of the script was (and is) the most time-consuming part. Only the story-arc where Willy and Amida were in Willy’s mind was very heavy on the effects, which took a LOT of time, so I was happy when that arc was over.

The script for one or a few episodesWorkflow chapter 1 comic

I used ‘Scrivener’ to do this. An incredible versatile piece of software which I didn’t use to its full power.

In each episode I tried to achieve a few things. At the very least, it had to be on route towards the end that I had in mind. And I try to give the episode a surprising or interesting end-panel.

Writing the text, I also imagined the scenes going along with it.

Creating the panels in text, without the images

Workflow chapter 1 comicI did this to get an idea of space in the panels. This sometimes changed the way I shot the photos and helped me envision the scenes. I’m terrible at drawing, otherwise I would’ve done this in the scriptwriting-phase. I use the “comic-life 3” software for this by the way.

Shoot the photos

For shooting the photos I used a Pentax K5-IIs combined (mostly) with a 100mm macro-lens. I shot the photos in Raw-format (DNG-files).

Workflow chapter 1 comic

When I first started the comic, I used to shoot these photos all around the house, sometimes even in the backyard in the sunlight. These days I have a small ‘studio’ in the basement. It’s a multifunctional room, really. My daughter played there, my wife worked out, and I shot the comics.

The reason I wanted a studio is to get the circumstances the same in each photo, mostly lighting-wise. Also, it is good to have a place where you can leave your stuff lying around.

A bit of post-production

Workflow chapter 1 comicI use Adobe Photoshop and NIK-software to do this. (sadly google bought the NIK software, and made it free to use recently… an ominous sign that in the near future it won’t be developed anymore, so hopefully I am really wrong on this one). I also checked contrast, sharpness etc.

workflow chapter 1 lego comic

 

When elaborate, this part takes a lot of time. Especially the first time I use a specific effect. The first time I still need to fabricate the effect (I mostly use Photoshop-tutorials on the Internet, in books or magazines for this.).

 

The photo’s go into the comic

This used to be the easiest part. I just dropped them into the panels I prepared in phase two. Sometimes I changed the text a little.

If my wife was around, she got to proof-read the episode, which sometimes led to a change of text and sporadically even to a new photo being shot.

I saved the episode as a comic-life and jpg-file.

workflow chapter 1 lego comic

Some resizing

The original file is too large to go on the internet so I resized it to 1020 x 656 pixels (that used to be 850 x 546pixels). I tried to keep the file-size maximally between 500 and 600kb in order to keep loading times on the site as short as possible.

Upload with a little text

For the final part I uploaded the episode to my website (Wordpress combined with the (free but worth a donation) plugin comic-easel.

I scheduled it for publication!

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

Brick photography - boy goats medieval

Boy meets goat

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


The end

What are you the most proud of?

Blog

February 14, 2016

In the comments on my very first Foolish Lego blogpost Pi3rk asked me one of the more difficult questions… “What are you the most proud of; the comic, the first 365 or the second 365?”

Now, that’s really a difficult question. All these projects have brought me different things. The first 365 I started was purely because I wanted to practice my photography and get my imagination flowing through the use of Lego. It was a challenging year, especially during vacations, taking along my minifigures and trying to get pictures in Nepal or Turkye or Miami… etc… Sometimes it was frustrating because I had no ideas (and the uninspired photo’s are easy to spot.) In the end I was relieved I was done, and happy with the achievement. On the other hand, I couldn’t stop yet because there was still inspiration and though I did see an improvement in my photography skills, it was not enough. So I went on into the next 365. A year later again I was happy to achieved the 720 daily photo’s but this time real life caught up with me. Work was too busy to keep on going in a daily routine. And so it stopped. But I kept learning and I believe the photo’s did get better (overall). And without the daily deadline I noticed a dwindling amount of inspiration (probably also caused by real life stress).The toast

The first one

On the other hand there are the comics. Yes there were a few stories in the 720’s and some characters got a little development but I wanted to do a real story, so I started the comic. 248 episodes later it’s moving towards the end and I learned a lot about storytelling too, so much in fact that I’ not too thrilled about the dragon story. So after this one I’m starting on the next one and hopefully the story itself will be better.

What I like most is that most of the cast are slowly growing personalities.

Now… I was told I have to choose… looking back I choose the first 365, the one that started everything and the one that gave me a new hobby and the opportunity to make new friends.

So there you have it, what are you the most proud off concerning your hobbies?

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.


Happiness

New beginnings

Blog

February 3, 2016

Happiness

Welcome everyone!

New website, new section. A blog. All around me I hear that personal blogs are quickly becoming a thing of the past so naturally I have to try this, now that it’s too late.

What will the blog be about? I don’t know exactly yet. Mostly about art, photography, behind the scenes, Lego, or just random Foolish thoughts. If you have anything you’d like to know about, just let me know.

So…

Once every one or two years I change the site around a little, just to keep it interesting. The last change I wasn’t too happy with to be honest, it was much too dark and the homepage was a little too gloomy. The problem was I tweaked the base-theme too much. In fact I tweaked it so much that it turned out to be impossible to just update the theme without breaking the site. It was even difficult to change the littlest thing… and so the look of Foolish Lego became a thorn in my eye.

This time around I tried to do thing differently, I stayed within the theme and I developed the site offline with the help off a program called: “MAMP”. That worked like a charm! After working on it for a few weeks (every day a little), it’s ready to be uploaded.

I’m only worried about a few things:
– What will you guys think about the changes (not so much a worry, just wondering)?
– Will my database update all the links correctly?- How will the site behave on mobile devices (especially the frontpage-header)?
– How much problems will there be the first few weeks.

If you find any problems, or if you have any suggestions to improve the site, let me know. It should be much easier to change the site without doing a mayor overhaul this time around!

Let me know, what you like and, sometimes even more important, dislike.

Cheers,

Dwaas

OTHER POSTS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU;

Lego photo - bookstore

The Bookstore

You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive occasional updates from Foolish Bricks.