Congratulations to the winners and non-winners alike - there were a huge number of very good MOCs in the contest.
My personal favourite was DNL's Siege of
Hrothingas Castle - there were loads of great techniques in there, and the overall effect was spectacular. Good job, mate
Jens' entry was also a lovely piece of work - the mumakil are superb, although I'd have liked to see the tusks filled in somehow.
Something that I've missed in some recent FC and CC contests is a feedback thread, even though I have mentioned/requested it. It can be very disheartening to (repeatedly) lose without knowing how to improve, even when you ask.
Would it be possible to get feedback on our entries for this contest? Josh's comments last time were very helpful.
I put a lot of effort, time and bricks and a reasonable amount of money (my collection really isn't very big) into my entry, and would value any constructive criticism I can have.
kris kelvin wrote:
SlyOwl`s entry was for me an epic MOC, epic battle and epic win.
Thanks Kris
I believe you have a death threat to carry out, though... j/k
jens wrote:
You put it out, it is Josh's contest, so he choose the winner. You prefered
SlyOwl's entry. It was well-built, a lot of Figs and action and comparatively big sized. Maybe that was the "mistake". If you have a big baseplate you have to fill it. A bag full of Orcs is the one, but Figplacement and compensation of action at the whole area is the other
.
I'm not sure I understand that last sentence, but I guess you're saying that the action is not condensed enough. There's a couple of reasons for that:
-Not enough people - I used up every Crownie, dwarf and troll (converted to minotaurs) I possess in there, as well as decalled psuedo-Crownies and generic castle/pirate torsos. I had aimed to build on a smaller footprint, but all the features I wanted to do just wouldn't fit in.
-The actual battle is very spread out in the film, over a huge area, and is more running around than static hand-to-hand fighting. Battles didn't use up all the space available - a MOC with a figure for every 4x4 area of studs may end up looking too set-out/heavily designed, rather than reflecting the true chaotic nature.
-Recently I've been reading a lot of historically-accurate novels and watching historically-accurate documentaries (anyone catch 1066: Battle for Middle Earth on BBC1 a few months back? Epic...) They've changed my view of how battles actually happened from the Kingdom of Heaven/LOTR style charging and clashing of thousands of troops to a more realistic view of skirmishes, small 20-man formations and static shield walls, which I tried to incorporate into my MOC, even if it wasn't like that in the film.
In retrospect, I may have been better off building a couple of 32x32 dioramas instead...