VonBrunk

"The time has come to test thy courage. I have been cursed. I need you to break the curse with your wisdom and courage. Dost thou have courage enough to undertake this task?"

One last shot taken of my Deku Tree LEGO MOC before dismantling it -- since I'm moving out of my apartment soon!

This image was actually a composite of three photos I shot:

The first image was the tree itself shot with a wide angle lens and a low aperture, to keep the foliage and sky out of focus. Next I added a shot I took of the sun in the sky above Whitestone, NY to create the lens flare effect on the left side. Finally I used another shot of the sky from the same outdoor photo shoot, and then masked it around the tree with blending options in Photoshop, which makes the sky and clouds look more realistic.

A Mortal Kombat fatality vignette featuring my Scorpion bigfig and an unfortunate unnamed skeleton.

This entire set was a practical effect, and used no CGI nor composite images, with the only exception being the color remastering in Lightroom. To get this scene, I placed both figures on the table, and anchored their feet with sticky tack. Behind the set is a dark red cloth with a flashing fire party bulb pointed directly at it; this is the same party bulb I used for my Halloween head sculpture images. Pointing towards Scorpions flames is a small blacklight, which causes the neon orange LEGO pieces to glow. The shot is taken with slow exposure, and quickly during the exposure time I'd shine a red light at Scorpion to give him red highlights.

This shot took about two hours to setup and take, and the big issue was the stability with the skeleton. The skeleton's body was too flimsy and kept toppling over in takes, which would cause a domino effect that knocked over the flames.

"No one slays like Gaston, no one flays like Gaston! After hunting some beast, no one preys like Gaston!"

A little vignette featuring everyone's favorite misunderstood French hunter Gaston. A while back I came up with the concept of using Gaston in a variety of humorous scenarios, proclaiming that "no one [past tense verb] like Gaston!" -- one of which being a scenario where he succeeds in killing the Beast.

The interior of this shot is actually the set for the White Rabbit's house in my forthcoming stop-motion Alice in Wonderland video, using the fireplace from the scenes I filmed for the inside of the Duchess' house. To get the fireplace to glow (along with Lumiere's candles), in Photoshop I superimposed parts of pictures of LEGO LED candles I built in 2016, then used various blending options with layer masks.

The most difficult challenge was making the Beast head mounted on the plaque: the various sections of the plaque are held onto the chimney with small dabs of sticky tack. I keep sticky tack close by to the photography table, as I use little pieces of the stuff to aid my characters and props in stop-motion animation.