Here is the third and last making of video for this picture ->
www.flickr.com/photos/shobrick/45683029382

The video is showing 4 main stages :
- The building of the set pieces, the buildings and the neon billboards.
- The costumization and the posing of the minifigs.
- The lighting process (how I built the light).
- The compliation of all the pictures, that shows the research for the best composition, lighting and live effects. And the final result image.

The main idea is to get everything in camera on the set and not to create anything in post-production as it will look less "organic". Just like in movies, you try to get as much as live effects as you can !

I hope you enjoyed the behind the scenes video, please don't hesitate if you have any questions on the creating process and don't hesitate to leave a comment if you think that's awesome ! ;-)

Tags:   lego minifig mecha moc cole blaq shobrick lego tokyo japan science fiction sci-fi future modern warfare robot ai ww3 markIII canon macro toys diorama making of building lighting creating process soldier neo tokyo us army spec op special operators survival video game kojima metal gear solid ghost in the shell

© All Rights Reserved

Here is the second making of video for this picture ->
www.flickr.com/photos/shobrick/44550166495

The video is showing 4 main stages :
- The building of the set pieces, the buildings and the neon billboards.
- The costumization and the posing of the minifigs.
- The lighting process (how I built the light).
- The compliation of all the pictures, that shows the research for the best composition, lighting and live effects. And the final result image.

The main idea is to get everything in camera on the set and not to create anything in post-production as it will look less organic. Just like in movies, you try to get as much as live effects as you can.

I hope you enjoyed the behind the scenes video, please don't hesitate if you have any questions on the creating process and don't hesitate to leave a comment if you think that's awesome ! ;-)

Tags:   shobrick cole blaq tiny tactical lego minifig moc cyberpunk amking of 5D mark3 canon science fiction mecha kojima metal gear solid ghost in the shell anime future modern warfare soldier us army navy seals survival action macro diorama toys photography

© All Rights Reserved

And here is the first making of video showing the creating process for the first picture of the LEGO TOKYO series -> www.flickr.com/photos/shobrick/44458304394

The video is showing 4 main stages :
- The building of the set pieces, the buildings and the neon billboards.
- The costumization and the posing of the minifigs.
- The lighting process (how I built the light).
- The compliation of all the pictures, that shows the research for the best composition, lighting and live effects. And the final result image.

The main idea is to get everything in camera on the set and not to create anything in post-production as it will look less organic. Just like in movies, you try to get as much as live effects as you can.

I hope you enjoyed the behind the scenes video, please don't hesitate if you have any questions on the creating process and don't hesitate to leave a comment if you think that's awesome ! ;-)

Tags:   shobrick cole blaq neo tokyo lego tokyo japan diorama minifig making of bts behind the scenes cinematography modern warfare sci-fi science fiction us army military M4 tiny tactical citizen brick 5d canon canon 5D mark III 5D3 macro reflections lighting rain fog live effects building construction

© All Rights Reserved

25 January 2038, 6:45 a.m.

As the sun is rising on Neo Tokyo's no man's land, Preacher who is the only survivor of his squad, is running for his life. The killing machine, which slaughtered his brothers in arms, is relentlessly chasing him through the wreckage.
Preacher is running for ages through the ruins, zizaging, getting in narrow spaces to buy some time. But the mecha is so agile that he can not lose it.
Preacher is exhausted, he perfectly knows his body is on the point of droping him. He is reaching the edge of the highway that has been cutted in half by airstikes. The mecha is getting closer, he can almost feel its mechanical breath on his back. Preacher would rather risk everything than to get grabbed and crushed by the machine's claws.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, he jumps off the bridge as the mecha is trying to reach him out with its arm.

Here is the last picture of the Lego Tokyo series and my last lego picture !
It is the largest diorama I've ever putted in stage, using almost all the buildings built for the series. It is a bit frustrating to see that we finaly only see the top of the building on the right behind the highway, which is a full half destroyed building. We only see a fraction of it haha, but composition goes first.

The lighting and the posing was the most challenging things on this frame. First to make clear that the minifig is jumping on purpose from the bridge instead of just falling was really tricky. I had to make several long shots to find the right way to do it.

As for the lighting the idea was to get a sun rising and orange and reddish look to get a Blade Runner vibe. It mixes continious light and flash. The background is a matte painting that I had to continiously repaint because there was too much red, there still is too much to my taste.

Next, I will uploaded 3 making of video for the main 3 pictures of the Lego Tokyo series. You will have a really complete behind the scene insides from all the steps from bulding the set, to the shooting.

Please comment and share this picture ! ;-)

Tags:   shobrick cole blacq hideo kojima metal gear solid ghost shell science fiction sci-fi future mecha war japan tokyo modern warfare soldier us navy seal canon markIII 5d macro diorama lego minifig lighting cinematography

© All Rights Reserved

25 January 2038, 5:30 a.m.

The navy seals recon team is trying to escape. Preacher is draging his wounded brother in arms, Stump, who is opening fire on the mecha. The M4 bullets are useless against it. Rabbit has already been taken down by the fighting bot.
As the threat is very low, メカ is having fun, which means that it disabled its machine guns and taking its time to erase the threat. Basically it’s doing like a cat with a mouse or a spider with a fly caught in its net.
As unpleasant as it seems it could mean a way to survive for Preacher. Stump’s body has been internally broken by a simple punch from the mecha. He won't live long but Preacher is not letting him behind.

メカ is a fully autonomous 6-legged walker tank, equiped with a huge fully rotating anti heavy armored laser gun, 8 grenade launchers, 2 machine guns on the front legs for close range combat. This is a very agile beast designed to fight on both horizontal and vertical zones. It is moving at an incredible speed, every leg of its body is made to kill, to the point where it is trying to avoid as much as possible to open fire.

This incredible mecha has been built by Cole Blaq, a very talented MOCer. I have contacted him with this project in mind and have sent him some inspirotional pictures to achieve something between Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid bestiary and Masamune Shirow's famous Ghost in the shell mecha.

I invite you to discover the building process detailed in Cole Blaq's last article -> cole-blaq.com/shobrick-meets-cole-blaq-neo-tokyo

Make sure to watch his fabulous work on Flickr and Instagram :
www.flickr.com/photos/coleblaq
www.instagram.com/cole_blaq

You probably noticed that the soldiers are made with Tiny Tactical's awesome gear. Make sure to have a look at their website : www.tinytactical.com
Preacher's tattooed arms are from citizen brick : citizenbrick.com/

Oh my god this picture was an everyday challenge to make it right. It has so many things in the same frame, from background to middle and foreground. The fire shot lighting was the trickiest part. I have taken separately the foreground with the two soldiers of the rest, because you know that kind of depth of field is impossible to achieve in one shot, and the fire effect was tricky enough to make the decision to seperate this two things.
So the idea was to get the lighting from the fire on the mecha. At first I tried with bengal lights but the sparkles keep getting everywhere in front of the mecha, so I simply switch to a small ikea lamp. You can notice the shadow of the mecha hand on its left front leg is pretty neat.
Then came the gun firing effect challenge, I wanted it to get it live as all my effects. I sliced of tiny pieces a bengal lights, put the powder on the top of an iron wire and light it. As you can imagine I had to light it so many times. And then on photoshop I mixed two blows to make the final effect. The bullets impacts are made with projections of bengal lights.

The shooting last at list 3 days, as I was not satisfied with the posing, lighting, effects, I kept getting back to the studio until it came up good.

Please let me know what you think of it in the comments !

Tags:   lego minifig mecha brick moc diorama japan tokyo ww3 military war no man's land war zone fighting M4 assault rifle firing shobrick cole blacq macro tiny tactical citizen brick geek afol cinema cinematography 5D canon mark3 science fiction sci-fi cyberpunk spider mechanical robot AI artificial intelligence ghost in the shell metal gear solid kojima hideo masamune shirow

© All Rights Reserved