Sheep and pillars

The pillars are finished, along with the sheep which will be placed around the temple when it is finished.I tried a photomerge (when you take multiple pictures and splice them together) in photoshop, but my super-steady ;-) hand wasn't steady enough, and the lighting was inconsistent, resulting in the amateur and rather poorly done picture you see before you.Great news the high priest has returned for more scale comparison shots! (crowd cheers) This is just a normal picture of the two completed pillars with their capitals. Check another off the list, literally I have a really loooooong list of all the pieces I need to order. Fortunately the list can only get shorter.
This is my sheep which I adapted from some other persons pig. Yes the sheep design evolved from a pig. I think he looks rather cute, with the hands as ears, and reminds me of that veggie tales episode where the sheep kept tipping over (the feet aren't very stable).
All five of them lined up with our champion scale comparison man! I had to set this up several times because the sheep kept performing the domino effect, again bringing that veggie tales episode to mind. :-) I have five orders coming in and that will probably be it until we move in the next week or two.

Thanks for taking the ,X, number of minutes that it took you to read this out of your day (and life), I hope you found it worthwhile. :-)

Could be down hill from here!!!

I was thinking today and devised a method to save a one to two hundred dollars!! I am currently figuring out how much money will be necessary to finish it, yes FINISH!!!

My method of saving money could be considered cheating, but when I'm saving over a hundred dollars I am willing to let that slide. Certain pieces had to be white due to their sides being shown, but I figured I could buy gray pieces instead (which are much cheaper and in greater quantity) and spray paint the edges white (and all the lego purists following or knowing of this blog's existence faint from horror). This could save at LEAST a hundred dollars, allowing me to finish this much faster.

Very exciting, for me at least!!

Some things are finishing up

First of all I want to apologize to my super extensive (yeah right) fanbase, that I have neglected over the last two and half months.

That out of the way, the list of finished things now includes: the cows, tables, lampstands, cherubim, Ark of the Covenant, Incense altar, and 3 to 4 priests. Fortunately the list of almost finished parts now includes: pillars, basins, altar, gates, and sea. Enough yakkin bring on the pics!Muuwwwhahahaha cringe in fear before my army of cows!!!

A less intimidating shot of the twelve completed cows which will support the sea

The two cherubim and the high priest providing scale

The "feathers" on the wings are, in actuality, minifig hands.

The finished ark of the covenant. The design of the cherubim on top actually came during my morning devotional. I literally sprang out of bed and ran to build and revise the design before I forgot. So this part is rather special to me.
The altar now features a finished ramp!! Again the high priest minifig was able to spare me some of his precious time to model as a scale comparison.
These are the ten wash basins that will go around the building when finished (hopefully that's sooner rather than way later). Again I thank the high priest for his wonderful size comparison modeling.
This is of the Holy of Hollies, and has the cherubim set up on either side of the ark (kinda hard to see, but trust me it's there).
The sea, used by the priest for washing, is very close to completion, and is the first spherical thing I have built.

Here you can see more of the round structure.the high priest was busy when this shot was taken so I grabbed this guy to fill in.(the cows were at a less finished stage, explaining the mysterious absence of a head). The two rows of round things near the top are pommegranites which encircled the, sea.
The current overall shot of the interior, displaying the lampstands, tables, and wall details... it's a lot of yellow.

The last shot, the high priest has reprised his role of size comparison guy, and you get the view from a minifigure's perspective. You can see the incense altar, tables, lampstands, and you can dimly see the cherubim in the holy of hollies.

We have bought a house in Beaverdam, and we close, God willing of course, on the seventeenth(very exciting).
I originally wanted to finish this when we would be reading through the temple construction (1 kings 6), and I estimate I have a little over a month, with 26 different piece types (not individual pieces, but different kinds of pieces) left, and many of those orders with several hundred pieces. So we shall see what will happen in regard to my self appointed deadline, but as long as I finish it before I'm much older I'll be happy.

Well I congratulate you on reading this far, and glad you find reading my attempts at humor and viewing my amateur photography worth your while. Thanks for reading.

Thomas

Not much new...

Couple orders have come in, the results of which, are unimpressive enough to not merit any pictures. Instead I shall describe how the 11 remaining lamp stands require 1 piece each before they are finished (YAY) the TOP, flowery part, of 1 pillar is finished. While I've been doing this time consuming, and visually unrewarding work I have made another stop motion video, this one spanning several months of on/off work mostly on weekends, and a picture I completely photoshopped (except for the people which were hand drawn and then scanned in, and colored).

The clouds, bricks, grass are photoshopped, thanks to some tutorials, and do-most-of-the-work-for-you buttons. ;-)
Heres the video, it's starwars, but I hope every one can appreciate it. I hope it's not too big. :-/

It isn't finished, and currently I don't plan on finishing it, but moving on to other better(hopefully), and brighter(hopefully) projects.

Pieces, boxes, and dogs oh my!

Well this friday (8/22/08) I received 1300+ pieces in a box weighing 6 lbs. Earlier that week I got the last of the baseplates so my foundation is set. Now the walls have begun to go up!
This is the current overall/all-encompassing shot. You can dimly see the white outside wall on the far side, and you can more easily see the yellow interior walls have been set up.
You can see the inside of the holy of hollies with the partially finished gates.
No construction pics for this, but the interior walls have been started and put in place.
Here is a shot from a lego guys perspective.
This is what 1300+ pieces looks like. :-D
And this is the box the box that held the 6 lbs of legos undergoing inspection. ;-)

The difference in time between this picture...and this picture is about 3 minutes.
The two layers finished. These will be the outside walls of the storage areas.
Here you can barely see the walls stacked up to close to their full height.
One last shot of the dismal situation of the half-finished cherubim in the holy of hollies.

Build it up brick by brick (literally)

Well it is about time I give an update with...updates in it. So here goes
My lego corner has been moved in transformed into the lego wall(ooooooooh)! Now the temple is in the corner (seen above) and stuck to the plywood with velcro, and I can actually stretch out while building, for the first time in many many years! :-D I was overjoyed at the accessibility of all the containers.

This is the vestibule, and the gate area. The white line of bricks is the perimeter and is about 1.5 inches tall at its highest point. YAY!!! You can see the stairs leading to the next floor at the top of this shot along with the wash basins, which surround the temple, along with the far from completed ramp to the altar. ;-)
Poor lighting, but I thought it was cool to see all ten nearly-but-not-quite-finished basins in a row. Also you can see the 1.5 inch tall corner for the holy of hollies next to the first basin(the yellow walls). The yellow(gold) walls have also started to go up, and I have laid down the entire perimeter. YAY! another minor achievement.A closer shot at the basins.
We just repainted the room so you may be the first to see the new paint that is behind the growth-spirt-lacking walls. Don't you just love it, I mean look at it.. it's so neutral!
This I believe is about the highest point, yep really impressive huh. Again gotta love the neutrality of that paint!
Here are shots of the unfinished capitals, which will look exactly like this, but in yellow. The tan pieces are actually robot arms and bodies, that are the flower petals.The ongoing process of funding continues slowly, and monotonously (wow can't believe I spelled that). I think most the small orders have been made, so now it's just the big expensive ones (whimper).

Well I think that's all for now, my goal is to have this finished by the time we go through 1 kings 6, so hopefully I'll make it.

Thomas

No new stuff on the temple, but theres a movie. :-)

Nothing new on the temple, just trying to fund this behemoth is gonna take a loooooooooooooong time :-( , but below is a lego stop motion I made, which is completely unrelated to the temple, other than I made it, and involves legos (naturally). It took about a week to animate and photoshop all the effects, and all for a 1 min long video!! >:-(
Something kinda interesting is that the chicken leg falling from sky was all photoshoped, I actually animated that, but it came out poorly so instead, I just photoshoped the entire scene. Also in the scene where the guy is reading, the book is photoshoped to look like a "for dummies" book, but I really animated that with the guy holding a plane brown book.
The power of Photohsop!

Hopefully I will have something interesting relating to the temple soon.

Some finished pieces

This time instead of all unfinished works in progress, I present, Three FINISHED PIECES.


The Finished Incense altar.



















The Lampstand








The Collection of all the finished things.





The Altar, sort of, now with fire effect


















The pillars in progress, thankfully the colorful inside will be hidden.










The gate with cherubim decorations







This is what 1,200 some pieces looks like when it arrives at your door.














The Floor with about 800 2x2 smooth tile pieces for the floor, giving it that smooth shiny look. You can see the Incese altar, where the lampstands will be(the round discs), the tables(the gaps in the floor), the ark(the box thing behind the incense altar), and the cherubim(the two blocks beside the ark, behind the incense altar :-D )





And finally the building area. The floor has now been moved to a piece of plywood, and the grey is the perimeter of the main building.

The built prototypes.

These are the prototype designs, complete with their multi-colored glory.

The offering table, will be all yellow, and there will be ten of them.

This was the original sheep design, but was rejected in favor of the one below. I did keep the head. I liked the use of the hands for ears.

The sheep, which will, naturally, be white or black(doesn't count as blemished), without the blue pieces.

Here is the High priest, a "regular" priest. I made the decals using photoshop, and applied them to the turban(a lego cook hat), body, and legs. The shoulders pieces are lego with gem stones glued on.



This was a prototype for the capitals on the pillars, and has since been replaced with a, I think, better design.

This is one of the oxen/cow, which will support the sea. In the finished build everything will be yellow.


The Cherubim, which will sit in the HOly of Hollies. You can see the hands on the wings in this picture, along with the size.

Lastly, two pictures of a designed ark. This is the final design, but in the wrong colors.