Emil Lidé
Rice Terraces
Terraced rice paddy fields are quite a spectacular marvel, both in their beauty and their ingeniousness.
A while ago I stumbled upon some mind-blowing photos of these, and I really wanted to see if I could do them justice in LEGO. I had quite a bit of lime wedge plates lying around, so that became the basis for the build, augmented with tiles and jumper plates.
I wanted to make thin paddies to get the very layered feel to the build. This naturally meant that the terrain had to be quite steep, or the paddies would be wider. I also wanted to intersperse the paddies with some overgrown jungle, to get a nice contrast and some variation. A river at the bottom also made sense since the water had to end up somewhere.
The terracing was certainly the most complicated thing going on here. The goal was to get smooth angles with showing as few studs as possible. Smooth angles pretty much means you need to use wedge plates, which also means you have very little area to work with before the studs become visible.
The building process was quite frustrating as building up layer by layer doesn't really work as you have to make sure that the top layers will combine well, or you may have to tear everything up. This meant the paddies were actually built from left to right rather than from the bottom to the top. There was still quite a bit modifications needed and I sometimes had to pull whole sections out to fix a small detail, and then try to put it back together again. Not the most fun ;)
I generally find lime green a bit hard to work with, as it is easy for it to overpower other greens because of its brightness. It was definitely the right colour choice here though, so had to try to make it work. In the end I think the colours work together because they represent different things, while trying to make them blend might have been harder. Here it is quite clear that the lime is paddies and the other greens are jungle and other random vegetation.
The most enjoyable part for me was (as it usually is) the forest/jungle. Making it work on very steep mountainsides was a bit of a challenge, but I had a lot of fun trying out both new elements and new techniques to get a varied, but still natural looking jungle.
I am quite happy with the end result of this build, though I feel it generally looks better close up rather than in overview photos of the whole build. Probably because close ups are more immersive. Will have to take some more of those later :)
As to whether I have made the rice terraces justice, I would have to say no. Though I do feel the build turned out quite well, the beauty of the real thing is just too high of a benchmark to reach. Just go ahead and google 'rice terraces' and you'll see what I mean :)
Rice Terraces
Terraced rice paddy fields are quite a spectacular marvel, both in their beauty and their ingeniousness.
A while ago I stumbled upon some mind-blowing photos of these, and I really wanted to see if I could do them justice in LEGO. I had quite a bit of lime wedge plates lying around, so that became the basis for the build, augmented with tiles and jumper plates.
I wanted to make thin paddies to get the very layered feel to the build. This naturally meant that the terrain had to be quite steep, or the paddies would be wider. I also wanted to intersperse the paddies with some overgrown jungle, to get a nice contrast and some variation. A river at the bottom also made sense since the water had to end up somewhere.
The terracing was certainly the most complicated thing going on here. The goal was to get smooth angles with showing as few studs as possible. Smooth angles pretty much means you need to use wedge plates, which also means you have very little area to work with before the studs become visible.
The building process was quite frustrating as building up layer by layer doesn't really work as you have to make sure that the top layers will combine well, or you may have to tear everything up. This meant the paddies were actually built from left to right rather than from the bottom to the top. There was still quite a bit modifications needed and I sometimes had to pull whole sections out to fix a small detail, and then try to put it back together again. Not the most fun ;)
I generally find lime green a bit hard to work with, as it is easy for it to overpower other greens because of its brightness. It was definitely the right colour choice here though, so had to try to make it work. In the end I think the colours work together because they represent different things, while trying to make them blend might have been harder. Here it is quite clear that the lime is paddies and the other greens are jungle and other random vegetation.
The most enjoyable part for me was (as it usually is) the forest/jungle. Making it work on very steep mountainsides was a bit of a challenge, but I had a lot of fun trying out both new elements and new techniques to get a varied, but still natural looking jungle.
I am quite happy with the end result of this build, though I feel it generally looks better close up rather than in overview photos of the whole build. Probably because close ups are more immersive. Will have to take some more of those later :)
As to whether I have made the rice terraces justice, I would have to say no. Though I do feel the build turned out quite well, the beauty of the real thing is just too high of a benchmark to reach. Just go ahead and google 'rice terraces' and you'll see what I mean :)