BionicleSaurus Builder Application

[BionicleSaurus]

What is your age?
17-20

In what country are you living?
USA (Washington State)

Where did you first hear about WesterosCraft?
Youtube

What do you like the most about GoT/ASoIaF?
My favorite aspect of the world George has created is just how believable and real it feels. No other novel or television series, fantasy or otherwise, has felt as rich, fleshed out, and gritty as GoT/ASoIaF. I am a fan of many other fictional properties, mainly other fantasy and sci fi books, but I have immersed myself in the world of ice and fire more than any other because it doesn't feel fictional at all, rather more like some real, forgotten period of medieval history (with dragons of course). GoT's first 4 seasons are masterful adaptations of the source material and, while I don't enjoy them quite as much, seasons 5 through 8 still have some great moments (The Battle of the Bastards for instance). I've seen all the seasons of the show and am currently reading the books (half way through Clash of Kings). My favorite character from the whole franchise has to be Petyr Baelish. While not always entirely likable, no other character proves to be as enigmatic, cunning, and truly interesting to me as Little Finger (Tywin, Tyrion, Eddard, Oberyn and Varys are all also some of my favs!).

What is your favorite build on our server?
An incredibly difficult choice, but right now I think it's White Harbor. I love the style of the lower income houses and farmland around the outskirts of the city, I like the distinct style and color pallet of the city itself and of New Castle, and my favorite bit has to be all the buildings and lighthouses built way out atop the jagged ocean rocks and sandbars that surround the city. There's this one lighthouse in particular, with this long, precarious wooden walkway out to where it stands upon a large chunk of rugged stone--so cool!
Some honorable mentions besides White Harbor would be King's Landing, Starfall, Winterfell, the Dreadfort, Blackhaven, Runestone, Karhold, Sunhouse, Duskendale and High Garden.

Why do you want to join our server?
I want to join WesterosCraft because all the people who have worked on this project have not only done an incredible job with the builds themselves, but also with the world-building and realism. I mentioned that I like ASoIaF so much because it feels fleshed out and gritty. I love this server for the same reason. Everyone involved has done justice to the source material and truly brought the seven kingdoms to life! In recent months, WesterosCraft has really been rejuvenating my inspiration to build in Minecraft. The attention to detail on the server, the planning, and the authentic historical influence are all just amazing. It would be a dream to be a part of it all!
Below I have included several screenshots of a simple house I built, inspired by some houses near the outskirts of High Garden. The house is owned by a barrel maker, has a simple garden and coop out back, and a terraced path along a steep heal down to a nearby stream. I hope it's turned out well!




Did you follow the application rules?
You know nothing, Jon Snow!

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey BionicleSaurus,

Thanks for your application! I appreciate your enthusiasm for the server, and I'm flattered by your compliments towards my WH lighthouse .

I'm pretty impressed by your submission; you've made very good use of the vanilla terrain, and I like all the little immersive details. I'd say you're off to an excellent start. I mostly just have some pickier feedback to give here:

- The blue slate roof, although it doesn't really look bad here, is typically an unusual choice outside of the Vale due to its more vibrant "high-fantasy" look. Main reason that I point this out is just because sometimes newer builders mistake it for the black slate, since they do look somewhat similar in the inventory.

- You should use half door blocks instead of trapdoors for the plant under the window - generally, trapdoors shouldn't be used for anything except actual trapdoors, since guests can mess stuff up by toggling them (and the texture isn't great IMO).

- You should also use half door blocks to cover up all exposed sides of cabinet/workbench/etc. blocks, other than one. There's an example of this in the top floor of the house. It doesn't look very realistic for a cabinet to have drawers on multiple sides (but the block doesn't support directional placement unfortunately).

- When placing dirt/gravel slabs, you want to avoid having a level of slabs that only touch "at the corners", since it looks messy and makes them difficult to walk up. It's best to have at least one slab block directly adjacent to every slab block. It's a bit hard to explain this in words, so let me know if you don't understand and I can try to link a picture. If the slope is steep enough that you find it difficult to do this, you might just want to consider either stairs or a longer switchback path, but I don't think that's relevant in this case.

Otherwise, good work! Since you're a fan of WH, we can use that location for the first challenge build - specifically, please make a middle-class house in that style. The middle-class example houses can generally be found in the southwest portion of the city, though you might already know that from exploring. Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck!

-Emote

 

[BionicleSaurus]

Thanks so much for the feedback! Excited to get working on the first challenge build.

 

[BionicleSaurus]

Hi, Emotione11, currently researching/exploring for the first challenge build. When you say the southwest portion of the city, do you mean inside or outside the city walls? There's quite a notable difference between the houses depending on that factor. I'm assuming the ones outside the walls are what you were referring to because most houses inside the walls appear a bit higher class and are also business fronts as well as houses, but I'm not sure. Thanks in advance!

 

[Emoticone11]

Oh, I actually meant inside of the walls. Specifically, if you do /warp fishfootyard and then walk south from there. It is true that the "classes" are a bit relative (i.e., what might be marked as "middle class" in the sprawl would look different from "middle class" within the city), but WH is canonically very wealthy from silver trade (and trade in general), so the internal house styles reflect that.

 

[BionicleSaurus]

Awesome, thanks so much. I actually already took note of several houses just south of that warp, so I was on the right track anyhow haha

 

[BionicleSaurus]

Alrighty, here it is! First challenge build complete. I took inspiration from several houses in the Southwest area of White Harbor for this, you may notice a couple specific designs carried over from the source material. One design in particular is the workspace of the house's owner (a cobbler) being in a small shed outside. I thought that was a great idea to maximize space so I decided to add it. Another design I saw in a few houses was a small corner in the house for a dog to live, complete with a bone, so I added that as well. Hope it all turned out well!

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey BionicleSaurus,

Great work on this house! Overall pretty solid, I think it would fit in nicely in the middle-class area of WH. There's just a couple things that I'd improve:

- The gradient/palette feels a bit messy in some areas. Specifically, you don't want the whitewashed plaster block to be too noisy (such as in the areas where there's just a 1x1 block of it with no adjacent plaster). If you look at the style examples, you'll notice that it's mostly a continuous blob of the white plaster surrounded smoothly by the white harbor brick blocks (intended to show areas where the whitewash has aged/corroded a bit).

- I usually try to avoid having dirt slab areas in small yards when I can avoid them, since when the yard is small they can make it appear cramped/messy. If you do have a small yard on a sloped area of land, I usually find it better to use a retaining wall of some sort anyways.

- Regarding fence windows, although they're used a bit at White Harbor (and other areas on the server), my preference is against them - it seems better (and more realistic) to me to just have "open" windows with shutters, or possibly using the window 'arrow slit' block. I think they've been getting less popular on the server in general.

Everything else is nicely done, I don't really have any feedback to give on the interiors.

For the next challenge build, please make a medium-sized house in the style of /warp duskendale. Let me know if you've got any more questions on anything. Good luck!

 

[BionicleSaurus]

Thanks for the feedback. First WH, now Duskendale? Two of my favorite places. So excited to get started on the next challenge!

 

[BionicleSaurus]

Oof, it took some time but it's finally done! The houses in Duskendale are VERY diverse and it was a bit of a struggle merely to decide what type of house I wanted to build. Also the last week and a half has been incredibly tiring/busy to boot. Anyhow, here it is! The second challenge build is complete.

For this one I decided to go with a fishmonger for the occupation (in screenshot number 2 you can spy a small area for storing/prepping fish, or perhaps even for selling fish depending on where this house would be located within the city). On the second floor there is another small bedroom and a privy under the stairs that I didn't show because of the 10 file attachment limit. They weren't too exciting anyhow, just thought I should mention it.

All in all I quite like this one. Hope the work has payed off!

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey Bionicle,

Lovely house! I'd say the work definitely payed off, since the build turned out quite well The only piece of feedback I have to give is a very minor one, and that's to avoid mixing light thatch and dark thatch together (as in this picture), as they contrast a bit too heavily.

Otherwise, this seems like a perfectly up-to-standards Duskendale house, and I don't want to drag the app on any longer than it needs to be, so consider yourself approved!

The next step is to contact a mod in-game to promote you to New Builder. The New Builder guide can be found here: http://westeroscraft.wikia.com/wiki/Newbie_guide
And also make a probation thread in the probation forum.

You can start building at any open locations on the server - you can find these at /warp build, although it sometimes gets outdated as people forget to update it, so I would also recommend just asking people in-game and checking the forums for recent project happenings. Currently, I believe there's plots open at /warp rhymerton, /warp brandybottom, /warp starpikehf1, and potentially some interesting KL-related building opportunities soon (stay tuned). You can also build at /warp probieground in the Test world if you just wanna experiment with stuff.

A probie leader should post on your thread within a week or so, and help give constructive feedback on your houses for the next month, and help be your entrypoint into the server community in general (although as sometimes the probie leaders are busy IRL, I would also encourage you to seek feedback from project leaders and other builders/mods). At the end, you'll be made full builder.

Welcome to the team, I look forward to building with you!

 

[BionicleSaurus]

Thank you so much for all your great feedback on my builds and for the approval Emotione11! I am so excited to be part of the amazing team on this server. Wow!