ChrisHiss Builder Application

[ChrisHiss]

What is your Minecraft username?
ChrisHiss

What is your age?
21-24

In what country are you living?
France

Where did you first hear about WesterosCraft?
Planet Minecraft

What do you like the most about GoT/ASoIaF?
I like that it's thrilling and you never know what's going to happen, but you know that sooner or later something mad is gonna happen

What is your favorite build on our server?
I would say Duskendale? But it's super hard to choose! I like the colors and the style of the buildings

Why do you want to join our server?
I like building and I like GoT so..

Tell us about your build.
This is a medieval city house that is inspired from Duskendale style.
Now let's talk about the house's story

The owner is an apothecary. He makes a great business with his healing potions that he has the secret of.
His gifted talent allowed him to buy an old estate that has partially collapsed because people around riotted a certain time ago, probably because the former owner was very impopular. Now that the apothecary bought and built over what was left of the old estate, people call it the Half-house given it's two different colors and architecture, as the apothecary didn't have the same income as the previous owner to buy such fine stones and rebuild the house in full masonry.
From the street view we can notice the new owner is a merchant given his open stall.
Going left of the door we enter a little courtyard where the owner can recieve his goods, but also where the dwellers can do their natural needs.
If we peek an eye in his shop we see baskets full of different fruits and god-knows-what ingredients, as well as random herbs hanging over the ground.
He has a lot of orders, so the house needs a cellar where he stores his merchandises but also his own home ressources.
His apprentice, sitting on one of the stools of the shop can grab some ingredients that his master needs, either in the shop itself or in the cellar.
If we take the stair case located on the old estate part, we can communicate with all the rooms. On the upper floor there is a kitchen and the next door gives access to the main room where him and his family can live. Notice that it has a quite large fireplace, which is a privilege to have at his social class. The last floor has a room for his apprentice or guests, and going at the back you can find an garret where clothes are washed and various things are stored.

This house is an example of how an old house can be transformed by the future owners



Did you follow the application rules?
You know NOTTIN Jon snO

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey ChrisHiss,

Thanks for the application - glad to see your interest in becoming a builder.

This is a wonderful first build! You seem to have already picked up most of the more subtle aspects of our building style. I don't really have any major feedback to give; mostly just some minor things that I feel could use work. Then I'll give a couple challenge houses just to see how you adapt to different styles on the server.

- Try to avoid what I call "bell-shaped" rooves, such as the one on the house to the left here. They usually end up feeling a bit clunky. Try to keep the roof neat and with a linear slope.

- I generally avoid using horizontal rows of the "open" timber & daub frame (the variant with no cross-hatches; the ones with cross-hatches are fine), since it doesn't look very good and isn't very common IRL. I recommend working on the patterns a bit more, especially now that we have the vertical timber frame variants.

- Overall some parts of it seem a bit bare, which can be improved by having some light foliage around, as well as some more immersive details along the streets and around the houses.

- Likewise with the interiors; everything you did here is pretty solid, but also just feels a bit empty in some spots. In some cases this might be improved a bit by working on the rafters. Sometimes I like to have an additional layer of supports (e.g. horizontal slabs) in larger rooms. A touch of eclecticism here and there isn't a bad thing, but it takes a bit of practice to get it right.

Otherwise lovely work For the first challenge build, please make a middle-class house in the style of /warp whiteharbor. The middle-class examples can generally be found to the south-west area of the city. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions about the feedback, or about the challenge build. Good luck!

 

[ChrisHiss]

Greetings Emoticon,
Thanks for your feedback and your rapidity!

So here is a middle class baker house of White Harbor. It's morning in the streets of the city, the baker gets up early to make hot bread to be delivered by chariot to different customers, but also to be sold in his shop where a little opening allows the bread to be passed through from the shop holder to the deliverer. Given the fact that the baker bought the neighbour house, the old furnace on your right hand side was used by the former owner of that part of the building as a kitchen oven, but is now only occasionally used for other purposes related to baking. To make bread and pastries, the magic happens in the basement of the original building, accessible by a wooden staircase at the back of the store. The vaulted room has a direct access to the outside for flour and fruits to be delivered. Going back to the same staircase and going 2 levels up we can go to the garret above the shop, and going only one level up we go from one building to another and enter the rooms above the vaulted ceiling. We have access to a corridor that goes to the main dining room/kitchen, and going to the staircase of that corridor we can see the bedroom where the family sleeps.

PS: I know about the bell shaped roofs, however the roofs of WH seems already bell-shaped so I stuck to the original style and I didn't make a fairmarket-like roof.

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey ChrisHiss,

Great work! I must say I'm impressed by how quickly you put up an entire city street I like how you're already thinking of the big picture rather than individual houses; that's a good builder trait to have.

Everything seems pretty solid, so I don't really have much feedback to give besides nitpicky stuff that I'm sure you'll hear from your probie leader when you get to that point. IMO some of the interiors, while doing nothing technically wrong, still feel a bit "sterile" (such as this one). I'd definitely try to focus on that. It takes a while to develop a good sense of it, but it's a good practice to be on the lookout for "exceptional" interiors in places, and try to learn what they do differently (I still do this myself whenever I see new town builds go up).

Since you've just done towns so far, for a tentative final challenge build I want to see a rural farmstead in the style of /warp Gaunt. In addition to the farmhouse, it should have a sizeable yard for veggies and anything else, any outbuildings you deem necessary, etc. Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck!

 

[ChrisHiss]

Hello Emoticon, here is my final build.
I have to admit that it was the most complicated for me so it was a good tentative final challenge indeed!

In the small hamlet, it is the annual harvest time. Wheat is now mature enough to be cut, put into hay bales and threshed to get the grain. The hamlet has gathered around a formerly solitary farmstead that started small, grew up quite significant and therefore hired more peasants that built their houses next to it.
This farmstead is composed of 2 groups of buildings: a barn and a house, jointed by a wall that creates a closed courtyard. The courtyard has a well, two gardens, a poultry house and a discreet backdoor allowing to access neighbours fields and meadows more easely. Having a courtyard allows any exterior window not being below 2 meters and large windows above 3 meters to prevent prying eyes and thieves.

The first group of buildings is composed of two barns. In the wooden one, the ground floor is a hay storage and has a shelf to store fire wood as well; the attic is for flour and grain. The stone part is a cow shed that is absolutely necessary to keep animals safe from thieves or the frost of winter (and winter is coming). At the back of the shed you can find a plow with a spare wheel. Tools to repair such wheeled equipment are stored in a shed on the angle of the two buildings.

Now, the second group is the farmer's house. The left part is the first building ever built in the farm, and includes now an extension that includes two fireplaces. Entering the house we arrive in the extension, divided in two parts: where we enter is the kitchen and the other is a dining room. That last room has a loft above with a bed and a curtain because the dormer of the dining room is too high to have a shutter.
By the dining room we enter the old building by an annex room in between two bedrooms. You can find in one of the bedrooms a loft.

PS: Other pictures are in the second post. I just noticed that I forgot the toilets, but that's ok they can shit somewhere else

 

[ChrisHiss]

Second part

 

[ChrisHiss]

Wow that's actually a lot of pictures

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey ChrisHiss,

Very nicely done! As before, love the effort you put into making this maximally immersive.

The only major feedback I have here is that the close-studded timber block doesn't really look great here; it makes the pattern look too messy, and also isn't how close-studded timber would be used IRL. It's basically an "all or nothing" type of block - houses with it should generally look like this, or not use it at all (people are still experimenting with the block so you might see some other cases of it on the server that look fine, but generally this is true I think).

Otherwise, I think you'll learn more in the probie period at this point, so consider yourself approved!

Ask a mod in-game to promote you to builder. The next step is to read over the New Builder guide, 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 (possibly outdated as people forget to update it sometimes), and also by going to our dynmap and toggling "Open Plot", which is a brand new feature that we're testing, or just asking around for which people need help with something. Also, you can experiment with stuff at /warp probieground.

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 as well). At the end, you'll be made full builder.

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