Iron Banker Builder Application

[witherack]

What is your Minecraft username?
Witherack

What is your age?
13-16

In what country are you living?
UK

Where did you first hear about WesterosCraft?
Instagram

What do you like the most about GoT/ASoIaF?
I have read the books and few bits of the TV series, and (obviously) I like the Starks because of their idealism and my favourite thing is probably direwolves.

What is your favorite build on our server?
The Wall is really cool and I love the Night's watch, but my favourite build is probably The Dragonpit on King's Landing

Why do you want to join our server?
I'd like to make something like a cool small castle for a minor house and help some big projects.

Tell us about your build.
I made a small fantasy house as requested and because of the biome it was in, decided to go for a more northern feel with dark timber, northern cobblestone and a fur roof. I tried to make the lower floors seem dim to add ambience and upstairs it is lighter because of shutters (they can't afford windows). I imagine the people who live there to be live in a village with smallfolk, but they are craftspeople who consider themselves above the others.



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

 

[CashBanks]

Hey Iron Banker
Thanks for your interest in the server and for putting in the time and thought to prepare this app.

You're on the right track with this house, I can see you've put thought into it and explored the server for inspiration and there's a lot of nice ideas and elements.
The shape and overall style is close to some of houses you might see in the North, so you've done well to emulate that style

I've just got a handful of suggested improvements that'll help with your future builds.

- Not a huge deal since you might not know but these days we try to avoid using full log blocks as primary wall materials, they tend to look a bit bulky/vanilla minecraft without as much variety as we like to see. Most houses will be a combination of wooden planks/stone and daub.

- Timber/daub blocks tend to look best when they use symmetrical patterns, try to use the diagonal/cross blocks to "frame" around doors/windows/other structural points.

- I can see you put some thought into the status/means of the houses' occupants. Economic class is one of the biggest influences on how a house looks and what it's furnished with. Bookshelves for instance are generally only used in rich high class houses, since books/paper was expensive and very few poor people could read.

For your first challenge build, please make a Low Class Farmer's house in the style of /warp hawthornetown and share screenshots of it in this thread. Take note of commonalities between the houses (block mix, shape of roof, size of house, interior blocks, attic spaces, mezzanine platforms) and make a house that would fit into the Hawthorne town.

Take a look at the Applicant Building Guide for some more tips, they'll help a lot.

WesterosCraft

WesterosCraft is faithfully recreating the world of Game of Thrones in Minecraft.

westeroscraft.com

Please take your time to study the style in detail, and make sure to ask if you have any questions on the above feedback or the hawthornetown style.

Good luck!

 

[witherack]

Here is the screenshots of the hawthorne town house.

 

[CashBanks]

Hey Iron Banker,
Thanks for completing this Hawthorne house, you've done a nice job of identifying the types of blocks used in the Hawthorne style.

I think you've got all the key elements right with this house, particularly the overall shape and layout (many people get tripped up on the roof profile).
- Instead of stairs for chairs, we'll often use wooden slabs to create a sort of bench, or add a half door to the back to make it a chair.
- You can also use pistons/wooden hoppers upside down stairs for tables as well.

- I think there may be a little room for improvement with the timber/daub pattern. It's often best to try and use symmetrical patterns with the various diagonal/cross lines of timber, using them to frame the key structural points of a house, see these for example:



Otherwise great job.
For your next challenge, please build a middle class house in the style of /warp whsprawl. Houses in large towns will usually have a profession on their on the ground floor, take a look at the styleguide at the /warp oldstyleguides and the finished houses in the White Harbor area for inspiration, and give the house some kind of profession that would make sense in White Harbor (e.g. carpenter/cooper/blacksmith/boat builder, netmaker etc).

Note in the post which profession you go with as well.

Good luck!

 

[witherack]

Here is my build in the style of White Harbor. There are elements from multiple houses and the profession I went with is a butcher.

 

[CashBanks]

Thanks Iron, could I grab another shot of the house from this angle but a bit higher up? Just want to see how you've approached the roof shape. Cheers

 

[witherack]

Is that good?

 

[CashBanks]

Thanks Iron,
Yep that helps get the full picture.

You've done well with this one, the stone gradient looks nice outside and there's an overall good shape and layout. My one key note was with that side of the roof I asked for the extra screenshot of - we generally aim to avoid that style of rounded cross-hip style of roof corner, instead just continuing the through-line of one of the wings of the house all the way to the end, (referred to as "cross-gables").

There might also be scope for another window or two just for a bit more variation to the walls, but not a big deal.

Great progress though, for your (tentatively) last challenge, please build a middle class house in the style of Highgarden, (take a look around /warp hgtown). As with this White Harbor house, it should have a profession/business on the bottom level e.g. carpenter/wine merchant/tailor/blacksmith, and a yard would be great as well.

Thanks!

 

[witherack]

Here is my build. It is a jeweller's house.

 

[CashBanks]

Hey witherack,
Thanks for finishing off this HG house, you've made some great progress.
Overall look and feel looks great, just a few small notes:
- They probably wouldn't store fish in the attic, would get a bit hot and smelly
- Try to avoid sticking candles to walls, they'd just put them on a table
- Perhaps a little less gold blocks, I get the effect you're going for but that much would be like $10 million just in a pile in the corner.
- The profession sign out front might work a little better if it was at least one block higher. You can hand them under thing like horizontal chains like this:

I think at this point you'll learn more from being an actual builder, so consider yourself approved!

Please make sure to read the New Builder guide here: http://westeroscraft.wikia.com/wiki/Newbie_guide

The next step is to make a probation thread in the Probation Forum. You can start building at any open locations on the server - you can find a list of these at /warp build, although it's sometimes outdated, so I would also recommend just asking people in-game and checking the forums for recent project happenings. You can also toggle open plot markers on the dynmap mc.westeroscraft.com

A probie leader should post on your thread within a week or so and continue to give you constructive feedback on your houses for the next month (and help be your entry point into the server community in general), although as sometimes the probie leaders are busy IRL you may need to be patient while they find the time to respond to you. But message me again if a probie leader hasn't contacted you within two weeks, or if they're taking a while to respond. I would also encourage you to seek feedback from project leaders and other builders/mods. At the end, you'll be made full builder assuming everything goes smoothly.

I'd suggest you also start thinking about what projects you might like to work on, we encourage new builders to first work on "mini-projects" which are small one off areas of other projects, e.g. a hamlet, mill, quarry, and flagged as open for mini-apps by the project leader. Once you've done a few of these you'll be able to apply for a full project.

Make sure to stay in touch and let us know if you're losing interest, not finding enough work to do, or if there's any issues with the probation.

Welcome aboard and I'll see you in Westeros!