Midyear Contest - Gulltown - RESULTS!

[CashBanks]

Theme - GULLTOWN
Gulltown is the major port city of the Vale of Arryn. It is located in a fine natural harbor at the northern tip of the Bay of Crabs, southeast of the Eyrie and south of nearby Runestone. It is the largest settlement in the Vale, but is much smaller than King's Landing, Lannisport, and Oldtown.

Gulltown is due for a redo in the next year or two, so it's about time we start exploring some design influences and consistent themes. Currently, we have a loose idea that the city would represent the pinnacle of the Vale's brand of Swiss inspired architecture, lots of colorful daub patterns, clean streets, crisp mountain air and so on.

Here's a link to the ongoing inspiration thread Inspiration Thread

Contest:
Start 6 June 2021 GMT 17:00
End 16 July 2021 GMT 17:00

Plots available at /warp contest

Multiple submissions will be allowed, as well as co-ops. However, you can only receive a prize for one submission. Prizes for co-ops will be divided.

As usual, Guests are allowed to compete as well! Please follow this link and leave us your username. Your submission will only count if you have been on our server before under that username. Builders do not need to fill in this form.

Judgement
Winners will be determined by a panel of mods and builders who will each award points for creativity, effort and faithfulness to the theme.

Prizes
Probably WesterosCraft Redbubble Store gift cards, or at least some coloured nickname flair.

 

[CashBanks]

Just over a week to go to finish off your Gulltown inspired contest entries. Seen some really great work so far!

 

[EStoop]

So my contest entry isn't coming along as quickly as I hoped for yet the due date is coming closer faster than you can say "can we get some more time if I ask for it with a meme?".

 

[Ben]

I second that!!

 

[CashBanks]

Contest extended to GMT 17:00 20 July 2021

 

[lemonbear]

CONTEST OFFICIALLY CLOSED (as of 5pm GMT)! Good luck to all entries!

 

[EStoop]

With the contest now over, it might be a good idea to gather all the inspiration used for the contest in order to provide whomever is going to lead Gulltown with a large and varied selection of what the community considers to be good inspiration for Gulltown. Here is the inspiration I used for my contest entry.

While we wait for the winners of the contest, I thought it might be interesting and insightful to start a conversation in which people can elaborate the entry they created, and share an idea for the next contest theme. I'll give it a start:

Stoop's entry
I was a bit late to the contest, so I had the chance to snoop around other entries before deciding what to make. A common theme seemed to be a small square with houses with a stone base and timber frame storeys, so I decided to go against the grain and try to make something else. I settled on making a street with a guild or market hall of sorts, and used the junction at the curch of Saint Ursula in Sibiu as a template. This way I could both make something in a high class landmark style as well as various houses in different styles and of different classes. The plot ended up a little smaller than I had liked though, so I had to limit myself to the junction itself.

Stylistically I based the houses on Alpine and Carpatian architecture, primarily plastered stone with timber frame. For the guildhall I used the large white bricks, since grey was a little too dark for my taste and cobble and small stone seemed inapproriate for a building of that stature. I didn't have enough time to finish the entry except for the facades on the street and the interior hall of the guildhall.

The most challenging part of the contest was using plaster as a main material, since there is no variation in the blocks themselves and they can't satisfyingly gradient with other blocks. As a result the facades look a lot more bland than they would with a stone gradient.

All in all I had a great time working on the contest as well as snooping around all the entries to see what everyone was building, and I am looking forward to the next contest, which I'd like to be about (natural) disasters; flooded towns, forest fires, landslides and more.

 

[Emoticone11]

For my "just for fun" entry, I also wanted to try something a bit against the grain and experiment with a more craggy terrain rather than a flat layout. Although we're probably gonna move away from mountains on the peninsula, it'd still be nice to have a city with some dynamic terrain, to distinguish it from other cities like WH. We might be able to achieve this realistically with a cliffy harbour area and/or glacial artifacts. I initially took inspiration from this artwork that comes up when I search gulltown which I've always thought was cool, if a bit high fantasy (although I can't seem to find the original source of the image!). I changed it up a lot though because of the size of the plot. I think one of our Austrian builders correctly identified the hill tower and cliff stairs as being inspired by the Schlossberg in Graz

 

[Renly_Baratheon_]

Guess I'll throw in sth about my plot too.
It was the first time I built with this resource pack and I also haven't really built in minecraft at all prior to this contest so it didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to.

So my main inspiration was the town hall in Lucerne as the main building. I also tried to build sth similar to the Kappelbrücke but since I decided to have the entrance come from a building, it's more similar to the Spreuerbrücke (both in Lucerne). the rest of it was pretty much just made up on the spot. The "gatehouse" was inspired by the entrance to the castle Romont (as seen from the inside).

With hindsight I think I should have gone bigger with the town hall because i later had to keep the townhouses rather small in order not to look too big next to the main focus, which gave me fewer opportunities to do fun stuff with them. I also kind of regret going for the Lannisport/Arbor kind of stone colour. But my decision was based on me wanting to use the Lannisport stone that changes into the yellow plaster so i just stuck with it for the rest of the build. Also I got tired of doing the landscaping so I wasn't able to finish it.

Sadly I don't have a handy dandy inspiration picture folder ready but tbh you can just google the ones i mentioned and pick out the pictures you like the most yourself.

 

[CashBanks]

Amazing work and thank you to everyone who participated in the contest. This was definitely the biggest turnout we've had to a contest in a while, with some brilliant creativity and style on display, a clear indicator that there's a lot of potential in a future Gulltown re-do.

The entries were reviewed by the judges; myself, Lem, Emote, Aeks, Ric and Iwan, the votes have been tallied and we can announce the following results:

1. Desmera Redwyne
2. bobbycatfisher
3. Telcontar

Please message me your best email address so we can forward you your Merch store giftcards.

The calibre of all the entries was fantastic though, and we're imploring anyone who didn't have a chance to complete there submission to now finish them off so we can include shader pics of them in the next Rookery and as tests for the Gulltown re-do.

Thanks again everyone CAWWW

 

[AerioOndos]

*excited seagull noises*

 

[Spikespiegel]

Congratulations, Des

 

[CashBanks]

Bump to remind people to finish off their contest entries so we can take some shader pics for the Rookery.