Builder Application: bandgeekninja42: REJECTED

[bandgeekninja]

Player name : bandgeekninja42

How long have you been a member of this project? : Joined in September 2021

How old are you? : 31

Where are you from? : Manitoba, Canada

Are you in our Discord?: Yes

Why do you want to help with this project? : I have been a Tolkien fan since grade 5 when I first read the Hobbit. I’ve always been obsessed with the world Tolkien built and have been drawn to anything that brings his words to life. I’ve been playing Minecraft off and on again for a decade now and have been looking for an excuse to do more with it.

Which Tolkien-related works have you read, seen or listened to? :

Read: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales, The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, The Fall of Gondolin, The History of Middle-Earth 1-10, The Atlas of Middle-Earth
Watched: Both Peter Jackson Trilogies countless times
Listened: Audio books for The Lord of the Rings (also the BBC audio drama) and the Silmarillion

Portfolio :
Plot ID: 13:-36
Folde House

[Album]Folde House
(https://imgur.com/a/54np9Y5)

Are there any styles that you excel at? Any styles which you have difficulty with? : I have a good grasp on anything structural. I come from a construction background so anything that is a building, as long as I have a template/guidelines to follow, I can get my head around it. Filling in a space to make it look lived in takes much more effort, but if I approach it from a “What would I need to live in this house/work in this space” angle, I can eventually get there. Generally if I’m shown something I can reproduce it, and once I have a full grasp of the conquest pack, I should be quicker with what I build.

Other relevant skills : I’m very heavily steeped in Middle-Earth history and lore

[Guan]

Hey, thanks for applying!
Apart from some very minor details, this is really well made and apprentice-worthy!
Now, you’ll need to do a second build.
Could you make a Tharbad ruin? You can find a step-by-step guide at /warp Tharbad.
I think a good size would be about 30 by 30 blocks.

[bandgeekninja]

Will do! Looking forward to it.

[bandgeekninja]

Here’s my Tharbad Ruin. I hope it meets the standard, or at least close.

Tharbad Ruin

[Yannig]

Hey happy to see you try your hands on Tharbad ruins. Right now your ruin is not good enough to get to apprentice in my opinion and I would like you to either start a new ruin or fix the first one by using the following feedbacks:

There are not enough rushes and summer reeds, you should cover every block that is part of the mud palette with them. If you look around Tharbad you will notice that rushes grow in small patches among the reeds so try to be less random in their placement. Rushes and summer reeds are always 2-3 blocks tall unless they grow in water in which case they can be whatever height seems the most sensible.
Walls end up being washed away by centuries of flooding so they should vanish as they get close to the water.
Why is there a big dump of gravel? I don’t see any reason for it especially since the ruins are decaying for a millennium or more for some.

Your walls don’t have any layers next to them to show the accumulation of rubbles.
I can only see one type of block in your wall gradient. You should use the cobblestone palette present in the guide in its entirety. You could also use the stone bricks and clay bricks palettes.
There is no vegetation on the walls. Ruderal plants grow on ruined walls.
Too much gravel/overgrown cobblestone is visible from the sky. Grass should cover around 95% of the dry areas. This particular ruin should look like a small hill and shouldn’t have random depressions like that.

The vegetation is very wrong here. We don’t use autumn reeds in Tharbad. And as mentioned previously, the whole mud surface should be covered by rushes and summer reeds.
Your mud gradient is too complex there. Keep it simple and don’t overuse the podzol and overgrown dirt blocks. Once again, look at Tharbad’s ruins. You will see that the ground palette isn’t that ambitious.
I don’t see any birch leaves to represent bushes.
Don’t be afraid to place floating plants on layers. Right now it looks bad but as soon as we update to 1.15 the vegetation will nicely snap to the layers.

[bandgeekninja]

I appreciate all the feedback! I’m going to try again from scratch. I think I went too much into building up layers without thinking about the vegetation and then had to try to salvage it. Landscapes are definitely my weak point so the practice will be good for me. I’ll post attempt 2 when I’m done.

I can’t believe I missed some autumn reeds! I had mistakenly used them to begin with and thought I had removed them all.

[bandgeekninja]

Attempt number 2 is done, I think I’m getting the hang of this now.
Tharbad Take 2

[Guan]

Alright sorry for the delay, but since your ruin is good now i’ll promote you to Apprentice!

Being an Apprentice means you are a part of the project, but not a full Builder yet. You have this rank so you can learn and understand how we build. We have high standards and a focus on realism which means that there are things for you to learn. Your duties as an Apprentice should give you good grounding to become a Builder, and, as such, you will begin your first lot of on-server building work assisting current Builders on their builds. This will hopefully allow you to obtain the experience needed to build on your own when you feel you can start on building something on your own.

When building as an Apprentice, you are only permitted to build on one building at a time. This not only provides you with good practice for your time as a Builder, but also allows project leaders and Overseers to get a good and clear idea of what your building abilities are. This will allow us to give you better and more bespoke feedback, and prevent any unnecessary problems. Keep in mind that you are only allowed to work on something if you have permission from a project leader via an open plot or confirmation if it’s something else. Finally, as an Apprentice you must always listen to project leaders when they give you feedback, criticisms, and tasks. Ask them if you are unsure of what to build, or how to build it. You have this rank to learn.

Please comment on this thread whenever you’ve got a new approved build, with a short description, cordinates and closest warp.

[Fornad]

On hold as requested - hope to see you back in the New Year!

[Fornad]

Rejected for inactivity