AoM: Farm Phase 3: Strongarm's Homestead House

[Bracari]

As Sir Loth Strongarm approaches the House he notices that his grandson, Tarrys, has returned with the goats from the pasture. Soon it will be time to join the herds of the community and move them to the Summer pastures. This year will be the first time Tarrys will spend time as a helper in the high valley shepherding with the older men.

    

The Strongarm's house is divided into the family hall and the animal enclosure with a pantry, dairy and overhead storage.

     

Tarrys is excitedly talking about his first outing alone without the family to his grandfather while his mother Skyra and older sister Yura tend to dinner.

 

 

Have been sitting on this for awhile, still struggling with scene composition, lighting and photography but have spent too much time with it and post-editing and want to really start a new project.

The house is easily detachable and pivots on two hinges.

Opinions and criticism are welcome. A few more pictures below.

Spoiler

         

Flicker Album: https://flic.kr/s/aHskJAFBZi

 

[mccoyed]

Unusual to see an untextured roof in a Mitgardian build but I like what you've done here.The interior features some nice parts usage, but my favorite detail is the golden snitch. Inspired use of that part!

[Grover]

Nice work!  There's a lot of great things going on here: I love the roof--it's a great use of tan and dark tan to make a thatched roof, and there's a lot of nice detail at the top with the legs and the golden snitch; the goats are well done and make sense with the dog indoors in a medieval setting; the interior is well thought out and very nice.  The grain for the goats, the cloaks for linens, and the boxes of food  I like the path outside, as it looks like an intentionally laid path from river stones.  I like the snot clear trans wash from the falling water.  I like the curved pieces to form the footbridge, too.

A few things stick out to me as small things that could be changed easily: the cleaver and some of the kitchenware is pointing up, but in most kitchens I've seen, the heavy blades hang downward, so if you put the clips higher it might look like the utensils are hanging.  On the other side, the pathway and river look quite straight.  Putting in a bit more of a bend here or there, even one brick wide, could help.  If you have the bricks, which I know not everyone does, you can put wedge plates across the pathway to increment the elevation changes, which helps break up the 90° angles that we commonly see.  As for the water, it's hard to get the trans tiles together, but smooth water is nice for calm water, and if you want more of a rushing mountain stream, putting the studded trans plates down with height differences of 1 plate here and there, interspersed with grey pieces for rocks.

As for photography, I built myself a cheap light box, and with 4 LED bulbs, I can take decent pics even with a cell phone.  More light is better, just don't use a flash.  That will get you about 85% of the way there.

Well done, though, and I look forward to more of your builds!

[zoth33]

Nice house.  I like the interior, the different rooms.  The goats inside is an interesting idea.  I like the house itself simple yet effective.  The landscaping is nice with the small stream.  Although I'm kind of worried about the fact that the fire place has no chimney in a wooden house lol.  

[W Navarre]

Nice how much detail this has! 

[Bracari]

On 11/25/2018 at 2:57 AM, Grover said:

I love the roof--it's a great use of tan and dark tan to make a thatched roof

The credit for the roof must go to @davee123 and his excellent viking village.

It is very part intensive and I probably won't use this technique for such a large house anytime soon .

On 11/25/2018 at 2:34 AM, mccoyed said:

but my favorite detail is the golden snitch

I had that hole in the roof intersection and thought, naturally, to use a shield then I remembered the snitch. It's a part that I thought would have not much use outside the Potterverse but it fit nicely into this build.

On 11/25/2018 at 2:57 AM, Grover said:

the cleaver and some of the kitchenware is pointing up

You are completely right, you can see in the pantry the utensils are hanging down. This was an oversight, in the Kitchen nook they should be too, there is actually space for it.

On 11/25/2018 at 11:02 PM, zoth33 said:

Although I'm kind of worried about the fact that the fire place has no chimney in a wooden house lol.

Actually, I did some research and fireplaces and chimneys as we know them are a later middle age feature:

"... there were only two ways to keep warm in a medieval winter:  fire and the animal heat of other living creatures. We take fireplaces for granted, and indeed fireplaces were a medieval invention.  They came in originally during the twelfth century but did not become common until the thirteenth, and were very much something for the elite.  Before then, and for peasants throughout most of the rest of the Middle Ages, the normal source of heat was a fire pit in the middle of the room.  The smoke found its way out through small holes under the roof..." From http://cdalebrittain.blogspot.com/2014/11/keeping-warm-in-middle-ages.html

This is just one source among many others.

One of the images I used as inspiration was this:

Thank for the comments and tips @mccoyed, @Grover, @zoth33, @W Navarre.

[Basiliscus]

As others have said, the roof is the stand out part, it looks excellent! The minifig legs for the cross beams is also a really nice touch!

Using the palisade pieces for the wall adds a great texture and mixing dark brown and reddish brown gives a nice colour combination.

The landscape though is a little bit cluttered - there are too many colours mixed up, not helped by the yellow and green border. Normally in landscaping you want to try and only pick two or three colours and colour block them in a natural way.

It's a nice build though, well done! 

[zoth33]

Yeah I was just saying as there is no hole in the roof.  Obviously you need a hole at the top like tee-pees' otherwise you get smoked out.  NIce build though.   

[Henjin_Quilones]

As mentioned above, some sort of opening for smoke to escape would have been nice to see; not a chimney, but some sort of hole. I like the house a lot; it is nicely sized for the people and its function, and it is well equipped for their needs. I don't like the landscape that much, and I think it is because, as Basiliscus said, it is too cluttered. It is visually busy with too many colors and too many textures, and it detracts from the pleasing visual simplicity of the house (likewise, I think the multi-colored and -textured floor inside detracts from the detail of the house - straight tan, with no round tiles or dark tan elements, would make excellent and intricate interior details pop better). In fact, I think it might be a good idea, for builds like this, to ditch the border (which adds to the confusion with its black green, and yellow, as well as a gap for the river to flow up to, but not through) and instead make an irregular base to complement the house. The house deserves better than a cramped and cluttered square to show it off. 

Edited November 29, 2018 by Henjin_Quilones

[The Stad]

As others have said, there's a bit too much going on here in terms of textures and colors, but at the same time it's got too many square corners and straight edges, particularly in the landscape.  I like the effort you put into the roof, and I really like the accuracy with respect to the source material.  I think this is one of the best nordic longhouses we've seen here.  Well done! 

[en_zoo]

lovely build! I'd personally leave the regular green in the landscape out and maybe I'd use some more goats, given that it's a phase 3 build. I particularly like the interior - it looks very Mitgardian (viking-style, in this case) - the big hall with central fire and the storage space are well thought and proportioned - well done!

[Bracari]

Just a couple of quick images of the connected build Orchard, Produce Garden and House (the best I could do with limited display space).

Learned a lot during the build. The comments and tips were and will be very helpful. Already started to dismantle and re-sort.

I spend a lot of time with this build, almost 4 months, as i am a slow builder and also had to keep ordering new parts as my collection was (and still is ) very small.

There are never enough bricks just lack of space or money .

Time to start the next build, which will require new part orders .