Challenge II - Category B - Mid-Spring Festival in Bluevale

[Bracari]

Winter has passed and the snow-covered land thaws, the early Spring floods have subsided. After spending most of the Winter huddled in their homes the clans from different areas of Bluevale gather for the Mid-Spring festival. On the center of the Festival grounds stands a large pole decorated with wild flowers and green vines.

At the market food and other goods are traded.

A patch was cleared for games and tournaments. Axe-throwing being the most popular among them.

Lady Eleanor and Davos listen as the dwarf blacksmith expounds on the acceptable craftsmanship of the vales' axes while boasting that he and his brother will bring new and improved methods and products as soon as their workshop is set-up.

This year's festival has added attractions as the Lady has hired a troupe of entertainers, a jester, a minstrel and a puppeteer.

Davos' caravan of goods supplement the Lady's own efforts in supplying the people with abundant and varied food and drink.

The people are happy in disposition and spirit. Such a grand festival is a distant memory shared only by the oldest.

 

Spoiler

Builder's notes: This was fun to build, initially i was planning on using the full 64x64 allowed space but lack of time, bricks and a proper workspace reduced it to 48x48. Even the 48x48 build stretched my resources pretty thin. Proper photography and lighting continues to be a struggle for me. sooner or later I will need to acquire a decent camera and probably some lighting equipment.

Here are a few more images not included above:

 

[Basiliscus]

What a great collection of different forms of entertainment in the one MOC! Love the jester and minstrel, bread oven and market stalls. The chairs and benches are lovely too, certainly adds to the atmosphere.

A few nitpicks though: you've done well with colour blocking the landscape, with brown mud around the axe throwing, tan and the bleys for the path and green grass. However, the latter could be improved by adding a little more variation in either colour (mixing in olive, sand or dark green) or height (by using 1x1 and 1x2 plates to give it natural undulation) to make it more realistic.

Also the photography isn't very consistent - some shots are bright and clear whereas some are dark which make it difficult to see the detail. Perhaps using your own lighting might help?

Anyway, lovely stuff!

[mccoyed]

Great collection of photos and a lot of action and good fig combos and posing. I'm a sucker for builds with a lot of figs. Keep working on the lighting and photography, we all start somewhere. My early stuff was blurry, dark, and badly shot.

One additional point that might help is to be more consistent with the presentation in general. I appreciate that you had a kind of system with the small shot then big shot, but it'd be easier to "read" this post if your pics were more balanced in size and location.

[de Gothia]

Great minds think alike they say! I have also made an entry with a maypole!

 

The different scenes and happenings in the moc are  really nice! 

 

haha, I also tried to put a pig over an open fire but couldn´t figure out how to make it stay in place! 

[zoth33]

Interesting scene, I like all the vendors at the festival.  The pole is a neat idea.  There alot of figs and several different things going on, I think if it was spread out more it would look a little better and the groundwork is a little one note.  

[Muakhah]

I really wanted to do an outdoors carnival type build like this but ran out of time before I could even get started.  There are plenty of really good bits here.  I  like the roasting pig, axe throwing and best of all the Puppet show which is an awesome idea!  Even  though you didn't hit the planned 64x64 its a big and impressive build with  a lot going on.

The tree by the dining area is also good and I think it shows what is lacking a bit elsewhere as it has good color variation.  In a few parts the edging seems a little square or straight but this is a great early build.

Also, is that a pizza oven!  Very nice.

[Grover]

This is kind of a subtle build that you don't fully appreciate until you see all the pictures.  It's really well done.  The overall scene is nice; it might benefit a bit from putting some of the stalls, etc. on studded plates so you can put them at a bit of an angle, but the real winners here are all the individual shots you have.  The food stalls have great use of the backpack pieces containing the cherries and the new plant piece from HP, plus some nice color choices for the awnings.  The axe throwing is a great idea, and I'm still not entirely sure how you got the one axe to stick in the grille there!  The scene with Lady Eleanor looks very natural since they characters are not stuck to the gridded studs on the plate.  The stilts walker and the musician are a very nice touch, and I love the puppet theater with the audience of mostly children.  The pig roast is one of my favorite parts, and I like the use of the paddle for moving bread in and out of the oven, which, by the way, is very well placed.  The tree is fairly simple, but looks really good in the dining scene, and the brick built legs on the lady facing away from the table is very nice.  The bonus shots are great, too--gives you a feel for the rest of the build.

As for lighting, I picked up some cheapo LED lamps that had flexible bases, and putting them on the sides of my build, filtered through a white cloth, really helped my shadows.  I don't know how your setup is, but something like that might help.

Really great job!

[en_zoo]

Really nice. Definitely a mid-spring festival I'd like to take part in! I like the variety of the entertainment as well as the figs and the little stalls. The pork cooking is a nice touch Well done!

[Bracari]

Thanks for all the comments.

On 1/31/2019 at 11:15 AM, Basiliscus said:

...green grass. However, the latter could be improved by adding a little more variation...

Yeah, the grass area could be improved. But I was too concentrated on all the other elements I missed that.

On 1/31/2019 at 11:15 AM, Basiliscus said:

Also the photography isn't very consistent

I believe that is my main shortcoming at the moment. I used a compact 10 year old camera (without optical zoom) for the full build shots and a wide-angle webcam (meant for skyping and creating web-videos) for the close-up shots. There's this debate in my head: save money for a 'real camera' or buy a lot of bricks.

On 1/31/2019 at 6:10 PM, mccoyed said:

easier to "read" this post if your pics were more balanced in size and location.

In the preview it seemed OK to me but now I see it is not so. Need to pay more attention to that in the future. Thanks.

On 1/31/2019 at 9:12 PM, de Gothia said:

I have also made an entry with a maypole!

haha, I also tried to put a pig over an open fire but couldn´t figure out how to make it stay in place!

I have seen your maypole and think it looks better. I didn't even think of using leaf pieces! The pig is not completely secure and might actually swivel a little when moving the build but if you don't it stays in place.

 

On 2/1/2019 at 4:21 AM, zoth33 said:

I think if it was spread out more it would look a little better and the groundwork is a little one note.

On 2/1/2019 at 1:25 PM, Muakhah said:

In a few parts the edging seems a little square or straight but this is a great early build.

It is a bit crammed, the original plan was for a 64x64 build with, essentially, the same elements present in the 48x48. It would allow for the individual scenes to breath and also for  more detailed groundwork, diagonal paths, etc... Unfortunately I couldn't get there.

On 2/1/2019 at 6:37 PM, Grover said:

how you got the one axe to stick in the grille there!

The grille is attached only on the bottom half, behind the top half there is an empty space so I could angle the axe and force it slightly so it stayed solidly in place.

[Rogue Angel]

You've packed a ton of activities into this build - a great representation of a busy medieval festival.  The stilt walker and the oven are probably my favorite parts.  Good work!

[Henjin_Quilones]

There are so many things to see here! That is both positive and negative. It is positive because there are details everywhere you look, which is great. But there is also too much going on visually to make full sense of it all, and it gets overwhelming. It does convey quite well the chaos of a festival, though, so well done on that count! The details are nice to look at. 

[soccerkid6]

Excellent work including so many different activities in the festival The food stands and baking oven are my favorite parts