mccoyed

AoM-Archery Phase 1: Her Father's Axe / McCoyed / Mitgardia

One day, Alva Tyrnsdottir would be taught to fight by her father. One day, she'll be scarred and hardened with one foot already in the Hall of the Gods. One day, she'll look back and remember this moment and know it was the beginning. It all started a snowy night when she pried her father's axe loose from the painted target on the wind-bent tree. When she tested its weight and found it good. When she threw it, end over end, and struck true.

Hello! In this thread you'll find a consistently updated series of builds inspired by Stephen King's seven-book masterwork The Dark Tower. I will do five builds per book for a total of 35 builds. Please check this post regularly as I'll update it with each build! Book 1: The Gunslinger Build 1: Roland Roland Deschain, the world's last gunslinger, hunts his quarry across a vast desert. Build 2: The Test Roland thinks back to his boyhood, when he challenged his teacher, Cort, to the test of manhood. He was the youngest ever heard of and won using a truly unconventional weapon. Build 3: The Way Station Sick with dehydration and heatstroke, Roland encounters a strange boy in a strange Way Station. Build 4: The Boy The Man in Black is near, finally within reach, but to catch him means making a terrible sacrifice. Build 5: The Palaver Roland awoke by the ruins of the campfire to find himself ten years older... and the man in black was a laughing skeleton in a rotting black robe... Book 2: The Drawing of the Three Build 1: The Door His right hand maimed by a monstrous "lobstrosity", Roland is beset by fever when he spots a door to nowhere rising up from the beach. Build note: Please see the Flickr for a bonus version of this with a lobstrosity. I felt it I couldn't get it quite right for this, so left it out of the final version. Build 2: The Prisoner Through the door on the beach, Roland reaches into a different world. Build 3: The Drawing of Eddie Dean At Balazar's, where Eddie was meant for a terrible fate, one door closes while another opens. Build 4: The Pusher Roland catches a glimpse of The Pusher's past, which incidentally shares a few critical moments with that of Odetta Holmes that was. Build 5: The Lady of Shadows Two women in one body unite to form a third, the gunslinger Susannah Dean. Book 3: The Wastelands Build 1: Shardik While traveling the path of the Beam, Roland's ka-tet encounter one of the last Guardians of the Beams... the mad and decaying cyborg bear, Shardik! Builder's Note: This was a tough one, and I took a lot of pics.

6 months! I was only there for a couple of weeks. :( Anyway, won't derail this thread any further!

I'd actually recommend cloth for the door.

The Shieling is going to factor into my own AoM Farm builds, so there are probably going to be some accidental similarities.

For photography, try tapping your screen in the area you want your phone to focus on. I haven't had an iPhone for a couple of years, but I think that's how it works for those and for Galaxys. Beyond that, try using msPaint or something to crop out the edge of your background paper. That can help a lot with presentation. For the build itself, I like the irregular base but the way you did the ground and rock seems rushed. More texturing with 1x2 plates and the like would be nice there. The color choices in the cliffside are haphazard-looking so you end up with an undesirable, artificial effect.

Great build. Especially that floor.

Love the variant sheep and the rocky land. Having been to Ireland recently, I can say the way you've done your landscaping nicely evokes the traditional pastoral scenes and old sheep grazelands there.

Great sheepfold. Do you know what a Shieling is, SK?

Great builds, SK. I too am planning something with sheep!

Would like to see more pics.

Is it a balcony? I thought a window with sill.

Yikes. This build is a monster of quality. Love the farmhouse, it's scary good.

It's awesome you have that all thought out.

I disagree with this simply because painting stone structures, even tan brick and so on, was common practice historically and there's a precedent for it in GoH too. Plus, this could be alabaster!

That's a cool looking creature with an interesting and nicely designed base. However, I don't love it as an inclusion to Mount Up! due to the fact that it's not a "mount" in the sense of being a domesticated animal bonded to and used by humans (and humanoids of course) but rather a humanoid sentient creature unto itself. Ultimately, this may be my own sense of things and I don't mean to be narrow, but I do feel like it's a poor fit for the contest in that sense.

Hahaha WAT.

I think it's a great little build. Also, I approve of the mix of fleshies and yellow especially if fleshies are used with setting in mind. Having paler, differently-toned skin works well for elves for example. My only C&C would be to add more texturing and detail to the ground. In a tight build like this one, that can be difficult unless you do it early. I often make the error of not planning for ground texturing and then slapping something together after the fact. Usually it looks like that's what I did, if you know what I mean.

Great posing here. With such a small, intimate build, posing becomes all-important.

This is really, really good.

That's kinda funny. My wife said something similar about the dirt! I experimented with foliage and my olive leaf pieces just seemed too big and haphazard. So I settled with cacti, though I wouldn't fault anyone for not recognizing that those big sand green things are cacti. :P Thanks man! I really appreciate that, especially the compliment about the writing.

Whoa. Do you have a flickr? I'd like to fave these pics for future reference.

Sweet, got some good eyes-on with the Yukar this time. I like that you used the ornate warhammer design I had!

I like that the tower feels like it has a specific aesthetic philosophy. By that I mean it looks dwarf-made as distinct from other Mitgardian styles, which admittedly tend to be different depending on the builder. In spite of the high level of craftsmanship and detail typical of GoH builds, structures can sometimes feel a little anonymous and though yours is a more humble build (so far!), it has a real style of its own.