Grover

The Bianca family was a dirt-poor, unranked family from the backwater canals of Illyrian. Unranked with no political power, following the death of their parents, the orphaned siblings turned to a life of crime. Now, years later, the family is still unranked but the siblings and their half brother run a growing criminal enterprise. Gualtiero Bianca, head of family Constant beatings from his drunken parents made Gualtiero a very sullen child, but an elderly local pharmacist took pity on him and mentored him in his craft, securing Gualtiero a position in a school of herbalism and pharmacy in the city of Illyrian. His third year in school, the pharmacist passed away from old age and his parents died only months later in a drunken gondola accident. Penniless and without support, he turned his skills to producing illicit pharmaceuticals and found he had quite a talent for it. With the help of a fellow pharmacy student (who had failed out the previous year and began dealing drugs), he slowly began to grow his criminal enterprise. Now, years later, Gualtiero and his assistant, Jesse Uomorosa, produce illicit pharmaceuticals in their caravan, the Nave di Krystallo. This product is then smuggled into Illyrian by Gualtiero's brother-in-law, Cletus, and distributed by their sister the madame and their half-brother nightclub bouncer. Gualtiero is a ruthless, brutal head of the Bianca crime family. Serifina Bianca Serafina is the second oldest of the siblings behind Gualtiero, and felt obligated to take care of the family after her parents' death. While Gualtiero was off starting up his business, she turned to the oldest profession to make money. Through traditional Varlyrian methods, Serafina quickly gained power in the working house, becoming the Madame. She revamped the business with a high-end clientele and began making more money. She renamed the house to "The Golden Banana" and now provides services to the rich and powerful in Varlyrio. Having reconciled with Gualtiero largely for a substantial cut of his profits, she now distributes wholesale 'product' to upper scale clients and provides law enforcement protection through bribes and blackmail. Niccolo Bianca Third eldest of the siblings, Niccolo Bianca was cared for by his oldest sister Serifina as a child. He learned the value of a dollar and how to prey upon the desires of others, distributing some of Gualtiero's pharmaceutical on the street as a teen. He saved his money and started to run his own gambling rackets in back alleys where he sold drugs. This grew, and he eventually took over a run down casino, renovating it and bringing in new clientele. He now runs a moderately successful casino in Illyrian that launders Gualtiero's money, sells drugs to clients, and provides cover for nefarious meetings of multiple Varlyrian underworld members. He is hard-nosed, has strict rules of his employees not using their product, and will eliminate anyone who breaks the rules or crosses him. His business is close to Serifina's, and they regularly refer clients to one another. Abriana Bianca, her husband Cletus Thurbrush, and her four sons 'Carlo' Youngest of the siblings, Gualtiero's disaster of a sister Abriana ran all over town with every man she could find after her parents died. Never the brightest, Abriana named all of her four sons Carlo after her father, telling them apart by their last names. She seems to have settled on the alligator farmer Cletus Thurbrush and she lives with him on the murky, fetid backwater lower class canals of Illyrian in a ramshackle house with her children and their numerous dogs. Cletus smuggles Gualtiero's bulk product around the city inside of alligator corpses, smelly, disgusting vehicles for transport that rarely are searched by authorities. Thag, half-orc half-brother The unusual product of their father's dalliance with an orc woman, the siblings' half-brother Thag works as a bouncer at a nightclub. He is a low-level dealer of Gualtiero's product and helps with enforcing and extortion operations in their drug territory.

Thanks! I had a bunch of the black plants around just for a Nocty build, so this was perfect. As for the animals, they're the Corellian Hounds from Han's Landspeeder (although they came in another landspeeder too). I happened to find some in a BL store when ordering something else and picked them up cheap a while back. I think they were like $0.20 each for 10 of them, so not bad!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. My color inspiration came from @Exetrius Nocturnus build with the black/turquoise tower. As for the story, well, you can click on the tag and see the humorous Bob posts if you haven't yet! Thanks! I was partly inspired by your introduction build for HQ, so kudos to you! I have more planned builds for Bob's backstory, one of which will be in the town forum! As for him being my main SigFig, I thought about it, but I think the whimsical nature and creativity for Bob's amusing builds might be lost in 'serious' thinking were he my sigfig. As it is, he's a great secondary character that anyone can use and incorporate into their builds, which I think is appropriate given his nature. Don't worry, I'll continue to build for Bob, too!

When Bob awoke, he found himself in some nightmarish Dr. Seuss book. He sat up and looked around. He was no longer in Philadelphia, that was for sure. His head was pounding from a hangover, so he must have slept for some time, but were it not for that, he would not have believed that he was awake. He was outdoors next to some sort of disgustingly colored pond in the middle of a bunch of black trees with purple leaves and red fruit. The vegetation had bizarre colors with odd flowers. Strange sounds from animals he had never heard filled the air and he swore he was being watched. The entire place was humid and smelled like the mens’ room at an Eagles game. Where on earth was he? He had no idea, so he tried to think about the last thing he remembered before finding himself here. He was working on that old gypsy’s sink and… ugh, he had been so drunk that when he stood up he puked up his breakfast of Slim Jims and Schlitz malt liquor all over that gypsy. And that’s when she cursed him. Yeah, he remembered that now. Everything had faded out after that though and he couldn’t remember anything else until he woke up here, wherever ‘here’ was. He thought he was either in some strange dream, or maybe that gypsy had just dumped him in a forest in New Jersey. Well, not much else to do but figure out where he was. He noticed his toolbox had somehow made it with him, and he grabbed it before exploring the area. Not far away he found a road of dark red earth. This was too weird. He checked his cell phone. No service. Great, he was probably even farther away than he thought. That gypsy may have drugged him and dumped him someplace in West Virginia. At the sound of approaching horse hooves, Bob wisely stepped out of the road, and a horse drawn cart approached with a driver clad in green colors with a funny hat. He slowed as he pulled up next to Bob and stopped, greeting him in some strange language. Seeing that Bob didn’t understand him, he waved his hands, muttering some odd words, and then he spoke again. His speech came out in English, but there was a bit of a delay and his words didn’t match his sounds, sort of like watching martial arts films dubbed in English. “Say, friend, what are you doing here? This is not a very friendly part of the world, and you don’t look like you’re from around here by your strange garb,” he said, gesturing to Bob's clothes. “Uh, no, I’m not from here. Where am I?” Bob asked. “Why, you’re in the forests of Nocturnus. How’d you get here?” the man asked. “I don’t really know,” said Bob, squinting his eyes from the hangover pain in his head. “I got cursed by a gypsy, and, well, here I am. Is Nocturnus near Philly at all?” he asked. “I don’t know where this Philly is, but I can take you with me to Albion, where you can get some help. Hop on in.” He gestured to the cart behind him, filled with crates and sacks. “Mind where you sit, I have some expensive spell components in there.” Bob looked around, and, hearing some growling from the brush where some weird whitish dog looking things were, decided to take the ride offered. Bob climbed on board with a “Thanks,” and thought to himself: ‘Spell components? Is this guy one of those LARPer freaks?', but decided not to comment, happy to be free of this weird area. He watched as the landscapes rolled by, but the scenery was far from normal. Strange birds flew through the air with calls he had never heard, and there weren’t any airplanes or traffic around. For that matter, there weren’t any electric lights anywhere. Bob checked his cell phone. Still no service. He was definitely going to pad his hours and charge mileage when he billed that gypsy. Bob's journey continues!

Welcome! We have a pretty laid back pace here, so there's not a lot of pressure, but we always enjoy seeing what other people build!

Awesome! I love the lighting! The bricks used down low with the smooth textures up high make a nice texture. I like how you positioned the lions heads like they are interested in what's going on. Nice subtlety with the door in the corner and bones on the floor, too. Hope the old man hasn't been covered in gravy before being tossed in! Good interpretation of Briton Rivière's painting, too.

I would love to see the pic, but your link is broken.

The latest Looney Tunes CMFs are foil bags. Do we know if they are going to stick to that for the CMFs or are they moving to boxes like for the Vidiyo figures? I'm hoping it's the foil packs since you can both feel them and get more accurate weights. The boxes have terrible variation.

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to present my collected data. It's really disappointing, since it looks like the variation in the boxes. I wound up buying more of these than I wanted just to get an idea of the statistics since we could be seeing more boxed figures in the future. The outlook is not good in that, unlike the foil bags in which you could more easily predict what you were getting by weight, these don't look very predictive and have too much weight overlap due to variation in the packaging. The genie, alien, and cowboy are all within error of one another, as are the bunny, werewolf, and banshee. The instructions were fairly consistent, but the boxes left something to be desired. With a 0.73g range, it covers a large part of the weight range, and total standard deviation based on additive error of the boxes, polybags, and instructions is 0.21g, meaning that for a 95% confidence interval, each average weight for a boxed figure, not including variation in figure weights (which is admittedly small unless pieces are missing) is ± 0.42g. For instance, if you wanted to be 95% sure you got the werewolf (27.30g average), you'd have to buy every box between 26.88 and 27.72g, which means you'd potentially get the Samurai, Cheetah, Bunny, Banshee, Cheerleader, and the Fox/Panda. Not a great predictor of outcome. Data on each is presented below in the format: Character - Average weight ± standard deviation (if able to be calculated) / range of weights from min to max Werewolf 27.30 ± 0.18g / 27.14-27.50g Fox/panda 27.89 / 27.84-27.94g Cowboy 26.06g Cheetah 26.80g / 26.78-26.81g Samurai 26.64g / 26.61-26.67g Shark 28.28 ± 0.11g / 28.17-28.39g Banshee 27.50g Cheerleader 27.87g / 27.81-27.93g Genie 25.93g Alien 26.10g / 25.99-26.20g Bunny 26.97g / 26.89-27.05g Ice cream 26.28g / 26.21-26.34g Boxes: 12.34 ± 0.20g / 12.00-12.73g Instructions: 3.80 ± 0.04g / 3.70-3.86g Polybags: 0.92 ± 0.04g / 0.85-0.96g Conclusion: Let's hope for foil packs, and if they go to boxes, buy a case to get what you want. Side note: the bunny rabbit came fully assembled in one of the two unsealed bags I got. Edit: One of my fox figures was way off because it was missing the 2x6 plate, so I removed that one from the statistics.

One of the Mitgardians will probably post soon to welcome you. In the meantime, you're welcome to post your new sigfig!

Found a new box and thought I'd try to get the werewolf, banshee, and genie. The box order is exactly backward from what has been reported and I wound up with shark guy and other junk I didn't want. I did put the weights into my post a couple of pages back for anyone that is keeping track.

Hard to say. My weights with an unopened box are on either side of that for the three I've weighed (see a few pages back, I keep adding weights to my original post). I have the cheerleader, shark, and alien rocker now.

Gorgeous! Good to see you building for the guilds again! The lighting is fantastic, and the irregular rock cliffs and hang of the trees is very natural. I like your coloration of the waterfall, too. Nice posing of the mini too, I like the outstretched hands. I hear you on the spiraling out of control. The lighting and dimensions are very similar to my pool room build, and I remember that thing kept getting bigger. Not to mention that, but you have more detail in all your vegetation and rockwork than I did. I'd shudder to know how long this took you. Great work, and I hope to see more of you around here again soon!

I will admit, I thought this was posted in the wrong forum because I read "Space ship on the Arkbri". I thought "Did @adde51 build Benny into his creation?" and then I realized had misread it. Ooops! In any case, nice little ship. I like the tan and white on the sails. It looks very natural. Clever use of the pitchforks as oars too!

Fun use of the new tribesmen! Very interesting build. I think it's hard to get a dense jungle looking right without making it too chaotic, but by taking a small slice of it here, you've done a great job. Funny, I didn't even notice the boat until @zoth33 pointed it out, but it looks good. I think the hanging foliage from the trees is my favorite, though followed a close second by the tree roots sticking out of the sides. Well done!

Beautiful! I've seen the dumped 1x1 trans light blue for water before, but not the dumped leaf pieces, and it really looks good! I love the swans! Your color choices are well done, and the whole scene flows together. I'd hate to be there when it floods though!

Really beautiful aesthetic. I love the vegetation, especially the vines winding up the walls. Clever use of the decorative pieces over the door. It's very reminiscent of a 19th century castle to me. Were the rings in the castle towers intentional or an artifact of the build somehow? The roundness of the towers really looks good. I also see that you found many of the same elements at the PAB wall as I did! Nice work!

Gorgeous work! I think your stonework is some of my favorite: not too busy, but plenty of interesting texture. Your rooflines are very nice too, and you use the not fully pressed down tiles to great effect, almost too perfect! The fall colors are bright and exciting, and look great with the dark tan and DBG stone. The slightly indented boards on the wall are very subtle and nice as well. The land itself is impressive. I don't know that I'd have enough patience to make a natural slope like that. And thanks for the Dr. Doom torso, I'm going to add that to my BL wishlist!

Very nice! I like the stonework on the sides and above the door. The 'inverted' color scheme (DBG with LBG hilights instead of the opposite) looks nice. NPU on 3839. Well done with the curved slopes on the corners of the tower, too. I'm glad to see you're still building for Mitgardia!

Nice work! I like the brightly colored roofs and the humor of the knight chasing a pig. You have a lot of nice details from facial expressions, the carrot market, and the woodpile to the tudor framing and the stones embedded in the road that really bring the creation to life. Well done!

Oooh, cool! I am really excited to learn about the secret entrance the elves know about... this is going to be fun! As for the build, it looks great, especially the backlighting. Going big is a problem sometimes as you mentioned in your other post, but you managed to make the scale look good with the nanofigs. I first looked at this on my phone and thought the same thing, but then when I looked at it on my computer, I was able to see a lot more contrast and detail. I tried it on a few different screens and get very different results, so this may be one of those unusual pictures that is screen dependent. Well done! Keep up the good work, and I can't wait to see where the story goes!

Great to see a GoH build from you again! Make sure to claim the build for Military on HSS! I really like the build, especially the proportions since you built to minifig scale. The realistic height on the town wall and towers, along with the functional crenelations look fantastic. The brick built flag gives a good sense of motion, too! You have enough texture and detail in the wall with the dark tan and the headlight bricks on their sides that the wall is interesting and yet not too busy. I also like the buttresses on the corner of the octagonal tower. The help with the sense of being round and break up the angles nicely. Very well done!

I agree, hence why I put in the caveat. I think it works better on larger builds, too, where it's less distracting. If you have a 300 stud long wall that's 20 bricks high, it tends to add texture, as opposed to a 12x12 vignette where it kind of sticks out.

I have an insane amount of light grey since I used to collect it for castle building as a kid, but not much of the brown. On mixing the colors, I would agree, it usually looks terrible, especially with the browns. However, I have found that LG and LBG can be mixed to make a more interesting stone pattern, if done carefully. It's much easier if you use plates. Using LBG/LG bricks can work if you have a large enough surface, but if it's small, can look blocky. All that being said, I still prefer the old LG over LBG. The LBG looks too bright to me and not as much like stone to my eye.

Since I typically only build medieval stuff, I miss the old brown!