After hearing the news from Cedrica, Luca di Carlo got slightly nervous about having to host an event him and his family would have to pay for themselves. Just as he sat and mourned his future expenses his father burst through the chamber door bombastically ranting about how his personal gondola rower managed to capsize the gondola and how he had fired him even before he got out of the water. Thats when Luca knew how they would entertain the people of Ostia. A game where gondola rowers can duel eachother while each standing on a board and holding a paddle to knock their opponent into the water with. The grand prize ofcourse being permanently employed by Nicola di Carlo (Luca's father).

Gondola rowers lining up to compete.

The location was carefully chosen because of the nearby di Carlo olive seller.

Nicola and Elena di Carlo.

Great opportunity to feed a gambling addiction!

 

Man, it was dificult to create 40+ figures and i still would have liked to have more but oh well. It was nice to get to try out the cheese-slope arches and I think it turned out well. I'm not quite satisfied with the sand green building but i didn't have time to scrap it and come up with something else. 

Lots of things to comment on but I don't really have time now either, but please let me know what you think about it! Any critisism is appriciated!

Edited January 31, 20196 yr by ZlatanXVIGustaf

This is excellent. The photos might be a bit dark, but I think this is easily my favorite Cat B build. The buildings are crazy good and I appreciate what you did here because what I was doing with mine was similar in some ways. Yours is just better. :P

Fantastic entry man, lovely architecture and a really fun (and well executed) form of entertainment. 

This is really great! The details are amazing! And the scene you have going on is very nice.

Excellent entry! Quite a lot of little amazing details that helps the overall build. The color palette is very nice.

Holy banana! Love your entry!! The colours, the houses and all the minifigs posings. My favourite is the dk tan house to the left, those windows are lovely!!

Really stunning entry all-round! I love when minifig posing is in the center of a build of such proportions
The various plants are also enhancing the scene quite a lot.

One comment is however that I think you've overused 1x1 round plates a bit for the walls, an idea to get a slightly more subtle texture is to mix them with 1x1 round tiles/1x1 "stadium tiles". Not as strong but gives less of a symmetric dent in the walls.

A minor nitpick is also that I think the photos are a bit greenish. Calibrating the white balance would correct that.

This is one of the best Category B entries and it's a delight to see it coming from Varlyrio!

So many beautiful architectural details all round, every building fits the Varlyrian style perfectly. Great fig posing and love the variety of faces and actions.

The photos are a little dark and I wish we had higher resolution versions to pore over the details.

Wow, this is really fantastic, the colors and details here are spot on, that tree is really nice too. I love the mood of this scene, looks so medieval! Keep it up!

Edited February 10, 20196 yr by TheLordOfBricks

This is just awesome.  I love the texturing and colors of all the buildings.  Each building has it's own style yet they all blend well together.  The touches of plants throughout the build are great, make the scene come to life, especially the two round stone sections by the water really great idea.  The little things going on  the streets is great too.  I like the two guys with the table of money, the lion guys watching the game, and the other different people watching the game really bring the scene to life.  Excellent job overall.  

Each building could stand alone really well but they all come together in a great way.  The texturing is really good but I really like the tiles on the roofs.  The plant fronds hanging down towards the water and the various figures in the crowd are all done very well.  I like the little group of Leanders, the gambling addicts and the big barrel of olives.

Hoping to see more Varlyrio builds from you in the future!

Oh man, what a great build!  This reminds me of log rolling competitions.  What a great story to give purpose to the competition!  I like the buildings around the quay; the colors are great, and the textures are very consistent--it really looks to me like buildings that have been around the water a long time.  The roof tiles on the left hand building with olive and orange are superb, and all the wedge arches look great.  The plants growing inbetween buildings and such are very well done, and the minis looking around look good too.  Outstanding build!

Really nice build, I'm amazed, how good are the buildings surround the little harbour.

Great concept here!  Really nice job executing it too, lots of neat arches (the half arch with the barrel is actually quite eye catching despite being comparatively simple; great asymmetric design) and the whole canal section is very well done.  And I really like the way you incorporated the vegetation on top of the round sections of the canal wall!  

haha really nice idea and cool, short story behind it. Lovely buildings all around, maybe a bit tii many 1x1 rounds, but I still enjoy the texture and I appreciate that it is consistent throughout all of the buildings. The whole scene is really lively and that's a whole bunch of nice figs!

'The location was carefully chosen because of the nearby di Carlo olive seller.' <--- this cracked me up

Spectacular!  Love seeing part of an eastern city like this, and the story is amusing! I like the dark tones of the buildings, and there is so much detail, cool arches and textures and designs! 

WOW! This blew me away....what beautiful work here. The stonework, the coloration, the roofing....wow. 

On 1/31/2019 at 7:08 PM, mccoyed said:

This is excellent. The photos might be a bit dark, but I think this is easily my favorite Cat B build. The buildings are crazy good and I appreciate what you did here because what I was doing with mine was similar in some ways. Yours is just better. :P

Thanks, that means a lot!

On 1/31/2019 at 8:28 PM, adde51 said:

Fantastic entry man, lovely architecture and a really fun (and well executed) form of entertainment. 

Thank you very much! Not gonna lie, the architecture was the main focus for me, the game part was just an excuse

On 1/31/2019 at 8:47 PM, Servertijd said:

This is really great! The details are amazing! And the scene you have going on is very nice.

Thanks!

On 1/31/2019 at 9:38 PM, Bracari said:

Excellent entry! Quite a lot of little amazing details that helps the overall build. The color palette is very nice.

Thank you! I varied the colour palette to not get too repetitive, I’m glad you like it!

On 1/31/2019 at 9:56 PM, de Gothia said:

Holy banana! Love your entry!! The colours, the houses and all the minifigs posings. My favourite is the dk tan house to the left, those windows are lovely!!

Thanks man! The windows were definitely a pain to build I like the end result aswell.

On 2/1/2019 at 12:43 AM, Gideon said:

Really stunning entry all-round! I love when minifig posing is in the center of a build of such proportions
The various plants are also enhancing the scene quite a lot.

One comment is however that I think you've overused 1x1 round plates a bit for the walls, an idea to get a slightly more subtle texture is to mix them with 1x1 round tiles/1x1 "stadium tiles". Not as strong but gives less of a symmetric dent in the walls.

A minor nitpick is also that I think the photos are a bit greenish. Calibrating the white balance would correct that.

Thanks! I think the greenery will be what characterises Ostia. 

I see what you mean about the 1x1 studs, I saw that aswell when I photographed it. I guess I never took a step back to look at it. The reason why I didn’t use round tiles was simply that I didn’t have enough of them. That’s an interesting use of the stadium tiles though, I’ve never thought about that.

And the white balance as always. I think I need to lower the brightness on my monitor when I edit because I really thought they were bright enough, oh well.

On 2/1/2019 at 12:55 AM, Basiliscus said:

This is one of the best Category B entries and it's a delight to see it coming from Varlyrio!

So many beautiful architectural details all round, every building fits the Varlyrian style perfectly. Great fig posing and love the variety of faces and actions.

The photos are a little dark and I wish we had higher resolution versions to pore over the details.

Thank you! I’ll work on my photography and editing for my next moc.

On 2/1/2019 at 2:04 AM, TheLordOfBricks said:

Wow, this is really fantastic, the colors and details here are spot on, that tree is really nice too. I love the mood of this scene, looks so medieval! Keep it up!

Thanks mate! The tree is one of those ones that are always on the verge of falling apart. I’ll have to figure out a way to make it survive a car ride.

On 2/1/2019 at 5:32 AM, zoth33 said:

This is just awesome.  I love the texturing and colors of all the buildings.  Each building has it's own style yet they all blend well together.  The touches of plants throughout the build are great, make the scene come to life, especially the two round stone sections by the water really great idea.  The little things going on  the streets is great too.  I like the two guys with the table of money, the lion guys watching the game, and the other different people watching the game really bring the scene to life.  Excellent job overall.  

Thank you very much! Those rounded sections are an upsized version of the same thing I did in my first Ostia moc.

On 2/1/2019 at 2:35 PM, Muakhah said:

Each building could stand alone really well but they all come together in a great way.  The texturing is really good but I really like the tiles on the roofs.  The plant fronds hanging down towards the water and the various figures in the crowd are all done very well.  I like the little group of Leanders, the gambling addicts and the big barrel of olives.

Hoping to see more Varlyrio builds from you in the future!

Thanks! I’ll definitely keep on building varlyrian mocs.

On 2/1/2019 at 7:58 PM, Grover said:

Oh man, what a great build!  This reminds me of log rolling competitions.  What a great story to give purpose to the competition!  I like the buildings around the quay; the colors are great, and the textures are very consistent--it really looks to me like buildings that have been around the water a long time.  The roof tiles on the left hand building with olive and orange are superb, and all the wedge arches look great.  The plants growing inbetween buildings and such are very well done, and the minis looking around look good too.  Outstanding build!

Thanks! I’m glad you like the story, I think it’s the first time I’ve actually written any type of story to accompany a build.

On 2/2/2019 at 4:10 PM, kahir88 said:

Really nice build, I'm amazed, how good are the buildings surround the little harbour.

Thank you very much!

On 2/2/2019 at 4:56 PM, Kai NRG said:

Great concept here!  Really nice job executing it too, lots of neat arches (the half arch with the barrel is actually quite eye catching despite being comparatively simple; great asymmetric design) and the whole canal section is very well done.  And I really like the way you incorporated the vegetation on top of the round sections of the canal wall!  

Thank you very much! I’m usually not a big fan of the prefabricated arches but they definitely served their purpose here.

On 2/3/2019 at 10:43 PM, en_zoo said:

haha really nice idea and cool, short story behind it. Lovely buildings all around, maybe a bit tii many 1x1 rounds, but I still enjoy the texture and I appreciate that it is consistent throughout all of the buildings. The whole scene is really lively and that's a whole bunch of nice figs!

'The location was carefully chosen because of the nearby di Carlo olive seller.' <--- this cracked me up

Thanks! I’m glad I gave you a laugh.

On 2/5/2019 at 11:15 PM, W Navarre said:

Spectacular!  Love seeing part of an eastern city like this, and the story is amusing! I like the dark tones of the buildings, and there is so much detail, cool arches and textures and designs! 

Thank you! 

On 2/8/2019 at 12:02 AM, Judge of the Wastelands said:

WOW! This blew me away....what beautiful work here. The stonework, the coloration, the roofing....wow. 

Hehe, thanks, glad you like it!

This is gorgeous!  I saw the first picture and was pretty impressed, then was blown away when I saw your second picture!  The story is very Varlyrian, but the build is even more Varlyryian.  Love the bley pillars on the white building, the black corner roof, the combination of dk red and dk orange/flesh, all the inset windows and arches, the window in the door, the planters, the walkways and stairs - Fantastic!  I think the contest is a great idea, and you've pulled it off well, and the watching crowd is well done too.  Great to have a new archetypal Varlyrian build for the main page!

Just gorgeous!  I'll echo what Rogue said - you've nailed Varlyrio in just about every way possible in the build, from the architecture to the game itself (an ingenious idea on its own!) to the color-schemes.  Great job posing all those minifigs as well and getting them all to look so alive and realistic; that's not easy, I know, especially not with so many in the same build!  The arched windows on the dark tan building are probably my single favorite architectural detail, but the texture and shaping on the dock is superb as well.  Amazing job all around - can't wait for more Varlyrian builds from you! 

On 2/10/2019 at 8:54 PM, ZlatanXVIGustaf said:

And the white balance as always. I think I need to lower the brightness on my monitor when I edit because I really thought they were bright enough, oh well.

Which program are you using for the editing? In Lightroom at least a very good tool to get a hunch about the brightness is to look at the histogram and see that it isn't too far to the dark or bright side.
The white balance is normally adjusted in warm ("yellowish") - cold ("blue"), but depending on the light source there can also be some need to adjust on the greenish-magenta scale too.
In at least both Lightroom and Picasa you can "pick" a white area to adjust the white balance automatically. My trick for that is to wrap a brick in PTFE tape (used for plumbing, costs about €1 for a whole roll), that is 99,9 % white  I then either put it in a corner of the frame, adjust the white balance and then crop it away. Or these days, simply take a separate shot to adjust the white balance with and then reuse on the other photos.

Top notch buildings with so many incredible brick built arches
Brilliant colors and roof designs too. Every area looks well thought out, and you maintained a very consistent aesthetic between all the buildings

Congrats on your well earned win

This is a great build, ZG! I love the textures, especially around the water. On the buildings, I think mixing things up a bit would be better, as all of them have the same basic pattern repeated in different colors. The colors are really nice though, and very appropriate to the location. A well-deserved winner!