Hello Hivians,
Once upon a time there was a tiny and very stingy gnome. He was so stingy that he preferred to live in an old tree stump instead of building a nice house in the Gnome Village.
He also had a little goat called Berta which lived in the paddock behind his stump house. He loved the fresh goat milk. But the goat was not very happy with her employer. Day in and day out she only got old turnips to eat and the gnome didn't want to spend any gold on building a stable for her. So she stood in the paddock whatever the weather.
Winter soon came over the land. It was getting bitterly cold.
As every morning the gnome went out to the paddock to milk the goat.
When he grabbed the goat's udder, she bleated...
"Maaaa... Build me a stable, I'm freezing. Can't you feel my cold udders?"
The gnome frowned and replied, "Too expensive. Hold on a little longer. In a few weeks it will be spring." ... milked and went back into his well heated house.
The next morning, when the gnome returned to the goat to be milked, the goat bleated again.
"Maaaaa ... Please, if you are too stingy to build me a stable, please buy me a blanket. It's so cold out here. Especially at night."
The gnome frowned again and replied... "Then I would have to go down to the village. That won't work, someone has to look for the fire in the house. Hold on, spring will definitely come soon." ... milked the goat and went back into the house.
Before he went to the goat the next morning, he heard the goat bleating loudly from paddock ... "Maaaa, maaaa, maaaa ...."
He quickly ran out of the house to see what was going on.
The goat stood there and was really pissed off.
"Maaaa ... I was freezing again all night long again. At least let me warm up in the house before you milk me."
The gnome then frowned again and said ... "Dear goat, I just turned the stove down. Then I would have to put on another piece of log for you in the stove. That is really way too expensive for me. Hold on just a little longer. The spring will come soon!"
"Maaaa ..." ... The goat pulled her bundle out from behind a fence post, jumped over the fence and called ... "Maaa, if I have to freeze out here you shouldn't get any milk from me. I am hereby resigning and I will find a more grateful gnome!" ... and moved away.
... and if he has not died yet, the gnome is still sitting in his warm stump without his beloved fresh goat's milk.
The collage
LMAC is a great community for artists of all skill levels. The name of the community is an abbreviation and stands for "Let's make a collage". Just take a look. Even if you think you are not an artist, LMAC will probably prove you wrong.
This is my contribution to the LMAC Contest Round 64.
Tools I used
- Gimp 2.10.20 for all of the image manipulation works.
- MakeHumanCommunity for creating the body of the gnome.
- Blender 2.91 for all of the 3D modelling and posing works.
Materials
The collage contains parts of multiple images. I took a few of them from Pixabay. The images there are free to use.
The other images are made by-myself in Blender, a 3D modelling tool. And except the background image, which was a template photo provided by @shaka.
I painted all the snow by hand on various objects, as well as light and shadow.
For the collage, I needed more space on the canvas. Therefore, I extended the template photo using mirroring. Then I brought chaos into the mirrored part in order to have a normal distribution of details over the entire canvas, which makes it much more realistic. I did this with the clone brush in GIMP by repeatedly painting parts of the original over the mirrored side, sometimes randomly, sometimes specifically.
@shaka's template photo
The beautiful template photo for this LMAC round, provided and photographed by @shaka.
List of materials
| Subject | Source |
|---|---|
| The tree stump. | Pixabay link: Click here |
| The goat. | Pixabay link: Click here |
| The teeth for the goat. | Pixabay link: Click here |
| The sack on the stick. | Pixabay link: Click here |
| The pile of firewood. | Pixabay link: Click here |
| Homemade: The door of the stump house. |  |
| Homemade: The right window. |  |
| Homemade: The left window. |  |
| Homemade: The front fence. |  |
| Homemade: The fence on the right side. |  |
| Homemade: The chimney. |  |
| Homemade: The barrel. |  |
| Homemade: The gnome. |  |
The creation process in one GIF
Best regards
QuantumG
We are not worthy. You are so many leagues ahead and yet you respect our work, and are even entertained by it.
I'm going to repeat what I said about your writing. It is amazingly fresh and humorous. One will never nod off while reading one of your stories.
The collage: What to admire? The goat? The stump/hut? The snow, the gnome, the chaos? All of it.
If you ever want to collaborate on a book...
You always say such nice words. I never know what to answer, except thank you. :-)
I don't know whether you know that, among others, your praise in particular has encouraged me always since I joined LMAC to try things out and to show them to the community. Kind of like a physical muse.
Thank you for that very much!
It would be my pleasure! Let's not hesitate to get in touch whenever one of us has an idea (via PeakD chat i.ex.). :-)
Hello my friend and teacher, @quantumg,
Your particular talent is not so much that you know things, but that you make it seem the rest of us can know these things also. It makes me very happy that I encourage you. My inclination is to blurt stuff out when it occurs to me. I lack sophistication :) Say what I feel.
When I speak about book collaboration, it is the thing that pops in my mind when I come across someone with talent, especially writing talent, but in your case art/writing/graphical technique talent.
It's an idea that may not come to fruition, but I have helped a few people self-publish over the years, mostly older ladies who wanted their one great book to come alive in the marketplace. You can see some of the books here:
https://www.amazon.com/Ursula-Nouza-Prose-Poetry-Punditry/dp/1482071479
https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Time-Mourn-Heal/dp/1082229520/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lois+wolfson&qid=1611205979&s=books&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Time-Mourn-Heal/dp/1082229520/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lois+wolfson&qid=1611205979&s=books&sr=1-1
If you ever wanted to wed your charming stories with illustrations, for example, and make a book out of it--I can see that happening easily. Doesn't cost anything. Just your time and effort.
I don't know how to use PeakD chat. There's a lot I don't know :)) But I'd be happy to share what I do know about self-publishing.
Just an idea to add to your already busy life :)
I love the gnome, I love the goat, I love the story. Dear @quantumg, Happy New Year!
I have started experimenting with Make Human. It is great. I see what you do and the expressiveness you achieve in your character and I really enjoy it!
Your collage picks up pretty well the tone of humorous fairy tales, which feed on the folkloric vein. By the way, goats are absolutely adorable beings and deserve their private accommodation with warm blankets.
A big hug!
Happy new year and a big hug to you, too. Thank you very much for your kind words. :-)
Yes I noticed imidiadely you used MakeHuman and it looks wonderful. I just had to find time to write a comment on your post. But I'll make up for that in a moment.
There is the secret home of my heart. I grew up very intensively with all the folkloric fairy tales and myths of my southern german culture. My grand parents and my parents had a lot to tell, a story for every situation.
These tales formed my values and my view to what is right, my moralic compass. And last but not least it formed the way I'm thinking whenever I imagine a story, despite the fact that I have yet to develop a better sense for good spins.
Fascinating that you recognized that in my stories. :-)
I recognize it because in a way, it is also my culture. Your country is a source of stories that have become important to everyone. Many of my childhood stories come from there. Many of those stories are told in my country with other landscapes and other characters. The powerful fictional image of the forest, built like a topos that is already universal. What a fortune to have grown up there!
Poor goat enduring the cold and feeding that lazy gnome! You do have a good imagination to create stories, I think I told you that already but I repeat it! 😁 I loved your entry, very creative! I wish you good luck my friend. And by the way Happy New Year! 🤗
Thank you very much. I wish you a happy new year and good luck at the poll (looks pretty good so far for your collage.:-) ), too. :-)
Love the lesson in the story and the goat. Wonderful collage!
Thank you. :-)
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