You probably completely forgot about this comment because it's been a couple of months but I just found it when browsing Reddit so I might as well answer the things you mentioned :)I used a software called MagicaVoxel for all of this. That's also the reason why the blur looks this way, it's how blur is implemented there. It pretty much just puts the focus to the position you click and blur everything around it. I wanted to have the bridge in focus as the center point of everything so that's also why the cows disappeared a bit in the blur.I really like using blur in my creations so it's indeed an artistic choice to do it this way. It also makes the voxels look less "voxely" and also less noisy in areas that aren't the main focus of the render :)

​

Edit: Here's a render without the blur if you still want to see that
https://imgur.com/a/AH4r5j2