Hello everyone! If you could tell from the title, this article is a little different from what I usually do, because this article is about building in Minecraft. I have some building tips to share with you, and a video of an art studio built in Minecraft.
Structure
In terms of building structure, the size of the structure depends on what you are building. Be aware that larger builds will take longer and may result in painful hands if you build non-stop without taking breaks! My hands have hurt from long building sessions, so please be careful when building for a while. In terms of building roofs, I like to do layers and make the layers smaller and smaller as I go up the roof. It gives a cool effect. Sometimes I make the floor a different block type or color from the walls of the building, sometimes I don’t. It depends on what I’m building, and the artistic look I’m going for.
Blocks
In terms of blocks, if you are trying to use specific blocks, make sure the block color and block texture complement each other, or you could do some contrasting blocks with different colors and textures if you prefer that. It depends on what you are building, and the style you desire.
Items
In terms of items, especially when decorating the inside of a room of your building, you may have to create items that don’t exist in Minecraft from other items. You just have to improvise. For example, I used lecturns to represent art easels in a video of mine called “Building an Art Studio in Minecraft” (linked below). I used chests for storage containers, a Ender Dragon mob head on a block to represent a painted clay mask.
In this particular video (linked below), I also added a lot of paintings, and sometimes had to place blocks to get the paintings I wanted, then broke the blocks afterwards. It can be annoying, trying to get the right painting. I didn’t add shelves in this video. However, you can add some bookshelves to represent shelves of sketchbooks or drawing books in a Minecraft art studio.
Building Items
If you noticed in the video I made a table using fence posts and wooden slabs. I did that to give it the effect of a wooden table with thin legs, as you would see in an art studio.
Ideas
Sometimes playing minecraft gives me drawing ideas, or ideas for characters. Sometimes building helps me calm down and relieve stress, especially when I can’t draw for some reason, or if my devices are charging. Sometimes I get the idea to do ‘vent builds’ which is like vent art, but in the form of something built in Minecraft. I don’t often do them because I don’t always have the motivation. I sometimes build things based off of characters, such as large character heads, usually of my own characters but sometimes other people’s or characters from a show, game, or movie that I like. At one point I built statues of my own characters.
Other
If you spawn mobs in or bring mobs to a part of a build and don’t want them running everywhere, I suggest you build some sort of animal pen. Usually I use fences to achieve this. Although there are other possibilities of making enclosures but I prefer using fences. Sometimes I decorate the fenced areas by putting torches on the fence posts, or place things around or in the fenced areas. Usually I use leads to bring the animals into the pens, but when I don’t have a lead with me I use the specific animals’ favorite foods to get them to come into the pens. With some mobs that don’t have a favorite food, getting them in the pens can be trickier if I don’t have a lead in my inventory.
If you see me in Minecraft, please say hi! My in-game name (IGN) is Greystokey. Let me know if you want to collaborate, or do a specific part of whatever I’m building.
Here is the video mentioned in this article.
I’ll “see” you again another day, in our virtual art world!