Block art via Minecraft? NICE!
While working on the Atlantis project for the Fantasy Realm, I was doing basic design work on the walls. The walls were still just slabs of raw rock.
I had been doing patterns i thought world look Atlantis like, as i tried to imagine what an intentionally underwater world might look like over time.
Atlantis would have creative patterns based on the colors their isolated underwater world would have provided, i decided. Lots of blue, aqua-green and other sea toned colors.
That was fine, but then it dawned on me that this culture would have certainly had some kind of picto-graphs by now, especially since much of its foundation would be based on massive cliff walls.
So I asked myself. What might three picto-graphs look like, what would the imagery be? Maybe ocean images, maybe outer world images they’d seen overhead, maybe some UFO’s from Elon Musk! After all, they’re only view would be overhead.
So I decided I would experiment with creating some pixel based images.
The first challenge would, be time. I have a lot of projects running at the same time, so I didn’t want anything drawn out.
It would also need to be something able to be created on a very small grid.
Last, I wanted to use the least amount of colors possible
Growing you I the 80’s I was part of the video game revolution. We had videogame arcades in every city. Our era of video games had lots of similar limitations, but were some of the best games ever imagined for the same reason. It was the 8-bit generation. The the 16-bit revision, followed by the 64-bit revolution.
While the Atlantis theme area is very large considering it is entirely under the ocean. It was only around 18 blocks tall. Technically 20 blocks, but the top two are clear glass keeping the ocean above, out.
After thinking about it, i determined that some of the original Space Invaders and Galaxian 8-bit images would be perfect. They look a little ancient, aquatic and alien all at the same time. Additionally, they are some of the smallest pixel graphics every designed.
So I went to work. I tested two Space Invaders pixel images first. Those worked pretty well as two color images.
So i decided to try something braver, a 16-bit 4 color image from the Galaxian video game. Its main image, the ship.
Unfortunately, I did make a goof and forgot to turn off the effects created by a protection boost device with the world. So the entire video has Smokey looking red visual effects the entire video.
No problem I decided, after all its was an experiment anyway. Next time, I’ll remember to disable those effects before beginning so they will not appear in the video capture.
I hope you get inspired and try this out in your own Minecraft world.