The Island

The Island is my latest project and still very much a work in progress that it as at a point where the vision is starting to show. This is my first major project since completing the Town and I can safely say I was very fed up building houses and more than that I was tired of going for quantity over quality. So, the whole theme of the island project was ‘perfectionism’. I want every single block on the Island to be exactly where and what I want it to be, no expenses spared. This is why I picked this island to begin with, as a comparatively small build site with very clear boundaries around it(the water) I would be forced into a quality over quantity build style as there simply isn’t space for any quantity.

Another theme of the Island is nature. I’ve burnt out building structures and wanted to try something I had never been very good at, custom trees and landscaping. Outside of the hobbit hole I built into the island(as a functional place for me to live) there will be no structures on the island(excepting a planned ruined chapel to explore more ruined builds after how much I enjoyed the town wall) so all the beauty will have to come from natural features like the trees.

The Trees

The trees are where the most progress towards the final vision of the island has been made as I now have three distinct types of tree designed that I can use to populate the rest of the island. From left to right above we have the oak tree design, the birch tree and an ash tree(though I took some liberties with the bark colour to add variation to the island).
These trees took a good few tries to get right in fact my first attempt at the large oak tree that sits above the the entrance to the hobbit hole had to be torn down and restarted. I’ve managed to find a picture of it, shown below.

It looked okay but I referred to my project themes and decided that '“okay” wasn’t good enough and started it again and I am much happier with the results now that I’ve learned from my mistakes on the first tree(not enough branches leading to large chunks of leaves making an artificial looking canopy).

The Hobbit Hole

The Hobbit Hole(clearly inspired by Bagend from Lord of the Rings) is a finished part of the island and though it’s small I’m quite proud of it. A mostly underground house seemed ideal as it meant I could make as many rooms as I wanted without having to worry about taking away space for nature on the island. The key themes behind this build were ‘comfort’ and ‘light in the darkness’. The second theme is really a method of achieving the first but I wanted to make sure it was something I followed as what this build really adds to the Island build is little spots of civilisation in an otherwise wild place which I think having that contrast makes the island seem more wild for the contrast. By showing the lights, the surrounding dark seems darker. Obviously these themes are most visible at night(shown below). I emphasised these themes by making the Hobbit Hole mostly white to make it stand out as much as possible from the surrounding terrain. At first the only visible part of the Hobbit Hole was the entrance way but I decided that didn’t really reflect the size of the build and I felt having more than one point of light would work for my theme better so I added more windows sticking out the hillside.

The interior is fairly simple with a few key design choices of note. Firstly, I tried my best to make the rooms as small as they could practically be. This was in pursuit of the ‘cosy’ theme as keeping everything compact is the best way I’ve found to achieve this in Minecraft. The other key design choice was inspired by Bagend where the roots of the oak tree above the home run through parts of the house. I emulated this to help tie the Hobbit Hole in to the rest of the island.