How I Build Minecraft Organics without Using Commands

You A question I get asked quite a bit is how do you build organics and while I did make a video on this previously you showing some basic tips I really didn’t get into too much of the details of my thought process that was more about how

To go about doing it with commands and some basic things to think about this video is gonna go a little more in-depth on how I actually perceive things as I’m building and some techniques that you could follow and to illustrate it even better I’m going to be showing you how

To build organics by hand so it’s not just limited to Java players who have access to world at it these are some techniques that hopefully any wine crafter can use if you’re interested in building organic sculptures of any kind chances are if you’re watching this video you already know what Newark Enoch

Is but for anyone who doesn’t an organic is anything that’s living such as a human or an animal or a plant but I would take it a step further in Minecraft to say that inorganic is anything was built with curves and organic shapes as opposed to geometric shapes organics make use of

Curves and tend to flow more whereas geometric shapes are more rigid and structured so how do we actually go about building organics I can give you one simple answer with a lot of patience and a lot of practice and that’s really all you need to know for how to build

Anything so I think you’re good to go I’ll see you later but in all seriousness there really is no set way to build and it’s not something that’s just gonna happen overnight it takes time to develop any kind of skill well you may not be at the

Level you want to be yet just remember everyone had to start from somewhere a lot of times when you see people who are really good builders it could be that they have been building for quite a long time or that they have some kind of artistic background which would be

Myself so what about the person that knows all the commands that knows they have to follow proportions and make a wireframe and they know all these things but I just want actual techniques to follow well that’s what I’m hoping that this video can help you with so we’re

Going to do a build from start to finish and I’ll explain to you my thought process for every single step and maybe some tips for each step and you might already know some of these that’s a given but this is just how I work and again I’m

Hoping it will help you step one is to get an idea and/or a reference photo I feel like most builders out there use a reference photo of some kind I oftentimes come up with an idea first then draw out to help me visualize what I’m thinking or look up a reference

Photo to help support my ideas ultimately whatever your idea is the more references you have of it the better so that you can more accurately portray it once you have a good solid reference here are a few tips for how we can analyze our reference before we

Start building we have a picture here of a hummingbird I can take any measurement I want and compare it to other measurements in that same form and see how they relate to each other by doing this I can estimate that the beak of this hummingbird is a little less than

One-third of the body light and this is what I do to help me figure out the proportions of something once you have a good understanding of proportions then you can also look at the positive shapes and the negative shapes in the same image to really just look at the shapes

In general see how they’re outlined and see how they fit with each other my brain is wired very strangely where anything I look at I automatically see the shape of it or I see the outline and once you have the proper proportions measured out you just recreate that

Shape and you’ll get a full form this might not come as easily to some people but think about it this way the more measurements you make the more accurate your form will be if you have a hard time eyeballing it and just drawing what you see then just measure it to death

And you will be much more accurate than if you did it that is something I learned for how to draw in two-dimensional space but what about a three dimensional space which is what we’re doing in Minecraft that’s where wireframing comes in wire framing is basically drawing in a 3d

Space so we need to determine the shapes or the outlines if you will of every angle instead of just 2d this has always come easy to me because of all the joy and I have done in the past so there’s definitely a factor of past experiences in drawing which have

Helped me pick up 3d more easily I’m going to do a demonstration build using this reference image I chose this one because it’s a bit more challenging it doesn’t give me all the information I need to accurately portray this pose but let’s have a go at it and see how it goes

The first thing I need to think about is space what is the space I want this shape to fill so I need to lay out some basic things like body length and height and leg height just basic things like that to help me get an idea of the space

This is going to fill and I know my photo gives me very little information so I actually did look up some other reference photos and I actually drew this little sketch of the top of the Fox just to give me an idea of how I think

The top would look I don’t know if it’s 100% accurate but it really did help me combine that with my reference photo to help me get an idea of the space that this will fit in in conjunction with space we need to think about proportions

I need to make sure that one leg isn’t longer than another that they’re both consistent and that they’re consistently measuring up to other parts of the body remember the hummingbird example that is a step I am talking about once you have the proportions and lengths figured out

You can start wire framing and adding shapes to your build now there’s a lot of important things to think about when creating the shapes I’m thinking about positive shapes the shapes that are actually part of the form and the outlines of them I’m thinking about them two dimensionally and then inserting

Them into a 3d space which does take a bit of practice I’m also thinking about the negative shapes and looking at those if there is a shape that is not part of the actual form it is a shape nonetheless so I want to make sure that the positive and negative shapes are

Both linking together and are both as accurate as I can get them to be in a voxel environment something else you need to think about it’s probably most important is the anatomy of what it is you’re building I’m not an expert in anatomy of a fox but I know for a fact

That they have backwards knees on the backs of their legs as do a lot of creatures like this and that I need to make its back a little bit arch just things that that you need to think about and once you have a decent understanding of anatomy in your head that’s when you

Really can try making up your own poses with different animals without using as me reference photos this is something I guess that you’d see more in as fantasy-type build if you have a building a dragon for example every picture of a dragon out there is just

Concept art and where do they come up with those poses well because they have a basic understanding of anatomy they’re able to take that knowledge and transfer it into a more fantasy like studying at least that’s how I perceive it I could be completely wrong but it makes sense

In my brain something else is very important that a lot of people oftentimes overlooked is weight distribution you don’t want your organic to look like it’s falling it over you want to make sure it looks like it’s standing solidly or in a solid pose and

That it has the balance that it needs to be portrayed accurately now of course if you’re doing something that’s flying or floating midair it won’t make as much of a difference to account for the weight but that’s something to think about those things are basically all I think

Of as I continue to build out the shape but you have to constantly be checking you know every angle to make sure they’re all looking correct if you’re building something by hand like I am doing here you’re also what to account for smoothing as you’re building normally whenever I’m building with

Commands I don’t do the smoothing until afterwards but since I’m doing they’re all at once I can just do it as I go here some really quick tips list smoothing I know I gave some before in another video but I want to give them again if you ever have a standalone

Block or a single black hole punched in your organic chances are you’re going to want to fill it in it can be a big distraction unless it was purposefully put there something else to consider is the spacing in between all the layers now a lot of this has to do with the

Angle that you need from the side view which I’m not showing here but I personally think it looks a little better to have more breathing space in between the layers as long as it’s not messing with the angle from the side I would recommend doing this probably the

Biggest tip I can get for smoothing is to try as much as possible to avoid a stair-step look here’s a simple example of the same basic shape smooth two different ways unless you’re wanting a really flat surface it’s better to smooth using curves instead of straight lines because

The more straight lines and diagonals you use of course the more blocky it’s going to appear this really depends on the context of what it is you’re building but most of the time when I’m building an animal or human I am going to want to use more curves when

Smoothing one more file tip is if you’re ever building with a lot of vertical lines it usually looks better to break it up on diagonals this again is us trying to get out of the blocky look of Minecraft and trying to make as many curves as possible wherever we can there

Is such a thing as over smoothing to make sure you’re not smoothing to a point where it’s ruining your form ultimately it’s the form that I think about first and foremost and smoothing is just a secondary thought so don’t think that you need to smooth something

Just because it has a sharp edge if it’s going to mess with the actual form then you’re probably not going to need to smooth it I am NOT an expert at coloring in details in fact I consider myself very bad at it that is probably what I

Need to work on the most is getting the details and stuff in my builds but some things that I think about that might help you are first of all the shadows and the highlights of the build now I built this Fox completely in its mid-tone I just picked a mid-tone block

And then I was going to add in the shadows and highlights later so think about where your shadows and your highlights are going to appear and replace those areas with a darker or lighter block so on my Fox I’m going to take a much darker block and place it

Wherever I know there’s a shadow I am using my photo as a reference and looking where any of the dark lines are and then I’m going to create a gradient to gradually transition that block to the mid-tone something to try to avoid is speckling blocks in too much because

That creates a whole other texture unless that’s something you’re really going for is the texture you should use it sparingly bottom line think about your shadows highlights and mid-tones think about gradients and making smooth transitions and I could be missing something but that’s pretty much all I do for my

Coloring and I know the coloring on this Fox isn’t perfect keep in mind I had built the sky three times and by the third time around I was tired of looking at this guy but I did want to do a quick coloring demonstration so I decided to

Do a very quick one very rough one I know that this video has been very detailed and I tried to condense it as much as I possibly could but I’m hoping that this video can help clarify maybe some of the thought processes I actually go through what I’m building I really

Can’t describe it any better than I have laid out in this video everyone has their own way of doing stuff this is just how I think about things as I create art and I will admit that all the steps I have laid out for you I

Sometimes skip some of them as I’m doing art it’s not like a step by step thing I follow every single time these are just some things I’ve come to recognize over time and that in a way come naturally to me a little bit because I don’t have to

Think about it as much but I truly hope I was able to help you in some way don’t you sometimes wish you could connect your brain to somebody else’s brain and then automatically you have all of their knowledge and abilities that would be so nice if we could do that but nope

We all forgot a practice we all got to start from somewhere this is the best I can do to explain my process to you and I hope you found it useful thank you all so much for watching this video and for being patient and watching the whole

Thing all the way through I hope to see you again sometime but until then have a great day in half I’m building