Colossal City!

Have you ever heard the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day?” Well, neither was the City of Anarchs, created by team Octovon. In fact, it took them eight months to create the huge post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk-themed metropolis, which measures a massive 2000 by 2000 blocks across!

“Immediately we were all interested in this project as it was the largest commission we have ever received,” Joshua, a builder for the team, told me.

They worked together with the client to figure out exactly how they wanted the city to look, drawing on inspiration they found by searching the internet for pictures of ruins and futuristic buildings. “To start out on a project of this size, it requires a lot of planning beforehand.”

When the team was finally ready to start creating, they began by making a huge crater for the city to sit in. Then it was time to start construction.

“For this project in particular, we began by creating the central district which has the tallest buildings in the city, then slowly made progress towards the end of the city. This process involves planning out the roads then adding the buildings and structures alongside the roads.”

But they did leave plenty of room for their builders to improvise: “There is no real exact plan when creating cities like this, we mainly just start in the middle then just add on.”

By the end, they’d added on “a hospital, restaurants, cafes, bookstores, classrooms, libraries, hotels, offices, police stations, grocery stores and even a jail.” And each building has both a unique exterior and a detailed interior. Outside, you might be looking at a skyscraper covered in creeping vegetation, but inside it’s a spacious restaurant or modern hospital.

The team that worked on this build consisted of seven people, though Octovon has thirteen members in total. Each person has their own role: “For example, we have a terraformer who does the map environments for us,” Joshua says. “We have a few renderers who create the beautiful images of our builds after they are finished and lastly, the majority of our members are structural builders who create the cities and skyscrapers that you can see in this map.” But the team encourages builders to experiment with other roles, too, so that they can learn new skills and techniques.

It’s this practice that’s made team Octovon so good. “Getting into Minecraft building - and more specifically commissioned work - takes a lot of hours and dedication, just like any other form of art. You really have to enjoy it to be able to put in the hours.”

So what advice do these professionals have for aspiring builders? “Share pictures of your builds to others in the community. People will give you advice on what needs to be improved which helps a lot, especially coming from somebody that has been in the same position as you.”

So put in as much hard work as team Octovon have and you, too, might be able to create a build as big as this one – if you don’t get lost in the myriad streets of the City of Anarchs first!

The original concept for City of Anarchs was from Tyler King of LacunaMC - Find out more about Lacuna by clicking here!

Renders by Lukasz and TimothyC