Fisher King

As we sadly discovered when we last weighed ourselves, bigger isn't always better. Large-scale builds, like ones that recreate entire cities or craft whole new worlds, are impressive showcases for what Minecraft can do, but going small-scale can be just as rewarding. Take A Normal Day for Bob from the building team NewHeaven. It's a build with a rich eye for detail, one that's immediately striking in a way we don't always see in Minecraft. Turns out, such a unique new direction was a big departure for NewHeaven too.

"'A Normal Day for Bob' is a year old now," Speedrus, NewHeaven's Community Manager, explains to us. "But, no, we didn't take a whole year to build this! This project was something we did on the side of another, bigger project. The idea was to not do a traditional build. In place of just building a map, we decided to tell a little story around one character."

The build switches the usual character models we see in Minecraft, like Steve and the villagers, out for a more detailed block-by-block model of the titular Bob. He's a little jarring at first (where on Earth is his face?), but it's a great way for NewHeaven to craft smaller touches, like Bob's feet dangling over the water as he waits for a fish to bite.

If anything, a smaller-scale build was larger in difficulty than what NewHeaven were used to. "In Minecraft, there is an issue when you build on a smaller scale," explains Speedrus. "It's more difficult to do assets easily. There was a great deal of experimentation we had to do with this project."

NewHeaven started in 2012, from "our passion for our creations. At that point we just loved to do that. Our goal now is to use the artistic potential of Minecraft to reach educational and other culture areas." In fact, a large part of the appeal of Minecraft to NewHeaven was the ability to reach a different audience with their art. "The audience of Minecraft is a young audience, most of the players aren't adults. Today it's difficult to bring kids to art. We think by introducing art to them through Minecraft, it's attracting them to art in other areas."

Why do NewHeaven want their builds to reach younger audiences? "It's really important because when you want to learn something, the best time to do that is when you are really young. This is the same with art. Most of them will not be interested, some will, and they'll start to do art themselves." Encouraging the young artists of tomorrow? NewHeaven should be careful not to put themselves out of a job.

"We think that education is the most important thing for kids, but we don't love to do art just for young people," explains Speedrus. "We just love what we do, that's all!"