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Meet Garry the Gentlesnail.

He’ll take you for the best vegan food in town and let you watch the sunset from the windmill in his shell. An all-round charmer, if you can get past the slime.

This is the work of Eli - or Elisthetic - whose work we’ve featured previously in our Spitfire scoop. Although she’s only been building in Minecraft for about six months, she’s already blown us away with her creations.

My personal favourite? This guy, of course.

“I am a huge fan of Studio Ghibli,” Eli tells me when I ask about Garry’s origin. “Their creations are always inspiring, basically a feast for eyes and minds.” With this build in particular, Eli was inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle.

“Howl’s castle is one of my favourite pieces of ‘architecture’. It looks messy, but everything has its own purpose. I wanted to do something similar with Garry; detailed, well thought-out and atmospheric.” She’s always admired that level of intricacy, the attention they pay to seemingly insignificant details. “I wanted my Garry to have that same level of quality,” she tells me.

Eli’s captured this style perfectly. The fundamentals here are that of a snail, but she’s blended the organic into inorganic, adding things to Garry that make him something entirely unlike your garden-variety gastropod. “The idea of combining structures and organics fascinates me and I wanted to create a personal sanctuary like that. Like Howl’s castle, he’s a giant, magical moving ‘house’.

It’s fair to say that Garry has a sprawling interior. “Garry is basically a Kid’s Next Door base, except it’s on a snail instead of a tree,” explains Eli. Inside Garry, there’s what you’d expect; living room, kitchen, bedroom with en-suite. Then there’s everything else: vaults, farms, gardens, libraries, a reservoir and an elevator, just for starters. “The only thing that I planned for was the elevator,” Eli says, “since the gear above can’t be relocated. Other than that, I just kinda winged it.”

You might be feeling a little inferior right now, but Eli admits she has a bit of an advantage. “I didn’t have a computer, so I watched Youtube videos for three years before playing the game,” she explains. “It’s interesting to ‘start’ playing a game when you already know everything about it. My first ever house in Minecraft wasn’t a dirt house, hah.”

If you’d like to see more of Eli’s work and take Garry out for some lettuce, you can slime-slide over to their PlanetMinecraft page.

Want more great builds? Why not try Spaceship 23, these Japanese Battleships or Waddesdon Manor?

Or for something completely different, click here!