Mast-ery!

We all know the story of Rapunzel, right? Woman gets trapped in tower because she lost her keys or something. Dashing hero comes to save her but can't because he's actually useless. So Rapunzel grows her hair ridiculously long, hangs it out of the window, and Useless Hero Guy climbs up her hair and saves her! Hooray! But wait, wouldn't they just both be trapped in the tower then? Who writes this drivel?

Anyway! I was so inspired by Rapunzel, I decided to grow my hair to tower-long lengths too! It was awful. The worst idea of all time. Took nineteen hairdressers to fix. One called it “the greatest sin upon the human head I've ever witnessed.” Everyone's a critic.

Luckily, when MuhBuilds was inspired by Rapunzel, he didn't grow a terrible new haircut. Instead, the story of Rapunzel inspired him to construct today's build, the wonderful Endurance Mast.

This tower is a beautiful homage to the fables and fairytales of old and the enchanting art that often accompanies them. Updated with that blocktacular Minecraft look!

MuhBuilds used 3D models of the tower from the Walt Disney retelling of Rapunzel to get a sense of how to begin building the foundations. But he had his own story in mind for this new take on the tower.

As he tells it in one version of the story, the Endurance Mast is a mirage, moving from place to place, rarely seen for more than a glance. Even in the tale MuhBuilds has imagined for it, it isn’t clear to anyone if the tower is real or not, or if anyone resides there.

As to how he managed to build it, MuhBuilds started by constructing the shape of the tower, then added details and colours. After this first step, he says he spent a lot of time “creating a lot of palettes, and after [that], choosing the best one.” This process, he explains, is called texturing.

After that, MuhBuilds built the piers and the landscape. “Finally,” he says, “I added some extra details and the [lanterns] of the tower. The texturing was made by following a particular light point, and that is that of the lanterns.”

When I ask how MuhBuilds was first inspired to build in Minecraft, he explains, “I was inspired by the work of builders better than me. For example, in Italy, Levin, Eonli and Dan27. Afterward, I also met foreign builders who have fascinated me deeply. Such as Udvio, Dr_Bond and Franjo Schnabel.”

He continues, “Many Italian builders helped me [by] explaining not only how to build well, but also how to put emotion in a build. To transform a simple Minecraft world into a story, an idea.”

That said, not everything can go so smoothly. “While I was building the tower,” he tells me, “I was excited by the project so I stayed [at] the PC [for] many hours in the day. My mother raged and deprived me of the PC for ten days. I had to study very, very much to convince my mother to leave me using the PC again.”

As much as we love good builds, sometimes you have to make compromises, and if one of those compromises is studying to earn your build time, that’s probably not the worst thing. I mean, look at me. I never studied for anything and now I work for Mojang! Er, bad example.