Interstellar Snow Globe

Snow globes are magical creations. I could shake them up and watch those glittering flakes fall for hours over miniature tourist locations or nature scenes. But it’s a well known fact that everything is better in space! And today’s builder, Alex, knows that very well.

His Hermes C319 Space Station was an entry in Planet Minecraft’s snow globe competition, but he says that he “really wanted to push the limit of the theme.” And he definitely did that!

By thinking outside of the box, he created a futuristic looking world where the dome of the “globe” is surrounded by floating spaceships and strange, cog-like mechanisms.

“Basically,” he says, “I wanted to make something no other person/team would have thought of doing. I figured that many people would just be building an almost "traditional" snow globe, and I wanted to make something that didn't really resemble a snow globe at all.”

The competition is partly judged for originality. It recommends that builders “try to do something new, differentiate yourself from the status quo and show us what you're made of.” But Alex wasn’t too concerned with winning (though he managed to come in third place overall). “I chose to enter into the Snow Globe contest mainly to have fun,” he tells me.

And he had another motivation: he wanted to push his skills to the limit. This competition was supposed to be entered by a team, but Alex worked totally alone. “The concept, the build itself, the renders, and graphics were done myself, with the exception of some advice here and there. It was a challenge to see if I could pull off such a map by myself in such a short amount of time.”

I think it’s fair to say that he pulled it off! How did he manage such an incredible feat? “Building solo in a contest meant for teams automatically puts you at a disadvantage, so I had to make sure I was building as efficiently as possible,” he explains. “Sometimes I would be building a spaceship or working on one of those mechanical rings, and at the same time be building something else in my head, already thinking ahead of what I was going to make next and how I would do it. Doing this really helped me stay on schedule with the map.”

And just how much of this hard work did he have to put in? “This map was the result of about 14 days of building and anywhere between 2-8 hours of building a day,” he says. That’s some serious dedication!

And he didn’t just need to put in a lot of time. With no team to help him, Alex also had to come up with all his own inspirations for his sci-fi snow globe. “A lot of my inspiration for this project came from just my own head and vague memories I have of sci-fi movies I have watched. A lot of space stations have lots of circular shapes to them as well as all these different mechanical pieces which I found to be very cool.”

Alex built those mechanical pieces, as well as other sci-fi details like the spaceships, first, and then pasted them around the central dome. This is quite the opposite of how most snow globes have their whole diorama packed inside – yet another way in which Alex’s build is unique!

But he isn’t the only one with a unique entry to the contest, and that creativity is part of why he enjoys them. “These project contests are always really fun to participate in and it is always cool to see all the awesome entries to them,” he says.

In this case, there are twelve, and I agree, they are all extremely awesome. You can take a look at them here - and imagine how pretty it would be to shake them all up at once.