Bold Eagle

If you can look past its piercing eagle eyes (and its equally piercing beak) you’ll find that there’s much more to this airship than just a pretty face. From the attention to detail (notice that the ropes are made from fences - “no other block offers that detail,” explains the build team) to the colour scheme (soft pink, wood, and metal, to give the ship an old-world feeling) this flying ship is something special.

As with any large-scale building project, these things don’t just happen overnight - and Saphire Studios, the build team behind the eagle airship, took their time in creating a perfect place to live (if you don’t mind flying through storms).

“To start, we worked the foundation of the ship,” says the team. “As in every ship, it starts with the hull, the most crucial aspect of any ship.”

“We combed through various ideas and unique aspects to give the ship a unique look,” the team adds, “from the decision to mash an eagle with a ship, to a steampunk style.” Mashing eagles with ships sounds like the kind of thing that would traumatise a pilot, but in this case, it actually resulted in a lovely Minecraft build that we're fairly optimistic won't traumatise anyone. Hooray!

In describing the building process, we get a look into how Saphire Studios works: they have different people working on different types of building, from Lukz2cool, the shipbuilder, who focused on the anatomy of the ship, to AustinDeBehr, the organics builder, who managed the eagle head. “I love organics,” says AustinDeBehr, ”so I figured I would try to start there. Thus, the eagle organic was born!” Concentrating on your area of speciality is a great approach to any team build.

“Our ideas spark from each other and our individual creativity,” Saphire Studios say. “It's a skill we find value in - to brainstorm concepts off each other, to develop the bigger picture.” Sounds like a pretty good partnership to us. Get it? Partner... ship? Alright, alright, we’re going, sorry...