Welcome to the house of horrors

October may be a distant memory, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t spotlight at least one of the incredible creepy builds the Minecraft community came up with. One of my favs was this spooksome standalone structure built by Sinbad. The lovely image of Sinbad's build you see above, and those on the grey background below, were rendered by TheItalian828.

“Parts of it are hand built,” says Sinbad, “but I use every time saving method available to me and the server I play on is equipped with both World Edit and Voxel Sniper. Every piece of the build is hand-crafted - I just spend time doing another piece of the build instead of repeating myself.”

Sinbad doesn’t like to dive into his builds unplanned, but spends time getting a clear feel for the mood or story behind the piece, then uses reference material to construct a strong concept - “blueprints of pillars, windows, the whole nine yards, really,” he says. Sometimes he sketches things out in advance, and usually begins placing blocks with the centrepiece - but the Halloween Mansion was a little different:

“By using reference images of houses I mapped out the front porch and, when I had that down, I used that as a reference point to get the rest of the building in the right scale. But there is never one sure method for doing things!”

"When I'm in the zone is usually how I get my best work done,” says Sinbad. “When I listen to some music that gets me emotional or when I’m on top of life or even when I feel like I need to prove something - those are the things that pushes me further.

"The learning curve is different for everyone and I believe that with enough time anyone could learn to build. The key is to experiment and be creative.”

Inspiringly spooky stuff!