Article by Tom Stone
Some ideas are so good that scientists really need to HURRY UP and make them reality. Like chocolate ice cream that somehow makes you thinner after eating nine tubs of it. Or an umbrella that both keeps you dry and makes your enemies more wet. Or a space station capable of crafting new galaxies.
That last idea comes from Lneox's latest project, The Galaxy Crafter. It's a beauty of a space station, one of tremendous scale - notice how it dwarfs the meteorites surrounding it. “I like to go very original,” explains LneoX when we asked him about the design process. “I like to do things which haven't been done yet. That's very important for me.”
The ships orbiting the Galaxy Crafter are a mix of original creations and more instantly iconic designs (“It's a bit Star Wars' agrees LNeoX, when we ask about the X-Wing style design of the smaller fighters). But while some of these wouldn't look out of place in Rogue One, you're unlikely to have seen anything like the Planetary Creation Plasma Device.
“First I thought, 'OK, let's make a spaceship which shrinks planets and then the planets get carried around'. But then when I got into the style and theme, I thought, 'why not make a planet creator which builds up shrinked planets'? Then they are grabbed by the grabber spaceship, brought to the pillars where they rest and get the finish taken off, and then get transported by the cruisers to their location. And that's where they expand to a normal sized planet.” Seriously, someone poke our real scientists and tell them to get on this! We want our own tiny Saturn that we can keep in our pocket.
LNeoX started building in Minecraft in 2009, during the early days of the game. It wasn't long before he was running his own server. “It was quite popular because around that time nobody really had a Minecraft server. I got into building slowly because I wanted to build stuff for my server. One day a girl came up to me and said 'why don't your release your stuff on Planet Minecraft?'
His first upload was a recreation of Arnor Londo, the legendary city of the Gods in FromSoftware's Dark Souls games. It got a “decent” response from the community, but critical feedback also helped improve LNeoX's large-scale skills. “The style itself was not appealing to everybody, because it was very over-detailed.”
“That happens if you spend too much time on facades. You try to get every blank spot filled with some sort of structure or detail. But what happens is you kind of lose the shapes and the colours. If you want nice buildings you probably go with clean – you can add detail, of course - but some parts need to be clean so it's visible and the shapes are visible.”
Advice that was heeded well for the Galaxy Crafter, and a great tip if you're planning a large-scale build of your own!
