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Project 1845
Project 1845
The first big inspiration comes from the now(unfortunately) defunct Project 1845. This was an endeavor started many years ago to faithfully recreate the entirety of the Forbidden City and other Chinese landmarks entirely in Minecraft. The creators of the project were committed to doing accurate research into these buildings so that their creation could be used to educate others on their significance in Chinese culture and history. Unfortunately, all work halted on the project with no updates from the creators for many years despite breaking numerous records for similar projects during its prime. This project was one of the first things that showed me what was possible with enough time and passion invested into a project. A project using a video game no less. Since then, I have spent a large chunk of my free time building. Just loading up worlds and creating whatever I wanted has turned into a pretty deep hobby for me. Therefore, I have definitely looked out for any opportunity where I could integrate the game into a current project and this was no exception.
A Portrait of Tenochtitlan
A Portrait of Tenochtitlan
From my lightning talk, this hit a similar note to Project 1845 for me as well as invoking memories of seeing sprawling digital cities in games like Simcity. Something different about this project was that the creator was able to leverage the tools they had access to and recreate the ancient Aztec city in place despite it not technically existing anymore. What they accomplished is nothing short of incredible. What really drew me in to it was that 3d modeling like this gave a level of detail beyond what Minecraft was capable of as a result of not being confined to using blocks for construction. Another cool thing I learned about A Portrait of Tenochtitlan was that everything used to create it was free and open source which helped me get tools for this project.
The Knight's Tale
The Knight's Tale
I read the Canterbury Tales during my undergraduate studies at Brandeis and I had a lot of fun with The Knight's Tale. It was a pretty standard plot with the two brothers fighting for one that they loved, but it had a nice sprinkle of divine intervention as well as an interesting look into Emelye's view of things. By far it was my favorite and I made the focus of my final project that semester comparing Chaucer's version to the 2001 film A Knight's Tale. Because of this, I definitely wanted to revisit it at some point and using a scene as descriptive and evocative as the temples seemed to be a great place to start.
Something I also really appreciated from the various medieval texts we read over the semester were the occasional pictures that accompanied the text. I was always very happy whenever I got to see them as I felt they really added some extra depth to narratives. In a way, this project is somewhat similar to that. As in, you would be able to put this up next to the scene I'm drawing from and it would accent the words very well.
A Quick Note
A Quick Note
Projects like A Portrait of Tenochtitlan and Project 1845 can take many months if not years to complete. I obviously didn't expect to create something with the same level of detail and quality as the two, but I hoped to at least invoke the spirit of them and potentially begin the process of doing more with this project.
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