Minecraft - LitCraft

A Series of Unfortunate Events : The Mansion
Idris Qamar, Camden Forrest

Drakes Creek Middle School

Minecraft Challenge

Before we began to build we thought about what books we liked and we got to a conclusion of either The School for Good and Evil or A Series of Unfortunate Events. We decided to pick the latter because we both knew more about it. We started brainstorming what we wanted to build because with A Series of Unfortunate Events, there are a lot of different things that are possible and could be used. 

We made two different builds in Minecraft for this project. For the first build, we built the mansion before it was burnt. We had some technical difficulties at first only being able to use one computer with no reference photo. After a couple days of looking, we were able to find a reference photo and we started building. We had to look at a hd picture of the burned mansion from the Netflix show so we could build a mansion that would be similar in shape to what the picture looked like (the picture). 

We started off with a pathway to the mansion and a fountain in the middle. We then proceeded to build the front of the mansion and also started working on the other build since we could now use two computers. We originally were only going to do the burned mansion but we decided to do more so we decided we were going to do a thing where we transition from non-burnt to burnt. One person was working on the outside of the non-burnt mansion while the other was working on walls on the side, and the floor of the burned mansion. We decided the walls, floors, whatever it was, could not have three blocks side by side so it would look more textured. 

We had to assume lots of things while we worked but we did know one thing, the family was rich. We made sure to give the house a vault with lots of riches, lots of paintings, their kids would own an exotic animal as a pet, and they have their own bar. They have a massive kitchen where people cook food for them. Then we proceeded to build the kids room (Klause, Sunny, and Violet), and then the parents’ room. We built a hallway leading to the two rooms and we filled in a big empty space because it just looked wrong. Upstairs contains a bar, storage that then leads to a vault with valuable things, and there is also a guest bedroom, a smithing room, a library, and a bar. We finished up with some finishing touches and some lanterns.

We decided to go with the burned mansion because it’s what kicked the series off and if you know anything about A Series of Unfortunate Events, you know the burned mansion! The burned mansion is what happens in the beginning of the book to start off all the unfortunate things that are going to happen. The idea of how to build the burned down mansion was a lot less complicated than the regular mansion because we had a photo to base it off of (the picture). We looked at the photo, and we tried to make key details the same when converted into Minecraft. The front we made was the same, and although barely visible, we made the floor the same. We added some small walls on the side so the outside world won’t show. We also built this tower-like structure that was in the picture and we added smoke because in the picture there was a smoke wall in the background. 

We each worked on the inside of the non-burnt mansion and the tower-like structure in the background, but little did we know that the tower-like structure would be the most difficult thing with the burnt mansion! With the tower-like structure, we could never figure out what to do with it. At first it was too far away, then it was too close, then it was too wide, then it was too short. Finally we decided on the right spot, with the right dimensions. Then we had one more problem with it, the roof. We decided to only make the tower one block wide, so we would have to make the roof going off the building. We tried a lot to not make it look bad, nothing was landing. We tried a couple more times and took what was good about them and put it in our next design. We finally ended with something that looked good. On the other side of the coin was the non-burnt mansion, and in the beginning we were building a staircase and floor in the non-burnt mansion. We quickly ran into a problem that would continue to happen and would cause the biggest problem to happen, bats. 

We continued to build like usual, building a couple rooms and a redstone contraption to power light but then we discovered that you can use command blocks. We spotted a village and tried to get rid of the village with command blocks but it wouldn’t work. We tried to use it to kill the bats but then disaster struck. We used the wrong input and put ourselves in an infinite death loop. We were able to go into the files and make the backup work with the builds so we fixed the world ending problem and started back up again. At this time, we had not done any of the 1st floor so we got to work. 

For the video of our build, we decided to film on a website called loom. We moved the recordings to Canva, added the voiceover and a blackout transition between the two builds to add tension. We ended with a pan out at the end of the non-burnt section so when it ends, it will end in the same spot where the burnt one starts.

Credits
Built & Designed by Idris & Camden
Sites for Research / Inspiration:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/m0yaaq/managed_to_obtainrecreate_the_hd_burnt_down/?rdt=34396
https://snicket.fandom.com/wiki/Baudelaire_Fire
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fgz1t4283fxl61.png%3Fwidth%3D960%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D11382795b2960645e3bc788adbec4943224f92ab