Newsroom News Breaking Comics Tags RSS
News video games 12 March 2024, 05:46

author: Alexandra Sokol

Author of Minecraft Paintings Revealed Years Later How They Were Created. It All Started With Real Works on Canvas

Engagement has more than one name, and one of them belongs to this artist. Where did the artwork seen in Minecraft come from?

Source: Kristoffer Zetterstrand
i

When playing Minecraft for fun, one of the fundamental aspects is creating your own little space - and of course, we would want to feel "at home" there. The right combinations of materials will allow us to build not only furniture but also decorative elements, making the decor more pleasing to the eye.

One of them are paintings. Original or not, most likely each of us has at least one piece of such decoration in a real home. Have you ever wondered how the works visible in Mojang's game were created?

Gotta Find 'em all!

In Minecraft, there are a total of twenty-six pieces of paintings that we can create using sticks and any color of wool. Admiring the fictional gallery, it's impossible not to appreciate the detail of some of the exhibits - and it's no wonder, as all the paintings were first created in real life.

The author of these works is Kristoffer Zetterstrand, a Swedish artist who created pixel images from Minecraft based on his own. Everything we see in Minecraft was previously painted and then adapted to the production style of Mojang Studios.

Back in 2010, Markus ( aka Notch ) [creator of Minecraft] asked me if I could do some pixel paintings for his little weird indie hobby game Minecraft. So I shrunk down some pics of my oilpaintings and played around with them a bit.

-- Kristoffer Zetterstrand

Most of the paintings were added to Minecraft in the third phase of development known as "indev" - therefore, Zetterstrand's art has been with us almost since the beginning of the game.

Pixel art in reality

Although the actual paintings were made using an oil painting technique, it's impossible not to notice the nod to the games. Zetterstrand's style blends realism with pixel art - polished "classic" scenes are interspersed with added pixels, as evident in the following works.

Among the slightly skeptical people who doubt the value of Zetterstrand's artistic contribution, most of the players are delighted with the creative approach to art in Minecraft. The paintings of the Swedish painter, although they deviate somewhat in atmosphere from the actual game, are associated with childhood for many - some even tried to recreate them.

Alexandra Sokol

Alexandra Sokol

She joined Gamepressure in the summer of 2023. Talks about games and events from their world. A graduate of English philology, who was able to dedicate her entire scientific work to the character of Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect series. She has experience in working on audiovisual translations, and currently combines her job as an English teacher with her passion, which is writing. Privately a bookworm, mother of two cats, and a fervent fan of Dragon Age and Cyberpunk 2077, who has spent half her life on the fandom side of the Internet.

more