Zeraora Mapart
 Zeraora is feeling highly charged!
| |
 Former Largest Mapart of MCO | |
| About | |
|---|---|
| Owner |  ServL
|
| Contributors |  Ertum_,  Kilosaurus,  ibxtoydog,  Nuboso358,  1235_John,  Ziza_art,  Firehammer55,  TheDarkrai85,  Eclypto18
|
| Category | Pixel Art |
| Underground? | No |
| Public? | Yes |
| Started | January 6, 2021 |
| Completed | March 3, 2021 |
| Size north to south | 384m |
| Size west to east | 384m |
| Height | 2m |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | X=-2181 Y=65 Z=-15877 |
| Dimension | Overworld |
| Map Link | |
The first 3x3 mapart on MCO. It was also the biggest mapart on the server until the Andromeda Mapart was completed.
The mapart IDs are from right to left, top to bottom: 9807, 9808, 9810; 9806, 9820, 9819; 9805, 9811, 9812.
Trivia
Materials Used
(Note: numbers are approximate due to some alterations)
- Black Wool: 91404
- Cobblestone: 9894
- White Wool 7628
- Blue Wool: 7137
- Yellow Wool: 5116
- Water: 4060
- Ice: 3967
- Brown Wool: 3700
- Orange Wool: 3059
- Light Blue Wool: 2075
- Sand: 1941
- Netherrack: 1670
- Green Wool: 1662
- Cyan Wool: 1429
- Grass Blocks: 1229
- Red Wool: 1208
- Podzol: 956
- Magenta Wool: 875
- Purple Wool: 787
- Clay Blocks: 679
- Oak Planks: 609
- Oak Leaves: 482
- Diamond Blocks: 421
- Iron Blocks: 401
- Emerald Blocks: 347
- Pink Wool: 319
- Light Gray Wool: 308
- Lapis Lazuli Blocks: 304
- Lime Wool: 121
- TNT: 15
Total Blocks: 147,546 not counting cobblestone used for water and sand
Estimated time to complete, counting schematic creation, material collection, and block placing: 200-300 hours
The Story
The Idea
One night, 
cafe7 asked a fateful question:
< cafe7> ha is any one good a pixal art
Little did cafe7 know that this single question would lead directly to the creation of this mapart. It happened like so:
<
At this point, ServL did some examination of the mapart on situation on MCO, not realizing that cafe7 had been asking about pixel art, not mapart. He soon realized that the mapart situation on MCO was sorely underdeveloped. Aside from some unfinished mapart, the only other maparts on MCO were 2x2 or smaller. Many maps didn't use an appealing color palette (yes, ServL is a bit snooty when it comes to art) and many others were not even aligned with map borders, did not use their full map area, or were of logos and not actual art. Seeing an opportunity to do better, ServL began brainstorming how to make a high-quality mapart that would get some attention.
<
After some more consideration, ibxtoydog suggested Suicune and ServL Lucario as these were their favorite Pokémon, but ServL was not able to find art with high enough contrast to work well in a mapart for either one. Realizing that he had a cat name, ServL got the idea to look for a cat-themed Pokémon. While looking through Pokemon wikis, he came across a Pokémon called Zeraora. Its bold yellow and blue colors would work well with Minecraft's high contrast blocks! A cursory examination of Zeraora art revealed some very nice candidates (plus a cornucopia of bizarre content.) Eventually, ServL settled on this drawing by Inosuke-0101--it had a bold, dynamic pose with a lot of elements that would break up the background. Translating that sense of motion into a mapart would be a real challenge, and at this point ServL had resolved that the mapart would be 3x3 maps. How would the two do it?
The Preparation
Now that ServL had settled on a picture to create, a bevy of new challenges presented themselves. The first issue was finding a program to translate the picture into a schematic to be placed in the game. The best candidate by far was MapartCraft. It allows the user to adjust the mapart size, the dithering algorithm, the blocks used to generate the schematic, and even adjust the image color settings! ServL threw in the image--and was immediately confronted by the cool background filled in with nasty clashing speckled colors. This would not do: the background needed to make the rest of the image pop out. The color of the Zeraora's braid, while cool in the art proper, also translated very poorly to Minecraft's color palette. So ServL pulled out Photoshop and blacked out the background and adjusted the braid color to be more brown--except he was bad at Photoshop. Fortunately, the Zeraora is glowing in the art, so ServL was able to use his lack of ability with brushes to his advantage and trust that the lack of detail in the mapart would disguise this.
ServL soon had a completely new problem: the earliest version of Minecraft MapartCraft supports is 1.12. And between 1.7 and 1.12 map colors changed dramatically. To make sure that the mapart looked as good as possible, ServL painstakingly tracked down all the changes in the map item format between the versions and found the greatest selection of blocks that could be used. For example, hardened clay could not be used because it is gray in 1.7, and oak planks had to be used because the other kinds of planks drastically change color in 1.12.
After this more types of blocks had to be discarded. As he was a lowly scrub, ServL had no luck getting access to a gold farm that would allow him to collect thousands of gold blocks in a reasonable time. So gold could not be used (thankfully, its loss was not greatly noticeable.) ServL also planned to use coarse dirt to prevent grass spreading on regular dirt, but this is not possible in 1.7 as Silk Touch does not work on it. Thus he had to use podzol instead. The colors change significantly between the two versions, but since the schematic would be made for 1.12, it would look better after the server updated. Lastly, using diamonds and lapis lazuli in the mapart would require thousands of both blocks. But ServL was not willing to compromise here, as the blue color of diamonds was incredibly close to the color of the highlights on the Zeraora's head frond thingy, whiskers, and eyes. Thus he resolved to edit those highlights in manually later.
At this point, ServL spent many hours adjusting the image pre-processing settings as he tried to avoid the blotchy/speckled features that plague mapart projects. Eventually, he found a good compromise and created the schematic. Then he edited out and in many elements of the mapart pixel-by-pixel to fix eye-catching problems created by the dithering algorithm, as well as all the diamond and lapis lazuli blocks from earlier. At this point, he had a schematic for a mapart which required placing 147,546 blocks of 31 different types. But just obtaining these blocks would be hard.
The Collection
During the process of creating the schematic, ServL met Kilosaurus for the first time. When Kilosaurus heard about the mapart, he immediately volunteered to join the project. At his behest, a Discord server for the project was created. Then it was a matter of obtaining the materials required.
Kilosaurus started off strong by donating the 147 diamond blocks required, a *ton* of colored wool, and many of the less-numerous resources. ServL fired back with the podzol and grass blocks required, plus some wool of his own. 1235_John then collected the sand and leaves needed. ServL spent seven hours mining 812 Nether quartz. At this point, ServL knew an automated shearing farm would be necessary to get the obscene amount of black wool (91k) needed. Fortunately he was able to use an ingenious farm made by Ziza_art for this very purpose. Suddenly thousands of black wool were being obtained in a matter of hours. At this point, obtaining all the materials was only a matter of time. ibxtoydog contributed the iron, ice, and lapis. Kilosaurus continued to go strong by smashing out most all of the colored wool. At the end of political discussion involving ServL and Eclypto18, Eclypto18 would donate the remainder of the colored wool needed. After ServL afked at the farm for another five days with his iron maintained by kind donations from Kilosaurus and 
Sahull, every material was obtained.
The Block Placing
After a lot of searching and some help from 
Anna_28, ServL found a location for the mapart at the top of the map (there are very few locations for a map this size anymore.) He placed a set of materials chests on a set of islands next to the mapart and set about creating a border. And so on the 28th of January, the first few blocks of the mapart were placed by ServL. Soon Kilosaurus, ibxtoydog, and 1235_John joined in, and within a day they had about 20k wool placed. While Kilosaurus made use of Craftbook bridges, he was the only person to do so. As that team worked on the black wool outline, Ertum_ began working on the detail in the front claw. By the 3rd of February, all of the black wool areas were placed and the left 1/3rd of the mapart was done. At this point, most of the contributors became busy, but ServL continued placing the glowing outline of the Zeraora for the next few days until he was promoted. At that point, all thoughts of the mapart vanished as ServL desperately tried to learn his new job.
A week later, ServL resumed work with some minor prodding/memeing from Kilo. The blue-to-white gradient seemed never-ending, but he persevered for the next few days until it was complete. Throughout this time Nuboso358 joined the project and contributed a bit. Next ServL targeted the red-to-black gradient, and knocked that out in a day. A few more days saw the yellow-to-orange gradient complete and a day after that, the back paw and green gradient.
At this point, ServL decided he hated the color palette of the head frond and made the choice to use more diamonds for it. He created a new schematic with the desired palette and threw the existing diamonds in it, knowing he would have to get more somehow. But conveniently, when ServL mentioned this quandary to Firehammer55, he was presented with two stacks of diamond blocks! From there, adding the frond with the new palette was mostly straightforward (except for the edges. Ew.) He still needed more diamonds, but TheDarkrai85 magically appeared and donated all the other diamond blocks needed! ServL also bought some more lapis lazuli from 
Vecxin, having underestimated the amount he would use.
Seeing the end in sight, ServL pushed forward. The biggest timeblock remaining was placing thousands of water buckets and the cobblestone underneath them so the correct map color was used. Ertum_, ibxtoydog, and 1235_John helped complete this arduous task. Then ServL began to slowly fill in all the gaps in the artwork. Finally, on March 2nd, he spent an hour tweaking the blocks in the Zeraora's eye, trying to get them just right. Eventually he was satisfied!
With the help of his sisters 
H20_Spyder and 
AKASpade, ServL found and fixed most of the remaining one-block holes in the mapart. After this, he hosted a scavenger hunt by placing a single coal block in the mapart and offering bounties for finding it as well as missing blocks. Sahull and 
Darkerfly were the main competitors. Soon there were no more holes to be found and the mapart was officially complete!
(Incidentally, ServL hit 500 hours on the server while finishing the mapart.)
<
Gallery
The original image
After some Photoshop butchering
Kilosaurus tests out the original schematic
A .gif of the mapart's progress
