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Jay Castello
Written By
Jay Castello
Published
7/6/18

Eternal Empire

DaftStar tells us about a project four years in the making

Here at Minecraft.net, we like to cover builds of all sizes. Sometimes they’re a single sculpture, and sometimes they’re a huge city. Today, though, we’re speaking to DaftStar, a builder who’s created an entire empire!

He’s been working on the sprawling civilisation of Frissia for over four years. “I had no initial vision for the whole build, only a few small towns,” he explained. “The build was made in my spare time as my hobby and just for fun, but I’m very interested in architecture and urbanism and want to study them in the future. So this build was a good way to express my ideas.”

DaftStar drew on many styles for his vast creation. The towns that he first created were partially inspired by trade cities in ancient empires: “like Greece, Rome, the Phoenicians, and so on.” But as the build grew, so too did his list of inspirations.

“The colour palette – white stone blocks and blue roofs – were inspired by traditional Greek architecture, but I incorporated many building styles in later builds. Roman, ancient Greek, Byzantine, Renaissance, Gothic, Middle Eastern…” He even decided to branch out into modern sci-fi when thinking about the shapes of some of his buildings.

Travelling through Frissia is an exploration of a real melting pot of ideas; look out for temples, cathedrals and churches in many styles, and iconic buildings like the coliseum and the tower of Babylon. But each has DaftStar’s unique twist. “I always just took the basic idea of those real life buildings and cities and wanted to build them my way and not recreate them exactly.”

"Throughout the empire the style changes and the buildings get better and more detailed."

Neither is the empire one large city. Small villages and towns are broken up by landscape features like fields and roads, so that citizens have food and transport. “There are also many builds that are not inside cities, like castles and baths,” DaftStar tells me, “But there are three cities which are much bigger than any other settlements, which have the most detail and features.”

Even these urban areas aren’t all buildings; DaftStar has done a great job planting trees and flowers in between the white stone walls, as well as on the balconies and roofs. If you look closely, you can even see sheep flocking in some areas!

It’s these cities that he considers to be his favourite part of the build. In a world this big, it seems like it might be hard to choose, but he thinks that he’s become a much better builder since he first began working on Frissia four years ago.

“Throughout the empire the style changes and the buildings get better and more detailed.” For example, he tells me that the cities have utilities like “parliaments, theatres, palaces, banks, schools, and so on.” On the other hand, he calls some of his earlier buildings “quite basic, rough, and weird!”

“I think my building style improved drastically over these four years,” he summarises. These recent, detailed metropolises can be found in the far east and far south of the empire, and in case it’s tricky to figure out his directions, Daftstar even has a handy colour-coded map for explorers to use.

It makes sense that he would want people to see his best work, but I think it’s quite interesting to be able to see all of his progress within the world. Not only does the empire span many different areas in its inspiration, it shows off the progress of its builder, too.

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