Builders come in all shapes and forms of personality and skill, most of us spend years upon trying out different layouts, plugins to help us, mindsets and even build in replication of others to practice and get better.
But have YOU ever felt stuck while building, had a moment of thought when the only thing you can hear yourself say is "if i just knew how I thought this was to look prior to building it".
Then I hope that this little idéa might be the thing to take you right back on track.

This post is related to all kinds of builders. New as Old ~

-z-z-z-

A builder in minecraft can take on many approaches for a project.
Some people like to give you a full on map of conent for you to create wich equals boundaries that can increase the rate of at wich one can produce.
Some people prefer to say "i would like something like this" and that is not as dangerous as the deadly "i am not sure of what I would like...", if you ever come into any projectgroup like the two just mentioned ones, leave by the very second you notice and never more come back. Expereince have taught me that noone benifits from being around insecure people.
But, this post is not about that, it's about you and what you can use as a tool of creation in order to help yourself keep track of things and maybe even figgure out designs you'dnt think was produceable.
This guide will contain some of the hundres of posibilities one can analyse their way towards through using the tool of pre-planning prior to making content.


And even if it is dangerous, this can even be your power towards getting that unsecure customer to make up their mind, but... don't give em too much time.

-z-z-z-

When I began building, it was when Yogscast was playing the mod "Tekkit" full on, and the content of wich they presented with their ideas, not necessary the builds, grabbed my attention.
I began drawing on paper, what I thought a cool build could look like, and then it was time to try building it.
At this time, I personally didn't think that this "pre planning" tecnique ever where to be of any kind of further functional use.
Yet today I still sit here, and use the element of "draw it out" prior to pretty much anything to get a good grasp of it.

Now, why is this post called "Photoshop - A builders guide to the minecraft universe"... ?
The minecraft universe is a pretty big place that can be related to building with LEGO in many ways.
A big universe equals a lot of posibilities if you choose to open up wide with the building.
Photoshop is a tool that I can recommend a builder to use, wether you're good at drawing or not, don't worry, I will show the simple and yet helpful steps below.

1) Photoshop have a function of when you "click and hold" to draw, you can draw straight lines
     By holding down the "shift" key prior to drawing the line, Photoshop enables the draft of horizontal or vertical lines".
     If this key is held down meanwhile drawing the line, and then you begin drawing another line with the same method,
     there will be a connectionline appearing between your previous "endpoint" and your (to be drawn) "startpoint".

   

2) Photoshop also serves in such way that you can use marker tools to copy and cut areas and sections of your draft.
     In a more widen way, this can be used to rebuild your pre plan for both "parts of" and "fully drawn" build before you
     build it, and yet being quite helpful.

   




Do you begin to realize why Photoshop can be a helpful tool in creating builds prior to building them?

The above building looks like this in the full pre-build drawing ~

Let's look at how pre-drawing even can help someone using W/E (World Edit).
In this case I created two drawn pieces that exist as two layers creating "Stage 1" in the view.
Then by placing, rotating, flipping, you can see that I've used these very pieces to create a more overviewing layout.





Then this evolves into a full "test layout".
The walls in this picture was to function for a "pre design", that I could go back to and use for planning a structural idea.





This is what a tower came to look like ingame - Note that it is built with elements from the pre-sketch, both materialwise and with the layout.





Last but not least, I would love to shed some light on another superfunctional way for those taking it to the next lvl.
Let's say we are working on a wall, but there is to be something added into the wall.
This could be a platform for a fantasybuild with a magetower, a gate, a house partilly existing trough the wall, or something completely different.


I built a town with walls in creativemode.
But realized "oh damn, this place ain't got no door!..." so what had to be done was to make a piece of wall with a gate.
The gate yet had to make sence with the other wallstyle, let's see if you enjoyed the way I made it turn out.
Flipping the first built wall in photoshop to create the span of air between the two pieces that where to surround the gatewall.




The final build is not done yet, but will be found in my projects post up ahead hopefully.



I hope you enjoyed this post, and maybe even grabbed some inspiration!
Remember that there is no "cheats" in building, just more / less clever & quicker / slower ways to do it.
As long as you come up with your own ideas, you're on the right track!




/BW Building - Quicksmith ~