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So once upon a time - oh wait, it's not that kind of story... well okay, sure why not?

Once upon a time, I was at my parents' house because yes even at my age I still spend a ridiculous amount of time over there. There is a long list of reasons for this, but this list is a black hole of tangents that I shall resist going down.... Anyhow as I was saying... I was over there on one of the many computers my dad owns. Why? Because I like playing video games that's why. Oh, why does he own so many? I don't know. Because he does. Even as I type this he is in the process of trying to convince my mother why they need to buy two more. It's just something he does. Have I ever mentioned how weird my family can be? No? I should mention that then. Consider it mentioned.

So I'm working on this project in Minecraft that I still haven't finished yet and still haven't posted on PMC. I no longer remember the surrounding conversation that triggered the sudden statement that just interrupts the whir of my mind as I'm just doing my thing. It was a simple statement really and one I'm pretty sure was said just for fun.

"Hey I know Mom," my oldest son said, "you should make an island that looks like ice cream!"

It's next to impossible to describe in words what my brain does when it grabs hold of a single idea and just explodes into a bunch of other random thoughts in a matter of seconds. This image is probably the best I can come to describing how it feels during a good moment:






So of course the project at hand was immediately abandoned for the moment to quickly capture as many of the fleeting thoughts and ideas as I could, lest they all be gone forever. The greatest regrets in life are those moments never seized only to flutter away like some irreclaimable dream after all.

I started with a circular flat map in WorldPainter and created a bowl like shape without water. Once that was created I added globular shapes for the "ice cream" and then finally put the water back in. Then I went looking for a tree pack that would given this island not only a splash of color, but lend it a feel of candy - or those jimmies you put on sundaes. Last but not least, I assigned the island areas to cold biomes and frosted the entire area. Confident that this is the shape and trees I wanted for the landscape, I went ahead and exported the map into creative mode. This is what I had at that point:





It still didn't look like ice cream to me. The terrain needed something more. Since this was my son's idea, I decided to ask for his input.

"Oh it's perfect!" he said, "It just needs to be survival friendly."




Which of course meant that all the void chunks that WorldPainter creates around a circular map needed to be deleted with MCEdit. I would then need to import the map back into WorldPainter and smooth out the border of the terrain I created and the game's generated terrain so that things wouldn't look horrifying. And of course I had to make more than one attempt at this because I missed a few spots and had some areas with void holes in the ocean. How awesome is that? In my last attempt at removing the void chunks, I took 5 laps around the border to make sure it was void free before I went to the trouble of smoothing it out.

So now the map is void free, survival friendly, and even includes a bonus chest at the spawn with 4 villager spawn eggs in it. Why? Because I like the NPC Villagers and why not? That's why. I challenge someone to build a thriving village of spoons on that ice cream island for the NPC Villagers to live in. With cherries and whatever else people eat with ice cream.

Any way, my son was happy at this point. His request was fulfilled as far as he was concerned, but I was not content. It did not look like ice cream and I was uncertain as to how to make this happen. My brother, being the booger he is, told me to make the mountain peaks "Rocky Road" flavor.



Seriously dear brother, you may be the baby of this family but pushing the "Toad Hulk" button is a bad idea. You should know this by now... Although, I must admit the Rocky Road idea isn't a bad one but my terrain isn't shaped correctly for the flavor. I don't know how to explain that, just trust me when I say it. It's something I can feel in the creative fibers of my soul if you will. He saves himself by mentioning chocolate mint flavor however. Grass blocks can convey this if framed well, but there is no way I could pull it off on the entire island with grass blocks alone.

Ultimately I settled with Neapolitan ice cream because I could make it work with the existing geological layers of the terrain that WorldPainter automatically created for me. I know, it sounds "lazy" and I'll own that. Maybe in a future ice cream terrain project I will adventure in the Rocky Road flavor my brother suggested with more foresight, organization, and proper planning. This on the other hand is the result of when something catches your creative fancy and runs wild within you. You just go for the ride because if you don't, you're left behind and never seen again. Is it like this for every creative person out there? Probably not. I haven't a clue and I have no authority to speak on their behalf. I speak only of what the creative process is like for me. Sometimes it's a messy whirlwind of activity and other times it's a grueling, painstaking, "nails on the chalk board" type of thing. Sometimes, even worse, there is absolutely nothing. No muse, no pin drop, no whispering of thought, no anything - just a blank page/screen/canvas/whatever to stare at. It's during those times I wonder why I even bother at all.



But this past month and this project has not been one of those times. In fact, quite the opposite. Leaving the grass layer alone, I selected pink stained clay for the strawberry ice cream layer and naturally chose white stained clay for the vanilla. The snow layer now represents whipped topping and of course I just had to put cherries on top. Sadly I regret that I hadn't considered the height of each peak or thought of adding cherries at the time of creating the terrain's shape so not every peak got a cherry. Such is life though; it's not always fair. Now the island is looking like ice cream but still needed some finish. To add that final touch, I sprinkled in other colors of stained clay in the white layer to make it look like it had jimmies on it.

Now I feel the island is complete and I hope you enjoy it - whether you to choose to free build on it in creative mode or choose to switch to survival and explore.

Either way, bon appétit!

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~ And as always, I'd love to hear any feedback you'd like to share in the comments section.

~ Last but not least, thank you very much for taking the time to read the story of this project!