WOOOO!!!! SPRING BREAK!!!! Uh... Ahem! Hey Peeps! It's Princess again and welcome to the official beginning of Minecraft Building: Tips and Tricks! Today will be part one of a multiple part series on the Basic Shapes. You know, the circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles that you guys saw in your math books? Yeah those. But right now we are going to begin at the Squares and the Rectangles! At first, these humble shapes may look stupidly easy to make, right? Of course that's what the experts say, but we're all noobs and intermediates here right? Okay. Anyways I want to bring up the squares and rectangles first because, well, look around you in Minecraft, everything is squared in some shape or form. In this blog I am going to show you a couple of tips that I developed in not only measuring, but also plotting the shape and where you will put it. 

       For starters I will be using Black wool for the edges, Blue wool for the inside of the rectangle, Red wool for the inside of the square, regular Torches and Redstone Torches in the demo, but you guys can literally use whatever blocks you want for this! Once you have your blocks ready, we're all set! First off, place a 1x1 strip of blocks 16 blocks long. We are using 16 just so it's not too big. To make sure you have 16, you can use torches to count them off, and you can remove them after or leave for reference. Next, to make a rectangle, we are going to go 90 degrees to either direction by 34 blocks, making sure to count the block this new edge is stemming off of.

++ Tip: when building shapes like this, and same will go for any shapes that have conjuncting edges like this, subtract one from the total amount of blocks you are going to place, so I counted 34 blocks, but I only placed 33.++

        So now that you have 2 sides forming a right angle, now you need to make 2 more. If you guys know your basic Geometry, a rectangle has 2 parallel sets of edges, the length and width. The respective pairs always have the same length to it's partner. So if my length is 16 and my width is 34, the other length and width will be 16 and 34 respectively. Since you just placed the width, 34, do this again on the other edge of the 16 long strip in the same direction as the first 34 edge. Once you have done this, if you have measured correctly, when you place the last edge from the primary 34 edge it should meet with the secondary width. If there is are excess blocks or the line isn't long enough, add and/or subtract accordingly. And Voila! You have yourself a 16x34 rectangle! It's up to you to fill the inside with whatever you like, but as for the demo, let's move on to the Square.

          The humble square, so simple, but if you're not thinking you could get it ALL wrong! But don't worry, Ima help ya peeps! The square starts out very similarly to the rectangle, by placing a 16 long strip of blocks to start it off. Now for the square, Geometry states that all sides of a square are of equal legnth, width, and later on height when we get to 3D shapes. So that means if we started with one side being 16 blocks, all the rest of the edges will be 16 as well! See? We're learning! Be sure to recall my tip and place all blocks accordingly.

++ Trick: This is where all those torches come in handy! In Minecraft, there are 2 kinds of torches, regular ones and Redstone ones. You know, the ones you use to blow up TNT? Yeah, those ones. That is perfect for this as you can use these torches to define length and width before you even place the blocks! ++

            Once you do, you should have a perfectly square and even, uh... Square! 16x16 to be exact. And with that, you just built your first shapes in Minecraft! Yay!! Also with this, the first lesson is over. Thanks a million for reading today peeps and be sure to Diamond, Sub and Fave to keep track of when the next blog will be posted. Hint, it's next week! Anyways peeps, this has been Princess_Corona, and I will see you guys next time! <3


++ Coming Up ++
Chapter 2: The Basic Shapes Pt. 2: The Three Triangles