24,830
This Interview was featured in the PMC Weekly Volume 95! In this Volume, we interviewed Stevecurious representing Aeonis!
"We are a small and selected community of some friends who love to create beautiful builds in Minecraft. Together, we try to create a vivid 18th century world on an earth-like planet called Æonis."
Æonis questions
Can you share something about how Æonis started?
Our predecessor was Glaciem, which went off as a fork of a former project called "The Four Kingdoms". Some members felt increasingly unhappy there and created Glaciem in middle/late 2013, led by Lukrezia. They got their old map and continued working on that. Beginning in early 2014, plans changed a bit, members became inactive, others joined and the first iteration of our city project Lucrécy started. It got some changes in the following years, different layouts, buildings got rearranged etc. When Lukrezia dropped out as an active staff member in 2016, Flo0498 and I decided to keep the project running, but we renamed it to differentiate from what we called "the good ol' times". So Æonis was born in 2016 and we have continued with our world building project since then. Click here to read more about the history of Æonis.
What inspired the team to be 18th century themed?
The style, the architecture, the people ... just everything was so elaborate and beautiful back then. Personally, several people were interested in architecture of that period and wanted to become architects when done with school (and two of them did), so it was more or less a natural choice to go for that style. Also we have some history fans on the server who greatly help out with world building, when contributing facts and stories to the world.
And on the other hand, there were practical reasons besides these as well. One guy already built a city with renaissance architecture on the Glaciem server ... and we somehow adapted the concept. Originally we planned on building a fantasy world with different continents, where only one part should actually be a human realm in a baroque style. That whole project never came to fruition, so we just started with a city (Lucrécy) and continued with that.
How did the team pick the name Æonis? Does it mean anything special?
As I mentioned we were named Glaciem before. It's the Latin word for ice, but we had no connection or resemblance in our server to it, it was rather randomly chosen because it sounded nice. (At least I guess, I wasn't around back then)
When Flo0498 (AKA Creator_of_Future) and I revived and continued it's works we decided to settle for a name which makes sense (at least partially). Until the very time we had to decide on a new name for the team, our whole world building so far just consisted of two nations, Castaire (with its capital Lucrécy) and Cantoras (which was part of the old map from Glaciem/The Four Kingdoms).
We wanted to eventually expand that and thought about how we could name a planet then which comprises all the countries which were to come. The word derives from ancient greek aiōn, meaning either age or eternity, and the -is at the end just looked good. Our thought was that a planet exists for a seemingly endless time in the eyes of its inhabitants, so they named it for eternity.
We have been around for seven years now, which is like a quarter of most of our members' lifetime. So also for them, Æonis has been around for a small eternity ;D
Can you share a little bit about who does what on the team?
Everyone builds as I command. Jokes aside, first and foremost, we are a building team, so we build a lot. Normally, Flo and I do the planning on where goes what and the general layout of cities, villages, larger buildings etc., but the other members are encouraged to do their own things as well. It's often a bit difficult to have them do this, because they don't want to destroy anything. They think we have a greater plan for everything, which ... we just don't have at all. Æonis isn't that much about a hierarchical team which does stuff according to certain plans, but more a small and selected group of friends and like-minded people loving to build together.
Besides the building part, we encourage every member to contribute to our storyline, like creating or expanding on a certain fantasy country, its background lore, characters etc. That's why we occasionally post collab skins as well, OneCord and Chabilulu helped very much with working some of the character designs out. We also had a collaboration with teamTopNotch, who created a lot of skins for our various characters.
What are the team's proudest PMC submissions? (You could ask a few team members to pick theirs and share a bit about why it is their favorite.)
Questions for Stevecurious
Can you share a bit about yourself and how you got into Minecraft?
My personal Minecraft experience started way back in 2010. A friend of mine told me of the game and brought it with him when he was visiting. So we installed it and played it for a few hours. The blocky view and the possibilities caught my attention from the very beginning. I loved how you could literally build anything you want, even with the then limited blocks (I started playing with the Beta 1.6.6). For the first few years, a small group of my friends had a server where we just played survival and built some small villages with houses and stuff. Before we even got to Bukkit and the possibilities of plugins, we created our very own, wheat-based economy system. Yes, it was the great time of automatic wheat farms
When they introduced the creative mode with Beta 1.8, my focus more and more went into that direction and I started constructing larger buildings with more intricate layouts. In the beginning, I learnt a lot from the Hypixel maps and a server called Forgotten Realms. I took inspiration from their buildings and refined my own style. I also had my own private server (don't look at it) for some time back then before I eventually joined Glaciem/Æonis.
What's your fondest Minecraft memory?
Oh that's a difficult one. As I've been around for such a long time, I don't recall a single perfect memory. What I love to do is to take a stroll between my older and oldest creations and get all that nostalgia back from the day. All the memories and what we played where with whom come back, and then remembering parts of my family playing with me and growing up with the game are some of the coolest things that come to my mind.
Also, what happens from time to time when building, and that's really something I love, is when two people have the very same idea for something. I remember the very first palace/castle I interiored on Glaciem back then, when I created a long hallway between several offices and other official rooms. Lukrezia told me when she got online that she loves the design and she could really imagine being a bureaucrat there running around with piles of paperwork and books (writable books were brand new back then!) ... and then I told her that I had the very same image in my head when building it as well!
Are there any teams or builders that you look up to or take inspiration from? Who are they and what is your favorite project of theirs?
In the beginning, the most fabled project similar to ours was the well known Imperial City by Rigolo and their mates. The sheer scale and grandeur inspired many fellow builders, and it still passes a very good source for inspiration. Over time, when my style improved, I started to draw less inspiration from other minecraft builders and instead drew more inspiration from real buildings. But I certainly still admire some of the older members like Schnogot, oakley09 and RezolutnyDarek, for example. Their creations are still outstanding and it is a pity that there hasn't been that much from them in more recent times. I also really loved Sillouetes ship designs, which still are used in several locations on our server.
What also is a very great, awe-inspiring, impressive and inspirational project is the Studio Ghibli server were they recreate the worlds of different Ghibli movies like Howls Moving Castle. Because of the similar architecture, it is a great source to get different approaches and ideas on how to do things.
If you could pick the theme for the next PMC official build contest, what would you choose?
We once had a "Historical Splendour" skin contest, (and no, certainly, I had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with that ), so I would wish for something similar as a building contest again. The task could be to create a building that shows off the specific grandeur of a time period, be it a magnificent chateau, an awesome tower or just a nice mansion. That would also lower the scale of the contest again and allow more people to participate. The last building contests were very wide and complex or very specific, so something smaller scaled like a single building again would be nice.
Fun questions
As a Steve in the Minecraft community, how do you feel about sharing your name with Minecraft’s Steve?
Well ... it has been a pain in the ass sometimes. Normally it's fine, but every then and now, you find people making stupid jokes about this. Just a small story: recently, I signed a message with "~ Steve" ... and the answer was like "steve? xD" ... as if people don't have normal names.
Also, let's just be serious here. I'm the original. I'm older than Minecraft Steve. I'm less blocky, I can bend my arms and knees. (Though, to be honest, Notch somehow got my visuals quite closely: brown hair and blue eyes o.O)
Is there any fun or interesting historical fact you’d like to share with Planet Minecraft?
Probably one of my favourite anecdotes is an event in Australia in late 1932. They had a severe issue with emus trampling wheat fields there (yes, the birds) and ordered the military to get rid of them. So Australia more or less waged a war against the emus ... and lost it. They were unable to overcome nature. Ironic.
Yuki must have nightmares of emus all the time xD
If you could eat only one color of food for the rest of your life, which color would you pick and why?
Yellow. Potatoes are yellow (more or less) and I'm German. Do I need to explain any more?
Anything you'd like to add?
I would like to say thanks to PMC, both the staff for keeping the site online, the mods for keeping the site clean and the community for keeping the site alive. PMC is a great place to share ideas and meet new people, and for me and Æonis it has been a gate to many new members, and if I may say so, friends as well. We have one of the best communities of a game I know and it makes me/us glad to be a part of it.
Also thanks to you Dinow, for taking your time and reading through my lengthy answers, it was a pleasure!
"We are a small and selected community of some friends who love to create beautiful builds in Minecraft. Together, we try to create a vivid 18th century world on an earth-like planet called Æonis."
Æonis questions
Can you share something about how Æonis started?
Our predecessor was Glaciem, which went off as a fork of a former project called "The Four Kingdoms". Some members felt increasingly unhappy there and created Glaciem in middle/late 2013, led by Lukrezia. They got their old map and continued working on that. Beginning in early 2014, plans changed a bit, members became inactive, others joined and the first iteration of our city project Lucrécy started. It got some changes in the following years, different layouts, buildings got rearranged etc. When Lukrezia dropped out as an active staff member in 2016, Flo0498 and I decided to keep the project running, but we renamed it to differentiate from what we called "the good ol' times". So Æonis was born in 2016 and we have continued with our world building project since then. Click here to read more about the history of Æonis.
What inspired the team to be 18th century themed?
The style, the architecture, the people ... just everything was so elaborate and beautiful back then. Personally, several people were interested in architecture of that period and wanted to become architects when done with school (and two of them did), so it was more or less a natural choice to go for that style. Also we have some history fans on the server who greatly help out with world building, when contributing facts and stories to the world.
And on the other hand, there were practical reasons besides these as well. One guy already built a city with renaissance architecture on the Glaciem server ... and we somehow adapted the concept. Originally we planned on building a fantasy world with different continents, where only one part should actually be a human realm in a baroque style. That whole project never came to fruition, so we just started with a city (Lucrécy) and continued with that.
How did the team pick the name Æonis? Does it mean anything special?
As I mentioned we were named Glaciem before. It's the Latin word for ice, but we had no connection or resemblance in our server to it, it was rather randomly chosen because it sounded nice. (At least I guess, I wasn't around back then)
When Flo0498 (AKA Creator_of_Future) and I revived and continued it's works we decided to settle for a name which makes sense (at least partially). Until the very time we had to decide on a new name for the team, our whole world building so far just consisted of two nations, Castaire (with its capital Lucrécy) and Cantoras (which was part of the old map from Glaciem/The Four Kingdoms).
We wanted to eventually expand that and thought about how we could name a planet then which comprises all the countries which were to come. The word derives from ancient greek aiōn, meaning either age or eternity, and the -is at the end just looked good. Our thought was that a planet exists for a seemingly endless time in the eyes of its inhabitants, so they named it for eternity.
We have been around for seven years now, which is like a quarter of most of our members' lifetime. So also for them, Æonis has been around for a small eternity ;D
Can you share a little bit about who does what on the team?
Everyone builds as I command. Jokes aside, first and foremost, we are a building team, so we build a lot. Normally, Flo and I do the planning on where goes what and the general layout of cities, villages, larger buildings etc., but the other members are encouraged to do their own things as well. It's often a bit difficult to have them do this, because they don't want to destroy anything. They think we have a greater plan for everything, which ... we just don't have at all. Æonis isn't that much about a hierarchical team which does stuff according to certain plans, but more a small and selected group of friends and like-minded people loving to build together.
Besides the building part, we encourage every member to contribute to our storyline, like creating or expanding on a certain fantasy country, its background lore, characters etc. That's why we occasionally post collab skins as well, OneCord and Chabilulu helped very much with working some of the character designs out. We also had a collaboration with teamTopNotch, who created a lot of skins for our various characters.
What are the team's proudest PMC submissions? (You could ask a few team members to pick theirs and share a bit about why it is their favorite.)
ArcaneKnight's proudest. The skin of Jocques Cendrefort from the [Æonis/Top Notch] - Baroque Skin Collaboration  | |
| Lukrezia: What a question ... THE GRAND TOILET OFC! Because it is a great memorial for a great friend. We even got a report for it! The joke about the toilet is the following one: we had a member named kllo which we had some arguments with at that time. We eventually sorted them out, but way after the post. The fun thing is his username, in German "Klo" is a slang word for toilet ... we always made fun of the name (he never changed it, even when name changes became possible and stuff) | |
Paulzero's proudest (#2), "georgous and beautiful and perfect"  [Æonis] - Église de Fleuviel by Aeonis |
Questions for Stevecurious
Can you share a bit about yourself and how you got into Minecraft?
My personal Minecraft experience started way back in 2010. A friend of mine told me of the game and brought it with him when he was visiting. So we installed it and played it for a few hours. The blocky view and the possibilities caught my attention from the very beginning. I loved how you could literally build anything you want, even with the then limited blocks (I started playing with the Beta 1.6.6). For the first few years, a small group of my friends had a server where we just played survival and built some small villages with houses and stuff. Before we even got to Bukkit and the possibilities of plugins, we created our very own, wheat-based economy system. Yes, it was the great time of automatic wheat farms
When they introduced the creative mode with Beta 1.8, my focus more and more went into that direction and I started constructing larger buildings with more intricate layouts. In the beginning, I learnt a lot from the Hypixel maps and a server called Forgotten Realms. I took inspiration from their buildings and refined my own style. I also had my own private server (don't look at it) for some time back then before I eventually joined Glaciem/Æonis.
What's your fondest Minecraft memory?
Oh that's a difficult one. As I've been around for such a long time, I don't recall a single perfect memory. What I love to do is to take a stroll between my older and oldest creations and get all that nostalgia back from the day. All the memories and what we played where with whom come back, and then remembering parts of my family playing with me and growing up with the game are some of the coolest things that come to my mind.
Also, what happens from time to time when building, and that's really something I love, is when two people have the very same idea for something. I remember the very first palace/castle I interiored on Glaciem back then, when I created a long hallway between several offices and other official rooms. Lukrezia told me when she got online that she loves the design and she could really imagine being a bureaucrat there running around with piles of paperwork and books (writable books were brand new back then!) ... and then I told her that I had the very same image in my head when building it as well!
Are there any teams or builders that you look up to or take inspiration from? Who are they and what is your favorite project of theirs?
In the beginning, the most fabled project similar to ours was the well known Imperial City by Rigolo and their mates. The sheer scale and grandeur inspired many fellow builders, and it still passes a very good source for inspiration. Over time, when my style improved, I started to draw less inspiration from other minecraft builders and instead drew more inspiration from real buildings. But I certainly still admire some of the older members like Schnogot, oakley09 and RezolutnyDarek, for example. Their creations are still outstanding and it is a pity that there hasn't been that much from them in more recent times. I also really loved Sillouetes ship designs, which still are used in several locations on our server.
What also is a very great, awe-inspiring, impressive and inspirational project is the Studio Ghibli server were they recreate the worlds of different Ghibli movies like Howls Moving Castle. Because of the similar architecture, it is a great source to get different approaches and ideas on how to do things.
If you could pick the theme for the next PMC official build contest, what would you choose?
We once had a "Historical Splendour" skin contest, (and no, certainly, I had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with that ), so I would wish for something similar as a building contest again. The task could be to create a building that shows off the specific grandeur of a time period, be it a magnificent chateau, an awesome tower or just a nice mansion. That would also lower the scale of the contest again and allow more people to participate. The last building contests were very wide and complex or very specific, so something smaller scaled like a single building again would be nice.
Fun questions
As a Steve in the Minecraft community, how do you feel about sharing your name with Minecraft’s Steve?
Well ... it has been a pain in the ass sometimes. Normally it's fine, but every then and now, you find people making stupid jokes about this. Just a small story: recently, I signed a message with "~ Steve" ... and the answer was like "steve? xD" ... as if people don't have normal names.
Also, let's just be serious here. I'm the original. I'm older than Minecraft Steve. I'm less blocky, I can bend my arms and knees. (Though, to be honest, Notch somehow got my visuals quite closely: brown hair and blue eyes o.O)
Is there any fun or interesting historical fact you’d like to share with Planet Minecraft?
Probably one of my favourite anecdotes is an event in Australia in late 1932. They had a severe issue with emus trampling wheat fields there (yes, the birds) and ordered the military to get rid of them. So Australia more or less waged a war against the emus ... and lost it. They were unable to overcome nature. Ironic.
Yuki must have nightmares of emus all the time xD
If you could eat only one color of food for the rest of your life, which color would you pick and why?
Yellow. Potatoes are yellow (more or less) and I'm German. Do I need to explain any more?
Anything you'd like to add?
I would like to say thanks to PMC, both the staff for keeping the site online, the mods for keeping the site clean and the community for keeping the site alive. PMC is a great place to share ideas and meet new people, and for me and Æonis it has been a gate to many new members, and if I may say so, friends as well. We have one of the best communities of a game I know and it makes me/us glad to be a part of it.
Also thanks to you Dinow, for taking your time and reading through my lengthy answers, it was a pleasure!
| Credit | SteveCurious, DinowCookie |
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It's kind of fun that Stevecurious is German, the interview is in Enlgish but names of building are in French
( and Æonis is inspired by ancient greek )
By the way, I think I have missed the Happy Halloween Event conclusion. Does anyone have the link ?
DMs are always open if you want to have a chat with me!