[Full Seize]Are you not in the picture yet?[Click here] and write your IGN to be part of the picture!
What is the PMC Group Picture?
And what's the goal? - The PMC (PlanetMinecraft) Group Picture is a piece of art made by
TomConn and
Wolf_with_Scarf. It uses a pixel-art style, heavily inspired by the
Minecraft Biome Vote videos, to portray an array of different members from the PlanetMinecraft community. The goal of the project, is to have a poster-seized community picture, which you can print out at home, and hang as a neat decoration somewhere in your room.
Short history of the pictureand why it failed at first
- The idea of a group picture was sparked in October of 2017 with the rework of the
GreenLeaf Creative server. On the server, there was a reward called "The Wall of Awesome!". It was, simply put: A group picture of the most active and most well-known members of the server. It did not have anything near the known pixel-art style which the PMC Group picture had. Instead, the Wall of Awesome looked like this:
- Around 2019, with the opening of GreenLeaf Creative, the idea for a PMC group picture was set into motion. On the 17/07/2019, the first
PMC Group Picture was opened up! With a total of 92 people wanting to be a part of the picture, with a few unaccounted members. Only 11 members made it into what would eventually become the final picture.
- I completely underestimated how many people would want to take part in it, as well as how much work each character took. So eventually, I abandoned the project and started learning how to do Pixel-art. Pixel-art seemed easier and faster to make, due to it's simplicity and focus on only the most important details.
Soon I would stumbled over the
Minecraft Biome Vote videos and got a kick of inspiration to create a similar style for my characters. I ended up with the character design that is used in the successful rendition of the PMC Group Picture.
The first characters I designed was my own Minecraft character, and my girlfriend's Minecraft character:

I then used these characters to create 3 different character templates:

And eventually ended up with a satisfying result.
- On the 09/07/2020 the
PMC Group Picture was reopened with this being the very first rendition of the picture. Only featuring a few friends of mine, but it laid the groundwork for the new PMC Group picture!
- After the release of this picture,
Wolf_with_Scarf joined the effort and helped create a few characters, as well as creating the wolf-based template. At first, the threshold for players to be in the picture was set to 50 players in total, however, after only 1 month active, over 100 members had already posted their IGN and wanted to be part of the picture.
So, as to avoid there being no goal, the threshold of 50, was changed to be a goal of adding 50 players in the first picture before adding a new section, and on the 05/09/2020, we hit the goal of 50 players!
- As of today ( 15/01/2021 ) this blog containing the history, as well as showcases from this project has been made public, even though the very first draft on this blog, was made 2 months ago.
The history of the picture is still on-going!Make sure you become part of it! :)
How to make your own character:
in 5 steps.
Step. 1 - Acquire software, Skin, and Template.
You will need 3 things to start off your character:
- A photo-editing software that has a layer and opacity function (I personally use GIMP 2.8)
- A screenshot of the skin, or just the skin file, that you want to create a small version of.
- And you'll need to download the Skin Templates.
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As soon as you have installed the photo-editing software, taken a screenshot or acquired the skin file, and you've downloaded the templates, then you can move on to Step. 2 of this guide.
Step. 2 - Layer setup.
Open your photo-editing software and go to the layers section.
Start off by making 4 different layers. Name them as follows, and place them in the order shown below:
Name: | Shadow | Placement: | Top layer |
| Pixel-art Character |
| Second layer |
| Template |
| Third layer |
| Skin |
| Fourth layer |
Step. 3 - Coloring and outlining
- To start off, you should focus on getting the basic colors of the character down first. That means that details such as hats, horns, chains, or anything alike should not be the first priority. Instead, focus on the big colors like the skin-color, color of their outfit, pants, and shoes.
- After laying out the basic colors, you now need to add an outline to the character. Choose a color from the basic coloring you've made. Then make that color a little darker on your pencil and draw along the outside of the colors. This creates a darker outline which makes it easier to see the shapes of the character.
Step. 4 - Adding detail- Now it's time to add the details. Just like with basic coloring: Go for the biggest details first. With the example character, that would be the hair. The clothing of this character is rather simple, which means there is no need for further detailing than the basic colors.
- After adding the biggest and most obvious details, you can sort of do what ever you want from here on out. Detail as you please, and once you're satisfied with the result, then you can move on to Step. 5
Step. 5 - Shadows- Select the shadow layer (The top layer) and make your pencil a pitch black (HTML_notation: 000000) Then start marking all the areas where a shadow would fall. If the character has a jacket on, there would fall shadows on some parts of the jacket. There would fall shadows right under their heads, on the back of their hans, and various other places.
- When you are satisfied with the result. Select the Shadow layer and find the Opacity button. In GIMP 2.8, the button can be found in the top of the Layer menu. It looks like this:
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Turn the opacity down to around 21% +/- and then go grab yourself a cookie, because you've done a good job and made your very own tiny Minecraft character :)
How I make your character:Small timelapse.
I myself don't always get a tutorial, and I personally find timelapse videos more helpful. That's why I recorded myself drawing one of the characters and made it into a timelapse to help you get a better idea of how to make your own character!
(This blog is being updated alongside the progress that is being made for the actual Group Picture. However it will only be updated when there is something very noteworthy which changes.)
https://discord.gg/GbCZyMD
One of the first things I mention is that I use GIMP 2.8. It's an older version of GIMP, but it's the one that works best for me :p
Here's my submission! I thought it would go well near the Nether portal but the flint & steel is easy enough to remove if not.
edit: how do i make it a cat what
Tilt the ears a bit and give it a tail, and that should do it ;)
(i forgot to mark as a transparent png)
file:///home/chronos/u-44b87d0622980668de54a31a79f8a41a61bdc3dc/MyFiles/Downloads/pixil-frame-0%20(2).png
I'll do a bit of a re-edit of the character, but after that I can add it to the picture ;D
My character!
Had some fun making it. I had to edit the wolf into a cat, though.
my skin
it was very fun to do
And no, I wouldn't say it does :)
imgur.com/a/HWmvlMv#mY4sTip
I'll make a few changes to it though, and then I can add it ;D
Just a heads up your profile picture is broken.