Minecraft and its rejection of NFTs was the big news this week. Amal got to work on a landscape-themed cover, dabbling with Magica Voxels until he created a terrain capable of incorporating multiple different elements. 

Floor is Lava

Issue #97 was released on 24th July.

Minecraft and its rejection of NFTs was the big news this week. Amal got to work on a landscape-themed cover, dabbling with Magica Voxels until he created a terrain capable of incorporating multiple different elements. An 888 castle, forest, farmland, and barren desert transform this from a simple landscape into a fully fleshed-out world. 
We originally intended to render the sun cycle using Cinema 4D but this would have taken too long - we wouldn’t have hit the weekly deadline. Dudly came up with an alternative: render each frame individually and then combine them into a PNG sequence. This gave us more scope to include details from the news, including the Latvian police coming knocking and burning oil wells. 
Combining the frames took an extraordinary amount of time, with Amal toiling into the small hours (4am). Fortunately, Dudly helped by splitting the workload and the design was complete. The final bake only took a few minutes in AE, leaving us with a stunningly detailed Voxel landscape and sun cycle that took 50 hours to complete.

In Gazette we explored Minecraft’s decision to part ways with NFTs; the reasons and the consequences. We also covered the shocking story of Shvembldr, an artist who had millions of euros confiscated by the Latvian police.
The ArtDrop for this issue was an emotive piece by PEGRUNTZ. It uses abstract techniques to represent the most valuable commodity of all: time spent with others.


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Artdrop #97