Building in Minecraft has always been about creative freedom with hardset limitations. It is somewhat of an oxymoron, but the nature of Minecraft is extremely limiting, despite the lack of restrictions. Blocks and simple geometry forces the player to make something interesting with sometimes insufficient resources. For example, the community has always wanted vertical slabs, but Mojang has stated it would stump creativity by allowing players a simple and easy accent to their builds. This is the design philosophy of the game, and it extends to a lot of different aspects of Minecraft. Today, we’re going to talk about another concept that revolves around the idea of limitation in the name of breeding more unique ideas and creativity, block palettes.
Block Palettes
What exactly is a block palette? Well, basically, Minecraft builds are composed of blocks. Usually, the blocks that make up the structure or place you’ve built are not random, but articulate. It can best be compared to a color palette for an artist’s design. Palettes are used to keep the theme of something consistent, and block palettes are no different.
In fact, most builders naturally form a block palette when working on their projects. They just don’t notice it. To give an example, you may have been building in a village one time and thought “This build would probably do best with stone and wood, I shouldn’t add Sponge blocks to the exterior” and you would be totally valid. Palettes aren’t about impeding on creativity so much as bringing out new innovative design through means of natural limitations. Consistency is the result of this limitation, as builds will (in theory) look nicer while using less colors.
If you’re interested in finding unique or new palettes to use for your builds, check out blockpalettes.com. It’s an awesome website where users can create and share their own palettes.
Conclusion
That’s all there is to palettes! Use palettes to make your builds more uniform and themed, and maybe you’ll notice a change in your building style. It won’t necessarily spice up the things you make, but it will definitely change how your world looks. If you’re interested, give a new block palette a try and see if you can make some interesting creations using only those blocks. With that said, I’m out. Have a good one!
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