Hello everybody, my name is Gemini. I am here to give you five tips on castle building in
Minecraft and today we get the pleasure of seeing this beautiful remake of Kenilworth
Castle built by the team Blockworks. Let's take a little look around, shall we? This
castle is absolutely stunning to look at. It includes an outer wall, a courtyard, stables
and has fantastic defendability because of the hill that it sits upon. It was built to
look how it did in 1575 when Queen Elizabeth visited. This was quite the challenge for
the builders to reproduce but I think they have done a fantastic job with it. When building
a realistic castle there are five tip that I want to give you so that you can create
your own, the first of which is to plan our your castle. You want to know what height
everything is going to be, what the scale is going to be, how everything is going to
look next to each other so something that the team did when building this one is that
they were able to look at real life references, and even if you aren't building a castle that
already exists you can still do this. You can google search something like castle, maybe
medieval castle, something along those lines. Figure out what era you want your castle to
be in, for example this one was built for 1575 and they used real life images of this
castle which is unfortunately now in ruins, however there have been paintings and drawings
of this castle throughout time that give us a good idea of what it would have looked like
in 1575 even though there are no photos of it. So I advise you to pick a castle that
you are greatly inspired by and try to take aspects from that that you'd love to build
into your own castle. Planning really is key and it makes every other step in this tutorial
so much easier if you just get your base all planned our properly. Because Kenilworth Castle
was originally built for defence it is positioned up on a hill. Before you get any of your building
in place you want to think about the terrain around it. Kenilworth Castle is up on this
little hill here. This gives it an advantage because it's elevated and you don't want to
start building your castle down on the flat ground and then realise that you need a hill.
You need to build the hill first. This is a super important first step to your castle
and you need to get the terrain done in your planning phase, not in your detailing phase.
It's too late by then! So now that your planning is done let's start thinking about our shapes.
If we look at this castle here it's easy to see that there are many different shapes.
I mean there really are not a lot of straight lines. Even the walls going from tower to
tower are curved in different directions and this really makes it very dynamic and gives
it a lot more of a realistic look. I see a lot of castles that are just a plain perfect
square and although this can work in some scenarios I believe it adds a lot to the look
if you add a lot of these curves and different shapes. This gives such as unique feel to
this castle I mean look at this roof here it's completely on an angle and this does
challenge the interior a little bit but the builders here have done such a fantastic job.
You can also see with this castle that there are not just 4 basic towers, there are many
towers dotted around it in both the actual castle as well as in the walls surrounding
it. So when you're thinking about doing your castle think about the amount of towers that
you wanna have, where you want to have them and what shape you want them to be. This one
here for example has more square towers here leading up in the main building, however back
here we have some circular ones that are larger and some circular ones that are slightly smaller.
This variety is amazing and helps out your shape so so much. Next up we're going to be
thinking about the materials that we are going to use, I mean in Minecraft we have so many
different blocks to choose from and you can really get super duper creative with this.
So Kenilworth Castle was built from natural sandstone so because it is a castle that is
in real life it was important for the castles to think about what it was made of. This castle
has this reddish tone because it is created from natural sandstone that was found in the
area. Think about where your castle's going to be located. Is it on a cliff where there
would be a lot of stone or maybe andesite to build the castle from? Is it going to be
mainly wooden in architecture? Is there a lot of trees and forests around? What materials
would have been available for you to build your castle with? Thinking about your material
and how the builders would have found it will make the castle so much more realistic. When
thinking about what materials you're using in Minecraft it's not only important to think
about where they're coming from but also what you have that could work together within Minecraft.
So for example the colour palette used here are all within the same range of colour tones
but they're all used in different ways to add depth and detail to different structures.
For example there is a small difference down here. The wall is made out of a different
material than the foundation. This gives the illusion that the foundation is much stronger.
It gives a nice divide along the base of the castle, makes it look stronger and more put-together.
I absolutely love this effect. For the roofs of each building they've differentiated the
material. This way it's very easy to see the divide between the main walls and then the
roofs. It really accents the top of the castle and adds just such a nice little flair of
detail. So now that we've got the castle all planned out, we know our shapes and we've
got our materials, it's time to actually start building. So how do we actually start? Well
I was talking to the builders of this castle and they basically started with a wall. Mark
out your wall like this one and then figure out the heights. So maybe this wall has to
go a little lower based on the reference pictures and then this one goes higher and this one
comes higher again and you want to mark out this before your details so before you put
any of these windows in or little slots into the wall before there's any doorways you want
to get your shapes. Getting the shape of the castle in place is very very important because
if you rush into your details too fast and you make a mistake you'll end up working so
much harder to pay for that mistake. Get your shapes in, get everything built up and then
worry about your details. It's not important to rush into them. Take your time to get your
castle correct .The fifth and final tip I have for you guys is to not be afraid to trial
and error when looking at your details, so if something doesn't work with your detailing
don't be afraid to try it again. Sometimes it can take several attempts to get a detail
the way that you want it. Don't give up. Keep going, it's worth it and castle building is
so fun and rewarding I know that you guys will have so much fun with it once you get
the details in place that you want. Let's look at some of the details that the build
team did. So for example here we have these foundations that are coming out from these
entry ways so you have a stairwell here with a beautiful railing on it but also across
the way here we have these super thick foundations that would have been very important in holding
up the real castle. In real life Kenilworth Castle has some walls that are up to four
metres thick. That is a super thick wall so when you're thinking about your castle it
doesn't necessarily have to be super thick, it needs to be sturdy. Think about whether
or not it was built for defense. This castle was originally built for defense so its got
slots for arrows it's got walls that you can easily defend it's got a well for fresh water
during sieges it's got thick foundations. Think about these things and it'll make it
so much easier to add your details. Think about whether your castle had gardens think
about what the walls going along the exterior looked like and then think about what your
castle would need to survive. I mean in order to survive your castle needs fresh water so
it needs a well, it needs somewhere for people to sleep, your castle needs a kitchen but
your castle also needs somewhere to put horses for example in these stables over here, look
at these gorgeous stables, the interior is done so amazingly I can just picture this
place filled with amazing beautiful horses. I love the details the builders have done
for the windows here, look at how they've used the trap doors. I want to point out something
to you that one of the builders pointed out to me. So you see you can have trapdoors here
on an edge, they look so wonderful but also over here you can put double trap doors together,
look at this it's two trap doors and from a distance you can barely notice but you can
tell that it's a lot thicker and it really is something that adds to the overall feel
of this castle. It just adds so much detail and it's such a simplistic way. It's so beautiful.
Thank you guys so much for listening to my 5 tips on building castle exteriors. If you
would like to see more from me on castle interiors definitely check out the next video in the
series. I hope you enjoyed this Minecraft tour of Kenilworth Castle, thank you so much
for watching. Bye bye!