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Building a snowman in Minecraft

Happy holidays everyone!

This post is about building a snowman for my annual family Christmas card. However, I want to wish you all the best no matter what holiday you do or don’t celebrate at this time of year.

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year

It’s the holiday season so I head back to the top of the mountain to start on the back drop to my annual Christmas card. Something I’ve been doing for four years now.

Like last months amethyst farm build, I had an itch to scratch. Something I wanted to build rather than what I should build. I wanted to build a 1 chunk snowman something that doesn’t quite make sense.

Image of a cabin with moon rising over the hills behind. The roof is covered in snow and ice. A pallet of glass, snow, diorite, wool and calcite.

My world has been fairly realistic, maybe leaning into fantasy, but realistic. The closest I have to a meme like build is the frozen creeper face that houses my creeper farm.

The mountain itself is a work in progress

Making it make (Minecraft) sense

So what to do with a giant snowman? A snowman that will be bigger than most of the builds on my island?

Turn it into snowball farm!

While purpose won’t fix the scale issue, it’ll at least make it make Minecraft sense.

The player stands at the foot of a glass and copper chamber. Inside a snow golem stares at the player. Both are inside a chamber of snow and ice with a copper floor.
The player stands in front of a stack of barrels inset into a wall of copper and ice. The room is made of snow with a patch of ice where the player stands. A sea lantern lights the space.

I tried to make the snowball farm look like a cryogenic chamber. Let me know how I did in the comments.

An autocrafter is hidden under the snow golem And a small storage is on the lower level.

A hopper minecart and a barrel feed hoppers that feed an autocrafter. A comparator in subtract mode compares the signal to a composter. The signal is sent into a solid block, redstone dust passes that signal into a repeater..the repeater powers a solid block next to the autocrafter.
The composter here was later replaced by a second auto crafter for signal strength comparison.

For the most part snowballs get sucked up by the hopper minecart. The ones that miss or build up one the minecart is full can be placed in a barrel.

Small builds; the gift that keeps giving

This is my 4th annual Christmas card; however, it’s my first time returning to the same world as the year before!

A view across a now filled valley with a small ice pond in the middle. The left side of the image has a cabin, snow and ice covers it's roof and hangs towards the ground. On the opposite side of the valley is a large snowman. 3 sections becoming smaller as they stack on one another.

The trick to keeping a world going in Minecraft and staying motivated?

Build smaller. Although this is a large snowman, it’s still a 1 chunk build. Not that big as far as Minecraft builds go. Sticking to 1 chunk builds has kept me regularly checking builds off my list and moving on to new and exciting challenges.

Now that my world is full of complete builds rather than overwhelming partiality constructed mega builds, I’m coming back to add more.

There’s more to life than Minecraft and small builds let me regularly add to my Minecraft, write blog posts about them and leave time for mountain biking, learning guitar or household chores.

The final build

Do I regret building a giant snowman that dominates the snowy build area in my world? No.

I’m okay with a silly whimsical mountain area. The house I built last year is vey cartooning anyways. Next year I have ambitions of building a glacier or Maybe a train could be fun. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

3 Tips for your Minecraft builds

Snow is an under utilized build palette. I think many skip over it because cold biomes are difficult to live in.

You don’t need a snowy biome, most of this mountain top is not. Covering it in snow wasn’t a big task, and finding a valley or circling an area with trees is an easy way to build a snowy build in your world.

If you’re building with snow I have 3 recommendations:

1. Try for lower contrast palettes

Last year I used a lot of diorite on the roof of the cabin. Diorite works well for icicles, transitions between cobblestone well or can be used as dirty snow.

A view of the cabin with a roof covered in snow. Snow is made up of diorite, snow blocks, calcite, wool and snow layers.

This year I took a lower contrast palette. Dark to light it is white concrete, white concrete powder, white wool, snow blocks.

Its easy to make Minecraft builds too busy, especially at the 1 chunk scale. Trying to pick lower contrast palettes where possible has helped me improve my builds. Here’s a link to last years post if you want to see more of that build (and a re-write of the night before Christmas).

2. Darker corners appear rounder

Darker edges make squares look rounder. Devs use this trick on wood blocks and polished basalt.

A view from the base of the snowman looking skyward. Corners of each square that makes up the 3 sections of the snowman are darker. Cobble deepslate make up the eyes and mouth. The arm a mix of deepslate and tuff. The nose made up of acacia a stripped log, two shelves and a fence gate.

I used the palette described in the first tip to make the square sections of the snowman appear rounded.

There’s snow layers rounding out each section as well. Which leads me to my third tip

3. Snow layers to create curves

Snow is a flexible palette that is underutilized. There’s a lot of white blocks. snow layers offer the most flexible height of any block; and it’s not even close.

A view of the foundation of last year's christmas build. Snow blocks, snow layers and polished quartz variants create the illusion of drifts snow against the cabin.

For the snowman I rounded each section with snow layers. Last year I used snow layers along with polished quartz variants to create snow drifts. The yellowish tint of quartz created separation from the snow covered roof.

Happy holidays!

Hope these tips can add some cheer to your holiday Minecraft builds. Don’t be afraid to get silly sometimes. These are our worlds and we don’t need everything to make perfect sense. Sometimes Minecraft sense is just right.

Happy holidays to you and yours and any way you celebrate or don’t! wish you all the best in the year to come!

Build stats

Real Life Days: 51

Minecraft Days: 158

Hours: 8.25

This build was a 1 chunk build, if you’d like to see more 1 chunk builds click here.

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