As many of us have become recently aware of, it seems like Minecraft textures are getting an update. With Jasper Boerstra brought on to handle it.

Jasper Boerstra is a ~20 year old graphic artist from the Netherlands. From his sites older and newer we can see his style. Seems to excel with animated pixel art.

We can already find examples of his work on Minecraft below:

• Tweak to Oak, and workbench
• Jungle Door
• Iron Block, Obsidian 1st pass, Birch
• Obsidian 2nd pass, and Diamond Block 1st Pass
• Brick
• Emerald Blocks
• Diamond Block 2nd Pass, and Cobblestone

Before going forward lets keep in mind:

Good criticism understands the subject, ways in which it seems to fail, and how it could potentially be better. It is not just gut reaction. The concept of Jeb's law does not undermine good criticism, it undermines mob reaction.

That said there are three things I'd like to reference for perspective:

• The work of Mojang's Art Developer Markus Toivonen, aka Junkboy.
• The artwork used in Minecraft's promotional material
• The resource pack Radiant Pixels
• Jasper's previous and current work above.

My central concern is that Jasper's work excels in animation. Looking at his history, his pages, shows just that. Very few still images. He's experienced in conveying energy, motion. Look at his work and focus on color, shading, style. Pause the animations. It starts to look worse.

Compare this to Junkboy's work. An unfair comparison given Junkboy is more experienced, but still. His work does a lot while still. It's interesting without conveying life. Shading and color are doing more work.

Think about Jasper's task: tweaking, remaking the textures. Mostly, if not entirely, still images. Even when animated, the textures represent mostly static objects. There's almost no opportunity to 'animate' in the same living way he normally does. Look at the Radiant Pixel's picture. Not a texture pack for everyone, but hard to say it doesn't do what it intends to well. It's interesting, it evokes Minecraft in the same way the promotional material does. Colorful, kid friendly, retro yet transformative. The changes Radiant Pixels makes often highlights that same feeling the artwork does.

Compare that to Jasper's changes so far: balancing out a blurred aesthetic with low details. The obsidian and brick tiles well, but the emerald block is a high contrast eye sore. The workbench looks much cleaner, but the jungle door is poorly defined. The works seem to consider each object singularly instead of cohesively. Radiant Pixel textures don't look weird when mixed and matched, they don't make you question where the light source is, etc. Jasper's jungle door and emerald block don't match. That emerald block looks awful as a room in large part because of it's bold shine.

The task of improving the vanilla pack should be a hard one. It shouldn't just recreate each object, it should be part of the game. Convey information. It's what's effective about this posted texture here. You convey information about the block and what will drop by how you design it. It's why so many packs make all iron objects match. It's one of the effective parts of The World of Color update, there's more consistency in color. The textures can convey a lot. Yes, it would take a lot work to consider each block, how they would pattern, how they compare to others, what they are made of, what you can do with them, etc. But that's why you would hire someone to do that. To be that mindful and effective through art.

I still have faith despite some rough starts. Jasper is clearly willing to tweak and change, and his skills have clearly improved over his career. I believe he can learn what makes an effective resource pack and implement that.

What are your thoughts, responses? What makes a good Minecraft resource pack? It's a great discussion even outside of this context.

Edit: Just noticed a very similar post made a few hours before mine here, and sorry for crowding on a similar topic. I missed it while I had the WIP tab open. It points out cobblestone, which I had missed, and is a worrying example.