The Sandbox is an upcoming online gaming world where anyone can own a plot of land and build games on it for others to come and play.

The idea of the world intrigued me, but I haven't been flush with enough ETH to seriously consider purchasing any land parcels. However, there was an intriguing twist to the whole concept. In order to populate these game parcels, creators will need game assets. I imagine there will be a limited selection of default assets to use, but otherwise, the game assets will have to be built by the creator, or purchased. And that's the interesting part. Not all game assets will be created and sold by The Sandbox team. Instead, there will be an army of third party voxel editors who make cool creations and sell them to the game makers for use on their land parcels! In other words, third party game additions are an integral part of the experience and the system is built to encourage artists to make some money from their work! Pretty damn cool!

Now I, myself, have dabbled in various artistic endeavors throughout the years, but voxel editing is new to me. I downloaded the official editor, Voxedit, and played around a bit, but didn't have an immediate vision for building something from scratch.

Then I heard about a voxel creation contest for The Sandbox, and this go-around the task was to take a pre-existing giant humanoid model (already built with animations and a rough, block form), and edit it into something new and awesome! Now this is something I can dig into -- I have a starting template, an end goal, and an idea to make some sort of Forest Giant.

I spent many hours this past week learning how to use the editor and trying to create a decent mossy tree look. With significant input from my kids, I finally finished yesterday and submitted my entry to the contest.

Unfortunately, I misread the competition deadline and submitted my entry early, so it's not quite as polished as I would like, but I think it turned out pretty well for a first attempt! I put in some details that may not be noticeable at first -- bird nest with egg on the shoulder, branches in the hair, root-like toes, and a lightning/burn scar on the right leg.

You can view a few other images as well as an animated gif of the Forest Giant and vote for my entry at this link - https://forum.sandbox.game/competition/entry/117-forest-giant/

And you can see current contest status and the other entries here - https://forum.sandbox.game/competition/14-voxedit-weekly-giants-contest/

I would love to place in this contest (top 3 places get a land parcel!), but even if I don't, I had fun doing it and can foresee myself pursuing future creation competitions and possibly even trying my hand at becoming a voxel artist!