Behind the Monsters: Shark

Our latest adventure map, Monsters of the Deep came out last month, bringing to life all of the new features from Update: Aquatic Part One which was released on May 16th. There are spoilers ahead, so if you haven't seen the map yet, you can check it out here first!

We're really excited to have been among the first to dive into creating aquatic themed content and we wanted to make it as special as it could be. One thing that we really wanted was to highlight some of the best features from the new update, but add a pinch of Noxcrew magic to turn the experience into something exciting! We settled on the idea of enhancing the new Update: Aquatic features with some custom monsters while using some of the new blocks and features to create a mystical underwater atmosphere.

Throw in some custom music, a couple of weird characters and hey presto, we've got ourselves a map! Now it's time to make some monsters...

The signature monster of the map is the giant shark. Not only is it the first of the monsters that you come head to head with in the map, but it was also the first of the three that we designed!

The shark was initially inspired by what is known as a Shipwreck Shark from the game Alice: Madness Returns which was released by EA back in 2011. Shipwreck Sharks are menacing supernatural sea creatures which are built from discarded wood and ship parts and constantly attempt to take down ships.

Rather than recreating the ship-infused shark, we decided to take a different approach and have the shark be enveloped by a ship, wearing it as armour. We wanted it to appear as though the shark had taken on the ship during a battle and come out victorious! 

During the concept stage, our shark went through various stages of development. We tried out a few different ways for the shark to 'wear' the ship, going back and forth with ideas and switching up the way in which the shark had managed to entangle itself in the wreck to mimic a suit of armour or a battle mask.

We eventually settled on this final design, with harpoons and tridents sticking out of him to show off how many battles our shark has survived and a trailing anchor to show just how strong he really is. 

Skyao and Avondale have done a brilliant job bringing the shark from screen to sea and you can meet in in the Monsters of the Deep map which is available now on the Minecraft store.

What's your favourite of the three Monsters of the Deep bosses and why? Let us know in the comments below!