Minecraft collaborates with Japanese grandpa of watercolor painting

Minecraft has recently been marking its 15^th birthday with its #shapeyourworld social media campaign. This encourages artists to create works that blend real life with the iconic blocky characters and textures from the sandbox game. On May 9, they featured a video of Japanese watercolor artist and YouTuber Harumichi Shibasaki. Grandpa Shibasaki, as he is affectionally called by fans, paints a watercolor landscape of the Japanese countryside scenery near his home, this time adding Minecraft characters Steve and Alex (as shown above). A short version of the video was posted on Minecraft’s official X account. 

With over 40 years of experience as an art instructor, Shibasaki started up his YouTube Channel “Watercolor by Shibasaki” back in 2017. Since then, he has attracted subscribers across various social media platforms, with over 1m followers on YouTube and TikTok at the time of writing. He is known for his relaxing ASMR painting videos (most of which have English subtitles). The full version of his Minecraft painting video is on YouTube.