Yet another Beta Nerd tries to scry some wisdom from the arcane realm that is Minecraft's artstyle.
Sorry if the speed or pacing is a little weird - first time doing this kinda thing.
Further reading:
https://minecraft.wiki/w/History_of_textures
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Terrain.png
https://minecraft.wiki/w/History_of_textures/Unused_textures_hidden_in_transparency
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Procedural_animated_texture_generation
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0:00 [Note 0]: All of these textures were made in Paint.NET, according to Notch's other development streams, and a leftover Command Block file in 15w34a.
2:10 [Note 1]: Wooden Door and Ladder textures were darkened in Infdev 20100618. There's also the unused item/door.png file in pre-resource pack versions.
4:13 [Note 2]: The very first version Torches were added featured a longer texture, which is actually streched instead of squished.
6:15 [Note 3]: It looks like Pi Edition also replaced all pixels of color 353535 with 282828. Probably also related to the reactor texture.
7:21 [Note 4]: These tweaks also resulted in a discrepancy with the unused copy of the grass top texture introduced in Beta 1.6.
8:33 [Note 5]: Theoretically, you could reverse-engineer the old shape from any cobblestone texture this way.
9:02 [Note 6]: Brewing Stands DID have a different model during development... but it was one WITHOUT a base: https://imgur.com/cNX6J
10:08 [Note 7]: The top texture of the anvil is pictured here, though the side texture is also a slightly different derivative of stone.
10:14 [Note 8]: Stained Clay was never updated, so this may be a continuity thing.
10:29 [Note 9]: I believe this goes for every color, though they're all distorted in different ways.
11:48 [Note 10]: Nether portal dissection GIF by Minecraft Wiki user "Constachugga". See the article in Further Reading.
12:21 [Note 11]: i'll put the link to the second video here one day. for now, view this bonus fact that'll be part of it: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1xbv5pnblv6e1.gif