Wait, did painterly already update?
No, but I added in all the new material textures using color edits/tweaks/resprites, and made a
2011 Painterly Pack Update of sorts. This also includes an armor mod I cobbled together, since I couldn't stand either the Leather Milkman or Slasher outfits.
Anyway, I just got a tour of a friend of mine's Minecraft project... a huge castle, with turrets, big rooms, huge courtyards, guard towers, all sorts of aesthetic details, etc. He's been working on it over a long period of time, and everything was done without hacked materials or bots... and it is simply awesome. Not only is it huge, but it's designed to be fun to walk through and explore, is functionally defensible, and is gorgeous.
I won't post screenshots because some of the towers and rooms are not finished yet... but I think this is probably the most impressive and functional one-man Minecraft projects I've seen to date. It's the sort of thing that should be at the spawn of a huge MP server, with castle rooms reserved for moderators or something... and it's designed sensibly enough that I could see it working as the core of a Medieval Role-Play server or something too, being that it's entirely defensible, and reasonably accurate.