Makin’ Mario Blocks: A Photo Essay
"Dramatic Recreation"
Inspired by this website, my buddy Ben and I made some real life Mario blocks out of cardboard. Click thorough to watch us do it.
Here’s Ben cutting 16″x16″ squares out of boxes we got from the back dumpster of a liquor store. Back dumpsters of liquor stores should always be your first stop for all of your cardboard needs.
Here I am making a 16″x16″ grid for the spray paint stencil.
We decided to make the stencil out of something thinner than cardboard, to give us cleaner edges. We used a giant calender, available free at many Asian markets.
Here’s a screenshot of Photoshop with an enlarged Mario block in it. I gridded it off to find out how many pixels high and wide it is (16 for both), and which pixels are which colors.
Here’s what the physical grid looks like for the brown color. Looking at the Mario block in Photoshop I could tell which pixels were supposed to be brown, x’ed them out and then cut out the x’ed squares with an X-Acto knife.
Here’s that same grid all cut out.
Here I am starting the spray painting process. After laying down the base color of yellow (and brown for the top and bottom squares), we put down the colors. There were two grids- one for black and one for brown.
Lining up a stencil…
And here they are all finished! You can see the stencils laying on the ground there too. Honestly, they’d make really nice flat wall hangings, but we came here to make a cube, so…
Weeks later, we tape them together from the back.
A flaw in our plan: How do we tape the inside of the last square? Gordon can’t figure it out either.
But he can jump! Dun-dun-dun dun-dun dun. Dun.
Here’s some pictures of the finished product. Because we stuck so closely to the source material, I think we ended up with one of the best looking Mario blocks on the web:
In it’s natural habitat.
Sorry. You ain’t getting no goofy pose out of me.
Tags: arts and crafts, blocks, Coins, Mario, pixel art, real world, Super Mario Bros.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:that is freakin’ awesome!
June 30th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:Now I want to try it
July 1st, 2009 at 5:42 am
Michelle says:Fantastic work!
Could you give us an idea of how long it took you from start to finish?
July 1st, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Dave "shaolinjesus" Corvin says:I think we need a Mario mushroom to pop out of the top.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:22 pm
MrColinP says:Thanks Michelle! I would say the whole process took five or six hours, but much of that was spent making the stencils which are reusable.
Dave- If you go to the site linked at the top of the entry, there are some mushrooms and coins and stuff there!
July 31st, 2009 at 6:52 pm
saitokthx says:i wanna try making one
August 1st, 2009 at 9:46 am
Marie says:Very win. I wonder if those steps could be modified into making a lamp cover? Just imagine the warm glow of the question mark during late nights gaming.
August 1st, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:@Marie
I like the way you think! Prolly wouldn’t be too difficult to pull off, either.
August 1st, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Marc says:I’d hit that.
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
mc2w says:I love it! You should mass produce and sell these!
August 4th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
adsgfhj says:This should be a lampshade.
August 5th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Tony says:Seriously? You can’t figure out how to tape the last side?
Ok, step 1, You want this to last a while, build a frame out of 1×1 pine. Its easy you can do it.
Step 2, Attach the cardboard using double sided tape, or spray glue.
Step 3, Profit!
August 7th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Sayne says:Definite win! Some of the pics look like an actual 8-bit sprite was ‘shopped in. Great work!
August 7th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Diego says:AWESOME!!
This is badass.
August 9th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
JD says:Thats awesome, I might make one of those soon! Thanks for that!
September 11th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Osama says:Dammit, now I have plans for the weekend
October 15th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Spartan-029 says:@Tony
Step 4: Get sued! Nintendo and the makers of mario would sue you for not going by them and paying to buy the item. They own every thing that has to do with it. you cant make money of of there inventions without asking them. -facepalm-
October 27th, 2009 at 6:55 am
Glomb says:dude you’re a ******* legend
November 17th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
michael vance says:this rocks
February 26th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Slashy says:No goofy pose from you? Its ok the “ive been riding in a convertible with the top down for 3 hours” hair does just fine =P ….badass block though
May 17th, 2010 at 11:18 am
George says:Sooo going to do this. I think I’ll alter it though and cut out the ? mark and the bottom to make it into a lampshade for my apartment.
I just hope my room mates appreciate it “/
June 13th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
James says:LOVE IT! some people are so creative
March 12th, 2012 at 4:05 am
derp says:@Spartan-029
Step 5: Stop being an idiot and learn to recognize internet memes.