PixelBlock Art

IMG_0039.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . Black Mage from Final Fantasy and the afore mentioned 8-bit Theater . Loves knives and hadokens.

IMG_0038.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . Fighter from Final Fantasy. Also, 8-bit Theater . Sword-chucks rule!

IMG_0046.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . Everyone's favorite blue sneaker wearing blur, Sonic! Can't wait to play Smash Bros. Brawl and pit Sonic vs. Mario.

IMG_0044.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . It'sa me! Mario!

IMG_0045.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . I tweaked the colors a bit on this Mario, it more fits with his overall image. The original sprite had brown hair, eyes, shirt and shoes. Very bland.

IMG_0028.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . A lot of people don't know this, but Mario didn't always have a name. In the original Donkey Kong, his name was Jump Man. Shigeru Miyamoto later named him Mario for the Mario Brothers game, and then Super Mario Bros. was released. The rest is history.

IMG_0030.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . Dig Dug was an awesome game! I never played it on the NES, but on my Commodore 64/128. As a kid growing up, we didn't own an NES (but I played one all the time at the local youth center). We owned a Commodore 128, and let me tell you that was a game MACHINE. We had tons of 5 1/4 floppy disks with games. Gotta love a computer that requires command line to launch a game.

IMG_0031.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . This ghost is vulnerable to Pac-Man's awesome chomping powers, at least temporarily.

IMG_0032.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . Pac-Mac, classic video game of the 80s. Kinda sad some of the trash games he's been in since the original. Wish I could play the MarioKart arcade game with Pac-Man and the red ghost though.

IMG_0037.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . One of the ducks from Duck Hunt. Anyone play the Wii Play shooting game?

IMG_0035.JPG , originally uploaded by dash16 . That darn dog from Duck Hunt. Anyone ever shoot him?

IMG_0029.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . 8-bit Link from The Legend of Zelda. For as much as I love Zelda, I never actually beat the first game. Never even played the second. Link to the Past was my hook into the series. Perhaps one day I'll go back and play Zelda 1 and 2; I have them on the Zelda collectors disc for the Gamecube.

IMG_0026.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . Samus Aran from the original Metroid game. Much easier to do than the 16-bit version. A Coworker recently asked if I could build the final fight against Mother Brain from NES Metroid for him. I've been looking into how many blocks it is going to take, and trying to figure out the best way to mount these in a semi-permanent state. I'm thinking picture frame, easy to hang on the wall. Would also be nice if I could come up with a way to backlight it, since the pixelblocks are semi-transparent it would look really nice.

IMG_0036.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . Excite Bike was one of those games I played, but never really got very far. Still had fun.

IMG_0033.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . The princess from Donkey Kong. Princess Peach? Possibly.

IMG_0034.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . Another dinosaur from Bubble Bobble, with its mouth open.

IMG_0025.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . The blue bomber! Mega Man was always one of my favorite series games, Mega Man X even more so. Whenever we go to family functions at my wife's aunt's house her little cousin asks me to beat some level or boss in his Mega Man 8 game.

IMG_0024.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . One of the cute bubble blowing dinosaurs from Bubble Bobble.

pixelblockscolors , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . Click the image for the full version. Currently pixelblocks come in 20 colors. I have the colors in the blue shaded box. Of each color, I have at least 150, some more than double that. I need lots more black, most of the items I want to create have a black border on them. You can order individual colors directly from the manufacturer , in groups of 200, or get them in sets of assorted colors.

IMG_0023.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . Samus Aran from Super Metroid. I'm definitely happy with how this turned out, as I said in my last post 16-bit is harder to do.

IMG_0022.JPG , originally uploaded by dustinnewell16 . Forgive me for not knowing the name of this Super Metroid creature. They live in Norfair, they are made of fire and creep along walls and ceilings. One of my first attempts at 16-bit characters. Quite hard seeing as I have 12 colors to work with, not the required 65,000+. Still, I think it turned out ok.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

I started this blog to showcase some of the pixel art I've been building at work lately. About 6-9 months ago we had a vendor fair at work, and one of our partners (Adobe) was giving out these little tins of pixelblocks . I didn't think much at the time, until I started trying to build a question mark block from Super Mario Bros. I found that one tin didn't have nearly enough blocks in it, I was especially lacking in yellow. So my friend Tim started aquiring other tins from fellow coworkers and rounded up about 4 or 5 more. I built the block, and Mario to punch the block, and a super mushroom. I broke it down and made Fire Mario, with a fireball. I made Samus and a Metroid from the NES Metroid. I gave it a rest for a while and folded origami instead. After folding 1000 paper cranes, 2 giant epcot balls , and a bunch of other shapes I got sick of origami and moved back to pixelblocks. I bought a set with 1200 blocks and a few more colors than I had originally and sta