Ever since I was a little kid I’ve loved playing video games. One of my favorite games to play is Luigi’s mansion. In the game the Boo ghost plays a big role, now I know this game wasn’t its first appearance, but that was my first exposure to the character. So I decided I wanted to make a 8bit version to hang on my wall.
Some links may be affiliate links
TOOLS & MATERIALS
Step 1:
I started out by ripping 3/4 inch plywood to 1 1/4 in strips. I needed to cut the strips into 207 squares. So I made a quick jig for my table saw so that I could cut them out safely. I put a spacer block against my table saw fence so that the little squares wouldn’t get trapped in the blade and come shooting back at me.
Step 2:
Once I had all the squares cut out i started sanding all the edges. This took forever and it wasn’t until I was halfway done that I realized I didn’t even need to sand them fully since they would be glued together and painted.
Step 3:
I painted the blocks based on my template for the 8bit art, this can be found in the tools & materials section if you want to make one as well. The colors I used were Red, Gray, Black, and White.
Once they were dry I then started to glue them together. I followed my template and went row by row. I used a square to try to keep everything as square as possible and for the most part it worked out pretty well. Now I did make a mistake and glued one row on the wrong way. So i took a soft mallet and knocked it off. This is one of the reasons why I used ca glue for this project. I then regaled it to the rest of the piece and low and behold I glued it on the wrong way again. I knocked it off and then carefully glued it on the correct way.
Step 4:
Once all the squares were glued together I cut out a 1/8 inch piece of plywood for the backer. I used wood glue to attach the boo to the plywood so that all the pixels will be held together with a strong bond.
Step 5:
After the glue dried I hit the whole piece with a few coats of glow in the dark spray paint. This came out looking pretty cool and added an awesome effect.
Overall, I love how this 8bit art came out. It is a little bigger than I originally thought it would be but I love it. I plan on making some other Mario characters in the 8bit pixel form in the future.