An artist seeks to recreate level 1-1 using one brick per pixel.
With so many independent developers using Kickstarter to fund game development, it’s easy to forget that there are numerous people out there trying to use the service for some gloriously weird stuff that could only ever hope to find funding with the help of a loosely affiliated group of internet wackos willing to lay out some scratch to see it come to fruition. Such is the case with LEGO enthusiast Zachary Pollock’s latest project, in which he seeks to build a ninety-foot by six-foot LEGO brick mosaic that faithfully recreates the opening level of Super Mario Brothers, using an individual brick for every single pixel on the map.
Such an undertaking will, of course, require a ridiculous number of LEGO bricks, which Pollock estimates at approximately 780,000. Unless you own a plastic mold and a whole lot of synthetic blue, green, and red goop, acquiring three quarters of a million bricks would take some significant buying power. Once you add that to the plywood, Plexiglas, and mounting hardware needed for the final installation, you get to about $26,400 (if Pollock’s Kickstarter goal is an accurate representation).
“This project has a couple goals,” Pollock writes on his Kickstarter page. “First and foremost, I want to inspire a new generation of LEGO enthusiasts. I also want to show people what they have forgotten, that building with LEGO can be done at any age. My second goal is to use this project to test the waters for a foundation I would like to start that will work with children doing healing art projects using LEGO bricks.”
Once finished, Pollock plans to take his creation to BrickCon, Comic Con, PAX, and beyond … if he can afford it (labor and transport are not covered in the money he’s asking for on Kickstarter). If he’s able to slap this thing together, Pollock also believes that it will be the longest LEGO project in history. Even if he’s wrong, it will certainly be longer than anything the rest of us have ever assembled with tiny plastic cubes.
Image: Taken from Pollock’s Kickstarter page. The panel represents the look of his project, but only 1/60 of it’s final width.
