Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Pixelblocks: Real life pixel art

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Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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Pixelblocks: Real life pixel art

by Ian Bogost June 6, 2004

categories: General

I just got these. I have 2800 of them now. They are little tiny translucent blocks that connect top to bottom, but also side to side.

You could use them as game design aids, especially for pixel art objects, but it's a LOT of work. They come in many colors, so you can do smooth gradations and make your own 2D and 3D pixel art objects or "digital stained glass," as the company that makes them calls it. Very cool and fun.

At right you see my first creation, an RL pixelart Pac Man ghost (click it for a larger one). I thought about making a nice Ludology ghost with cap, but it was too much work. Sorry, Gonzalo ;).

Comments (4)

Lego has been called the ultimate geek toy because it's so deeply mathematical. Any kid that messes around with Lego quickly learns interesting aspects of division, multiplication, and even calculus-like ratio shifting and fractal concepts of internal...

collision detection - Digital stained glass on June 6, 2004 7:58 PM

These are awesome. Is the ghost one of the patterns that comes with the set or is it a one of a kind?

Dakota on June 7, 2004 8:41 PM

The set comes with a 36-page idea book. The ghost was my creation, not in the book. But, you can also use the cool tool on the Pixelblocks site that processes a digital image or photo into Pixelblocks instructions. Way cool.

Ian Bogost on June 8, 2004 4:17 AM

Nice ghost. I made a ms. pac-man. I love the way the light shows through it. I surrounded the character in black though. I think it looks better that way. It can be framed and turned into a nice suncatcher. I bought more black and yellow for future arcade characters.

Dan on October 5, 2005 9:17 PM