Rather than make a random section of a Mega Man game with a robot master standing there, I wanted to do a nice landscape. My immediate thought was Castlevania, but my chosen shot (the ending screen of Castlevania) proved too large. My friend Oberle suggested Contra. I hadn't thought of it, so I perused some of the stages of that tough NES.
I found this |
Since most of my previous pieces had been oriented landscape, I opted to get a great swath of vertical space. The ground, trees, and mountain make for a fairly simple piece. I initially planned to use a patchwork of black card stock, but Mother suggested that I get a large single piece. I'm glad I took her advice, as the patchwork's seams would not have been masked enough to look very nice.
And here it is |
Long story short, the ground was easy, the trees were a pain, the mountains were easy, and the stars were fun. I accidentally misaligned the trees a few times, so that area doesn't exactly match the initial pixel map. The mountains threw me off while cutting them out, because I thought that I had reversed one at one point. It turned out that I was looking at an already reversed image, used for making sure I cut out the correct pixels.
Complete in frame |
The frame was the most complicated one I've worked with thus far. There were screws holding L-shaped bits of metal, bendy metal to push the canvas against the frame, and a large piece of glass in front of everything. Unfortunately, in my disassembly, I made a tiny chip in the glass. Fortunately, the frame covers most of it.
Bonus note: for the tree trunks, I did not have a matching green. I instead used the same light green I used on the tree highlights, but colored it with a metallic bronze sharpie.
Bonus note 2: in the original, you'll notice that there aren't that many stars in the sky. I used three metallic markers and three shades of light card stock to pepper in a few more pixels in the sky.
In the future, I might try another one that size. However, I prefer sticking to nice 11" x 8.5" sized pieces instead.
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