Crazy Minecrafter built a pixel artwork from over 1.1 million blocks
This picture of video game characters Kerrigan, Deathwing and Diablo is made out of pixels, but not the kind you think: Each pixel is a Minecraft voxel.
Thorlar Thorlarian is one magnificent lunatic. The Twitch streamer and self-described Pixel Art King claims to have broken the world record for the biggest pixel artwork created in block-building sandbox MMOG Minecraft.
While that's hard to verify, his achievement is nothing to be sniffed at: a massive reproduction of game developer Blizzard's 2010 BlizzCon wallpaper, featuring villains Deathwing, Kerrigan and Diablo, rendered out of 1,128,960 hand-placed blocks in around 1,000 hours over a period of 23 and a half weeks.
While the creation of the artwork was an attempt to break the world record, he live-streamed the build through Twitch and partnered with Make-A-Wish Ireland to raise money for children with life-threatening illnesses.
According to Thorlarian, who suffers from arthritis and has trouble holding a pen, he constructed the entire thing by eye -- without the aid of software such as SpriteCraft, which converts images into their corresponding Minecraft blocks.
"If I see black, I'd go for something like coalblocks or black wool, if it shades over to another colour possibly utilising obsidian and similar blocks in similar situations. Just going with the colours and what blocks match up the best," he said in a Q and A on Reddit's Minecraft forum.
Whether or not you believe him -- the denizens of Reddit's /r/Minecraft found his claim dubious -- there's no doubt that spending the time creating an artwork that size by hand is a pretty tremendous achievement. Check it out in the video below, and you can explore the Dynamap here.