Stop-motion bead Mario takes to the streets
Using Perler beads and stop-motion techniques, Swedish brothers Marcus and Hannes Knutsson have created Mario levels in the real world.
(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)
Using Perler beads and stop-motion techniques, Swedish brothers Marcus and Hannes Knutsson have created Mario levels in the real world.
Perler beads lend themselves particularly well to pixel art, but they're not exactly easy to animate. Swedish brothers Marcus and Hannes Knutsson consider that "challenge accepted".
This is the third video featuring our favourite little plumber made out of beads by the pair, the first two being just 43 seconds and then 86 seconds, respectively.
This third one is a lot more ambitious. The five-minute animation took hours of painstaking work; the longest sequence (Mario Kart at 2:06) took a whole 12 hours to shoot, and the entire thing used 205 bead models, made entirely by hand.
The shoot was all manual, as well; no special effects, no fancy cameras or tripod, made and shot the old-fashioned way.
The finished video totals 3106 photographs: a labour of love worth every second.
Watch it below, and check out the making-of video here for more details on how the Knutssons put their amazing film together.