Showing off my Koopa

This fellow is my Koopa Trooper. He's just shy of 16 inches tall, and each block is 5/8"X5/8"x5/8". He hangs out in the living room, just inside the door. I am not sure what possessed me to make him, but I can tell you how I did it.

First, I found a sprite of the Koopa. (If you all aren't in the know about such things, the sprites are the 'models' used in the older games. This one is a Super Mario World sprite from the 16bit Super Nintendo system). I blew it up, printed it out, and drew a grid over it so I could see how many 'pixels' I would need. Turns out I needed roughly ...a bunch. I think it was around 244? But I'm no longer sure of the number.

I bought some bitty little wooden cubes from Hobby Lobby, while all their wood stuff was on sale, and I painted them with acrylic paint. I counted out how many light green cubes, dark green cubes, black cubes etc. I would need then divided them up and painted 'em all. It was a slow process.

After all the painting, I glued them together with wood glue, starting at the bottom and working my way up, one row at a time. I found it was easier to glue a whole row together at once, or at least big parts of the rows, then glue them to the existing rows. That kept things mostly straight. There's obviously some distortion in him, but I liked it, so I left it.

After he was all glued up, I left him to dry for a day or two, then propped him up on the mantle. I was afraid to put him anywhere else, cuz I thought he would break. He's tough, though. He lives happily on the floor, now. Maybe some day he'll get some company, like say a Boo to hang on the wall above him.