You, Too, Can Become a Trendy Gaming Artist!

Before we get too in-depth with the forthcoming how-to, we’d like to spoil the ending by showing you a masterpiece we made in under 20 minutes. Go on, click it.

Click the jump to see more works of art and the tools we used to create them.

Before we show you anymore, here are the tools we used:

- A Windows Computer
- Wired Xbox 360 Controller
- JoyToKey GamePad Mapping Software
- AndreaMosaic Auto Mosaic Program
- Photoshop CS5
- FCEUX NES Emulator
- Our favorite legally obtained NES roms

After using JoyToKey to map our Xbox 360 controller to specific keyboard keys, we opened up FCUEX and loaded up Super Mario Bros. By simply playing through the game while snapping screenshots with the F12 key, we ended up with over 400 usable images perfectly suited for our future mosaic. We recommend mapping the F12 key to one of the triggers so you can easily take screens without interrupting gameplay.

Once we located our collection of screenshots, which were stored in the same folder we extracted FCUEX, we had to convert them from .png to .jpg. To do this, we simply opened up Photoshop, went to File, Scripts and Image Processor and batch converted them all at once. Next, we chose a source image in which the mosaic would be based off of. In our first case, it was a large portrait of beloved plumber Mario.

AndreaMosaic’s easy-to-use interface let us drag-and-drop our source image into place, then select the folder where the screentshots were located to create a tile archive. After tweaking a few quality settings, we hit the “Create Mosaic” button and let it chug away. Not more than three minutes later, we were graced by the image above. It really couldn’t have been easier.

Here are a few more award-winning mosaics we spit out using the same Mario tile archive we already had put together.

Now it’s time to show us your creations.