This Picture Was Made With Over 1 Million ‘Minecraft’ Blocks

Ben Silverman
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(Not a drawing. Credit: Thorlar Thorlarian)

You can build incredible things in Minecraft, from a space shuttle to Minas Tirith to a working computer. But even the coolest architectural wonder pales next to this ridiculous piece created by a pixel art master known as Thorlar Thorlarian.

That’s right. The picture at the top of this story is actually a top-down snapshot of a vast Minecraft world.

How vast? Thorlar used 1,128,960 Minecraft blocks to recreate the official wallpaper from the 2010 BlizzCon fan event. He did the entire thing by hand, dropping one block at a time. It took him nearly six months to complete it.

Don’t believe it? Here’s the video:

Thorlar’s insane work wasn’t just for the sake of art — it was also for charity. He live-streamed his work via Twitch, earning $3,500 for the Make-A-Wish foundation in the process. He’s raised over $11,000 since joining Twitch in 2014.

While his feat seems remarkable, Thorlar told PC Gamer that it was really just a matter of scale.

“Pixel art, when it comes down to it, is just like drawing with pen and paper,” he told the publication. “So with enough practice, it’s easy to know what blocks have what color, such as black being best represented by black wool, coal blocks, etc. At that point, no matter the size of your project, all you need to do is know what block would be most suitable for what area.”

Add about 1,000 hours of meticulously dropping blocks into place and, yeah, it’s a breeze. An interactive map of Thorlar’s work can be found here.

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