This Stop-Motion Mario Animation Was Made with a Rubik’s Cubes

I’ve never put much effort into cracking the code myself personally, but I do know that in order to solve a Rubik’s Cube, you have to spend time learning about the patterns involved in the twists and turns on the way to creating a uniformly colored shape. That’s assuming your goal is uniformity, though. What if what you’re trying to achieve is controlled chaos?

It looks like that is what needed to be done many, many times in order to create the above video, a stop-motion animation of Mario and his various incarnations, with all the pixel work done using Rubik’s Cubes (via Gamnesia).Not only did YouTube user jugglersynchro have to create these images with specific cube configurations, but he also had to make them move. Despite the limited color palette the Rubik’s Cube offers, the result looks pretty legitimate, as they managed to animate Super Mario Bros.-era Mario running, punching coin blocks, and transforming into Super Mario Bros. 2-era Mario before again transforming into a super impressive 3D-era Mario. That last illustration was created on a 31-by-31 Rubik’s Cube grid, meaning it took them 961 cubes to achieve that.

It’s a pretty remarkable feat, and it looks like it was created by fans to celebrate Nintendo’s 30th anniversary, since the clip was uploaded in 2015 and finishes with the message (of course written in cube), “30TH ANNIVERSARY / CONGRATULATIONS!”

In the time it took them to create this clip, we’d probably still be learning how to solve a single cube. If you can, though, put your envy aside and check out the video above.

Featured image: jugglersynchro/YouTube

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