100 Rubik's Cubes

Awhile ago I had the idea to take Rubik’s cubes and build pixel art out of them. When thinking about how to make a more interesting Zoom background, I stumbled upon Twist Pixel and decided to give it a try.

A collection of many Rubik's Cubes on a table

They looked great, so it was time to make a frame to fit.

An unfinished wooden frameA painted wooden frameSome Rubik's Cubes filling up the bottom of a frame

Getting them all put together was fun too, I’ve gotten quite good at solving exactly one side of a cube. So far I’ve changed the design out monthly, we’ll see how long I keep up that pace.

Rubik's cubes as pixel art of Link and an Octorok from Legend of ZeldaRubik's cubes as pixel art of the TCG logo for the TCGbay Hackathon 2023Rubik's cubes as pixel art of Simon Belmont and a red skeleton from CastlevaniaRubik's cubes as pixel art of the back of a Magic: The Gathering card

To assist with cube setup, I put together a little brute-force bash to take a 30x30 pixel image and break it out into cube slices:

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#!/bin/bash

convert $1 -scale 1000% o_r.png

convert o_r.png -background black \
  -splice 2x2+290+290 \
  -splice 2x2+280+280 \
  -splice 4x4+270+270 \
  -splice 2x2+260+260 \
  -splice 2x2+250+250 \
  -splice 4x4+240+240 \
  -splice 2x2+230+230 \
  -splice 2x2+220+220 \
  -splice 4x4+210+210 \
  -splice 2x2+200+200 \
  -splice 2x2+190+190 \
  -splice 4x4+180+180 \
  -splice 2x2+170+170 \
  -splice 2x2+160+160 \
  -splice 4x4+150+150 \
  -splice 2x2+140+140 \
  -splice 2x2+130+130 \
  -splice 4x4+120+120 \
  -splice 2x2+110+110 \
  -splice 2x2+100+100 \
  -splice 4x4+90+90 \
  -splice 2x2+80+80 \
  -splice 2x2+70+70 \
  -splice 4x4+60+60 \
  -splice 2x2+50+50 \
  -splice 2x2+40+40 \
  -splice 4x4+30+30 \
  -splice 2x2+20+20 \
  -splice 2x2+10+10 \
  o_r_s.png