Physical Sprites

So, I am finally at it again. A little while ago I made a system for assembling sprites from 3D printed cubes ...







It turned out that this did not generate any sort of interest what so ever... it might be because it required a fair amount of assembly.

I have now just combined the cubes so there is no assembly required




This method is quite a bit cheaper as I can scale things down, but now I am a little worried that I might be breaching some copyright laws. :/

You might want to get the legalities sorted out before you offer this for sale in your shop.
(And stating here "in public" that you already suspect you might get in trouble over this
is probably not the brightest move either, if you hope to rely on the "fair use" clause)

You are right! Well, they're not for sale for now. Will try to get some sort of response from Nintendo.

About the "requires assembly", people are already using beads to make things like this. You should think what this method improves over plain beads, and then target places where such artists share their works (pixelgasm, deviantart...).

About the technical details, are the cubes 6mm? Did you get any complain from service about too many and too small parts, or was it printed without questions?

Yes, bead sprites were the reason for my idea. I know 3D printing can't beat the price of beads and what could be easier then ironing them together... still I wanted to make something bigger and with square blocks that don't have holes on the surface.. so the outcome looks smooth, straight and more professional. Anyway. I posted on those communities and while people thought it was a neat idea it's just too expensive and complicated.

About the technical limitations... I received no complaints. I suppose it was still within the limits plus the parts are simple cubes and are probably easy enough to handle. I have tried to upload a street fighter sprite in single cubes before... that blew up the system .

Well, Nintendo got back to me and I have to say they were really polite and friendly. However their reply left me none the wiser on what to do with my physical sprites. Since they receive thousands such inquiries they don't have the capacity to process each individual case so their advice is to get independent legal advice... I suppose the sprites will remain private items for the time being.