Now that I have a decent stock of colored tiles, I started work on my first 4×4′ 8-bit sprite.  I always planned to use the original Mario for my first legit piece.  I found a good reference image on DeviantArt

Blue Background

Gold for Arms and Feet

Looking pretty good… Oops I don’t have enough red.  Probably would’ve been smart to count these out first.

I used some creative license and made Mario’s hat green.  Who knows, maybe he gets tired of wearing the same red hat all the time. Unfortunately, it looks like I botched the skin color.  It looks more orange than I had planned.  I’ll call this “Jersey Shore” Mario.

So all in all, pretty successful from a functionality standpoint.  The base and tiles worked pretty much as designed.  It took maybe 40 minutes to lay the tiles.  The only disappointment is with some of the colors I chose.  It looks like I’ll need to start up the tile making factory again soon.