I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This M&M shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study about an 8-bit sprite pixel art contest for Collective Bias and its client.
Last week, my husband and I sat down to do a jigsaw puzzle without the children for the first time in a long time. It turned out to be a nice quiet and stress-free evening. The best part was that we sat face-to-face, as opposed to forehead-to-forehead. What I mean is, we usually are sitting across from each other at our computers and the only part we see of each other is our foreheads peeping over our monitors. Since we had so much fun with the jigsaw puzzle, I thought I'd invite my husband to join in on the Gaming is Better with M Pixel Art Contest on Instagram. To my delight, he accepted my invitation (most likely because he wanted to win an Xbox One and Forza 5 prize pack) and we soon learned that creating pixel art with M&M's, although extremely fun, was not as easy as we thought it would be.
Want to play along? First you'll need some M&M's. I went to Walmart and was faced with making a choice from more types of M&M's than I knew existed. I chose Peanut Butter M&M's because they sounded tasty. They ended up being delicious, but if I had to choose again, I would have chosen the classic milk chocolate M&M's because they are more consistent in size and shape. Even though our candy pieces were a little rounder and varied a bit in size, we still had a blast constructing our 8-bit sprites. The most difficult part of it was remembering that we were working on a fixed grid (like on a peg board) that requires all your pieces to line up in perfect rows, both vertically and horizontally.
Here is what we came up with . . .
We tried to stick with a racing theme, since Xbox is celebrating the release of the new Forza 5 game. I was super-impressed by my husband because he was able to create an 8-bit sprite for almost anything that popped into our heads, including a racetrack, race car, and checkered flag.
Because of the size of our Peanut Butter M&M's, it took me several tries to make this finish line. I think the next time we do this, I'm going to look for the mini baking M&Ms, whose smaller size would allow our designs to be more elaborate.
My favorite of all the 8-bit sprites I created is the first place trophy. I attempted several times to put handles on it, but decided that it looks better without. What do you think?
Are you all revved up to enter to win an Xbox One Prize Pack? Just follow these easy steps . . .
- Create your own Pixel Art using M&M's (R) candies and snap an Instagram Photo.
- Tag your image with #FueledByM AND #Contest and post the image on Instagram and Twitter.
Be sure to stop by the Gaming is Better with M contest page to see all the creative entries.
Are you a Walmart shopper? Here's how you can get a $10 Walmart eGift Card to help with your Holiday shopping . . .
Buy, Snap, Redeem!
- Buy Forza 5 game at Walmart
- Buy participating M&M’s products at Walmart (Participating products include: M&Ms Peanut 42oz Stand Up Pouch, M&Ms Milk 42oz Stand Up Pouch, M&Ms Peanut Butter 38oz Stand Up Pouch, M&Ms Pretzel 30oz Stand Up Pouch, M&Ms Peanut 19.2oz Large Laydown Bag, M&Ms Milk 19.2oz Large Laydown Bag, M&Ms Peanut Butter 18.4oz Large Laydown Bag, M&Ms Pretzel 15.4oz Large Laydown Bag.)
- Snap a photo of qualifying items on the receipt on your phone and text it to 811811. Include the code M&M with the picture of your Walmart receipt. Game and M&M’s must be purchased on the same receipt between November 22nd, 2013 and December 31st, 2013.
- Redeem: You will receive a text back with a reward code valid for a $10 eGift Card to Walmart.
