Pac-Man Wall Art

If you're decorating your man cave, game room, or workshop you're going to need some cool wall art to hang. And what better wall art than an old school video game like Pac-Man? You've seen the Space Invaders wall art. You've seen the Super Mario brothers wall art. Now let's do Pac-Man and some ghosts! This project is perfect for a game room, especially one that involves an arcade machine or a game console!

Step 1: Watch the Video!

First, before you start this Instructable, I recommend you watch the project video I put together. I use some advanced tools, but as with all of my projects we'll talk about how to do this with regular tools in the Instructable.

Step 2: Cutting Out the Characters

I used a machine called an X-Carve which is a CNC 3D router to cut out my Pac-Man and ghosts. With a CNC machine you draw the shape or object on your computer screen and then let the machine do all of the work. But don't let the lack of CNC stop you! This is a super easy project with any set of tools!

Without a CNC, here's what I recommend. Print out the pictures of your Pac-Man and ghosts. You can get them from my web article linked below for free. Or if you don't like those just search Google Images for Pac-Man and you'll find hundreds to choose from! Make sure to print them out all the same size!

Once you have them printed, pick your material. In my case I chose 1/4" MDF. MDF is easy to work with, and takes a very smooth coat of paint. Perfect for a glossy finish. You can also use plywood, expanded PVC sheeting, or acrylic sheeting. Expanded PVC is a great choice if you don't like to paint because you can get it numerous colors.

I like to use some spray adhesive and glue the paper directly to my work surface; in this case the MDF. Then all you need to do is use a handsaw, bandsaw, or jigsaw to cut out the characters following the lines from the printed out graphic or picture.

Whether you use a CNC or a handsaw, once you've got them cut out, you'll want to use some 100 grit sand paper and remove all the burs along the edges and smooth everything to get ready for the next step: Paint!

If you have a CNC, or you want to use my artwork you can download them for free from my website here: Pac-Man Wall Art

Step 3: Painting the Characters

I only made two ghosts for my wall art, Blinky and Clyde. If you make all four, you'll need more paint then I did. You'll need black, white, yellow, cyan, red, orange, and pink.

Red is for Blinky.
Pink is for Pinky.
Cyan is for Inky.
Orange is for Clyde.
Yellow is for Pac-Man.
Black and White are for the ghosts eyes and the pellets.

After you've sanded the wood down, make sure you get all of the dust off. It's imperative your surface is clean. Paint Pac-Man and the ghosts separately and let them dry over night. I recommend about three to four coats of paint, 15 minutes apart. The first three are light coats, and the last coat is a thick gloss coat.

The next day, take your ghosts and tape everything off except their eyes and then spray those with the black paint (or dark blue if you're a Pac-Man purist). After about an hour remove the tape and then let them dry for another few hours.

One note. Because my wall was white, I decided to make my pellets black even though traditionally the pellets are white. I just felt it would look better to have a contrasting color. Some purists will likely not agree.

Step 4: Hang Them on the Wall!

The last step is easy, but you'll want to have a little patience. Trust me.

Decide where you want to hang the characters and then hold a level to the wall. Under that level affix a strip of masking tape. If you followed my advice in step 1 and made all of them the same size then all you'll need to do is align the bottom of every character with the masking tape strip to get a perfect alignment!

I used a high quality double-sided tape from my local big box store to attach them. Just hold them up to the tape, align the bottoms and press them to the wall! That's all it takes! You can use the same process with a smaller section of masking tape to align the pellets.

Thanks for reading my Instructable! If you liked this project, you'll probably like my other projects too! Check them out here on Instructables and don't forget to subscribe to my channel on YouTube at YouTube.com/c/TheGeekPub and my website at TheGeekPub.com.