Local Artist Puts Buffalo on Virtual Display in 'Minecraft'

It's Buffalo like you've never seen it before. A local illustrator and graphic designer has transformed the streets and buildings of the Queen City into a pixelated masterpiece through a video game. Time Warner Cable News reporter Rebecca Vogt shows you more of "Minecraft Buffalo."

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Mickey Harmon is a guy who likes Buffalo, illustrating and playing video games.

A graphic designer by day, Harmon says he's been drawing pictures since he was little and hasn't put the pencil down since. Except recently when he traded a writing utensil for an XBox controller to recreate the city's downtown core in a game called Minecraft.

"You pick your blocks and you kind of just map it out. You lay down the foundations and you do it row by row. You can also delete by destroying blocks. I used Google Earth and a lot of reference images," said Harmon.

In video game speak, Minecraft is considered a virtual sandbox, where users can construct pretty much anything out of those blocks as well as engage in exploration and combat.

Harmon said he started with City Hall, then added other notable spots in the city like the Statler, Lafayette Square and the Liberty Building. The entire project took him 2 1/2 years to complete.

"I would say thousands of man hours," said Harmon on this labor of love. "It's a perfect marriage of loving Buffalo, knowing a lot about it, displaying it to the best ability, and utilizing my natural talent as a dork."

Buffalo's map is also dotted with several unique items -- Mayor Byron Brown is enshrined as a Sphynx, an oversized Grover Cleveland looks out over Lake Erie and the oldest tree in the city is larger than life. Harmon's massive undertaking also caught the eye of the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, which featured his work in their "Amid/In WNY Exhibition Series" in mid-November.

"As a visual artist you have a responsibility to reflect our natural environment in any way you can -- to not use that in a good way would be your loss," Harmon said.

And while this current pixilated world has virtual boundaries, Harmon said he'll consider building subsections of Buffalo's neighborhoods in the future.