End grain wood craftsmanship with an 8-bit attitude. Photo: Fab.com The Triforce is strong in Cameron Oehler's woodshop. Photo: Fab.com Optical art, another common "1337 Motif." Photo: Fab.com Racks of wood coasters set up to dry. Photo: Cameron Oehler Laying out a familiar design before gluing begins. Photo: Cameron Oehler The beauty of the Fibonacci sequence is timeless and, fortunately for Oehler, also free of copyright claims. Photo: Fab.com Workshop credo: You can never have enough clamps. Photo: Cameron Oehler Oehler's clean workbench — for now at least. Photo: Cameron Oehler Some designs are created by gluing long bundles of wood into the desired pixel pattern, then slicing the resulting block into thinner pieces. Photo: Cameron Oehler Analog tools for a digitally inspired product. Photo: Cameron Oehler

Cameron Oehler learned about woodworking from his cabinet maker father, but also has a deeply ingrained passion for videogames and digital culture. Luckily, he found a way to dovetail his two interests and started a company called "1337 Motif" that combines old-world craftsmanship with pop-culture icons.

He started out as a traditional apprentice, cutting wood and sanding cabinets, but a gift from a friend pressed the start button on his imagination. He says "My first geek/pixel art creation was a Space Invaders cutting board. Someone had given me a set of Space Invaders wall decals for Christmas; I like to cook, and somehow the two ideas mashed together in my brain and came out as my first cutting board." Pics of his boards made the rounds online and he has been producing them full time for the past three years.

Technically, Oehler's process isn't that different from a traditional artisan's approach. He says "The traditional butcher-block style definitely lends itself really well to doing pixel art. I think people sometimes assume that my cutting boards shouldn't be used for their intended purposes because they are really nice looking, but I use the same technique as any other end-grain butcher block maker."

The preparation for each board starts by cutting, sanding, and gluing long strips of wood. Each wooden "pixel" is laid down next to another and compressed with a clamp. The process is repeated, dozens of times, layer by layer, in an excruciatingly detailed process. Boards take anywhere from six to 12 hours, not unlike a marathon game session.

Oehler does have to work with limitations that videogame creators do not, like a relatively modest palette. "There are only so many colors of wood to choose from. I don't use any dyes or stains in my cutting boards, so I pretty much have to choose designs that only use shades of brown and red and black and white." The designers on the latest revision of Madden can utilize millions of colors, but Oehler basically has to compose his images with ash, mahogany and walnut. This limitation means Oehler has to decline some commissions, like one for a fan who wanted a Mega-Man homage that just wouldn't work in earth tones.

"Resolution becomes a limiting factor as well," Oehler says. "I have made some necklaces and keychains with pixels that are about 1/8-inch square, and that's about as small as my tools allow me to go, but for a cutting board, it would be an insane amount of work to use pixels that small. My boards are usually about 18 by 12 inches, so I would be looking at almost 14,000 pixels to make a full cutting board at that resolution."

Oehler's interactive inspirations have got him into some trouble. The iconic characters he pays homage to are usually owned by companies that would expect a healthy cut from his cutting board proceeds. Videogame makers aren't used to licensing their characters to individual makers and Oehler says "I have had to stop selling some items due to copyright issues, and so far, haven't been able to work out licensing deals." To diversify his portfolio Oehler has started developing products for math geeks, like a cutting board based on the Fibonacci sequence.

Ultimately Oehler sees himself as a bridge between classical techniques and the connected generation and says, "I think that for a long time nobody was making classy products that also appeal to geeky people. That's one of my favorite things about my work — I have had people my grandparents' age buy the Fibonacci board or the Triforce board without 'getting it' at all just because they are beautiful designs, and I've had to tell them not to be too surprised if someone my age comes over for dinner and gets super excited about their cutting board."