This lesson supports understanding of texture packs: have students color in and fold a minecraft skin, downloaded and printed ahead of time. It's meant for under 12-yr old students.

blank skins are available here:
http://www.pixelpapercraft.com/papercraft/4fb568abc7394aca0100002a/minecraft-character-template

I actually copied the blank skin at 90% and physically cut pieces of 2mm graph paper  to fit the skin. (you can get custom graph paper here:http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com/
So old-schoool of me, eh?

For differentiation sake, I only required them to complete the head, but they could move on to the body if they finished. It took my slowest workers 45 minutes. 

As they finished the head, we glued a paperclip to the back, which made a super cute paperclip. If they finish the body, they could ignore the tap connecting the back of the body to the top, and use the paperclip to attach the head to the body.

Before this activity, I actually had them make skins on Skindex.com, and them I printed them out. They immediately notice that the file is tiny, which is a great introduction to why Minecraft looks pixelated. 

I explained that the image file is made of tiny square of color called pixels. I then showed them how to  download the skin template from minecraft.net (available on the profile page) and zoomed it in using the image program to show them how it starts to look like Minecraft as it zooms in because you start to be able to see the pixels. 

We compared the layout of the foldable skins with the downloaded templates to find differences. They used markers or color pencils to copy their Minecraft skins from Skindex onto the paper copy, and it really helped them understand the rather confusing skin files.  

*Thanks to LTM teacher Jinjerm, who shared this lesson plan