Friday, March 29, 2013

Perler Beads: Final Fantasy V

I started making Final Fantasy V sprites several months ago, but for some reason I never got around to finishing the last guy... until last week. And then we had to make an enemy for them to fight to round it all out. We didn't want to do something huge though, so it took a while to decide on which one would be suitably cool and also not massive... And this is what we came up with. What do you think?


Final Fantasy V cast fighting a Tonberry

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Perler Beads: Jewelry Edition

A few weeks ago, when my brother was down visiting, the conversation turned (as it often does, given our decor) to perler beads. And that led to a burst of creativity resulting in...

Nathan made the controller sprites up, and I made them into earrings.

NES controllers
SNES controllers
We also did this one for the N64 controller, but it's a little large for earrings...

N64 controller

Not sure yet what we'll do with that one. Keychain, perhaps, or a pendant necklace?

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Perler Beads: Addendum to ChronoTrigger

Every now and then, Nathan gets an itch to make something big. So far, he's resisted making Kefka from the end of Final Fantasy 6 (the sprite in perler beads would be something like 7 feet tall), but he did make...

They call me Gato, I have metal joints, beat me up and earn 15 silver points

Gato, from the Millennial Fair in ChronoTrigger! Again, having the pearlescent colors really came in handy for the shading. Here he is with the rest of the crew:

And here he is with the whole ChronoTrigger crew.
Pretty cool, all in all.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Perler Beads: Miscellaneous Cool Stuff (and Professor Layton!)

Ah, what do we have here? A bunch of random sprites... very random indeed.

Top row: Kirby from NES era, Imp from Final Fantasy VI, main character from Chrystalis
Second row: Slime, main character, Drakee (Dragon Warrior)
Third row: Karnov from The Legend of Karnov, Nemo from Little Nemo the Dreammaster

As an added bonus, we also have one of my favorites from the Nintendo DS: Professor Layton and his assistant, Luke! I actually made these for my friend and coworker, but I liked them so much I made myself a set too. They are very inspiring when you're stumped on something... because as you know, "every puzzle has an answer!" The games themselves are not pixel art, but Professor Layton and the Last Specter had a mini-game in pixel art style, and that plus the power of the internet made these sprites possible.

Professor Layton and Luke

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Perler Beads: Sonic, ToeJam & Earl, and Boo

First up: Sonic the Hedgehog. Yes, although we do tend to favor the SNES in our sprite-making, the Genesis had some great contributions to 16 bit art.

Sonic! Tails! Knuckles!

And to go along with that, another Genesis classic, ToeJam & Earl:

ToeJam on the left, Earl on the right.

And last but not least, we just had to make these Boo sprites with our glow in the dark beads. (I know, I know, not Genesis. Deal with it.) Even the pink beads glow (but they're only available if you buy the glow in the dark mix, which comes with green, pink, orange, blue, and regular black). For the record, the glow in the dark stuff makes the beads smell awful when you iron them.

Super Mario World  glow in the dark Boo sprites

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Perler Beads: Persona 3

My husband likes Persona 3. Like, REALLY likes it. To the point that he's played through it about 3 times, twice on the PS3 and once on the PSP. So when he found out that the artist who made the Scott Pilgrim sprites made all the characters into pixel art... well, the rest is history (view source image here). And luckily, the Perler website came out with some pearlescent colors right before this, so we were able to recreate the sprites much more accurately with 7ish new shades to work with.

Persona 3 chibi style, with a husband to give a sense of scale

Persona 3: Protagonist, Yukari, Junpei, Akihiko, Mitsuru, Fuuka, Aegis, Koru, Ken, Shinji, Edgar, and Elizabeth

Friday, March 8, 2013

Perler Beads: Close up of Falling Link

I had a request in the comments for a close-up shot of falling Link (from Minish Cap), so... here he is in all his zoomed in glory!

(Also, maybe this will spur me back into posting more regularly. Especially since I haven't stopped making stuff, so I have a nice backlog to draw from for blog material...)


Link falling, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap