Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 3: Square RPGs

Time for round three of Perler Armageddon! That's...not what I'm actually calling it, but whatever. 

Today we're gonna focus on what was once one of my most favorite developers ever (and sadly is not really anymore) that made some absolutely gorgeous and fantastic video games back in the NES and SNES era. I'm, of course, talking about LJN.

Ah, nothing but quality games out of these guys. 

Wait...my mistake, they were the exact opposite of what I just said! Ha ha ha, how did I mess that up? No, I was talking actually about Square (or Square-Enix now).

Or Squaresoft...you know what? Whatever. 

Anyway, Square(soft) was pretty freaking great back in the day. Aside from making 3D World Runner, which I love, they also made tons of RPGs on the side I guess? And now you know I'm just messin' with ya. Let's get on with the sprites. 

FINAL FANTASY

Suck it, Garland!

The first picture is a bit zoomed out, but you get the point. Garland is the first boss in FF1, and thus I figured we'd have our team fight against him. It's worth noting that this ISN'T the team I usually pick; I'd have a fighter in there and probably no thief. 

A wizard did it!

Fighter and Black Mage are instead confronting Sarda in a tribute to 8-bit theater. Seriously, that comic is hilarious (and actually ended, which is amazing).

Next up...FINAL FANTASY 4!

...

Uh, ok, so I actually haven't done these yet. I've been meaning to make a full party and a Fat Chocobo (and maybe a Garland once I have enough beads...) but I just haven't had the time. Maybe they'll be next on the roster? I did make Tellah but I don't have a picture yet...so let's move on.

On to my favorite game ever...FINAL FANTASY 6!

I have a lot of pictures of these, so bear with me. 

I LOVE Final Fantasy 6's sprite work. From the characters that convey so much emotion despite being so small to the absolutely gorgeous enemies, this is probably my favorite game in terms of pixel art. While I'll admit it isn't as straight up artistic as games like Chrono Trigger or the later Secret of Mana games, it has a style I just love, and making the sprites was fun.

What's tricky with perlers is having to modify sprites based on the colors available. For example, there are very few shades of dark gray, meaning making Shadow was almost impossible. Also Kefka, Banon, Celes, and Gau's hair is technically a sort of gray-blonde in the game, but since there was no way to properly do that we had to variate with different shades of brown. 

Let's take a look at them closer up.

Emperor, Kefka, and Magitech armor. 

The Magitech armor was tricky because, again, we didn't have the proper colors. I ended up ditching the original brown/tan scheme for a sort of gray/cream variant. This was because if I didn't there wouldn't be any contrast between the soldier and the armor he was in. Kefka's hair was also tricky (I switched out the colors probably six or seven times before finally coming to that conclusion) but it boiled down to the gray/blonde colors available didn't blend well and thus made the sprite look bad, so I ended up with a darker brown. Took ten years off Kefka, let me tell ya. 

And I want to make another with his fists up going "IDIOTS!" but I had to do the iconic laugh pose first. 

Esper Terra, Cid, Leo, and Banon. 

This is sort of the "Misc" group (and will be with the Chocobo when I finally get around to doing it). Esper Terra is probably my favorite sprite out of the bunch, despite being the simplest. She just looks...badass. I never really cared for Cid so I made him dull, and Leo didn't really have a lot of poses. Banon, again, should probably have grayer hair but whatever...blame Perler. 

Terra, Locke, Edgar, Sabin, Celes, Interceptor and Shadow, Cyan, Gau, Setzer, Strago, Relm, Mog, Umaro, Gogo. 

Nerd test! I put the playable characters in a certain order. Can you figure out what that order is?

If you guessed "order they were acquired" you would be correct! You win...points? I don't know. I was going to put them in order of my personal favorites, but scrapped the idea after it didn't look very good. 

Regardless, I tried to find a varied mix of poses for them all. Edgar is suave, Terra is distant, Locke is freaking out, Sabin is ready to go, etc. I really wish I'd done a better pose for Mog, but he was the one I did first so...it happens. Maybe I'll gift him to somebody and make another one...

That isn't it from FF6, because about half way through I lost my mind. I realized I wanted to do my favorite enemy from the game (aside from Kefka's final boss sprite) so I got on it...and this is what happened. We'll give you the step by step of...ULTROS!

A "dud" version that I eventually recolored. 

First off, that's SIX perler trays, so you get a sense of size here. Second, he is VERY tricky to do. Remember when I said I do outlines first and then go from there? Look at the black beads on this guy. There's no rhyme or reason behind it. It's super tricky!

The biggest issue, though, is the fact that there are only TWO actual purple shades in all of perler-dom. Because of that on my original run I tried shaded in too soon, meaning I ran out of colors that worked well together. I did an experiment on that colored-in tentacle to try and find a color scheme that worked, but it just looked awful. So what did I do? I went insane.

After I fixed him. 

I took out all the dark purples and replaced them with dark grays. Every. Single. One. With tweezers, one at a time, while staying true to the original sprite. I then replaced all the light purples with dark purples. I also experimented on the tentacle to try and find a better color mix and it ended up being much better. Just to point out: Ultros has something like six shades of purple, and I have only two shades of beads (and only three that really work well together). Because of that, some colors had to do double duty, so the sprite isn't as color detailed. It basically boils down to what shades best and still looks like the original sprite, which I'd like to say my background in actual pixel art helps in deciding. 

I love his teeth. Sorry this one is blurry. 

So you can see I used considerably less purples here. I also had to compensate for lack of teeth colors as well, as there's really only two shades of yellow and an off-color "creme" that I never use for anything. 

All finished! 

I ended up shading the purple into a purple-pink and then to a pink and to a white because it seemed to blend best. The pink still "pops" a little much, but it's the best you can get. The dark grays were actually dark purples in the sprite, but they really just make the shadows a little deeper when I'm fine with. I think he ended up looking really good, and an accurate representation of the original sprite. 

The famous opera scene. 

And this is him finished on the wall, with Maria/Celes. I really like the Celes sprite too. Ultros is pretty dang big, about as long as my forearm, and I had to use some clear on the curving back tentacle. He was also a mess to try to iron but my wife managed to pull it off. From a distance, he looks fantastic!

View of the wall leading to the video game room pt 1...

And from a slightly different angle. 

Alright, enough Final Fantasy 6. Let's quickly run through some other Square SNES games...like SECRET OF MANA!

By "quickly" I mean "one picture" 

It's a well known fact based on my review that I don't think Secret of Mana has aged very well. However, I still think it's a pretty game, and I have nostalgia for it. My wife actually made most of these sprites (I just did the princess/girl), but I really like the hero's hair and headband. I think the shading on that is just awesome.

Next up, what might be the best RPG ever made, CHRONO TRIGGER!

Some ironed ones, some in progress. 

These are also some tricky ones due to color schemes. Ayla ended up with some interesting hair shading (I wanted her to be blonde but didn't have enough yellows so some brown gets in there), Magus' cape and pants are actually a pretty lazy bit of pixel art (though I love his hair), and making Chrono's sword stand out when it's sheen is basically the same shade as his clothes was tricky. However, I think we ended up making it work out!

The finished circle of destruction. 

I love Ozzie from Chrono Trigger, if only because he's so absurd. I also love the cat sprite (as you can see we made one looking on) so we had to throw him in too. I figured we'd have everybody attacking poor Ozzie (who is in a jam) and that would be perfect. I really like Marle and Frog's sprites especially. 

Now I just need a Gato...who has metal joints...beat him up...you know where I'm going with this. 

That's currently it for Square RPGs! Hopefully I'll be back in the future with some Final Fantasy IV and maybe a few other games along the way (though I'm not sure which...) but for now, that's all I've got! So tune in next time for the penultimate reveal: Castlevania, Pokemon, and...some other stuff!

Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 2: Metroid & Zelda

Time for the next batch of perlers! This one, for the Metroid series, we have something nifty: a step by step walkthrough of me making both these sprites!

And by "step by step" I mean like two steps. Yeah...you'll get over it. Here's how I do 'em.

Metroid!

Can you tell who this is from just the black beads?

I don't use any grids or anything when doing the sprites; I just look at the original pixel art and go off it from there. In nearly every situation, I start by doing the black outline, which gives me a stable framework to design off of. In some cases, especially the SNES sprites, the entire outlines aren't just black. This can be a little trickier, but usually the next color in is just a dark gray or something. 

I also have to determine the sprite size before beginning. All trays a 29x29, so you'll have to do the math accordingly.

As you can see, Samus had some orange outline pixels. 

And a finished Samus. My math was off; I actually didn't need the upper right corner grid. In the original sprite there were something like four shades of gray for her arm-cannon. Since there are only two gray shades in perler (light and dark), you have to consolidate sometime, usually with the SNES sprites. You really can't tell, however, unless you put the perler side-by-side with the sprite.

And yes, you do have to put each bead down individually. It can take a while. I usually go color by color (black outline, then work inward), as this makes filling in easier. 

I put the SNES cart in for scale. 

In this one's case, I did the mouth part first, then did a dark green outline. This sprite had a lot of green shades, which meant I had to just use the greens I had (there's about four greens that blend good together). For those wondering, that's nine trays, which is 87x87.

Symmetrical ones like this are easier but kind of boring, as once you do one half you just mimic it for the other side. That's when having a good podcast or movie on helps. 

There's actually four shades of green here, even though it can be hard to see. 

Sometimes you don't know which color to use, and in that case I usually do a limited amount of the sprite in two different shades and see which "blends" better. I'd like to say my pixel art days helps me figure out which colors best substitute, but sometimes it's just random guesswork. If you do that you have to carefully remove every wrong colored pixel and replace it, which can be a pain. 

Finished Metroid!

This isn't actually finished yet; I filled in all the empty spaces with clear beads. If you don't, when you iron it the pieces will frequently break off, which sucks. I only use clears in rare instances, since they aren't completely clear. A project like this Metroid was done in two chunks, and was around four hours of work. 

Brain-sucking!

The finished metroid, sucking out all my life. Look how big it is! This one we couldn't sticky-tack to the wall; we had to actually nail 'em in. 

There's the Metroid ones! Now, next up we have another iconic Nintendo franchise...

You know, the one with that housecleaning mini-robot!

Zelda is a tricky one to perler, as a lot about those games are the epic environments. However, we still got a few done, and got a timeline thing going on!

Looks empty, huh? Zelda's a lot about the environments. 

We have a good representation from the first NES Zelda game, though I wanted to make a dungeon entrance to bump up the scenery. From Zelda 2 we have the iconic "P Bag," Link, and Error. I was going to make an "I Am Error" text box, but that would have taken something like 600 black beads so...maybe some other time.

Link to the Past, aka the best Zelda Game. 

Link to the Past's sprites look a lot cooler, though I swear Zelda looks mini. But not as mini as Minnish Cap Link! I think Minnish Cap Link is probably my favorite of all the Link sprites. If you haven't played that game you are REALLY missing out; it's absolutely beautiful and we are going to make more sprites from it. Seriously, really gorgeous game. 

That's all for today's installment! Tomorrow, we'll delve deep into what we have the most of: Square RPGs! Stay tuned!

Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 1: Mario Bros

So my wife and I, aside from playing a lot of video games, secretly enjoy doing crafty stuff. Or rather, she enjoys it, and I just sort of watch and dictate what she makes. For example, she was really good at crocheting stuff, and so she made a bunch of Mario themed crochet projects. They were pretty nifty!

And a Psyduck, because Psyduck is awesome. 

But it wasn't for a while later when a friend introduced us to Perler Beads. Yeah, beads. For reals. Basically it's arts and crafts for people who suck at arts and crafts. You get several trays set in the shape of grids, and then you just stick beads into pins in designs. When you are done you iron them and the beads melt, sticking together, and viola: you have a...thing. It's like magic. 

It's fun for the whole family! Especially the crafting impaired!

Well it turns out there's a whole sub devision of people these days who buy perlers just to make video game sprites out of them. Seems that it's really easy to translate 8 and 16 bit sprites into real life bead creations, translating single pixels into single beads. It's tricky, seeing as you have a limited pallet of bead colors (and have to buy them all to have a wide enough range to do more complex stuff) and some sprites get astronomically big, but seeing as I had a background in pixel art having made indie games before, I just couldn't resist!

Several hundred dollars and tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of beads later, and our apartment has turned into a video game themed shrine. 

We stick them to the wall with poster tack (also known as sticky tack) so our landlords won't get mad and we can rearrange them easily. But since we've made so much stuff over the past few months, I thought it would be fun to do a brief series on all the crap we've made, going by theme. So, without further ado, here is day one of Nathan (and his wife) vs Perler Beads.

Part One: It's a me! Mario!

First off we'll start with the most iconic gaming guy ever: Mario. To be honest, my wife did most of the regular Mario stuff, though I'll go into details as we get further in. We wanted to have something that showed Mario's evolution throughout the 2D platforming days: from Mario 1 all the way to Mario World and Yoshi's Island. So, after much creation, we made the "WALL OF MARIO!" (tm).

First up: Super Mario 1. 

We started with something everybody would recognize: original Super Mario Bros. My wife did everything except Mario himself and the flying goomba, and I'd say she did a good job! I especially like the fish coming up from behind.

Mario 2 is a real Mario game, ya jerks!

Then we move on to Mario 2, one of my most favorite games of all time. I did scary face mask guy and jumping bird faced guy, while the wife did all the rest. I especially like Birdo, with he/she in his/her iconic pose. And of course we picked Peach; does anybody pick any other character when playing Mario 2? 

Mario 3, aka that one with the BOOT. 

Mario 3 is also great, and we basically just picked all our favorite stuff from that game. The angry sun, the flying goomba, the fire piranha plant, and of course...THE BOOT. Viewers with a discrete eye will notice it's the Super Mario Allstars version of Mario in the boot (in 16 bit, while the rest is 8 bit) but hey...it looked better. I also didn't do any of these. 

Super Mario World: Still awesome. 

And lastly, Super Mario World, another big favorite. I absolutely love the Wiggler here. This one's a bit cluttered because we kept wanting to add more! We just love Mario World! Also, 16 bit sprites look way cooler than 8 bit ones, but we love them all the same. 

Savin' the best for last. 

And finally, Yoshi's Island, a game my wife hadn't even heard of until we bought the SNES cart. Arguably the best Mario platformer ever, we can at least all agree it's the best game starring Yoshi. I absolutely love the art style in this game, and the flower-headed shy guys are just too hilarious to not make.

A shot of the wall in (most) of it's glory. 

And finally...

The DYNAMIC shot! 

So there you have it: all the Mario 2D games from Mario 1 to World and Yoshi's Island, all in a row. Looks pretty awesome, huh?

So that's all the regular Mario 2D platformers we made...but wait! There's more! A lot more!

And now "Fever" is stuck in your head. 

I am awful at Dr. Mario. My wife, on the other hand, completely crushes me every time. It's...a thing, I guess. Anyway, this Dr. Mario was a joint effort, though she made the good doctor and I made a virus and a pill (the blue one, who is lookin confident). For a sense of scale: the doctor is about as long as my forearm, with pill. Those little pills ain't gonna beat those fat viruses, I can tell you that much. 

The evolution of Yoshi. 

We also had some misc Mario stuff we didn't know where to put it, so we just plastered it nearby. The shell was from Mario World but was too big for some reason, so it got separated. We also did the evolution of Yoshi, which is awesome. I still think baby Yoshi is adorable, with his cute smirk. 

"

Toad and Bowser cartin'. 

My wife's favorite Mario Kart game is Super Mario Kart, so she made a collection from that! I only made Yoshi...who you'll see shortly. 

Yoshi always beats Mario, because Yoshi is the best! 

The tongue later broke off and we had to super-glue it back on...

Koopa! Why didn't he make it to Mario Kart 64?

Peach has seriously evil eyes in this picture.

And the whole batch, racing around the corner of the Retro Room!

Donkey Kong won! Yeah, like that ever happens! Plus he was smaller then the rest for some reason...but oh well, it works. 

Lastly, we have some from my favorite Mario game maybe ever. Here's a little spoiler of a work-in-progress photo I took...

Power from his pants. And ignore the two on the left; they are spoilers for future episodes!

You got it, Mario RPG. I attempted to use a limited color pallet of beads to pixel-sprite sprites that were originally 3D rendors compressed down for the SNES. Sounds tricky? Well...it was. But guess what. I did it. I won the perler. 

Booster is still my favorite Mario villain ever. 

Aw yeaaaah! The whole gang is here, with Booster of course. They are placed between the Yoshi chain and Dr. Mario, guarding the closet under the stairs that leads to all the Rock Band crap. All I can say is Booster's about to get his world rocked. 

And that's it for this installment of Nathan vs Perler Beads! Check back in tomorrow (or whenever I get it up) for the next installment, where we'll be looking at Metroid and The Legend of Zelda! Here's a teaser!

More like a spoiler, but whatever.