Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 7 : Go Big or Go Home

Time for another round of this! It's a two-part bonus episode today, featuring the creative magic of Final Fantasy VI. Seriously, it's my favorite game, so no duh I'm going to make tons of FFVI perlers. Whenever I sit down, I just want to make some huge Final Fantasy VI enemy, even if they're tricky and take like four hours. Because that game is gorgeous. 

Anyway, I've got a one-two punch today, with steps!

First up, the clown himself, Kefka. We made him before in walkaround sprite form, but I decided that wasn't cool enough.

Black outline first...

...and the finished product. I like how he turned out quite a bit!

We put him over the other Final Fantasy VI characters so he could act all superior.

Continuing the FFVI train, here's the biggest sprite I've done yet. It's based off the fantastic AbyssWolf's sprite art, and the original looked like this:

The trickiest part about perlering is getting the right colors, and adapting to fit the colors you have. However, in any case, I always start with a black outline, so we did that first:

That took about 45 minutes just for that. Then I decided to just work on colors I knew for certain were correct, so I started with the greens of her hair and sash thing.

After that I realized I had to make a hard decision and actually commit to some colors, so I committed to the easy ones: the blues in her legs.

I also had an idea of what I wanted the reds to be, and the purple in her bow wasn't that bad.

The trick was finding colors that blended well with the reds, because there aren't that many that match the original sprite. I finally decided on the colors I wanted which made her outfit a bit more vibrant than the original sprite.

I also had to darken her skin tone a bit because of my limited selection of fleshy-colors, but I think it looks good. 

I was doing this all in the middle of the night, and this is where I went to bed. I wasn't certain exactly what colors to use for her shoulder cape and I also wasn't sold on the skin tone (yet). I also needed to find a way to make the gold at the top of  her gloves and bustline "pop", as well as the edges of the cape. After waking up the next day, however, I knew exactly what colors to use, which is rare; usually I screw up at least once on big colored projects like this. 

All that was left now was her cape, which I was also worried about because of the limited colors, but I manned up and just made it. Here is the finished product, next to a Final Fantasy III SNES cart and the original Terra overworld sprite for size and color comparisions. 

She's big! Three feet! Look at how big she is!

Also, my beard looks crazy in that picture. Whatever.

Ironing things this big is a pain, and she was no exception. Part of her cape and hair broke off, and bits of her separated into large chunks as we ironed. It took almost an hour to iron her and fix the damage we'd done, but in the end everything turned out lovely. 

This is her next to the giant Metroid, for a size check:

And this is her nailed to the wall:

That picture makes her look small. She isn't. :)

We'll have more in the future, so be sure to check all that out! Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed watching the steps!

Next up? Atma Weapon. Yeah. That'll be awesome. 

Oh, and unrelated: we have a Facebook Page as well as an Esty Shop (that we just started) where we'll TAKE REQUESTS (on either the Facebook page or email us through the shop). If you're interested, we try to price them competitively and would be willing to do almost any sprite. We also have Pokemon Coasters that I want to keep for myself, so here's a spoiler for next time:

BIDOOF

Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 6: Persona 3

Long time, no Perler. After a long hiatus, I returned to the world of perlers (I've actually been making stuff, but this is the most significant update in recent years) to make the characters from one of my favorite JRPGs: Persona 3.

But you might wonder: how does one perler a PS2 sprite based game? Easy, find somebody who made fan sprites. Especially if that person is Paul Robertson, the guy who made the sprites for the Scott Pilgrim video game adaptation.

The whole crew, chibi-ized and pixelated

Now, it's worth pointing out that these things are pretty big, about a foot tall each were I to make them, and took several hundreds beads each. They also use a lot more colors than there are perlers, but luckily Perler introduced a bunch of new colors recently (specifically grays) that helped with the shading. Still, it took a lot of tweaking in order to get everything to work. 

Startin' out with the protag. 

Our sullen, emo protag.  Or, in my guy's case, a dude who talked back to everybody. 

Fuuka and Protag

Of course we do Fuuka next. She's the best lady of them all, duh.

The rest of the main crew. Yukari, Akihiko, and Mitsuru. I liked how the hair turned out in particular. 

So there isn't much more progress ones from here, because I kind of just did 'em all. But here's the grand finale.

The whole shebang, except Shinji, who I made after. Game for size reference. 

Pretty rad, right? Aegis' hair was hell, as was Koro's fur color. In the end, however, I like how they turned out.

Me, posing. Yes, I cut my hair. It's a tragic thing. 

And lastly, the whole batch on the walls.

All hangin' out on the walls. 

These guys, again, are way bigger than you probably think. At least four feet from bottom to top, so they cover the wall pretty well. Now nobody will ever go to the bathroom (the room to the right) because evil-Igor is staring ya down.

That's it from this time, but who knows what else I'll do next? I did Sonic and didn't take pictures. Keep an eye out!

Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 5: Final Fantasy IV, Earthbound, & Bonus

So in my Squaresoft post I mentioned I didn't do Final Fantasy IV. Well, I was feeling pretty bad about that, so I decided to remedy it by making A WHOLE BUNCH OF 'EM.

...but I didn't do any step by steps of the actual in-game heroes. Sorry. So instead, let's see my work on the enemy I was going to have them fight...

Whatever could it be?

Yeah, I really should actually document this stuff...

It's VampGirl! This is seriously one of my most favorite enemy sprites from FFIV. 

For a size estimate (if the cart doesn't cut it), it's about as big as Sigma, who was about as big as my forearm. 

So now it's time to kick butt and take names...

I figured the final party would be appropriate. 

Cecil was the most annoying because he's mostly a muted yellow/white color, of which there is only one bead color (cream). So we compensated by using a mix of yellows and grays. I still think it worked out! Kain was also annoying, but he also turned out a lot better than I'd expected. 

YOU KNOW WHOSE FAT?!

I love the Fat Chocobo. 

The whole group before we stuck 'em to the wall. 

...and after we stuck 'em to the wall. 

All the rest of them are hangin' out next to the Fat Chocobo. I gotta say, I LOVE Cid. I wanna make another one and put 'em up at work. Probably because I kind of look like him (glances at profile picture...)

The whole brigade. We put them over the bedroom door because...I have no idea. 

Next, a few bonus ones. Earthbound!

I kind of want to make every NPC from the game. I just love the style from the Mother games. 

And we put them over the piano because...it's...piano related. Not really.

But it gives me something awesome to look at whist I pound out a bad rendition of Loss of Me. 

A few other misc ones coming off the misc truck...

Wario's Woods is my wife's favorite puzzle game. Besides maybe Plants vs Zombies. 

I am so bad at Wario's Woods it isn't even funny, so my wife made all of these. Because she's absurdly good at Wario's Woods.

We put 'em next to Dr. Mario and the Mario RPG cupboard under the stairs. 

I think it still needs something, but we'll see.

Lastly, we did a bunch of misc NES ones that we weren't sure where to put 'em or what to do, but I wanted to make. So in no particular order, let's play "guess what NES game these are from!"

I put this on in the bathroom sitting on the lightswitch. 

And...

This one should be pretty easy to guess. 

And.....

I figured next to the shower was appropriate. 

And lastly, my wife made a ton of Minnish Cap cats because...she likes cats.

She also made that Companion Cube you see through our coffee table. 

And that's it from this batch! And I just realized I haven't made any Kirby sprites yet. SO NOW GUESS WHAT IM DOING TONIGHT?!

Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 4: The Megamans

It's been a while, viewers, but it's gonna be worth it. Here has been my biggest project to date. Rather then talk a lot, I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves. MEGA MAN!

It started out simple enough, just robots from my favorite Mega Man game: #2. 

Then I remembered that Mega Man 1 and 3 are pretty awesome to, so we tossed 'em up as well. 

I couldn't live without Skull Man, so I did Mega Man 4. And gave Rock/Mega Man and ally. 

Then I was like, "Aw, screw it, let's just do the NES ones." But there was room left...

...so I changed "all NES" to "all 8-bit Mega Man robot masters."

All the robot masters from Mega Man 1,2,3,4,5,6,9,and 10, with Dr. Wily as a bonus. 

And, yes, the placement of Plug Man is intentional.

After I finished with every robot master ever I felt kind of like I was missing doing Mega Man related stuff. Luckily, Capcom discovered the SNES and re-vitalized the series...

X, geared up and ready to blast. 

But he needed a buddy...

Always do the outline and easy colors first. 

And the finished product.  MMX cart for scale. 

But there was no point in having them look all awesome without an enemy to kill, so I began work on my biggest project yet. Well, aside from the Metroid. 

This dude is as long as my forearm. 

Filling in colors...

That's a lotta red. 

Three and a half hours later...

I put MMX away, so Sigma's next to Dynowarz (another "great classic") for scale. 

And, finally, them up on the wall.

The love seat just got a lot...lovelier? PUNS. 

That's it from the Mega Man batch. Three months of work and I don't want to think of how many beads (easily in the tens of thousands, if not hundred thousand). What else do I got for ya? Well...tune in next time for some misc. stuff we've been making, followed shortly after by my next big project...POKEMON. See you then!