I'd seen some web sites on pixel art before after I saw Retrocalypse on Youtube showing some of his pixel art (don't remember the medium though). A few years back I bought those .S "puzzles" (a very search engine unfriendly product name, btw) of Pac Man and Dig Dug in Harajuku's Kiddie Land. Some people have done this with Lego bricks, but I was looking for an easier medium to make pixel artworks with to celebrate my love for the Super Famicom and sprite-based games in general. Well, when I was at JoAnn's with my wife, I saw these boxes and bags of Perler beads. I figured that this would be the perfect medium for making these. It turns out that there's an entire fanbase on the Net for this sort of thing, and I discovered the Pixelgasm Forum, a nexus for others pursuing this hobby. Doing a search on the Net, I've found plenty of people displaying their artworks. Check out this girl's photos of her works. Her works are awesome.
What you do is find a screenshot of a video game or a pixel dump of characters and such, load the image in MS Paint, and zoom in 800%. All you need to do then is make sure you have the proper colors, and match them bead for pixel. My first work was for my all-time favorite Super Famicom RPG, Chrono Trigger.
It's pretty easy, but the trick is the color matching and I happen to be color blind. I started putting together Marle from Chrono Trigger while my wife watched and my baby daughter made a mess of the beads on the floor. Most of the conversation was like:
"Is this orange?"
"No, it's light green."
"Thanks. Is this brown?"
"No, it's dark green."
"Nuts."
It sucks being color blind. I can see colors, but my eyes get them confused in relation to other colors and the context they are in. Sometimes I need a reference before I can identify a color. This sucks when I'm playing color-dependent puzzle games such as Super Puzzle Figther, Puzzle Bobble, and Puyo Puyo (The latter two are particularly hard to play on my Neo Geo Pocket Color).
I found this website of sprite archives. And here's another NES/SNES sprites archive page. I downloaded a bunch of these tiny sprites, loaded them with MS Paint and zoomed in 800%. Bang, translate pixels to beads. Put some wax paper that the beads come with on top and iron them together. The iron will melt and fuse the beads together, and viola. Neat stuff, huh? I put a border around Marle and Crono to fit them together, and the finished Chrono Trigger product looks like this:
Here's a list of various sprites websites I have used:
Game Sprites Archive
Shyguy Kingdom
Sprite Database
NES SNES Sprites
Left: Shin from Area 88, my favorite Super Famicom shmup (aka U.N. Squadron). Right: Etna from Disgaea.
Bomberman, FTW!
Arle and Carbunkle from Super Puyo Puyo 2. In the upper corner is a Space Invader.
This was my most ambitious project yet to date. This is Marth and Sheeda from Fire Emblem on the Super Famicom. This game was a remake of the original 8-bit Famicom Fire Emblem, which was also later re-made as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon on the DS. Below is the final result.
Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh. I think this was the first game I bought for my family's first computer, a 286 AT clone in 1989. I played the heck out of this game through junior high and high school!
Dig Dug! Oh yeah!
Guzuta, Pinky, Akabei, and Aosuke!
Twin ships from Galaga.
Bomberman from Super Bomberman 5 on the SNES/SFC.
"HEAVYYYYYY MACHINE GUN!"
Athena from SNK Gals Fighters on the Neo Geo Pocket Color.
Yuri, also from the NGPC game...
...and can't forget Mai too!
A part of a screenshot from Langrisser on the PC Engine. You can find the part of the screen I re-created from the screenshot below:
Made this for my mom-in-law, sprite taken from the Spongebob GBA game. Plus, here is the ubiquitous dark mage from Final Fantasy 1. Everyone seems to make this one.
The fateful, sorrowful duel between Yuko and Reiko from Valis on the Genesis/Megadrive.
Popful Mail for the Super Famicom.
Cotton from Cotton 100% on the Super Famicom.
Player 1 (red) and player 2 (blue), from the Raiden arcade game. I actually missed two pixels on the red one and had to fuse them onto the completed project and the result is barely noticeable.
Fighting crime, trying to save the world... Sprites taken from the GBA Powerpuff Girls game.
Ripple from Magical Chase on the PC Engine. Actually, this would be the Turbografx 16, since I used the US version of the sprite. I just thought it looked nicer than the Japanese sprite. The curved broom handle in the Japanese version looks kinda weird. You can see comparison pictures here.
Capcom fighters taken from SNK vs Capcom: Match of the Millenium on the Neo Geo Pocket Color.
Here's the second set. Iori, Terry, and Kyo from the SNK fighting team from the same game.
Plenair from Disgaea DS and Chibi Totoro. I found the Chibi Totoro design by doing a Google image search. I'd provide a link, but I can't seem to find it again. I modified the Chibi Totoro slightly, and the white one I designed myself. My wife Mayu says you can't have one without the little white one. Oh yeah, and you can also see my work in progress of Terry Bogard from King of Fighters in the top right.
Izuna from Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja on the DS.
Hikaru, Max, and Millia from Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie on the Super Famicom. These are big and took a lot of time to make!
I went on a PC Engine Taito characters kick. Here is Sayo-chan from Kiki Kaikai (The SNES spinoff was called Pocky & Rocky), the kid from Rainbow Islands, the kid from Parasol Stars, and Tiki from The New Zealand Story.
My hero, Rilakkuma! Sprite taken from the Gameboy Advance game.
On my trip to Tokyo in April 2011, I presented a Metal Slug beadsprite to Super Potato, the legendary retro game shop in Akihabara. A friend in Tokyo took this picture!
Yggdra from Yggdra Union on the GBA (also on the PSP). Chicks with swords are awesome. I feel that it should not be necessary to explain that to anyone.
I took a screenshot of Ms. Pac Man in MAME and used the new large-size 49x69 Perler pegboard.
Check out the next thingy I write about.
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mail: shoegazer -atsign- cox -dot- net