Nathan vs Perler Beads Part 7: Go Big or Go Home (Final Fantasy VI)

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theuselessgod

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Edited By theuselessgod
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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...

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

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

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For those wondering, the ETA for Kefka was somewhere between 3-5 hours. I kind of stopped paying attention, but it was a decent chunk of time (as you'd imagine). He's also about a foot tall and a foot wide.

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:

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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:

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And this is her nailed to the wall:

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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.

Honestly, I don't care if you buy anything, but if you like our Facebook page you can keep up to date on the crazy stuff we make. Also, I'd feel cooler. XD

We also have Pokemon Coasters that I want to keep for myself, so here's a spoiler for next time:

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BIDOOF

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crusader8463

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Really awesome stuff man. I have wanted to get into doing that forever but I have avoided it out of fear of getting obsessed with it. How expensive are the materials for doing stuff like that? If I got into it my ultimate goal would be to make a giant movie poster style photo of something but I'm terrified of the time, space, and cost of materials involved should I get really hooked.

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Video_Game_King

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#2  Edited By Video_Game_King

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

Trust me, there are crazier parts of this picture. It's like the boundaries of reality are breaking apart.

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Slag

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#3  Edited By Slag

now that is cool.

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theuselessgod

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@crusader8463:

I'd say put aside about $100 for starting materials, though you could probably make do around $50-75. If you buy directly from Perler and use the coupon "PB4" (Unlimited use, 25% off + free shipping at $45) you can get bags of 1k for about $1.50 each. Terra is about 15k beads so, math-wise we're looking at only about $22 in supplies (plus the trays; you can get four for $10, but we use coupons at local stores to get 4 for $5) plus the time spent.
The real timesink is figuring out what colors to buy and how much. You always need massive amounts of black, white, and red (especially if you make NES stuff). We own every perler color (and even imported some Hama beads from the UK) but we are also insane, so not necessary. :)

There's actually a beadsprites reddit that has a list of good things to consider when starting up, and what colors to get. I'll admit it can get to be a little expensive, but compared to gaming (Where it's $60 a game), it's downright cheap!

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theuselessgod

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#5  Edited By theuselessgod

Here's a bonus for those who read the comments. I made this one last night and don't know how I'd fit it into a blog post. But it's relevant to MODERN GAMES for once!

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Oscar__Explosion

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Oh man this just makes me want to get into perler bead art even more! Great job

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veektarius

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I think you're crazy, but it's the kind of crazy I can appreciate from afar. Sort of like a living statue.