SteveTheFish Posted May 10 Share Posted May 10 One of my hobbies is making iron beads from pixels taken from 16-bit video games. Since there was an abundance of anime-related video games. When we were still living in America, I found packages of Perler Iron Beads at a craft store and I thought, "I could totally make pixel art from retro video games with these!" Before I knew it, I'd stumbled upon a hobby popular online. You just take game screenshots, enlarge them, and replicate them pixel by pixel from the screen to the beads. It's meticulous, but not tedious. It's fun. Since this is a Macross forum, I'll start with these from the game Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie on the Super Famicom. Lum from the Urusei Yatsura game on the Mega CD. She is particularly tall. Nadia from the PC Engine game. There are also Nano Beads, which are 1/4th the size of regular iron beads. These can sometimes be frustrating because a slight bump can send them all flying because they are so small. Here is Devil Hunter Yohko from the PC Engine game. This one was very big as the sprite took up the entire screen in the game. It would not have been feasible to make this with regular iron beads. Rei from Evangelion, done in Nano Beads. I just found pixel art of her on Pinterest and used it to recreate her. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beltane70 Posted May 10 Share Posted May 10 Those look absolutely fantastic! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveTheFish Posted May 10 Author Share Posted May 10 18 minutes ago, Beltane70 said: Those look absolutely fantastic! Thanks! Nadia is my most recent work. There are different bead makers: Perler in the US, Hama in the UK, Nabbi in... Denmark or somewhere, and lately I've learned of Artkal in China. Hama kind of complements Perler because they offer different shades of color that Perler does not, but I don't like how glossy their beads are after melting them. Artkal has the best range of colors, and I've only recently learned about them. Artkal has the yellow/brown colors I needed to make Nadia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MKT Posted May 10 Share Posted May 10 (edited) These are really cool @SteveTheFish! Having played extensively on 16-bit consoles then, as a kid I didn’t really much appreciate the art of the sprites themselves in the games, and always wishing they could be sharper because of well, ‘better graphics’ was always an aspiration. Seeing these now really rekindle memories of that era, with newfound appreciation of pixel art. And you have captured the likeness perfectly with the beads. Thanks for sharing! Edited May 10 by MKT Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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