Pixel art! (digital and physical alike)

Spoiler: Today's perler bead arts

Spoiler: Smoother reverse side for comparison.

 

Today I felt like using some of my recently-purchased 6,000 black perler beads. Decided to do the story symbols again, with an added challenge: making the black part of the symbols 10px by 15px (with one exception), and surrounding them with a single, relevant color.

Spoiler: Large image

In clockwise order starting from the upper left:
Growth/Sprout,
Wave/Tide,
Breath,
Storm,
Ideals/Unicorn,
Bone,
Hive.

I really rather like how these look like a coherent series, unlike the previous mishmash of colors. I intend to do all of them, once I figure out the last couple of symbols, each with a different color of surrounding beads.

Main complaint: I had the iron on a little too hot today. They melted very quickly; too quickly. Just look at the edges of a few of these. I may trim them with an x-acto knife later.

 

Spoiler: Compare!!!

Mini perler beads, get! I recreated the rainbow cat for a quick and easy test of the size comparison, melting speed, and color options. Got 26,000 beads all told, and thank fucking goodness, they are presorted by color. I cannot begin to tell you how much faster that will make this for me.

edit to make the image less absurdly large

Spoiler: Post-heating comparison!

I am pretty happy with how the tiny one came out. All the beads melted consistently, unlike those three in the original one, so it doesn't have dimples!

Unfortunately, the small beads have a smaller range of colors. The dark green and dark blue are too dark to look quite right with the other colors, especially over the camera. I'll need to make a few rainbow comparisons and think about the color balance.

 

Okay. Round 2 of the miniature perler beads, and... at least 4th post in a row? Oh man. At least I'm the OP so I don't feel quite so silly for posting this often.

So I did up 3 Undertale characters, melted them, and stuck them next to a quarter for a size comparison. I'm happy with how much faster doing these is, between how I already had the designs I wanted in front of me, and the way the colors were already sorted. I did figure out that I'm going to need to play with the iron settings a little, because the temp I've been using is too hot for the mini beads. They skewed and tilted the figures a little.

Spoiler: Undertale spoilers

 

Don't feel bad! I love seeing what you're making. :D

 

Rounds 3 and 4 of the mini perler beads, in which I expand my nerddom to other things: Kamen Rider and Homestuck.

Spoiler: Top two are round 3 (yesterday), bottom is round 4 (today)

Upper left: one of the logos for Kamen Rider Fourze. Took me about an hour to do.
Upper right: the card suits, or popularly known as the symbols for troll quadrants. I didn't time that one. I'm impressed if you come to this forum and don't know about quadrants, because there is a very high Hamsteak density here and we talk about quadrants in quite a few threads.
Lower left: one of the card designs in Kamen Rider Blade, the one for Chalice. This took me about an hour and a half to do. I am very pleased with its general effect, and I intend to make the other card designs snazzier.

 

Spoiler: Large blurry image of four, intended as a set

I now have miniature drafts for all four of the Kamen Rider Blade transform cards! Kamen Rider really likes bugs as the themes for their suits, and this show went with it. Two beetles, a spider, and a praying mantis.

You could say they're... perler beadles?

;)

Spoiler: Based on these:

The main issue I've got so far is that my versions are less wide than the bugs themselves, and I'll probably want to fix that before the end. I'm very happy with how I worked out doing the backgrounds, and soon I'll redo the Mantis card so it's got the flickery brown background so it fits the rest of the series better.

I'm planning to work with one of my roommates to make these into magnets, and sell to interested people online. If I can do that, I can do other pixel art. Updates later if I make this happen. :)

 

I made a lil starry background for a blog of mine

Spoiler: Second attempt at pixel art lol

 

The Undertales are multiplying! Beware spoilers.

Spoiler: Arranged on a sketchbook to be easily seen

Spoiler: Arranged over my doorway

I'm sad that I spaced out and made Undyne backwards, so I'm putting her smooth-side forward up on the doorway. It's far enough that I can barely see the textured side anyway.

 

The last couple of days were not great brainwise (I did a lot of hiding in my room instead of going anywhere that I'd need to look at peoples' faces or have actual conversations with words and emotions involved). So, after a while of playing Minecraft, I realized I wanted tangible pixel arts, so I went downstairs with headphones to do more perler bead stuff.

Spoiler: Undertale continues, or I'm running out of doorway

Spoiler: Kamen Rider Blade, a better image

The full four again, plus an alternate color scheme for Leangle.

 

I made a tiny lapis while watching @Void stream

Spoiler: screencap

 

can't see your images, for some reason

 

@Imoyram they worked earlier - did you change something?

 

Huh. I didn't change anything.

I'll try fixing it in a bit.

 

Did that fix them?

 

Ah, yes, can see now!

 

Spoiler: Swirl's doorway: The Undertale-ening.

I'm pretty happy with the sheer number of Undertale characters I've got going. Not quite all of my favorites, but I'm getting there. Problem is, I'm running low on blacks (again) and don't really have the money to go grabbing more right now.

So (in addition to obligatory nod to the need to step up the job hunt), I should start doing more art that doesn't involve characters with black boundaries, and uses more of the colors I've been under-utilizing. Time to brainstorm.

 

well, i made this thing and now it cannot be un-made, so

 

So! A while back, I realized that the mini perler beads are just about the right size to fit inside the normal beads. (Some need a little more encouragement than others, but very nearly all will fit).

I figured quickly that I could use that to make neat gradient patterns, putting neighboring colors of smaller beads inside larger.



Here's normal perler beads:

Spoiler

And here's with the mini beads partway through the process. The left one got really swirly, and I was trying to figure out how to reduce the blurring on the right one.

Spoiler

The left one was the first building silhouette I did, where I experimented with lots of different colors (including dark blues for unlit windows reflecting the sky). It looked too busy, so I tried using fewer colors in the second one.

I've discovered since that, if I put mini beads in some but not all, it's extremely difficult to iron the image flat. Either things get smeared from pressing too forcefully, or there's a bunch of gaps left.

So today, after two misadventures where I accidentally bounced a bunch of the mini beads out of place...

Spoiler: like this

I did a skyscape silhouette of a made-up church.

Spoiler: partly melted, so you can see the separate beads fairly well

Spoiler: nearly complete