My son and I stopped by Hobby Lobby before the movie this afternoon and found the Hama brand beads for 15,000 for $10, but they had no square boards whatsoever.

I'll stop by Michael's next week.

BTW, they had two types of Hama beads, opaque and transparent. Which are better?

Has anyone tried the Pixel Blocks yet as well? I found those locally, but haven't looked for beads yet.

When I bought the bucket of Perler beads, it came with both opaque and translucent beads. I usually use the opaque beads, but the translucent ones are helpful when trying to get differents shades of one color.

http://s87617422.onlinehome.us/pictu...ritebeads3.jpg

This thread is quickly becoming beefyjerky's show and tell. I made the caped Mario, and my grandma made the Mog. The clear beads were useful in giving support to Mog's atenna or whatever that is.

Beefjerky, how did you decide which color bead to use for each pixel's RGB color values in the sprites? Was it just your best guess or something more precise?

Yeah, best guess. Luckily the tub I bought had a lot of colors. I've completed entire sprites only to find that I can't find the right color on the last little part, so I have to start over with a new sprite. Mario was hard to do because colors on the sprite look fine when they're small, but in the scale that I made him, his shirt and hat would've been purple, and his skin would've looked like it had an infection. So even though the colors I originally had matched up almost exactly to the sprite, I had to replace colors to make it look like Mario. Still not happy with the way it turned out. 16 bit sprites had way too much detail to try to reproduce them with beads.

These things are a lot bigger than I thought they'd be. My Walmart only had the lame pegboard shapes included with some beads, so I found one that had a couple of 14 by 14 squares. I can't even fit the entire hat of the black mage on one of them. I guess I'll have to wait until I'm in another town with a crafts store to get another pegboard and more beads.

beefjerky, do you think you put a dollar bill or something similar in the next picture you take? It would help give some frame of reference to help comprehend the size of these bead sprites.

I can't believe that a bunch of grown men are going to craft store looking for beads.

... and that I'm one of them.

I made Ness on a bike and a 1 Up mushroom.

Grown or not, I'm a nerd at heart. These things are addicting to make...and a pain in the ass.

Making these are no different than doing a puzzle.

Nice! Have you found any other good sites of enlarged sprites, or just the one you posted earlier?

tsgk.captainn.net/

1.) Go there, download whatever sprites you need.
2.) Open the sprites up in photoshop (or Paint Shop Pro).
3.) Copy and paste the sprite you want onto a new canvas.
4.) Zoom in until you can see each individual pixel.
5.) Lay a grid over the sprite.

Instant enlarged sprite with each pixel boxed. You can also open up your pixels with MS Paint, but you can't use a grid to help you out.

MS Paint has grid functions.. enlarge in MS Paint and hit CTRL+G.

I had no luck Sunday. I hit Michael's, Jo-Ann's, and Immigrant-Mart and while each store offered a variety of the Perler Beads and kits, nobody had any decent sized boards. Hobby Lobby is closed on Sunday, so I'll try there on my way home from work tonight.

http://s87617422.onlinehome.us/pictu...ritebeads5.jpg

My sprites, now with more Yoshi and Goomba.

Awesome!

I just finished Samus in her Gravity Suit. What a bitch to iron together. It fell apart as I was flipping it over to iron the other side.



Anyone else doing this? Let's see your creations!

I did a SMB1 goomba earlier tonight. I had to carefully place some beads on the border of my pegboard, since the sprite was barely too big for the board. It turned out as well as I could expect, though. Just a slight problem with the foot thing

If any of your are looking for bigger boards, Hobby Lobby carries a Butterfly Girls kit from Hama. It comes with three 29x29 boards, 4000 beads (includes flesh colored beads), and an ironing sheet, all for $8.99. It's a better deal than buying three packs of pegboards.

Yeah, I'll probably stop by there this weekend. So what are the dimensions of the gravity suit sprite?

Okay finished my first one... it fell completely apart when I pulled the ironing paper off the first time, so I got to start over.

The pic below also shows my 29x29 board. Perler sells boxes that hang on the racks that come with 2000 beads and a 29x29 board for $5.99 at JoAnn. I picked up the "Jungle Safari" set... the only way I could get a decent sized board.

Cool thing about this board is that it links together with other boards (see the brackets on my board in the below pic), so you could buy several and have a massive board... I'm considering it if I come up with a large collage type idea. It'd be sweet to re-create an entire title screen from a game!!

Here's my goomba and squished goomba:

That's spam, not a thread crap. Besides, those kind of beads belong in the adult forum.

Yup.. that's what I got. The only other kit they had with a nice peg board was $5 for 1 square and a bunch of useless shapes. The Butterfly Girl kit is nice if only for the 3 big boards.

So you iron both sides? Hmm.. I'll try that on one of my next ones.

I've only got Hama beads so far, the ones that came with the kit, you still stand by the Perler Beads being better?

I iron both sides.. the instructions w/ my beads told me too... I iron side 1 till it's nice and flat and most of the holes are totally filled in.. ugly to look at... then i do side 2 until the beads just start to melt together against each other, but the center hole remains a circle.

edit: I wonder if Hama and Perler beads can be mixed on the same boards.... or would the size difference make it hard for the two types to bond together when you iron?

For those of you without a bead dealer nearby, here's a nifty ebay store I found. 4 29x29 boards for $8, plus lots of other perler stuff.

Linky.

Now everyone can jump on the bandwagon.