8 bit game characters art projects made from plastic beads

"Bead Sprites
by Patrick De Vogel
07022004

First let me tell you a little story. The year was 1992 and I noticed the girl across the street was making something, with some kind of strange meltable bead-y stuff. Curious fellow that I was, I went across the way and inquired. So some weeks later I got me some of it too and made some worthless things and never touched it again.

Fast forward to 1995 where I was fooling around with my Super Gameboy. Suddenly something clicked and I had the brilliant idea to remake a Megaman sprite with those beads. So I made some relatively nice Megaman characters and once again forgot about the whole thing.

Then, sometime in 2002 my younger brother found my old Megaman thingies somewhere on the attic and my old idea was reborn. He wanted to make his own so I helped him rip some sprites and increased their color where possible. It turns out his interest in making these things wasn't as short lived as it was with me and he made a ton of them, all of which looked better than anything I ever made (of course, he had pixel-perfect sprites at his disposal thanks to emulators, whereas I had to do with a blurry TV).

The characters used in the pics below are really his creations, but I'm sure he doesn't mind that I'm giving them some exposure. He hasn't touched them in at least a year anyway. He's just like me. For extra techyness, all images have been taken with an Eyetoy. Or maybe it's just the only camera I have access to.

Regardless! If you always wanted a way to express your creative abilities, but couldn't draw anything more complex than stick-men, or perhaps your drawing abilities weren't the problem, but you wanted to create something tangible, but clay, metals and wood just weren't your thing - fear not creative children of the digital age, because now you can bring your favorite pixels to life!

All you need is some pixel-art of choice, patience and fusible beads.
Let's get started..." (hit the link for full detailed instructions)

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Man, this is pretty damn nifty, I've seen Mario post-it note art, Mario quilts, now this.

Don't burn your stupid self with that iron if you try that, boy it hurts.

Not that I would know. Yeah.

(pixel'd from Eyebeam)