The Making of: Juggernaut (Dota)

The Manila Major is here and to celebrate that I thought to make some Dota related beadsprites. I decided to keep it simple this time and go with a ready sprite. Hero minimap icons' size was good for what I had in mind and I made Juggernaut. Here is how it turned out:

 Easiest colour i.e. black first.

Next Photo Pearls (PP) Red (19) and Hama Dark grey (71).

PP orange (13) and Hama Pink (06). I hadn't noticed before that there was pink in Juggernaut's mask. Well of course the minimap  icon is so small that you can't really see it.First I tried PP Pink (25) but it was way too bright.

Hama Grey (17) and Light grey (70).

Another surprise was that the mask is not actually white but kind of really really light shade of green. I used PP Light grey (10) because it was the closest almost white I have. There also is some PP Light beiges (12) near the... ears or what ever those are.

Then the browns. These browns (PP 02, 03 and Hama 12) were too dark so I changed them for lighter.

The browns are PP Brown 27, Light brown20 and Cappuccino 06. I also replaced some beads with Hama Grey and Light grey (around the ear area).

Top part finished with Hama Burgundy (30), Reddish brown (20), Light brown (21) and PP Rust (05)

Finished Juggernaut on the wall waiting for company. It turned out pretty great.

Edit: Forgot the original image, but no worries here it is:

Sprite from http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Category:Hero_minimap_icons

The Making of: Mario and Yoshi (Super Mario World)

We got a Wii some weeks ago and surprise, surprise there was Super Mario World on it. I've been playing it some time now (Valley of Bowser almost conquered) and thought that it would be awesome to make my favourite character: Yoshi. Because Yoshi shines only when he's with Mario, I decided to make them together. Sprites are from spriters-resource.com, I just had to combine them myself.

As I have already made Mario with cape once, let us start with him. Whites and blacks first. I put Yoshi's there too already.

Next Hama burgundy (no. 30).

Hama yellow (03) and pink (06).

Hama blue (08), Photo Pearls yellow (21) to the cap, PP light grey (10) to the face and added also some whites I missed earlier.

PP no. 27 for the brown parts, PP yellow (21) to the shoe which I missed earlier, PP no. 23 and 28 for the blues (for some reason there was a lot of greens with the blues in the no. 23 bag).

Hama claret for Mario's arm and cap. Then I made a small adjustment to my earlier colour selection. Previously I had used Pyssla pink for the pink in the cap and in the arm. Pyssla beads however are thinner and taller than Hama or Photo Pearls so this time I traded it for Nabbi no. 18 which I got just recently. The Nabbi number 18 is about the same colour as Pyssla pink. First use for Nabbi beads. Let's see how it turns out.

Next Yoshi. Yoshi has three shades of green and I decided to try PP dark green (09) for the darkest, Hama green (10) for the middle and PP light green (22) for the lightest. Another viable option would have been PP green (16) instead of Hama green, but as it is really hard to separate PP geen and light green when they are next to each other, I decided to try Hama green as the middle one.

Almost there. Only feet (or shoes?) and hand left. The feet are easy. Just add red. Hama no. 05 for them. Unfortunately I don't have exact colour for the yellowish orange that is Yoshis hand. After some debate I used Hama teddybear brown (60) for it.

Here is the final product.

The Making of: Goofy (Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories)

Finally got new pegboards! The old ones are in bad condition due all the ironing. Nowadays I only use the masking tape method when ironing =)

I bought Nabbi's/Photo Pearls' pegboards this time. They were only 1€/pegboard when you ordered at least twelve. Not bad price compared to Hama's boards which usually are at least 2€/board. There is some difference in the boards. Hama's pegs are longer for example and Nabbi's have 30 pegs instead of 29. Hama's boards clearly fit tighter together. I'm not sure Nabbi's would hold together if you tried to lift them. On table they hold together well and that's the main point anyway. The new pegboards are also see through. Previously I have only used white pegboards. Let's see how the new ones work out:

As the first project I chose Goofy from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Here's the first phase. As usual I started with the easiest colours. Blacks and grays this time. The lightest gray was little bit blueish in the original sprite, but since I don't have that kind of colour I used Hama's light grey. Colours:

Photo Pearls: Black

Hama: Gray (17), Light gray (70) and Dark gray (71).

Still easy colours. (Also added black to the nose. Missed that the first time around.) And as you can see my table is kind of short so I will add the last pegboard and Goofy's leg in the end. =)

Photo Pearls: Red (19), Dark green (9), Light green (22) and White.
Hama: Pastel green (47).

Getting to the harder colours. This one was a debate between Hama's Light brown (21), Photo Pearls Light brown (20) and Brown (27). I rejected Photo Pearls' Light brown because was too light and Photo Pearls' Brown because I feared that it would be too close to which ever dark brown I would use.

The dark brown, which looks almost black in this photo even though I edited it lighter, is Photo Pearls no. 3 Chestnut.

The hardest choices were the brownish orange, the light yellow and the king of brownish light yellow. Below are bunch of combos I tried out for them. In the cap there is Photo Pearls' Orange (13) and Yellow (21). In Goofy's lower jar there is Hama's Creme (02) and Teddybear brown (60) and Photo Pearls' Orange (13). On the upper part of the face there is Hama's Creme (02), Photo Pearls' Yellow (21) (supposed to be the same colour as Hama's Teddybear on jaw) and Photo Pearls' Rust (05) (this one is orange in the cap and jaw). I also changed Hama's Light brown to Photo Pearls' Brown (27) because Rust and Hama's Light brown were almost the same. Final colours in the next pic.

I chose Photo Pearls' Orange as the orange, Photo Pearls' Yellow (21) as the brownish light yellow and Photo Pearls' Light beige (12) as the lightest yellow. Hama's Creme was just too yellow for the face and too close to the Photo Pearls' Yellow. The whole face was just too yellow. I thought really long about using Hama's Teddybear brown instead of Photo Pearls' Yellow but it was just so dark, compared to the colour in the sprite, that I decided against it. Now only thing left was the leg and ironing.

Below the whole work half way through the masking tape.

And final product on the wall with Sora and Neoshadow. The face is little bit too yellow for my liking, but other ways it looks good.

Sprite from spriters-resource.com as usual.

The Making of: Mario with the cape (Super Mario World)

Here is some of the work and thought process I went through when making Mario from Super Mario World (which is one of my all-time favourite Mario games). The sprite below is from spriters-resource.com.

Sorry for blurry image by the way. I tried about half an hour to get it sharper, but it just wouldn't co-operate. It is perfectly sharp on my computer, but something on Blogger blurs it. Maybe it got something to do with the fact that the image is so small (original size here:). If someone knows how to make it sharp I'm all ears =) The colours are the most important thing for this post anyway even though the form is a little bit difficult to see.

Back to business then. This Mario is pretty simple, about one pegboard in size. Only the colouring of the face produced some difficulty. Because I could see that from the beginning I decided to start from the easy colours and proceed to harder from there. So first the black:

Next yellow and white, no problems there. Yellow is Hama yellow (product number 03). Black is Hama black and white is the white of Photo Pearls, if you are interested. Reason for different brand of white and black was that I had run out of Hama white.

On the edge of the cape I used Hama burgundy (no. 30). First I thought about using dark brown (Hama or Photo Pearls), but I thought there was a reddish tint on the edge so I used burgundy instead. It is quite dark anyhow and I think it worked out pretty well.

Next Hama blue (no. 08) for Mario's clothes and that short section of the cape (which I found out a bit weird but it was on all the sprites I could find so I guess it is correct). In the cap there is two Photo Pearls (from now on just PP) yellows (no. 21) and one Hama teddybear brown (no. 60). The red in the cap and close to Mario's hand is Hama claret (no. 29).

I didn't quite have the right light brown, but the PP brown (no. 27) was the closest so I used that. I thought about using Hama light brown (no. 21), but it was too light and a bit too much like fudge.

Add some blues (PP no. 23 and 28). First I put Hama azur blue (no. 49) as the lightest blue, but it wasn't quite distinct enough so I changed it for PP.

Rare use for Pyssla beads. Pyssla pink to the cap and to the arm.

For the face I tried different combos. The light, almost white, colour is PP light grey (no. 10). It settled there easily, but the red/pinkish colour was harder.

This one is Hama pastel red (no. 44) which was actually close to the original colour, but was just a little bit too red. With it Mario looked like he'd done too much drinking... So I discarded it.

Here we have PP antique pink (no. 18). It looked most natural, but not like the original. Plus it didn't really fit in the cape.

My final choice was Hama pink (no. 06). It is not exactly the right colour either, but I think it was the best choice.

Here's the final work before ironing...

...and here after ironing. Diving on some Final Fantasy characters.

So what do you think? Did I make right choices or wrong choices? Comments appreciated.