Perlers of Wisdom
If you’re into videogames and hang out on the internet much, then Perler Beads probably aren’t news to you. In fact, we’ve had a thread about them in our forums for a few months now.
For those who haven’t heard of them, Perler Beads are tiny plastic beads in a rainbow of different colors. You arrange the beads on a grid and run an iron over them, fusing the beads together. From there, you can do all sorts of things with them. You can hang your creation on the wall, glue some magnets to the back of them, use them as coasters…whatever. If you want to get real elaborate, you can connect multiple creations together to create 3D objects. The nature of the beads makes them perfect for creating physical representations of videogame sprites.
Back in episode 109, I gave a shout-out to a listener who goes by the hacker alias SnowWolf. He had sent me a gift in the form of two magnets made out of Perler Beads. To no one’s surprise, one of the magnets was Mega Man. The other was the evil robot master, Metal Man. I immediately fell in love with the things and slapped them up on my fridge.
I had always wanted to try my hand at making my own Perler sprites, but I’m also a lazy, lazy person. Not too long ago, I was inspired to finally give this craft a go. You see, Perler Beads are extremely popular with some of the kids that I teach. They get to build their own bead creations during an after-school kids’ club (an adult does the ironing, of course), so I’ve seen plenty of Perler Bead hearts, stars, and horses.
Craft stores often sell buckets of beads in assorted colors, but unless you want to do an bunch of mind numbing sorting, your best bet is to order bags of single colors. There are plenty of people selling the beads on eBay, but I ordered straight from the official Perler Bead website. It’s a relatively cheap hobby, too. The large pegboards sell for $1.85 each. They’re good for making a sprite that’s up to 29 x 29 pixels. If you want to making something bigger than that, the large boards link together. Having four pegboards on hand is a safe bet unless you plan on doing a very elaborate project.
A bag of 1000 single color beads costs $2.80. Like I mentioned before, there are lots of colors to choose from, so it’s a good idea to have in mind what you want to make before you start ordering. Here’s a tip, though: buy extra black and white beads. You’ll plow through those at a surprisingly fast rate. There is also some ironing paper that you need to place over your project before you iron it. That’ll run you $3.00 for six sheets. A good pair of tweezers is also extremely useful for dropping the beads on the pegboard.
Once my order arrived, I decided to do a little experimenting with the beads by creating some weapons for my two existing magnets. As you probably noticed in the above picture, I give Metal Man a Metal-Blade and Mega Man three Buster shots (because you can only have three shots on the screen at once–I’m a nerd!). After my successful test, I started going all out.
At first, I wanted to just mess around with simple colors, so what better characters to create than Pac-Man and the four ghosts (Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde)? Once they were finished, I whipped up a few dots and a Power Pellet for Pac-Man to eat. The dot magnets are extremely tiny. They’re comprised of only four beads, and they’re not even a half inch square.
We all know that I’m going to concentrate on the Mega Man series with these things, but before diving into creating more Robot Masters, I wanted to make a Kid Niki: Radical Ninja magnet. I do love me some Kid Niki.
OK, on to the Mega Man stuff. I was trying to think of which characters to start with, and I decided to go with some of the bosses from Mega Man 9. I also had to whip up a Cut Man since he is one of my favorite bosses in the series. To add a little variety to my Mega Man collection, I made a 1up and one of the ubiquitous Mets.
Finally, my latest creation was made for my wife. She has, as I’ve mentioned on the show, been rather preoccupied with Dragon Quest IV and V on the DS. So of course I had to make her a Slime magnet.
Oh, just to give you a sense of scale, Kid Niki and the Mega Man characters are all about 6″ tall. Splash Woman is the exception at about 10″. The Pac-Man characters are about 3″ tall as is the Slime and the Mega Man 1up. Each of the pictures in this post can be clicked on for a look at a higher res shot, too.
So yeah, Perler Beads are pretty friggin’ awesome. It’s a fairly simple craft, and the end results look pretty darn cool. Like I said, these things are all over the internet, so if you’re looking for more inspiration, just do a Google search for “perler bead sprites,” and you’ll find plenty of ideas. Then look up some spirte sheets for your favorite games and get creating.
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