Hi everybody! I know I haven’t been posting much, bad me, right? Well, there is a reason for it. I was going to write “there is a good reason for it”… but I’m not entirely convinced how “good” it is.

See, lately I’ve been going through this weird “creative crisis”. The problem is, it’s not the sort of creative crisis where you have writer’s or artist’s block and can’t create. It’s the exact opposite. The flood gates have been opened and all this creative energy that has been pent up for who knows how long is just gushing out. I think it has to do with the fact that I finally am free of the Sword That Cuts Things. Suddenly I’m writing my comic, I’m doing short Atom Kappa animations again, starring all my old and forgotten characters, and …. well, I’m doing what I am about to post about in this entry. The only major problem with this whole creative explosion is that I am finding it very hard to control it. One day I want to do the comic, one day I want to make an Atom Kappa doll and one day I want to animate. I said “problem” … but i don’t necessarily feel that it is a problem. I’m embracing it and just really enjoying myself, which is something I haven’t really done with my art or my animations in a long time.

That being said, this entry is about one of my recent creative diversions.

When I was a kid, I always loved making things. In 7th grade, it was handpainted tee shirts. In 10th grade I made every single one of my comic characters out of sculpy clay. In 2001, it was a Christmas animation about a fox and a kappa.

In 2003, my mother was put into a nursing home because of a malignant brain tumor which would later kill her in 2005. Most of you know this already though. It was at this time that I gave up on much of the creative stuff that I used to do. I buried myself in the Sword that Cuts Things because it made me not have to think about anything. I haven’t really felt liberated until now.

This Christmas, my friend Matt and I decided to exchange gifts, as always, and I had no idea what to get him. If you know Matt, or if you ARE Matt (Matt, I know you read this blog, so … heh) you would know that he is very much into Nintendo, but he also HAS EVERYTHING EVER! ^_^ Seeing that he is a good friend of mine, I wanted to make him something special that you cannot buy in stores. I went to the internet and discovered a site about people that make sprite artwork out of little beads called Perler Beads. Many of you probably heard of them or have used them, possibly in elementary school. From what I hear, they are a very popular craft.

The basic thing with Perler beads is that you place them in a certain arrangement on a pegboard and then iron them so they melt together. Brilliant for little kids who want to make dragonflies and cats and stuff, AMAZING for someone who wants to make their favorite 8-bit or 16-bit character.

I went to Michael’s Craft Store as soon as they opened and bought as many beads as I could afford. Then I came home and began to create.

I tend to get obsessed with things, and after a day, this is what my basement looked like:

At first I couldn’t find one of the bigger 29×29 pegboards, so i had to make most of these on a very tiny and very hard to use pegboard. I can’t remember the actual dimensions, but it was really hard. The Rydia, Yoshi, and Devout are all done on the 29×29, as are the rest of the ones later in this post with the exception of two. I also had a very hard time finding single colors, except for the glow in the dark package, so most of these earlier ones glow in the dark!

After Christmas, I decided I was going to make sprites of a bunch of things that I always wanted action figures of as a child, but that they never made figures of. Now, Keep in mind, I have very weird taste in things I like, especially when it comes to video game characters. As a child, I would always draw tons and tons of pictures of “random enemy A” because I thought that when I was playing the game it “looked adorable” …. I also would do things like avoid certain enemies because I liked them too much to hurt them. That being said, below is Quick Boomerang Mega Man, Crash Man and Panser from SMB 2. Now, back when I got Mega Man 2, I was quite angry that there wasn’t a “mega girl” that i could play as… so… I would beat Quick Man’s stage and change into the quick boomerang suit as soon as possible and pretend I was Mega Girl. Yeah, that’s right… ^_^ Then there is Crash Man. He’s just my favorite Mega Man guy for no good reason. I really want an action figure of him!

…. and… then there is Panser. This is probably the weirdest story of all. When I got Super Mario 2, I opened up the instruction manual to look at the characters, and there she was. Panser. Just a random flower enemy that shot fire at Mario. But…. IT WAS OH SO CUTE! I mean, LOOK AT HER!

(actually, this picture is perfect because I also am in love with that porcupine and made a sprite of him just a few weeks ago ^_^) So anyway, throughout my entire life I have just been drawing pictures of Panser everywhere. I even had Panser address labels at one point. So, anyway, after that long drawn out story about why I’m weird, here are the sprites:

When I was a young child, my parents got me an Atari 2600. I loved it and I loved dragons, so it was only natural that I would become obsessed with the game “Adventure”. I always wanted figures of the dragons when I was a kid. I used to buy random dragon figures at the store just so I could play “Adventure”.  I’ve used the dragons in my animations before, and  now they are magnets in my basement. Oh, yes, and I realize that the red one is backwards. I realized it AFTER I had glued the magnet on the back!

Another things I always wanted when I was a kid was action figures from various Final Fantasy games, especially Final Fantasy 1 and Final Fantasy 4, which, in my opinion, are the best. (before you Final Fantasy 7 fanboys and girls beat me up or something, I am referring to earlier final fantasy games, because they DID make and continue to make FF7 action figures)

I have now made it my project to make all the characters from FF1 and FFIV. I realize it is going to take me a long time, but it is something I really want to do. I am going to make a few enemies, too, and if i have it in me, I am going to make a Behemoth from the final place in FFIV. But that, my friends, will take a VERY long time.

Anyway, here are a few final fantasy sprites. Rydia is my favorite character of all time ever, so that is why there are a million versions of her and that she is in like every picture. I also LOVE Edward. The one with the pink hair is sorta obscure, it’s Edward’s girlfriend who gets killed, Anna:

This is a Piscodemon from FF1 (A wizard from the Ice Cave), chibi Edward and a chibi Rydia that I HAVE to redo cause I don’t like it. It was my first sprite and it is messed up.

I got a lot of guff from my friend Jamie for doing an injured white mage, but I think the white mage looks extremely cute like this. I made the Cecil for my friend Fatt, and the Devout for myself.

I made this Cecil sprite for my friend Bill. The stuff in the background is from an animation idea I had. ^_^

I also made Kain, but I don’t have a picture of him right now. I gave him to someone and forgot to snap a picture!

Last, but certainly not least, I decided I was going to make a really big one. Well, all right, not a REALLY big one, but one that used two pegboards. I give you………(drumroll please)………

THE CHEETAHMAN!….. and toad TOO!

Anyway, it’s been really fun doing all of this. I will post more here at some point, I actually think I feel like making more today. What I’m going to make, I dunno… but i just got 1000 brown beads…. can someone say…. TANUKI MARIO!

I hope that I can focus my creativity soon, and finish something, but for now I’m just going to let all of this come out however it wants to, whether it be drawings, animations, comics, etc. I’ll post the results. ^_^