Project Update Post

As always I seem to get behind on projects, but in the last few months I've managed to start picking things up again. So I'm going to reorganize my deadlines again today and reorganize a few of the projects.

• Project 5 - SNES Coasters
• I have actually gotten as far as beading and fusing my new larger format test coaster. Now it needs a backing and then I'll give it a test for a little while to see if it develops the same cupping that the smaller ones. 
• I'm going to try to get the backing on in the next week and then I'll test it for a month or so.  I'm going to set the deadline to see if I make more / bigger ones on July 17, 2015.

• Project 12 - Chrono Trigger Sprites
• I've finally made some progress. Last night in fact I actually spent about 2 hours beading the beginning of a 1x1 Chrono sprite. This is giving me a chance to see what works and how the colours look (little problem there, but I'll give a longer update once I get everything done).

Coming together.

• Progress is happening so I hope to have the 1x1 sprite and update done by June 23, 2015.

• Project 13 - Bubble Puzzle
• I'll get back to it and I'm putting it on hold for the time being.

• Project 14 - Sketch Fiction
• I originally was calling this flash fiction, but based on the lack of ... plot in the stuff I've been writing I wasn't sure if flash fiction counted. I ran across an article on "sketch fiction" which I'm repurposing as a term for what I'm turning out.
• As you might have guess from the above, I have actually written a bit. I have one sketch done and ready to go an others "in the pipeline". I'm going to try to do six sketches in the next little while, rather than one a month like I'd originally posted. I'd like to try to have all six posted by August 1, 2015.

• New Projects
• I have two (and a half) new projects I've either started or would like to start. I'll put up proper posts for them soon. 

Project Update Post

I've managed to get behind on projects again, mostly due to having research and teach commitments that need to get done with a higher priority. Still I've managed to get a bit done and in this post I'm going to update my deadlines to give myself something to shoot for again.

• Project 5 - SNES Coasters and Project 12 - Chrono Trigger Sprites
• I've had to hold off a little on working on these due to house sitting and wanting to make sure that I'm using the same iron while testing.
• The SNES Coasters have been holding mostly steady, but I've decided that I want to build and test one of the bigger size before making others since that way I don't waste quite as much if I don't like the size. 
• I'd like to finish and start testing the test SNES coaster by November 15, 2014.
• I spent a long time going through the Perler bead colours and discovered that I actually DIDN'T buy all the colours and I'm missing a few that might be helpful for the sprites. However I think I have enough on hand to make it through the small scale test.
• I've also done all the colour matching and think I have a plan for which colour of beads I'll use for each of the colours in the Chrono sprite.
• I'd like to finish a test block (just the colours) by November 15, 2014 and the small scale Chrono by November 30, 2014.
• Project 13 - Bubble Puzzle
• I haven't had time to start on this one at all yet, so I don't have much to report other than that I've decided to do a test with Unity that works well enough to shoot bubbles at other bubbles.
• I'd like to finish this Unity test by December 31, 2014
• Project 14 - Flash Fiction
• I also haven't made much progress on this one either so I think given that I'm still fairly early in November, I'm simply going to slide this back a month and hopefully put up my first piece by November 30, 2014.

Project 12: Chrono Trigger Sprites: Update

The Chrono Trigger Sprites are another project I stalled on.

One of the big concerns I ran into was figuring out what colours of perler I wanted to use. I had a sampler set of beads (which I made the test patch in the picture above from), which was a good starting point. I was able to create the original SNES Coasters out of that set, and I might have been able to start on the sprites, but there was one particularly large problem ... I can't figure out what colour (by name) each of these colours is.

So that slowed me down some, along with all the other usual distractions that lead to me not finishing a project. However I have now solved this problem, I went out (to the Internet) and bought myself ALL of the beads:

On the EK Sucess Perler site, they sell 1000 bead bags of every colour. I started to try to figure out what matched what I had already through the website, but then ended up just picking up one bag of everything they sold. Fortunately perler beads are relatively affordable and the promise of free shipping on large enough orders convinced me to just go ahead and do it. Sadly it turns out that that offer wasn't available to Canadians, but still at the end of the day a big box of perler beads appeared at my door, for not that much out of pocket. And now I know name of every colour of bead I have.

As a side note, I wanted to find a nice way to sort the beads that I had. Conveniently I found a screw sorter that happens to perfectly hold 1000 beads in each drawer and probably 3000 in the bigger drawers, which seems like a really nice way to be organized for a project.

Anyway, now that I have all the beads and I'm super organized, I'm out of good excuses not to work on the Chrono Trigger Sprites. So I'll bring the project back up and try to finish a Chrono in 20cm scale by September 30, 2014.

Project 12: Chrono Trigger Sprites

A quick note, I've updated this project!

I don't usually go for having a lot of stuff on your desk, but my recent success making SNES coasters has inspired me to try my hand at making something cool that I can put over my desk at work. Given that Chrono Trigger is one of my favourite games, I figured doing sprites of all the playable characters in the game would be a pretty cool addition to my office.

If you look at the sprite sheets for Chrono Trigger each of the PCs has a lot of positions. I think the best poses though will be the action poses the characters strike at the beginning of each battle. Chrono's sprites look like this:

I'd like to make them about 20cm tall, which will require some reworking since the sprites themselves are only about 30 - 40 pixels tall, which will probably be about half the hight I'd like to reach. Given the need to expand the sprites, I'm not sure if the right answer will be simply to scale them or if I'll have to make a "higher res" version.

The other main problem I've discovered I'll have is is matching colours, since Perler doesn't give you quite the full palette the SNES does. Other people, such as devient artists ~SerenaAzureth and ~MaliceOhgr242, have tackled this before so I'm going take my cue's from them in terms of matching colours.

The next little while is not great for the number of things I need to get done (and the number of unfinished projects I have hanging around) so I'm hoping to be done with these by July 1, 2013.