I made this for a teacher I work with. Evangelion is his favorite anime. He suffers from epilepsy, and the stress from work is once again keeping him from doing his job. He came back last year and did well, but this year has taken a toll on him again, unfortunately.
I used Perler Nano and Iron de Beads (local Japanese iron beads company) mini beads for this. Shinji’s fleshtone is Perler Nano Sand, Rei’s is Nano Cream, and Askua’s is Iron de Beads Fleshtone. Re’s hair is two tone Iron de Beads Aqua. These colors matched her hair perfectly. Iron de Beads are slightly taller, but they melt well and I like them way better than Hama Minis, which are too small and cause problems.
This is where I got the pattern from. It was done in Lego! I found this image on Pinterest.
I finished this one rather quickly. I wasn’t timing myself, but it was under a half hour for sure. For the reds, I used Iron de Beads’ red and dark red. While they look different in the bag, after ironing they don’t really stand apart from each other very well. At least not to my eyes. Iron de Beads is an iron beads brand I’ve found at Tokai craft stores here in Japan.
I took a photo of my nerd cave late at night, two years ago. I have a better camera this time. I also have added more stuff since then, like my light-up Starship Enterprise atop my monitor. This is a better view of the iron bead pixel art on the wall.
A closer look at my Pac-Man light. It’s actually LEDs, made to look like a neon sign.
My Pac-Man lamps, with a Dragon Quest Slime in between, atop my Megadrive game collection.
My blue paper lantern now lights up the far corner of the nerd cave.
My Aliens and Empire Strikes Back posters, and to the left side are my Record of Lodoss War action figures.
My video gaming pillow collection: Megadrive, Saturn, and Dreamcast cushions, pillows and tissue covers, as well as Pac-Man pillows. Ulan likes to plop on these pillows and chill out. I’ve shown the Sega stuff from Shimamura previously on this blog.
Glad to have learned of Artkal beads on the r/Beadsprites subreddit! Perler is American, Hama is British, and Artkal is Chinese. Artkal provides such a broader palette of color than the other two companies do! Artkal S82 made this project possible. That and Perler Brown are the two main fleshtones for Nadia. Her hair is Perler Midnight and Pastel Blue, while her vest is Perler Cherry and Red.
The pixel artwork was taken from the Fushigi no Umi no Nadia game for the PC Engine CD.
I’m working on an iron beads work of Rei from Evangelion with Nano Beads. She’s proving to be difficult! The source has irregularly shaped pixels. This non-uniformity is really forcing me to fudge and guess a lot, making this time-consuming. I’m using 1/4 size Nano Beads rather than the full-size Perler Beads, which also makes things difficult due to their tiny size. I’ve run out of the blues and skin tones, so I’ll have to wait for my shipment from Yodobashi Camera I ordered tonight to arrive before I can proceed much further. Here is the original sprite I found on Pinterest:
At this point, I’m unsure if I want to stop at Rei’s head or go ahead and do the rest of her. Her boobs are so pretty, it’d be a shame not to.
This is the original, non-pixelized image. Someone must have run this image through a pixelization filter to get the image above.
The first one I saw was of Asuka Langley, apparently by the same artist. However this one too is not true sprites as the pixel sizes are not uniform. If you zoom in you’ll know what I mean.
Update 1, Dec. 5th. I’ve had to order the fleshtone and blue colors for her hair. They’ll arrive tomorrow.
Update 2, Dec. 6th. Last night I finished most of her hair. Her skintone should be easy. Just dump the beads and nudge them onto the pegs. I’ve decided to go ahead and do the whole image. I’ve sort of gotten used to the pixels being wonky. I’m able to improvise more and not worry so much about complete accuracy because it’s impossible anyway.
Update 3, Dec. 7th. Her face is now complete!
Update 4, Dec. 8th. I have to wait for more peg boards to arrive now before I can continue…
Update 5, Dec. 10th. Almost there… Now I’ve had to order more Gray colored Nano Beads as well as one more peg board. They’ll arrive Tuesday perhaps.
Update 6, Dec. 12th. I finished the beads! Next will be ironing. I hope it goes well. Not in the mood for that tonight.
Update 7, Dec. 16th. I finished Rei at last! Unfortunately there was a bit of a mishap on the right side where her shoulder is (and a little where her breast is), but I was able to salvage and rescue the project.
