This epic battle of wizard vs. dragon, magic against flames was just begging to be cross-stitched for the Sprite Stitch Dragon Challenge.
This scene is taken from the final battle in the NES game The Immortal. The evil wizard Mordamir (not seen in this image as he is actively engulfed in flames) stole a powerful amulet found by you earlier in the game, used it against you, attacking with bolts of lightning and using its power to control the dragon to attack as well. But with magic of your own you managed to fend off all attacks (Blink, Statue and Fire Protection spells), and using one final spell (Magnet spell) tore the amulet from Mordamir's clutches, reclaiming it. With the amulet no longer in his grasp the dragon turns on him instead. So, he is now feeling the heat of dragon breath. Moments after this image, the evil wizard's charred body topples over the edge, a rope comes down (from an ally made earlier in the game) and you climb up to a text ending.
When it had first been announced that this was going to be a dragon challenge I was ecstatic, because dragons are awesome and I had already had a lot of choices ready to go (with patterns of many dragons on the NES, SNES, Genesis, PC Engine, and Playstation). I wasn't certain about doing this one for The Immortal just yet (not for the challenge), I figured the monotony would bog it down for me, so much background and so much of the same colors, and that it'd take way too long anyway. Another thing is that I was still kind of uncertain whether to show the wizard Mordamir standing upon that rock pillar in the distance with the dragon's flames just about to strike him or full out flames and forget the evil wizard, he's history. Its obvious which I went with, full blaze, and final attack in the game.
I also had a screen shot of the Sega Genesis one and was torn between the two, but in the end for favoritism and more familiarity I did stick with the NES one (as the finished cross-stitch shows). Also, of the two, while the Genesis Immortal looks better graphically, what I liked better about the NES version is the darkness, and how further apart all the rocks are, and with how black that pit looks, you don't have a clue as to how deep it goes down. Also, the wizard being smaller, not so close up to the player makes the dragon appear so much larger.
Originally I had intended to do this one last, if I did it at all, but I need something extraordinary, epic, a classic battle scene of good vs. evil, it tells a story, not just a dragon against black background as many of my dragons would have been, so all others took a back seat, this has got to be stitched first, now. Better get to it, time is short. Besides, if I waited I'd probably been burnt out by the time I got to it and may have not had enough time to complete it.
Of coarse I did run into some difficulties, what huge project would be complete without any. Firstly the colors used in this game is not with the standard NES palette so I had to look for all new colors to stitch with, not from my presorted ones that I've had for most of my other projects. Also, even though this cross-stitch has fewer stitches than the Startropics one I had completed end of last year, the size of the material made it difficult to work with so it probably took a bit longer than it should have. And, with how scattered and sporadic everything is, there were several times I had to go back and stitch a pixel or few in that I had somehow missed stitching earlier when I had done that particular color, but thankfully missing them first time did not throw anything off in the picture. Only times I had to remove a lot of stitches was when I was testing colors with the dragon (but nothing too trying, not like what I ran into with the water in that Startropics one), tried several, eventually went back to the very first choice.
I had spent some time planning, trying to get a good estimate of how long it'd take me to complete it, as well as with how much time left over for the challenge that I would have to do each of the other choices and what order I'd stitch them in. Heck, I already have ziplock bags loaded with the colors for each dragon I may stitch so that I'd be ready. I figured this one should take me about 3 weeks, maybe a little longer, but one thing for certain is that I needed to have it done by the end of the month that I started so that I'd still have a whole month to work on the other ones (two more at least), and well, I just made it.
Thank goodness! Standing back to admire it... damn that is awesome! But boy am I glad its done. Whew. I think I need a day off from stitching.
I also liked the Bonsai Tree. As always, your project details and the way you keep track of your stitching time is really neat!
