Sprite Stitch Board!

Hello everyone, I decided to share a project I'm working on. It's basically the famous cut scene from the first Ninja Gaiden that came out on the NES. I've never Stitched anything before, so to take on a project of this magnitude is going to require a lot of patience. At least that's what I think, only time will tell.

Ok, for those of you who haven't played the game, there's a special cut scene that appears if you take too long to press start on the title screen. the scene involves two ninjas who are about to fight to the death. It's kinda like a quick draw match; first hit wins it all. They run towards each other, jump really high, then swing their swords at each other in mid air.

anyways, the scene itself looked kinda plain, so I decided to add each of the ninja's faces and the title screen. here's a picture of what it SHOULD look like once I'm done.
Yeah, That's pretty epic looking, right?

Well, I'll post pictures of my project once I get started. I still need to buy the materials, but I'm definitely going to do this pretty soon.

that'll look pretty awesome, for sure! :o

whoa!! That will look awesome. How big is that going to be?

That's going to be huuuuuuuuuuge! Have you tried to make a pattern or anything yet for it to see the final dimenstions? It's a very epic picture indeed though.

I just want to make sure you know how big it'll be/how long it'll take you before starting on it, especially for a first project

well, according to the KG-Chart LE program, it should be 32.51cm x 28.44cm (so about 13in x 11in)

It won't be THAT big, but it should make a decent picture frame once it's finish. I'm not sure how long it will actually take, but that's ok. I'll just treat this project like a very complex jigsaw puzzle, only the jigsaw pieces will be replaced by DMC thread.

Hopefully, I'll get enough materials to get started tomorrow.

Just take it one stitch at a time, i always say (if its not for someone else and the deadline isnt looming) it doesn't matter how long it takes as long as you enjoy the time you've spent on it also count twice and stitch once!!

I know someone's done it in perler, so it is totally doable. Good luck, and for inspiration this is the perler one.
http://www.spritestitch.com/?p=2656

That looks like it will turn out awesome! The nes Ninja Gaiden games were some of my favorites.

Can I make a quick suggestion that might save you some time? If it were me stitching this huge piece, I would do all of the background in halfstitch (only the / part of a cross-stitch), but do the ninjas, their profiles and the ninja gaiden logo in full cross stitch. You'll probably want to use at least 3 strands of floss if you do the background this way, but it would save you time (half the number of stitches for most if it), and I think that the characters and text would really "pop."

Either way, good luck!

Thanks for all the tips guys! oh, and for that link with the perler version of this project. That's very cool looking, especially since it glows in the dark.

@ crazystrange: you're not kidding about making sure you have the correct number of spaces. One little mistake and it could throw the whole project out of whack. I must have counted the boarders 3 times.

@ moxi: I didn't know about the half stitch method at all. Sounds like it would give it a cool effect. Well, for now, I'll stick to the regular cross stitch technique, but I'll keep that half stitch method in mind for future projects.

well, I got enough materials to get started, so I spend a couple of hours trying to get everything set up. I still don't know the actual size, but it turn out to be bigger than I previously stated.

here's what i managed to get done. (notice the pen marks on the boarders. )
**quick update. now that I've been working on this for a few days, I realized just how long this'll actually take. haha. Anyways, I managed to get a little more done. I'll keep you guys posted as time goes by.
** update 05/23/10 ** Got a little bit more done.
** update 06/05/10 ** ditto. I decided to work on the ninja outline. I blew up the pic so that you can see the detail.