Sorry for the downtime, welcome back!!

NOV/DEC Challenge - Common Enemies

Monthly Video Game Craft Challenges
User avatar
Miss Clawful
Rank 6 - Tanooki Mario
Rank 6 - Tanooki Mario
Posts: 317
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 9:44 pm
Contact:

Re: NOV/DEC Challenge - Common Enemies

Post by Miss Clawful »

What snowmen do In Summer

Image

Image

Image

PATTERN:
112x140 pixels = 8"x10"
Image

MATERIAL:
Green Aida (14ct)

COLORS (DMC):
White
402 - Very Light Mahogany
963 - Ultra Very Light Dusty Rose
3021 - Very Dark Brown Gray
301 - Medium Mahogany
3857 - Dark Rosewood
760 - Salmon
905 - Dark Parrot Green
996 - Medium Electric Blue
3846 - Light Bright Turquoise
826 - Medium Blue
3761 - Light Sky Blue
813 - Light Blue
Black

total colors: 14

DATE/TIME:
Started stitching: November 20th 2014
Finished stitching: December 2nd 2014
??? minutes = ?? hours ?? minutes
(did not log in my time on this one)

STITCHES:
2876

NOTES:
Spoiler
This snowman project started out a week and some before the common enemy challenge began on Sprite Stitch, just so happened to come at the right time and so made this pattern in progress a good choice for the challenge. This was inspired by the Disney animated movie Frozen, along with another project I'll eventually get around to stitching. I've never seen that movie, but hear good things about it and I do love one of the songs in it ("Let it go"). Seen a few clips of several of the songs and the one song ("In Summer") from the adorable, yet not so bright snowman Olaf brought an idea to my head.

I pictured what I wanted, a snowman on a lounge chair under a palm tree with a drink nearby and a warm sun above, the fluffy dude just laying back chillin', catching some summer sun rays. I searched my memory for every game that I could remember that had a snowman somewhere in it, focusing on those that had an ice/snow level then went through each gathering every snowman I could find. I already had my choice early on though, the snowman enemy from Kirby's Adventure.

So I played through Kirby, got the snowman, played enough into it to get to the cutscene with Kirby on the lounge chair, got a snapshot of that too, minus Kirby. Lay the little snowman in the chair, changing his pose a little so he can relax in it. Moved the drink to a good position.

Got the sun from Kirby's Adventure as well, what was going to be the sun before I changed it. I had started out with Mr. Bright when he's up in the sky, but once I really knew where I was going with this changed it to the Angry Sun from Super Mario Bros. 3.

I needed a tree, something tropical, but wanted it as the snowman would imagine it to be, frozen, after all he's never seen what things look like in summer, nor ever been to the tropics. My first and only thought led me to turn to the first Megaman game, Ice Man's stage, snapshot of the screen, got me a frozen palm tree. Set that behind my delusional lounging snowman. Got me a picture now.

Most of my troubles were with the text, what I wanted to say, how I wanted to phrase it. "I'll be doing whatever snow does In summer", or "I want to do what frozen things do In summer", or maybe something based on the lyrics but not quite the same wording. "I want to do what snowmen do In summer!" Yeah, I likes. I went with that, and settled on the font from Kid Icarus as it was basic and small enough to fit it all within the size I needed the pattern to be.

I started stitching, beginning with the Mr. Bright sun from Kirby's Adventure, which I'm glad I started with that because it was when I got halfway through stitching it when it hit me that the Angry Sun from SMB3 would be a better choice. Also, something else was missing from this picture. The sun is hot, angry, not at all what this snowman expected, he needed some shade, I needed an umbrella. Searching the memory banks of my head again...okay, enough searching, already got a good one as a power-up from Kirby's Adventure, but needed something more at an angle, took it from the power-up icon, changed the color, placed it in the snowman's hand. Ah, that's better.

I added some sweat, uh, melting water droplets splattering off of the snowman's head. My idea was to have a look of surprise at the unexpected heat, that it wasn't as cool as he thought it'd be (or could be drops of melting ice from the tree's leaves overhead, one falling and splashing off of his head), but then I thought...Okay, what the hell is that snowman looking at? He looks startled, like he's seeing something unpleasant before him.

I need to find a way to fit another snowman in this picture. Okay so text temporarily had to go, I'll fit it in later. This next task was going to be tough. I had a melting snowman already, this an enemy from Battletoads but he was too big, also the art style didn't quite fit plus not as much melty as just a crumpled heap. Then I remembered one I had missed, there's a snowman in the very last stage of Wizards & Warriors II: Ironsword, used my saved password to get there, snapshots taken of it.

Okay, removed hat from crumpled Battletoads snowman, placed on the few animations of the Ironsword one, decided on the most gone one. Still, something not quite right, the snow doesn't look melty, looks too cold, too solid, I needed a puddle. Took me a while to find what I was looking for but started looking towards slime enemies for this, the Babble from the Dragon Warrior games was very puddle looking, but how to use it? After fiddling around for a time with it, even as a possible choice for a melting snowman it hit me that I could stretch it horizontally and...hey, that is perfect! So I had me a melting snowman, made up of three enemies.

Now to try to fit all that text back into the picture. But making it even harder on myself I looked up NES games with the word summer in them, bam!, right in my face, Summer Carnival '92 Recca for the Famicom. That "Summer" was sprited so nicely I just had to use it as is. Will it fit? Please, please let it fit! Well now, it does, but now I can't fit all of the wording that I wanted. I messed around with it a bit, rearranged things for a while, then settled on the most necessary part, omitting the first few words "what snowmen do In Summer" I liked it.

And to think I had already stitched in the characters before even getting my wording satisfactorily together, but I knew I'd come up with something appropriate so had no worries. So, while looking upon it doesn't seem like much, a huge effort went into this composition, and was well worth seeing through.

Something interesting I just found out when looking for the name of the Kirby's Adventure snowman, Chilly, is that he don't look to me like the drawn art of him, well at least until I looked more closely. How I see his sprite is a snowman with sunglasses on (not actually wearing them over his eyes, just resting tilted up on his head, more a statement of being cool than actually needing them), he don't appear to have a hat on in the one animation frame that I used, just a round bald head of snow, but after looking at the other two frames, I don't know how I missed this detail, I guess because I was focused so much on that one which the hat wasn't shown well enough, but now know why because it is tilted back. But the art depicts Chilly having a bucket hat and what I thought were shades are actually thick eyebrows, interesting, but still look like sunglasses to me. Also he's wearing a bell which can't really be shown very well in the small sprites, I thought it simply a button.

Reminds me of the time long ago before I ever played Blaster Master and saw this one image of Jason battling a boss, Jason's super-deformed body shown from the rear to me looked like a plump car, like a cute Spy Hunter type thing (though I related it to Bump 'n Jump since that was the only overhead view driving game I had played at that time) which as funny as that seems, not having much to go by back then and that one image in this one of the only two gaming magazines I had at the time, my imagination played tricks on me. It was a common thing back then to misinterpret what a sprite looked like if you've never seen any drawn art of it, so I'm not surprised that I done it with mr. Chilly here too. I like my version better, a bald snowman with shades on. :)

And just for laughs, here are the original sprites of Chilly from Kirby's Adventure:

Image

My interpretation (what my eyes immediately see them as) of those sprites before seeing artwork on him:

Image

By the way this is the first time I have drawn anything on paper since June 2012, I don't put the pencil or pen to the paper very often, always feels so awkward. I still enjoy creating things with pixels more (less erasing, less mess), a lot more, but I couldn't share this silly vision any other way than to actually draw it.

Lalina
Rank 4 - Raccoon Mario
Rank 4 - Raccoon Mario
Posts: 109
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 7:07 pm

Re: NOV/DEC Challenge - Common Enemies

Post by Lalina »

I decided to make a little ornament for this challenge. This enemy has snown up in almost all of the Mana Series games. Normally they look pretty harmless (they are typically quite weak) but I kind of love the way they look when they are about to chomp on your character.

Rabbite - Seiken Densetsu 3
rabbite ornament.JPG
rabbite ornament.JPG (221.09 KiB) Viewed 5642 times
Current Projects:
- Game of Thrones/Mario World Mash-up (cross-stitch)

User avatar
JemmaJ
Rank 2 - Fire Mario
Rank 2 - Fire Mario
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:20 am
Contact:

Re: NOV/DEC Challenge - Common Enemies

Post by JemmaJ »

Here is my entry. I decided on a piranha plant from Mario...

Image
Just keep stitching...

Jemma's Stitchery | Stitch Blog: Dreaming In Aida | Instagram & Twitter: @JemmaJH

WIPs:
A Very Merry Christmas Town
Stitching for Charity 2016/17
KLT Charting: Russian Dolls SAL
and many more...

User avatar
TigerLily
Rank 7 - Kuribo Mario
Rank 7 - Kuribo Mario
Posts: 365
Joined: Fri Nov 29, 2013 1:08 pm

Re: NOV/DEC Challenge - Common Enemies

Post by TigerLily »

Alrighty, hopefully this counts. If not, oh well.

A Creeper hat and scarf set:
Image
A pile of Creepers:
Image
And a close-up of the bottom so you can see my attempt at redstone torch tassels. :)
Image

I'll be making a post with more pictures and a bit of an explanation in it shortly.

User avatar
blackberrybear
Rank 8 - Statue Mario
Rank 8 - Statue Mario
Posts: 646
Joined: Sun Jan 30, 2011 11:09 am

Re: NOV/DEC Challenge - Common Enemies

Post by blackberrybear »

Dragon Warrior Slime
nov-dec 2014 chal Slime.jpg
nov-dec 2014 chal Slime.jpg (57.77 KiB) Viewed 5535 times
(a beginner's attempt at amigurumi)

User avatar
SofaraStarfyre
Rank 8 - Statue Mario
Rank 8 - Statue Mario
Posts: 665
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2012 9:12 pm

Re: NOV/DEC Challenge - Common Enemies

Post by SofaraStarfyre »

Here is my entry. A set of pins of 3 of the common enemies from Minecraft.

Here they are together. A Creeper, a Zombie and a Skeleton.
IMG_0213.JPG
IMG_0213.JPG (48.84 KiB) Viewed 5490 times
Up close of all three of them:

Creeper:
IMG_0216.JPG
IMG_0216.JPG (46.93 KiB) Viewed 5490 times
Zombie:
IMG_0215.JPG
IMG_0215.JPG (50.43 KiB) Viewed 5490 times
Skeleton:
IMG_0214.JPG
IMG_0214.JPG (50.9 KiB) Viewed 5490 times

Post Reply