8-Bit Art: 3D Pokemon House Project

Unfortunately Canada Post is in the middle of a contract negotiation and there is a possibly now of postal strike as soon as Friday. This possible strike has left me no choice but to put my Etsy store, Pixelized Creations on vacation mode until the issue is resolved and I know for sure my packages can go out without fear of them getting stuck in transit.

This has left me though with tons of time to work on new fused bead art projects, so I decided to enter a contest on instagram where you had to make a fused bead art piece with a Pokemon theme. I decided to make a little scene with Ash and Pikachu fighting another trainer with their pokemon. Then it escalated into a bigger piece with a house, plants etc. And then I decided to make the house 3D. I had to play around with a couple different concepts before I got the piece to finally fit.

The final project I think turned out pretty darn good though. It is made completely from perler/hama beads and a little bit of e6000 glue. I used only black, white, grey, dark grey and hama brand's translucent grey colour. Not sure how many beads I used total but I know I went through 3.5 bags of grey beads roughly which is 3500 beads.

The patterns I got mostly from the Pokemon Red/Blue game though I had to come up with the garden soil and side/back of the house patterns on my own. The 3D house pattern is completely my own design too.

I will plan to sell this when the postal strike is over with. I am not sure about the pricing but I will let people know if they are interested in purchasing it now. I can always look into other couriers for this like FedEx or UPS.

I will update everyone when my store reopens. Pixelized Creations

Playing Pokemon Red for 7 Days

I'm all for saving the environment and such but I'm not a big fan of reusable pads or tampons. Apparently some ladies are which is why Etsy seller, Naturally Hip is selling Pokemon natural cotton pads made for the gamer girl who likes to be all earth-friendly and geeky at the same time. Girls can reuse this pads time and time again.

Again, this is not at the top of my "gamer goodies to buy" list but everyone has their own tastes and you have to admit the store owner is at least thinking of everyone in her demographic. The store is currently out of the pads right now but as I know from experience, most Etsy sellers will take requests if you message them.

How Do They Come Up With Those Pokemon Names?

Big Mystery Solved: New Pokemon Game!

Cheeky little monkeys. Got my finally email today from Nintendo and yes, it was a new Pokemon game that they revealed. Pokemon Platinum!

Now this type of game I can get behind and play. Just not those Mystery Dungeon gamesas those were terrible.

2007 Brought ... Another Email from Nintendo?

Nintendo sent me another email today with only a subject line: 2007 brought and this image. Nothing more than that. This must be a new Pokemon game coming out.

Epic 8-Bit Art: Master Chief

My newest piece was inspired by a guy over at Destructoid who asked if I could make Master Chief. So I tried and this is what I came up with. You can buy Master Chief or a Pink Spartan for $10

I've got a lot of time on my hands right now and so I've been trying to create new pieces for my store. Below are a few of the new ones.

Mega Man for $5

Metroid

Moogle and Pikachu Key Chains

Remember that you can purchase my creations from my store, Pixelated Creations.

Real Pikachus Sold in Japan for $925 Million

Oh, if only these were real!

Those I'm pretty sure this picture is photoshopped that apparently didn't stop someone with too much money from spending $925 million dollars on 20 "real live Pikachus" on a Japanese Yahoo! auction site.

Who knows? Maybe they are real. Japan is doing amazing thing nowadays with science - they could be genetically modified hamsters or something. But honestly? $925 million!

But who could pass up such a great deal? The seller even offered to throw in a 60 minute video on how to raise your Pikachu if you bought 3 months worth of Pokemon food from them.

[Via Tokyo Mango]

Who Knew? Pokemon Airplane Designs

Today I went to Toronto with my boyfriend to Aviation World, Threshold Aviation and to a few choices place to take places of the planes landing and taking off at Pearson International Airport.

While at Threshold Aviation, I found this model plane kit for a Pokemon airplane design and mostly died laughing at the thought of this thing actually flying people around the world.

Apparently All Nippon Airway's (ANA) have Pokemon painted airplanes in their collection of airplane livery designs. There were 4 designs painted on the company's Boeing 747-400 and 767-300 between 1998 and 1999 and the planes were used for both domestic and international flights. These planes also featured Pokemon headrest covers, cups, and flight attendant aprons.

Review: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness/Time

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness/Time
Nintendo, Chunsoft
Both available on Nintendo DS

Mash ups are great when they bring two wonderful items together to make something even more magical, but Chunsoft’s idea of combining Pokemon and Mystery Dungeon games, two wonderful games on their own, didn’t quite work out to better creation together. While they’ve done this before with these two franchises, I doubt they were any better than the two Pokemon Mystery Dungeon titles, I’m about to review.

Players, in either version of PMD, are treated to playing as Pokemon, instead of a trainer, which the type is determined by the game through a neat personality quiz. You then get to pick your dungeon crawling Poke-partner from a small selection of different Pokemon, but choose carefully, because your partner with be with you throughout the whole game.



The plots for both games start off the same; your character awakes on a beach and finds a Pokemon trying to wake you up. While you appreciate their help, but you can’t figure out how you understand him, because Pokemons can’t talk to humans, but then you suddenly realize that you’re no longer a human, but a Pokemon too! From there the plot takes you and your new friend eventually to a guild where you sign up to perform tasks to earn money, items and level up your skills, all the while trying to discover the original of your transformation and the mystery behind the time gears.

With two versions of the PMD games, players who choose to play both versions will be rewarded with different types of Pokemon in each game, different layouts for the dungeons (which change every time you enter them anyway) and different opening scenes. Well worth it, if you’re a massive Poke-fan.

While most Pokemon games are well developed games, the mystery dungeon format is too intense for a Nintendo DS game and too hard for a kid’s game, which removes these games from two key markets that most Pokemon games tend to target. I play a lot of my DS games at work and you couldn’t save your game casually, so I found myself having to use the battery save feature on my Nintendo DS and hoping that nothing happened to turn the game off or pop the game card until I could find time to save it properly. Portable games need a good casual save feature or they won’t go over well, especially with busy adult players.

The difficulty of the games were so frustrating and unforgiving, I probably would have tossed the game card against the wall, if I hadn’t been borrowing it from a friend. If you or your partner dies, you both go back to the guild to start a new day over, plus you lose your money and some of your items. You can save your money and items at little banks, but you need all the items possible in the dungeons just to survive, so you just end up losing those items in no time.

The battle system allows you one basic attack and one special attack at a time, and with such limited attack choices during battle, death comes quickly and often. Special enemy attacks like bind or poison really took my characters down quickly and I couldn’t even buy healing items to remove those effects. Basically the system isn’t simple to master and if I’m having trouble as a skilled adult gamer, imagine how a 9-year-old is going to fair.

The graphics in the Pokemon franchise have definitely come a long way since I played them on my Gameboy Colour and I was really happy to see such colourful and detailed cartoon characters now. The sounds have been updated too, with the critters making cute, little poke-noises, instead of those horrible, screeching sounds they had on the old Gameboy versions.

Being that is the first Pokemon game I’ve had the chance to play since the days of the Red, Blue and Yellow versions, I was really looking forward to getting back into the franchise, but I think I jumped back in with the wrong series. I just found these games to be too hard and not very rewarding with the constant dying and restarting.

We, Pokemon purists, should probably stick with the latest Diamond & Pearl versions, while Mystery Dungeon/Pokemon fans can keep their weird hybrid games, because they don’t seem to play very well together as a team.

Rating: 4 out of 10
Forget it!

My Newest Etsy Pieces - Contains Pixelated Nudity

I've been still working on my Perler bead sprites here and there and these are the newest pieces I've added to my shop in the last month.

I've added Space Invader Key Chains for only $2 a piece. They come complete with a metal bead chain and metal key ring.


I've added a Poke Ball bag tag for $4 that also comes with a metal bead chain.


And finally I made this River City Ransom Spa Hanger for your bathroom. Hang it from the door or the wall to complete your own gamer spa. Alex is shown toweling his little behind off, just like in the game. Available with hanger for only $5.

More Pixelated Creations: Geekery from Etsy.com

Bring the sweet, life-giving liquid of Lon Lon Ranch milk with you everywhere. Tiffany Bell is selling glass bottles charms that look like Lon Lon Ranch milk bottles from The Legend of Zelda series.

She is also selling Pokemon Ball charms. Made from clay and finished with acrylic paint and glaze. Both charms sell for $3.00 on Etsy.com.