This was actually my roomate’s idea (Blaine). But damnit, I made it!

It’s S.O.P.H.I.A. (the car) from Blaster Master, which was one of my favorite games for the NES. It also had a great, bump ‘n grind soundtrack. So, without further hesitation, here it is.

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The next challenge that winner Welsh-wuff came up with was great. Actually, it was Crausse’s suggestion, but Welsh had the sense of mind to accept it. The challange was to bead a custom sprite of Kirby after eating a character that he had not yet eaten in a game. In other words, no Link, DK, Samus, etc.

There was no restriction on the character to be used, so some of us went a little crazy. My submission for the challenge was Voltron Kirby.

I like how he turned out, don’t you?

To see the rest of the submissions, check out the Beadsprites Forum. If you’re a member, don’t forget to vote for your favorite (*cough* Voltron Kirby *cough*), and if you’re not a member, sign up to vote!

I am about 6,000 beads short of completing one of my more ambitious 3-D projects, a fully 3-D X-Wing, from Star Wars, of course. So far I have assembled one complete wing, and parts of the fuselage, but I’ve run out of white beads. As soon as I order more, I’ll be posting the finished project.

The ambition, however, is not in the bead count, or even the size. Skull Castle contains more beads and is much larger in size. No, this project is more experimental, as the majority of my 3-D bead sprites thus far have been box shaped. This X-Wing, however, has many angles in it, making for some interesting construction methods. Until I have finished the body of the craft, this will be hard to explain, so I’ll just let you use your imagination until then.

After my A-Team van project, I was trying to think of other classic TV shows to use as my subject matter. I thought about other famous vehicles from television and the General Lee, from the Dukes of Hazzard, came to mind. I quickly dismissed the idea, as I was never too in to the show as a kid, only to hours later be commissioned to do that exact piece. Funny, that.

Much like the A-Team van, the General Lee is re-enforced from within using foam core, and the pieces all interlock like a Puzz 3-D foam puzzle.

Like me, many of you may have been big fans of the A-Team back in the 80’s. Well, I still am, and I have the nifty bead art to prove it!

Below you will find all four members of the A-Team, and the classic GMC van they drove around in for the majority of the series, made from beads. These are custom drawn sprites based on the style of the game series Metal Slug, which featured a souped up Contra like gameplay.

First up, it’s B.A. Baracus, better known as Mr. T.

Next, it’s John “Hannibal” Smith, who loves it when a plan comes together.

And what would any good team be without a pretty boy. It’s Face.

Last but not least of the group, it’s the team’s wildcard, Murdock.

And now for what I believe to be the best part of this set - the A-Team Van, which I made from interlocking bead sprite pieces and re-enforced on the inside with foam core. This one contains over 10,000 beads!

And just for fun, an action shot!

As many of you might know, I’m into a little hobby known as Bead Spriting. As some of you also know, I am a member at a quainte little corner of the Internet called The Beadsprites Forum, which is essentially a place for people like me, obsessed with both classic video games and kid’s crafts. Yeah, there are about 200 of us on there, believe it or not.

It’s a regular occurance for the members over at the BSF to show off their creations, as each one of us has our own dedicated post within which we post pictures of our work, but more recently, we’ve been getting a bit more competitive. I can’t say the Admins (myself being one of them) over there are rolling in the cash and offering prizes for placing submissions to our bi-weekly challenges, but there is a bit of extra motivation for members to participate since, in the spirit of PixelJoint’s challenges, we have a similar “winner makes next challenge” stipulation attached.

We may have just started the Bead Sprite Challenges, but I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of a beautiful string of custom bead sprites, crazy interpretations of gaming icons, and whatever else the future of insane nerd-craft holds. We are still in the midst of voting for our favorite submisson to “Challenge 01 – RPG Yourself!“, given by me to kick things off, but the responses are great. The members love it, and so do spammers – it seems we’ve been in excess of bot signups and porn ads in our topics, but myself and the other Admins are doing our best to clean things up.

Ten entries came in for “RPG Yourself!”, so I thought I’d share them with you. The challenge was to use an existing RPG character as a base to design your own. As a general rule, whoever gives the challenge is not allowed to participate, so I did not enter. I did, however, decided to RPG Myself for fun since I liked the idea well enough (it was my own after all), which you will find pictured above, at the beginning of this post.

Check for the official entries after the jump!

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I can prove it.

(This is also just an excuse to post some more pictures of him)