Glorious.

Pikachu here is made with 855 Perler beads (169 Black, 137 Light Brown, 326 White, and 223 Yellow)*. I went off of a Pokemon Green (not LeafGreen, mind you) sprite sheet I happened upon through Google Images. That's the reason why he's white, kids! And I know, I know, his cheeks are red, but the Pokemon sprites use only four colors. I'm kind of a purist sometimes. I omitted the electricity coming off since it was disconnected.

But what have I learned from this first project? A few things:
- A well lit work station is a good thing to have.
- My floor is brown. I know this because I dropped two times more brown pieces than the other colors combined.
- Tapping the board lightly will settle the beads into place.
- Shuffling the board around does the exact opposite.
- Diagonal pieces do not touch. This baffled and upset me for a full five minutes before I remembered basic geometry.
- Working from the outside in makes placing beads tough... even though it's how I prefer to build sprites.
- My fingers are a bit big. The beads are small. This is not a good combination.

Ironing was surprisingly easy. Pikachu used four pegboards but really only took up about one and a half. I made sure to get the pegboards out after I was sure they'd fused but before they'd cooled too much. Only his tail gave me problems; it was hanging on loosely by one pixel until I had ironed both sides. It's not perfect, but it's something!

Picture taken on a Motorla Razr.

*Numbers may be off. I hand counted.