A tale of two Samuses

Wait, what's the plural of Samus?  Samus'?  Samuses?  Samuii?

Whooooooooo boy has it been a while.  I think there were digital cobwebs and dust on these authoring tools I had to clear off.  Hey there! It's been a while.  I've been busy with Real Life Stuff™. Still employed by a certain fruit-themed technology company (we're very small I doubt you've ever heard of us) but in a new position that doesn't give me a ton of time to work on PixelBlock stuff, but I'm thinking real hard about getting back into the biz.

Anyway.

I had an itch to scratch, so I did the things and am writing this post.  Back when I first started doing this, I had priced out the cost of PixelBlocks vs. LEGO, for a few reasons:

1. LEGO obviously will survive us all.  Our great great great great cyber-grandoffspring will be playing with LEGO that will still fit on bricks centuries old.  PixelBlocks... might be dead any day now if they aren't already, but apparently you can still buy sets on Amazon for like $40 so who knows.  Having a medium that is discontinued certainly limits the options and possibilities for future art, so switching to a medium that will always be around seems like a smart move.
2. PixelBlocks are sure pretty to look at with back light, but without light streaming through them the colors don't quite pop as much.  They are translucent, vs LEGO's being mostly opaque.  Truer color representation in more light levels for LEGO.
3. Differing color palettes.  PixelBlocks doesn't really have a good representation of purple, there's really only one shade and it's very bright.  I've love a darker purple to go with dark blue and dark red.  I've had to throw out ideas I've wanted to build because I didn't have a good purple with which to build it in.

However it turns out LEGOs are actually more expensive than PixelBlocks, almost by a factor of two.  Maybe LEGO could cut me a break and give me a discount if I ordered in bulk?  LEGO 1x1 bricks cost 7¢ each, while PixelBlocks are around 4¢ each.  When you are building sets that number in the hundreds of pieces, it adds up!

Which brings us to this:

Clearly there are FIVE Samuses here, not two!

The two Samuses I speak of are the PixelBlock Samus and the LEGO Samus.  This is a comparison between them and a peek behind the curtain into my process.  I'm still considering going into LEGO in spite of the cost difference, maybe on a trial basis.  Maybe just for a piece that needs a whole buncha purple!

Above, Samus 1 is the original sprite image courtesy of Nintendo.  I doubt they willingly provided this anywhere and am relying on some sprite sheets that have probably been extracted from the game data.  Samus 2 and 3 are direct translations from the 16-bit color palette to my custom PixelBlocks (2) and LEGO (3) color palettes.  I had Photoshop do its dirty work on the original and what you see are the uncorrected results.  I don't love how dark orange and green her midriff is on the PixelBlocks result and the LEGO result has way too much brown in my opinion.  The Varia suit is Orange and Red, with some yellow underpinnings from the vanilla Power Suit.  It's not dark green or brown!  So I manually painted the original sprite with my custom palette by hand to achieve a different result that I like a whole lot better.  The LEGO piece is still a bit too khaki for my liking, I think I prefer the PixelBlocks color palette for Samus over the LEGO one.  It's harder to see the differences in detail when you are looking at the pixels in 1 to 1:

Here it is easier to see the Adjusted PixelBlocks Samus (4) looks closer to the Original Samus(1) than the Adjusted LEGO Samus (5) does.  However if I leave the green in her torso on 3 and pop her visor a bit, that might look decent too.

Samus has 847 pixels in her.  A PixelBlocks Samus would cost $33.88 in raw materials, while a LEGO Samus would cost $59.29.  You can't put a price on art, unless it is your hobby and you still need to feed your family.  That said, if someone wants a LEGO Samus around 18 inches tall I could happily build you one for $80.

That's all for now, if I get some inspiration I'll make some new pieces to showcase here.