Interview with Red Mage

Over the next week, I will be posting a few interviews that I have conducted with other bead artists.

Today's artist is Rob Hawks aka Red Mage.
He has done a challenge of 100 days of sprites where he created at least one bead sprite a day.
I hope you really enjoy my interview with him. I am very thankfully that he agreed to partake in my interview.

                    When and why did you start doing Bead Sprites?

I started doing beadsprites around the summer of ’09 because I loooove video games and had wanted to do them since I saw that they were even an option. Also Doctor Octoroc is a huge inspiration~

                       What has been your favourite project to do?

Oh man I did this giant Kuwabara sprite from a Yu Yu Hakusho game, I loved doing it because I really love Yu Yu Hakusho and several of my moral values were set up by Kazuma Kuwabara so it was a great thing to do a giant bead tribute to him!

             What has been the most challenging thing about beading that you have found so far?

Well waiting for the beads to show up is by the most annoying thing when it comes to beading ;_;

 Do you have any favourite coloured beads that you like to use?

Dark Blue, Periwinkle Blue, Light Blue, Pastel Blue. It’s the palette I use for the blue Pokemon sprites I do for my set of them :3 You can see those at beadregion.blogspot.com!

            Do you focus strictly on bead art or are you involved in making things from other mediums?

Oh man I do all sorts of art! I paint and just find reasons to do pixel art all the time, I once did a sprite on a chalk board at a restaurant :3

When people come to your house, is your creations posted around? If so, what are people's opinions of them?

My creations are all over the walls of my house, when people go into my bathroom they totally are like “oh snap” at the wall of Pokemon. My room is pretty much covered in beads and people know immediately what I do!

Do you prefer to make old school video game images, anime/cartoon or do you make images from other sources? 

 

I have no preference, I just like to bead <3

                       Why did you start doing Sprites a day?

I started doing Sprite A Day the moment I joined the Pixelgasm forum. I saw it as a challenge and I am definitely one who likes to set himself apart so I saw this as an opportunity to tell them forum what kind of bead spriter I am.

What has been the biggest challenge in regards to the 100 Sprites a day that you did?

 Running out of beads. I ran out of black a lot during the challenge, so I had to do a bunch of experimental things regarding colors and types of beads I used. Also: Digging through damned assorted buckets of beads.

You are currently embarking on another Sprite-A-Day, do you plan to try and excess the 100 sprites you made your first go?

I absolutely plan to pass 100 days with Sprite A Day+ HOPEFULLY THIS WORKS OUT.

What are the biggest number of sprites you made in one day?

I think it was around 12 sprites? The first 5 days of my initial Sprite A Day challenge I did 10 a day. So I think that was a pretty cool thing, I already had 50 sprites done by the end of the first five days!

                   Any tips for people, wanting to make sprites every day?

Just have a passion for it! I really enjoy posting a sprite a day, though it is stressful sometimes the fact that I have put myself in a position where I NEED to every day. Whenever I finished Sprite A Day the first time, I felt such relief not having to bead once I finished, of course, I still continued doing a sprite a day after I had retired from the challenge at day 100, but I didn’t post them as a part of the challenge. 100 is such a good number <3 So just have fun. JUST HAVE FUN.


Thank you Rob for the great interview. Now be sure to check out his website Sprite-A-Day for more of his daily work.
Thank you guys for checking it out!