Turning Games into Art #EQ2

It comes as no surprise to those who know me that as the winter months approach I tend to game a little less, and get involved in crafts a little more. One hobby I have is cross-stitching which is a counted-thread embroidery where you make images using nothing but a collection of little X’s in different colours onto aida cloth. I’ve been doing these for as long as I can remember, my Mom got me involved and she has been doing them for as long as I can remember, creating some absolutely amazing crafted pieces. It takes a lot of time, but in the end well worth it.

I recently obtained an aida afghan from her, it’s a series of panels that you can cross stitch images onto to create a finished afghan product. She gave me a pattern of cats that seems really nice but it’s not really for me. It got me thinking, could I perhaps create my own patterns and hence my own personalized afghan using in-game screen shots that reflected my different game and character choices.

There are numerous programs out there that will take your photographs and turn them into printable cross-stitch patterns. They relate each colour to a floss type (DMC is a regular brand and easy to find in any craft store) and print out a grid where each colour is represented by a symbol. I figured that screen shots are bound to have less colour than a photograph, and if I adjusted the shots in photoshop first to reduce the number of colours that the program would have to process, that would be even easier.

Pictured above is one of my results. It’s a cross-stitch pattern for my Fae in EQ2. The grids are hidden and it’s zoomed out so you can see the over all effect, but it turned out pretty well. I think I would want to ignore the background unless I really wanted a complex image. This one in particular was a screen shot reduced to 50 colours in photoshop, and then adjusted to 200 thread colours in the pattern program I’m using. I could have easily switched this to any number of floss colours but wanted to use the most I could for maximum effect of this post in specific. 200 colours would be an incredible amount to work with – but it really does give the best options as far as keeping your details go.

I’m pretty excited. Of course it’s a lot of work to find screen shots I want to use and then adjust them all so that they’re optimized to turn into a pattern. Concept art seems to work best, and games with bright vibrant colours. I posted some one twitter last night that I had created for World of Warcraft, and Wizard101. As for my afghan I thought perhaps creating a panel collection of each of the EQ2 epic weapons would be neat (and completely geeky). I thought SOE released some concept art of each weapon just before they came out in game, I’ll have to see if I can’t find them.

Unfortunately you won’t see me selling these finished products any time soon since they are covered by copyright laws. I can’t make a profit from selling images of someone else’ property (which just makes sense). That won’t stop me from making them for myself and friends for personal use though and I’m really excited.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!