And so, 108 hours later, King Zora on his throne slowly mweeping along is complete. February 18 to April 28, we made it in our 10 week frame and finished by the end of April. Of course, as noted, it took a lot more hours than expected and we averaged almost 11 hours a week compared to our usual 7. Taking out the first two weeks when we did just stitch an hour a day, our average jumps to about 12 a week, which I believe. Pushing things a bit here at the end, we did 28 hours in 15 days, including about 3 hours today. But I was close to finishing and wanted to just push through and get it complete. And while The Artery is open today, the framer wasn't there, so I wasn't able to drop it off. So, that'll have to wait until Tuesday. But that's fine. It's done, we don't have to worry about it any more. Because I was pushing this one a bit, I was planning on taking a couple of days off this week anyway. This just gives us a chance at more of a breather, or more options when to start the next project.
Meanwhile, we can look back at all we've done with this one. Overall, pleased with how it came out. N64 graphics don't translate to stitching as well as NES ones, but we have King Zora, have his throne room. And I think speedrunners, especially those of Ocarina of Time, will get it. Pen there for scale and it amazed me taking the picture how small it is. We packed a lot into it 99x71 stitches. I think not stitching the text was the good call and I like how it almost stands out more because it isn't stitched. There was some white (couple different shades, actually) in King Zora's face, but we did stitch those to keep the texture and all the same. I tried signing in white over the top of the picture, but that wasn't working/looking good, so I took it out (which was a little tricky, trying not to undone the picture) and just signed it below the picture. Have to go back and see what I did for Twilight Princess since that was also all completely stitched.
As alluded to above, with one project done, we set our eyes to the next (see attached). Slightly modified screenshot from Flipull, a Japanese only puzzle game for the NES. You can see the sequence of the ending at
https://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/a/fli.htm including the shot I'm doing (didn't change much, other than tightening everything up to decrease the overall size of the picture). Not sure if our blob hero is trying to rescue his blob girlfriend, or impress her by solving all the puzzles, but either way, the two of them get to live happily ever after. It's a cute ending and has some good (bad?) Engrish, so perfect candidate for AGDQ 2025. Much smaller picture than King Zora, only 4 colors and much less to stitch, so expect this to take all of 2 or 3 weeks. And pressure is off because the marathon isn't until January.
And then, middle/end of May, we jump back to Minish Cap to finish that up this Summer. Know we're getting towards the end of that, but still have a couple of months to go. But it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that come August, we'll be jumping into our next Zelda project (Spirit Tracks, unless a super awesome Phantom Hourglass pattern comes into my possession near future)