So, about four to six inch pieces, most of them half the width of the blade and oddly shaped. Alright, I can do that.

As for fast, well... the lion's share of the work took me about two hours, give or take a bit, and was mostly focused on redrawing the outline. I used to do pixel art on a MUCH larger scale, back in the day. So yeah; lot of that you see there was done with a pencil or line tool. :) I can't take credit for the gradients though, those were all software tools (except for the aqua gem thing in the guard and the tip, which I have yet to find a satisfactory tool for).