Since my teaching load evolved this year to include some intro block coding, I’ve been playing with basic of game design so that I’ll be prepared for all the ideas the kiddoes will inevitably bring to those lessons. Here are some of the assets I whipped up for this simple pong-style game- I wanted to make them as low-key as the game itself!

Animations rework episode 3: Dagger Charge Attack. hold the ATK button to charge a mighty lunge attack.

https://www.instagram.com/ahighmentality/

been a while since I’ve animated some sprite stuff

Galar Pokemon sprites for PokeFarm Q!

not entirely a solo project, the other pfq art staff helped a lot too, bless them <3

Please do not use without permission!

This month, we continued to work on getting the Schedules v3 system implemented. It’s been a huge endeavor and there’s still much to do, but the to-do list is visibly shrinking, and man, does that feel good.

Pretty much all of the smaller tasks are now in the “done” pile. Three large tasks remain:

1. Finish all the new poses sprites needed (60%ish?)
   
2. Finish updating the dialog/interaction system to use new character pose/location flags (30%ish?)
   
3. Implement the character events on the game maps. (not started)
   

The first two are what I’ve spent most of November on. The sprites above show a sampling of poses done by me and @lsdoiphin​ (who is busy with finals right now but will be done in a couple weeks, ready to rejoin me and tag team the rest of the spriting to-do list). As you can see, these little cowboys are very busy and have a lot of hobbies. It’s a lot of work, but we hope it’ll make the town feel lively and exciting to explore!

The third item on the to do list can’t really be started until the sprites are done.

I’ve been working hard. Admittedly I’m a little bummed that the beta won’t be out before the end of the year–I was really hoping to make that work, but even spending a huge chunk of my free time on this, it can’t move as fast as I want it to. It’s definitely a lot easier to complete a huge project when you’re not also working full time, hah. u_u

Anyway, though, realistically speaking, I think it’s going as fast as it can. I’m really looking forward to finishing these huge slow tasks and having more to share with you guys.

See you in 2021!

We have release the old “Ninja Adventure” asset pack on our Itchio page, you can make a donation if you like it and if you wish to have more content related to this pack, thanks!

https://pixel-boy.itch.io/ninja-adventure-asset-pack

I was a fan of the Archie era TMNT and wanted to make a picture of the turtles in their Stump Wrestling costumes but decided to try my hand at pixal/sprite art with downloading the Sprite art for Tmnt tournament fighters for SNES

Happy thirty-fourth anniversary to Mega Man, who will personally see Dr. Wily’s world-ruling schemes through to their ends as he fights for everlasting peace! … or, uh, was it fighting to save the world?

I REALLY wanted to make something far more extravagant for Mega Man’s anniversary this year, but given what I had made last year paired with how busy the first half of December’s been, I decided to opt for something a little simpler.

It isn’t quite a wallpaper (It can be if you crop it to your liking), though here is a sprite piece I whipped up of the crew from the original Mega Man on the NES (Guest starring Mega Man? from Mega Man Powered Up) in one big epic battle!

Of course, we all know who will prevail, don’t we? Here’s to another year of fighting for… well, take your pick!

Hi everyone! I’m back yet again with another lengthy design deep-dive post, this time having to do with Override! It’s been a short while since I’ve discussed anything Override related, and since I’ve been wanting to talk about it and its cast of characters again for quite some time, I settled on the perfect topic: how its main character designs have evolved over the course of two years!

Since I first unveiled Override as a concept to my tumblr (Which you can find linked in the paragraph above), a good few touch-ups have been made to all four protagonists— including a complete redesign of Casey! Check it out!

I find that the differences in design are most prevalent with Casey, though effectively, the remaining three have also had pixel-perfect alterations made to their sprites. I’m also just now realizing that this is the first time my followers are getting to see their default sprites, something I’m very much acquainted to by this point.

Below, you will find not only explanations as to what’s changed for each character’s design, but also their full design timelines (And developmental names!) which includes sprites I made for Casey and Lauren back in 2019! Without further adieu, let’s get into it, because we’re in for a long ride!

As I’ve mentioned in Override’s two year anniversary post, Override was once a completely different concept entirely compared to what it is today, and given this, each member of the chosen four have had quite a rollercoaster ride in just about every aspect of their design, be it their looks, name, or personality.

And who better to start with than Casey?

Casey was originally going to be named either ‘Weston’ or 'Colton’ early on in back when the project was called MOTHER: Into the Unknown, but 'Casey’ was settled to be his final name once I drew him for the first time.

As you can see above, the tried and true Earthbound 'striped shirt and shorts protagonist’ combo in Casey’s design was used to its fullest since day one. At first, I wanted him to have a red shirt with orange stripes, but after noticing this made him look too similar to Lucas, it was changed to a blue shirt with cyan stripes.

Fun fact: Casey’s dull brown hair color and the color scheme of his shirt for a while were in direct reference to one of Lucas’ Smash Bros. alternate palettes, which was where I got the inspiration from (Plus, blue is my favorite color)! He was going to have red shorts as well, but that was much too on the nose.

Casey’s scarf also went through a few color changes! I think the reason it was white in the first design was just for placeholder reasons, though I recall it being red for a little while before I switched into yellow for two reasons: one, the color yellow is associated with both optimism and cowardice (Both being big personality traits of Casey’s), and two… well… this guy.

Lastly, let’s touch on Casey’s most recent design. Because Override is now its own entity separate from the Earthbound continuity, I wanted to opt for a design that was… more of my own, if that makes sense. I ended up giving him a long sleeved light cyan shirt with blue sleeves, referencing his previous design, as well as completely redrawing his hair so that it wouldn’t be too spherical.

Now, how would you react if I told you that Casey’s design timeline has the least number of sprites?

Enter Lauren, who I’ve given the distinction of having the second most changed design since her first version! My original vision of Lauren was to have her be more of a 'girly girl’ type (Look where that ended up lol), and while she had several preliminary names, the only ones I distinctly remember are 'Madison’ and 'Hannah’.

Because I didn’t bring it up in Casey’s section, you might notice that Lauren’s sprite style changes drastically by the third design, opting for a bigger sprite with room for more detail. Early on in, this visual style lined up with Oddity’s quite a bit, and became its own thing soon enough (Plus, Override’s character sprites have four pixel tall eyes. Big difference.).

For like a very brief while, Lauren’s color of choice was a mint green, though that was swapped out for a shade of orange quite fast. I also wanted Lauren to have a bow, kind of like what Paula wears in Earthbound, and I also wanted her to wear a dress… before long, I realized I had just designed another Paula.

So, the dress aspect of the design had to be changed, but I first wanted to see if I could hammer out a good hairstyle for her, which doesn’t come into full effect until the third-to-last sprite. Lauren eventually began to sport her trademark ruby red color, and instantaneously after that change, she switched out the dress for something marginally less lady-like; a t-shirt and overall combo.

By now, Lauren’s 'nine-year-old tyrant’ personality was beginning to take shape, and while her overall design was her final design for a while, I then remembered that Override takes place early on in the year, so it might make a little more sense to have her dress in something warmer (Like how Casey gained a sweater)!

Thus, Lauren was given her standard jacket, as well as keeping the pink shirt aspect of the previous design! I find that Lauren had the smallest amount of changes between the Override reveal post and this one, as all I did were give her the little hood pullies and a hood for her jacket.

And that’s a wrap for Lauren! You know how I said that Lauren had the second most changes to her design since her initial concept? Well, do you want to know who couldn’t keep a consistent design for the live of him for the longest time?

Bradley.

With a whopping eleven different design sprites, it took me an extremely long time to settle on how I wanted Bradley to look, as well as who Bradley is as a character. Named 'Oliver’ originally, his design didn’t start making the rounds until I had started to round out the designs for Casey and Lauren.

Initially, I envisioned Bradley as more of a 'social outcast’ type (Much more so than his present version, funnily), though I also wanted him to be kind of a nerd type who plays video games a lot and does well in class, but I also wanted him to be a 'cool guy’ character who would skateboard everywhere… oh, boy, this wasn’t going to be easy.

Bradley, for a while, wore glasses, as a subtle nod to the glasses Jeff wears in Earthbound: the only difference being that you could actually see Bradley’s eyes. Jeff was a big inspiration for Bradley’s character, too, seeing as both were blonde (At one point), had glasses (At one point, again), wore green (At some point) and didn’t use magic.

It was when I did away with his glasses that his current design began to form. I briefly brought back the hoodie his first design has before giving him a red dress shirt with a black overshirt jacket (Though the hoodie was repurposed for his best friend’s design, who ended up looking a lot more like how I first wanted Bradley to).

I then tested out a different palette for his new outfit by making the overshirt jacket green and trying out a long-sleeved black shirt underneath, and since that design change, Bradley was pretty much finished, save for small changes from then on (Such as his military dog tag necklace).

His current design changes two things from his previous design: one, I finally got his hair how I wanted it to look— noticed best by his bangs and the addition of a cowlick— and two, he now sports an undershirt like this, which I find has a particular 'late 90s/early 2000s’ feel to it.

As for Bradley’s character, it was eventually decided he would be a mix of the personalities I wanted to give him: he’s mostly known as an unassuming and awkward teenager, but also likes skateboarding and playing video games. With perhaps the most design-intensive character out of the way, let’s move on to our last but certainly not least team member…

MacKenzie! Oddly enough, I’m pretty sure MacKenzie was like the second character I began to think of ideas for. In the Into the Unknown days, my basic idea was for her to be the standard 'early 2000s gothic girl’ without going too overboard in terms of the usual dark and complex clothing.

She was named 'Destiny’ at the start, but I then changed her name to 'Kenzie’, as it better fit the era Override takes place in… but then I felt like Kenzie was too feminine of a name for the type of character I was aiming for, so she was promptly renamed to MacKenzie thereafter.

MacKenzie is noteworthy for having her first design line up pretty closely to her current design, though plenty of changes were made in-between. She started out with an extremely basic, placeholder look: a jean jacket, deep red shirt, black pants… boom. MacKenzie. However, for a while, MacKenzie had two things the current MacKenzie does not: a hair bow, which has a crescent moon in the middle, and bright pink wrist sleeve braces.

Most of her early sprites were focused primarily of detailing her first sprite, while experimenting some with color choices. Somewhere down the line, though, a humorous idea came to mind— what if she carried an entire stop sign for a weapon? I had wanted MacKenzie to be more of a masculine type of girl, similar to MOTHER 3’s Kumatora, so it was a perfect addition to her design!

For a little while, the sprite where she first has the stop sign was her current design, before I tried out giving her the black jeans I had initially drawn her with. I liked the design, though I felt that it was a little lacking, like it was missing something… maybe if I gave her different headwear?

Her crescent moon bow was replaced with a black snapback with a purple brim (That’s why MacKenzie is always represented with a purple color, by the way!), and I saturated her jean jacket a bit so it wouldn’t be so flat. She also now wears a black wrist sleeve brace (Though it could also be a Psiometer… up to interpretation!) on one of her arms, as a nice callback to her starting design.

Thus, MacKenzie’s design was complete! … or, so I thought. It was when my good friend @minxxikuo took a huge liking to MacKenzie and began to draw her that I found that I really like how he portrayed her. Knives’ portrayal of MacKenzie featured a shorter hairstyle that juts out to the side a bit, as well as giving her all kind of earrings.

We ended up agreeing that this interpretation was now canon, and the only other addition I made that you can find in her latest sprite— which is an extremely easily missed detail, mind you— is the addition of two little pins to the front of her jean jacket. Oh, also, her stop sign has a dent in it now, implying… previous melee use.

Well, I think that’s about everything! This post ended up being much longer than I expected it to be, but knowing a good few of my followers do like when I get lengthier insights to whatever I make, I’m not sweating it too much! I hope that you’ve enjoyed this deep dive of the Override cast’s designs— these four have come a long way!

It was bound to happen sooner or later, though after extensive work and a close eye for attention to detail, I’ve created promo artwork for the Deltarune AU @itsactuallyreigh and I have been working on, DarkLight: Parallel Worlds, based off of the artwork Deltarune uses in its file select menu!

(And there’s quite a tale behind its creation, too, of which you can find a deep dive and additional insight for underneath the cut— concept art included!)

Since Reigh and I began talking about creating a Deltarune about a month or so back, we knew that at one point we wanted a version of the one piece of Deltarune art featuring Kris, Susie and Ralsei beholding a behemoth of a billowing, blue dark fountain (Unintentional alliteration + 100).

The only difference being, naturally, that in place of the usual three heroes of the Delta Rune legend, it would instead feature the DarkLight trio: Reigh,Micah, and— a character that a lot of the Deltarune fandom could argue deserves much more lore relevance— Rouxls Kaard.

I mean, how hard could it be, right? Said artwork is entirely sprited, and if you know me, I’ve quite a history in pushing my spriting expertise to the limit… though, let’s take a closer look at the original’s sprites.

Upon closer inspection, the silhouettes of Deltarune’s trio are not only shaded a very specific way, but also have parts of their outfits flowing valiantly in the wind. The more I began to look at it up close, the more I wasn’t sure if I had the skill to make something of this caliber for DarkLight— I even would have to sprite the trio from the back!

Though, I didn’t want to conclude that it couldn’t be done, not without at least giving it an attempt. Really, all I needed to do was sprite DarkLight’s trio of the legend, as I already had a good, pixel-perfect asset of the fountain itself. So, I took to MS Paint and hastily drew out what the end result would look like.

Key word: Hastily.

As it turns out, it was easier than I thought it would be whipping up silhouettes of the cast by mouse, though I knew for certain that I would have to add a lot more details and accurate shading if I were to attempt a final version.

It was at this point that I discovered a sneaky trick that would, effectively, give me silhouettes that would actually look good, and from then on, all I’d need to do is shade them. The trick in question? Just upscale their overworld sprites, redraw them as solid black silhouettes, and flip them horizontally!

It worked out a lot better than I thought it would, too, and all that was left to do was heavily reference the shading style of the original. I noticed that, in the original art piece, the upper halves of Susie and Ralsei are at a very slight angle— it’s easier to see with Susie, as you’ll notice her jacket is flowing mostly to the left, so I’d have to account for that for Micah and Rouxls.

So, I got to work in shading. It was during this process that I made the realization that I would have to draw in some details so that the silhouettes would look better, most notably, having Rouxls holding his hands behind his back (Which, as any artist who’s drawn said pose from the front, is nowhere near as easy from the back).

Here’s what the fruits of my labor yielded! Eagle-eyed observers may notice that Rouxls’ coat flaps are drawn differently than the original silhouettes so that they look a bit more flowy (Rouxls Kaard fanatics may also notice that his whole design looks a bit different, and the reason behind that is… well… Reigh fixed it!).

This was quite a fun little project to work on, and it won’t be the last time you’ll see this art in action, either, though more on that in due course… in the meantime, I hope you’ve found my sprite process for this piece to be fascinating because I’m REALLY proud of it!!

This past weekend, a small teaser video I made was uploaded by my good friend @itsactuallyreigh for a Deltarune AU they and I have been working on called DarkLight: Parallel Worlds, and let me tell you, the entire process of batting ideas back and forth so far has been nothing short of a thrill!

We knew early on in that we wanted DarkLight’s protagonists to feature self-inserts of ourselves (You can check out Reigh’s right here!), and I found that to be the perfect opportunity to use my fursona as my respective Deltarune self-insert as well as getting to design a Dark World variation for him, too! And after working meticulously to sprite my fursona in Deltarune’s spriting style…

I can finally show him off!!

I had Micah’s Light World design (Pictured on the left) designed long before I had even played Deltarune (Because… well, he is just my fursona), so having his base design ready when going in to sprite him in Deltarune’s style made the process very easy.

However, what I didn’t have was a clear idea on what I wanted his Dark World design to look like. There isn’t necessarily a consistent theming in terms of the Lightner’s Dark World designs; sure, I supposeKris’ armored statureandRalsei’s wizard-esque outfit kinda leans more toward a fantasy approach… but then we have Berdly, who is clearly just Falco Lombardi.

After some thinking, I had an idea— what if I were to combine design aspects of select video game characters into Micah’s Dark World design? It was an idea that seemed sound enough to work, so I began to look toward some of my favorite video game characters for influences.

Perhaps the most obvious design aspect I I took inspiration from is Micah’s shoulder cape, which some of my followers may recognize as being near-identical to Clairen’s. I can’t help the fact that the panther wife has such a cool cape, and I wanted Dark World Micah to have one, too!

Micah’s Dark World design also features a chestplate and arm gauntlets that are heavily inspired by the armor of Shovel Knight, and while it’s not exactly prevalent in sprite form, I based his boots off of the boots you see in the Mega Man franchise, namely that of Mega Man’s own!

Lastly, you might notice a very specific coloring throughout the design. If you look specifically at the scarf, chestplate and boots… his color scheme draws inspiration from the Bi flag! This was an idea that I had when beginning to outline the sprite, and I’m STILL surprised I managed to get it to look good!

And, as per most of my recent sprite posts, here is the design process I went about when spriting Micah’s Light World variant! You can see a lot of the early steps involve outlining the head, and then once the torso comes in, you can see the exact moment when I shrank everything to be appropriately sized. I was able to get him to be two pixels smaller than Susie’s sprite!

At some point later this month, I’m hoping to draw out his Dark World design so you can get a better idea of what the smaller details look like, but for now, I hope that you’ve enjoyed the spritework and insight on the design process!

Happy third anniversary to Mega Man 11, the blue bomber’s triumphant return since Mega Man 10, which released eight years prior! I’ve mentioned in a previous ask that Mega Man 11 is not only tied with its predecessor as my favorite Mega Man game, but it’s also a contender in a three-way tie for my favorite video game ever— and for good reason!

Mega Man 11 is noteworthy for a variety of reasons, but for me, I feel like its strongest point is staying true to the classic Mega Man formula while trying enough new things to form its own identity. More or less, it’s like a modernized NES Mega Man, with the addition of a game-changing mechanic, a solid team of voice actors, and perhaps the most expressive robot master line since Mega Man 8!

Speaking of the eleventh line of robot masters, back in March I began making posts that showcased the eight robot masters of Mega Man 11 sprited into an NES-esque style. The posts were certainly way more well-received than I thought they would be, and they were a whole lot of fun to make!

Anyone who’s been keeping track of said posts, however, knows that there’s still two robot masters left to be seen sprited, those robot masters being Blast Man and Impact Man. Really, the biggest reason I haven’t gotten around to making posts for them yet is because of both bosses’ backgrounds (Especially Blast Man’s) have a lot of detail in them, and it’s been really hard trying to get them to look right.

But with the anniversary of Mega Man 11 finally upon us, I didn’t want to keep any of my followers waiting for any longer for the last two bots of the lineup, so I figured what way to show them off…

… than showing the entire line all together!

While I still feel a little bad about not having sprited demakes for the boss rooms of Blast Man and Impact Man yet, the arrival of Mega Man 11’s release date made for the perfect opportunity to get around to showing their respective sprites since I have had both done for quite a while! With that, let’s start with the robot master who was originally going to be next in line to be showed off… Blast Man!

Blast Man is unique in a way that he bears a more simplistic design (In a similar vein to Fuse Man and Block Man) while still having just a touch of the modern design influences that the rest of the lineup has. However, he still has a lot of cool features that aren’t really explored a whole lot, such as his tri-button torso piece and his segmented boots, which I find to be really neat!

To make up for the lack of backgrounds for both Blast and Impact, I’ve made gifs showcasing the process I took in making their sprites as I’ve been doing for my more recent sprite posts! The biggest challenge in spriting Blast Man for me was accounting for the smaller details on his armor, as well as nailing his red headpiece, which I found was detrimental if I wanted his overall sprite to look good.

Another small detail I wanted to account for was Blast Man’s skin tone— there are a lot of Blast Man sprites out there that portray him with the same skin tone as most of the other vaguely humanoid robot masters, which I always found to be off-puttingly inaccurate. I made absolutely certain that this was something I would correct with my 8-Bit interpretation!

And with the ins-and-outs of Blast Man’s sprite design process done and out of the way, now we can move onto the last robot master of the pack, who I regard as being my favorite of the eight…

BEHOOOOOOOLD!!! IMPACT MAN!!!

The overall design of Impact Man is an interesting one; I remember when I first saw him that I thought his yellow/orange color scheme was just how he was shaded, but as it turns out, that’s actually a component of his design. I also didn’t really understand the spike on his head until we got around to seeing his full-body… though now knowing that he’s made up of the Impact Brothers, it’s a really cool design approach!

Impact Man’s hulking size resulted in a particular challenge when I got around to spriting him. A lot of the Impact Man sprites out there fall in under two categories: they’re either accurate to Impact Man’s design, but are much too small, or they keep his size in check, and as a result doesn’t necessarily have that Mega Man feel to it.

Perfectly striking a balance between the two was an astronomical feat, too. The biggest thing I wanted to make sure my sprite of Impact Man had were those classic ‘robot master eyes’, and from there I would sprite the rest of him as accurately sized as I could manage, all while still having him be smaller than Bounce Man.

Color choice was also very important, too! My original Impact Man sprite from 2018 used seven colors, and my version from 2019 had six colors like the present version above, though the color I swapped out for the latest version was a shade of grey so I wouldn’t have to color every dark section of him a solid black.

It feels so wonderful to finally get to show off all eight of my sprite demakes of the robot masters from Mega Man 11, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed them and the processes in making them that I detailed! I do intend on spriting out backgrounds for Blast Man and Impact Man when I get some more practice, but for now, here’s to another year of the Double Gear!

All Kris had to do was follow Susie to the supply closet to retrieve some chalk, yet moments later, they’re a mere twenty-four hours away from the worldwide reveal of Charles Feldman’s Y2K plan.

(Context and a better look at the sprites under the cut!)

I initially didn’t plan on making an entire post for this, but given the effort that went into it (Even if it looks identical to the source material at first glance), I figured it was worthy of showing on my main blog!

As of a few days ago (As a result of my good friend @minxxikuo being a big fan of it and with the veryrecent release of Chapter Two), I decided to give Deltarune a go, and man am I glad that I did. It may have been a good five years since I’ve even touched anything having to do with Undertale, yet Deltarune does enough differently from its predecessor that it’s a whole new experience entirely!

Though, my experience with Deltarune so far isn’t necessarily the point of this post (Though you can find similar insight in the tags). Rather, once I discovered that there was a meme where Kris and Susie find themselves in varying media that isn’tDeltarune (Much to Susie’s frustration), I just had to make a contribution to it.

And what better way to do that than by putting the human and monster duo in the world of Override— specifically, this scene? I went into the creation of it knowing only Knives and whoever else I decided to show it to would understand it to its fullest, though it ended up looking so good that I decided I ought to post it!

The original Deltarune sprites are featured on the left, whereas my Override-styled interpretations are on the right side! Kris was particularly easy to draw a sprite for, the only thing that was challenging for them was trying to match their body type to their original sprite, as well as stylizing their hair.

I was anticipating spriting Susie would be a muchmore daunting task (Because of her overall design coupled with the fact that I had to redraw a veryspecific frame of her), though resizing the sprite just a notch and adding some finer details (Like the pocket on her jacket, the belt loops on her pants and a whole ton of shading) made the process much easier.

Then, there was the fact that I had to recreate the general scene where Lauren’s out investigating the SGN-DRN crash— really, I still had all of the sprites, the toughest thing about the recreation was getting the lighting (Which I didn’t have on-hand) to look as identical as possible to the original. Suffice to say, I think I got pretty close!

For a joke I only intended on showing a couple of people, I’m still really proud of it, and am happy to have put my spriting smarts to good use for such a creative meme!

Around the end of November last year, I unveiled a full set of robot masters that I had designed for my very own faux Mega Man game, Mega Man Ultimate! At first, I was a little nervous in showing off my fanmade robot masters, but to my surprise, they were a big hit— I was not expecting the Synergon Legion bots to be so well-received!

In the first post I’ve linked, I mentioned that I’ve been designing robot master OCs since mid-2013, though ended up becoming super reclusive with them since a lot of them were subject to extreme ridicule, despite the fact that none of them were meant to be on the same level as official ones.

However, there was one particular bot in the very first lineup of robot masters that I designed which stood out the most, in that he actually looked like he belonged in a Mega Man game. Granted, his design was still particularly lacking, but I held him in a high regard.

And after designing a full set of robot masters that all look official in one way or another, I figured that it was high time that I revisit said favorite robot master OC of mine and give him a big redesign with my newfound robot master design smarts. Enter…

SDN-001:Stellar Man

Height: 5'11"
Special Weapon: Crescent Boomerang
Good Point: Confident
Bad Point: Tends to overwork himself

Stellar Man is the rank of general of the Space Surveillance Network. As the head of the astral agency, he works tirelessly to ensure that the space station he mans is always within perfect working order. He specializes in the design of numerous spacecrafts and space stations, and has a major soft spot for all things astrology, spending most of his free time studying star patterns and galaxies.

When he’s doing battle with a threat from beyond the SSN’s parsec (Namely a certain Mega Man), Stellar Man utilizes his zero gravity mobility and his signature weapon: the Crescent Boomerang, a cross between the Metal Blade and the Rolling Cutter. With an iconic weapon, a well-regarded reputation and an absolutely out of this world look overall, he’s a real star, man!

(Design and sprite process below the cut!)

At last, Stellar Man makes his debut on my blog! I’ve actually had Stellar Man’s general design around since before I even had any of the Mega Man Ultimate robot masters up on tumblr, so this appearance was a long time coming!

When I set out to design him, one of the biggest things I wanted out of his design was to have him look a lot like the Stardroids from Mega Man V. The Stardroids have some of the coolest design elements in Classic Mega Man’s history; even now, there’s nothing quite like them, in my eyes, and that was something I wanted to incorporate into Stellar Man’s design.

I also knew that I wanted him to have a unique helmet shape, but after combing through all of the robot masters and Stardroids, I couldn’t think of something that’d stand out. It was when I looked to the character designs of the X Series, however, that I found a few design aspects that I liked, and suddenly his design was blasting off!

Here is the step-by-step process I made when drawing Stellar Man’s sprite! Really, the toughest thing about taking the design and shrinking it down to sprite form was the helmet, as the jagged edges and the glass dome proved to be a challenge in sizing perfectly, but I’m really happy with how he ended up looking!

Also, can we talk about the stage select portrait I drew for him?! I’m fairly certain that it’s one of my absolute best portraits I’ve sprited, right up there with Strafe Man and Glitch Man! It originally started as a test to see how far I could go in spriting a robot master portrait without any preliminary sketching… and before I knew it, I had a full icon made. Talk about motivation!

I am REALLY proud of the sprites on display here and the overall design of Stellar Man, and I couldn’t wait to show them to my followers! I really hope you’ve enjoyed everything this post has to offer, and you can certainly expect to see more fanmade robot masters of mine in the future!

Ifone of my first few art posts on this blog is any indication, I love making sprite art. While I didn’t necessarily consider myself much of a sprite artist back when I first joined tumblr in April of last year, the progress I’ve made in improving upon what I could do with pixels since is considerable.

Up until very recently, however, most if not all of my sprite pieces were done in an 8-Bit visual style, seeing as NES-Styled sprites are the easiest for me to make— there’s just something so fun about working with limitations and seeing how few colors one could use to make a visually stunning sprite.

With this, the thought of attempting something in a 16-Bit visual style didn’t cross my mind for quite some time. I was convinced for a bit (Pun absolutely intended) that my skill in sprite art was limited to a faux NES visual style, though with the unveiling of Override a little bit ago, it was pretty clear to me that my skillset exceeded eight mere bits.

And to see if it really did, I wanted to challenge myself with a task: sprite something that looks like it’d fit right in with Mega Man 7 on the SNES, cartoony yet solid visual flair and all. At first, I wasn’t sure what I could attempt making a 16-Bit sprite of…

But a fellow practitioner of shovelry was all I needed for inspiration!

With a franchise like Shovel Knight bearing an iconic faux NES visual style, it was only a matter of time before fans began to wonder what the titular spade-spinner would look like with a double the bits, and because of this, quite a few SNES-esque iterations of Shovel Knight and company are out there.

My goal, however, wasn’t to create the definitive 16-Bit styled Shovel Knight. As I mentioned, I wanted to really take into consideration how Mega Man 7’s sprites looked in particular (I.E. size, colors, shading styles, etc.) and reference Shovel Knight’s original sprite to ultimately concoct an upgraded, SNES-ified Shovel Knight.

Keeping these limitations in check, I managed to draw a sprite of the blue burrower using only eleven colors in contrast to Mega Man’s twelve— a whole color less! At one point in the sprite’s creation, I used twelve colors, though swapped out a dark grey for a dark blue. It isn’t very often in my sprite posts that I provide a step-by-step process on how I go about spriting, though for this post…

I’ve made a gif of the process using the various pieces I had on my workspace! You’ll notice a few things change as the sprite is shaped, the most obvious to me are his legs, which go from a solid placeholder color to fully shaded and then fixed a bit in the span of a few frames.

My end result really does prove that I can sprite whatever I can set my mind to, doesn’t it? I was NOT expecting the turnout to look so clean and faithful to the style I was going for, and it was really fun making it! Perhaps in the future, I could try my hand at a 16-Bit King Knight, or even SNES-ifying some of my Mega Man robot master OCs! Until that happens, though, I hope you’ve enjoyed my deep dive into the creation of what Shovel Knight may have looked like in the mid-90s!

Even though it was just last month that I revealed it here on tumblr, two years ago on this very day— August 25th— was the day where Override was first conceived! Back in 2019, Override was immensely different than what it is today; at the time, it wasn’t even called Override, nor did it take place in a universe designed by my own hand per se.

By that, I mean that it originally took place in the Earthbound/MOTHER continuity (PSI powers included!) and, for the longest time, went by the name “MOTHER: Into the Unknown”. It would have been set directly after the events of Earthbound, and still retained its Y2K plot elements… loosely. Like I said, its story back then was a lotdifferent.

Though, more on pre-Override trivia for a future post. I was debating on whether or not I should post something to commemorate the two-year anniversary of Override’s creation… until I realized I still had a battle sprite to show off. So, as a nice continuation to Override’s first actual teaser…

… here’s what happens next!

When it came time to think of a few enemy types for Override, I knew that I wanted an enemy similar to that of the MOTHER series’ Starman, something that could come in a few different forms but ultimately be recognizable regardless of variation. And so, with a few sketches here and there…

I designed the SGN-DRN— the Synergon Drone! The Synergon Drone was created with two specific inspirations; the L'il UFO from Earthbound and a pinch of a Mega Man-esque aesthetic, combined with my usual character design philosophy. The Synergon Drone’s initial design sketch portrayed it to look a lot wider (You can see this version of the design in the original teaser), but was eventually slimmed down a bit.

And spriting the Synergon Drone was no picnic, either. I actually decided to start from scratch at one point when I had already drawn at least 40% of it because I knew that it could look a lot better with enough tweaking, and surprisingly enough, I pulled it off! A whole lot of colors were used in the Synergon Drone’s battle sprite, but that only makes it a lot more visually pleasing!

I also went ahead and not only sprited an overworld sprite for the Synergon Drone, but animated its rotors, too! On its own, this makes for a really solid gif, and I’m impressed with myself that I was able to cram all of its details into a much smaller, size-accurate overworld sprite!

The last thing I’d like to talk about are a few aspects of the battle screen that I sprited, featuring Lauren’s first (hostile) encounter with a piece of Synergon tech. There are a few things that you’ll notice are new in this battle screen compared to the last one, such as what it looks like when you’re laying out your attack strategy as well as an adorable sprite I made of Lauren deep in thought.

It was a whole lot of fun making this new battle screen against a Synergon Drone, though next time when I upload another mockup of an in-game screenshot, it will instead be an overworld scene where I’ll test out my skills in tilesetting. For the time being, I hope you’ve enjoyed the spritework as always!

In a previous post from the very start of this year, I went into detail regarding my love for the tenth installment of the Classic Mega Man series of games, as well as how spectacular a lot of that game’s robot master designs were (Even if most would disagree).

Even some of the more plain-looking robot masters of the bunch still appeal to me quite a bit, and if there’s one robot master from Mega Man 10 that wouldn’t look too out of place in an NES-Era Mega Man title, it’s probably Pump Man, perhaps one of the most underrated bots from Mega Man’s tenth outing.

In spite of being overshadowed by just about everybody else, he still has a lot going for him. In my opinion, Pump Man’s Water Shield is one of the best barrier weapons in the series, he has a really immersive stage theme (Reminds me a lot of Acid Man’s theme) and, while his stage takes place in a wastewater treatment plant, the stage itself has some really nice spritework.

Speaking of spritework…

I wanted to take a shot at spriting Pump Man myself, just like I did with Solar Man!

There’s a lot about Pump Man’s design that I really like— while fairly simplistic, his lanky, tubular arm shape is one of my favorite aspects of his (And even inspired the arms for Hydro Man) and he has a really cool buster (Even though we don’t see him using it in-game… though his true talent comes in using his pump handle)!

Some aspects of respriting Pump Man were actually a bit of a challenge. Take for example his large pump handle attached to his helmet— to me, that was one of the most important parts of the sprite to nail because it had to look perfect. His chest cannon and arms took a bit of experimentation in coloring though ultimately I love what I was able to come up with!

While I realize I still have two robot masters left in my ‘Mega Man 11 Resprited’ series, whenever I get done with that I’d like to resprite all of Mega Man 10’s robot masters since it’s one of if not my favorite game in the series; now that would be cool! For now, enjoy this resprite of Pump Man, as I loved giving a more underrepresented robot master some time in the limelight!