Hi All
Its been a long while since I’ve made a spriting gallery thread. While I plan to continue posting my F2E sprites to the submission thread, I also will post them here alongside some non F2E stuff. I have drawn a lot of sprites over the last decade and a half and probably won’t post them all here, maybe mainly the more recent ones and ones of significance to me.
I’ll also post a little commentary and backstory to each of the sprites uploaded here as well. I won’t post commentary or the like on the submission thread.
I don’t usually accept requests (never accepted commissions because I see this as a hobby not a paying gig), mainly because my spare time isn’t entirely filled with spriting (I do other things outside of this) and that doesn’t usually line up with people’s deadlines etc.
I’ll divide my sprites into two categories below;
F2E and Observation Only, general rule of thumb with my stuff is OCs, plus a few other things can’t be used because they’re usually for other projects/ have some sort of personal investment/value to me or they’re unfinished and I don’t want people using unfinished stuff.
UPDATE: Further to this I have re arranged my post so clicking on one spolier won’t expand the size of this post in to oblivion… hopefully.
(P.S my understanding is F2E is more encompasing than F2U, so obviously things inside the F2E section are also F2U)
F2E
These have been posted to Repository Submission thread but if you like to read some commentary, this is where you will find it.
UPDATE: I’ve categorised things in a bid to reduce post size blow out.
Fire Emblem
FE PoR Ike
For Fire Emblem’s 25th Anniversary Yusuke Kozaki, the main artist for Awakening, Fates and the main FEH OCs did some really cool artwork of most o the main lords of the Fire Emblem series in general (in that one he did Radiant Dawn Ike). Later on he also did a PoR Ike who actually looked like Roy a bit, but I really liked the angle and design so I wanted to sprite that one rather than his pose used in FE9 which everyone else seems to sprite. Side note personally I don’t like tracing original art (eg tracing Ike from FE9 or FE10) to make my sprites, mainly because I try to keep proportions and style smilar to the GBA games which is I suppose my developed spriting style.
Its a little hard to tell from the insertion image but his hair severely limited his pose options and how wide or tall he could be in the hackbox.
FE Awakening Ephraim
Awakening had some DLC back in the day when it was thought to be the last Fire Emblem and basically the DLC was a culmination and celebration of Fire Emblem. Einherjar concept in Awakening was that you could summon select heroes/villains from all the past franchise titles to be your allies in Awakening which was cool. They later added special DLC Einherjar heroes who came with extra bonuses with special art (different artists) for Awakeing (Ike, Michiah, Roy, Celica, Alm, Eirika, Ephraim, Marth, Leif, Seliph, Elincia, Lyn, Katarina, Palla, Catria, Est) where they were wearing their awakening class outfits. I did do a Roy as well, but it didn’t turn out that great whereas I was really satisfied with this Ephraim.
FE PoR Black Knight
Not too much to say about this one, he is my favourite FE Villain. Basically giving you Darth Vader vibes the whole time with his own theme and slow unstoppable march to you. This is actually the 4th version of him I have sprited over the years. The main goal was to maintain his proportions and fit him into the hack box while also making sure his helmet looked physically correct sizing for a GBA character’s head.
FE Awakening Priam
If I’m a fan of Ike and Tellius, then most likely I am going to be a fan of his descendant Priam. This one was interesting to take on because his hair is kinda nuts and Awakening armour designs in general were even more crazy (toilet bowl cavaliers?) The gear collar guard thing was the most annoying thing about this sprite and is depicted smaller here than in Awakening. That and the colour limit.
FE Fates Xander
Xander is interesting, I personally prefer him over Ryoma, but I preferred playing Revalations (mainly because I liked different builds and parent combos with everyone, but RIP Scarlet) so take from that what you will. Looking at his design its not as loud and busy as Ryoma’s on initial look, however he had a lot of complexity himself. I had to get creative with the colours and his hair wasn’t easy to get down pat either. If you see the 2nd image I uploaded you will see how I utilised his colour pallette.
FE 3 Houses School Phase Bernadetta
Back in 2020 I did a Sprite-tober (basically an Inktober) where I did a sprite a day. She was one of those (yes this was done in one evening after work). Most of those ended up okay but she ended up being one of the better ones. If I went back, I would probably revisit her eyes mainly.
FE 3 Houses School Phase Marianne
I really like Marianne’s school phase hair design, I much prefer it over her war phase one. However the reason I did this was because I actually saw someone do a long hair edit of her Three Houses portrait and did that one first. Then doing her OG cut was just the next logical step. If I were to revisit this one, I’d probably re do her shoulders.
FE 4 Seliph
Similar to Ike above, he is also based on some art from Kozaki, however not quite as faithful to the pose. I also wanted to make this one more similiar to the Wada Sachiko styles of FE6, 7 and 8. Another part of Sprite-tober
FE PoR Petrine
One of my favourite designed villains from FE. Her shoulder pad caused me grief because I had to angle it down a bit, but it looks odd angled down. If I revist her, I may re do her clothing entirely again based on her FEH clothing instead.
FE 3 Houses Catherine
One of my favourite looking characters out of 3 Houses and to be honest I do like a lot of the faculty pf the church of Seiros. I like the interesting colouring of her hair, it was a dirty blonde unlike any other I had seen really depicted in Fire Emblem. Working out the colours for her sprite were fun and I think suited her really well. I am pretty proud of this one, definitely one of my cleaner sprites, probably being one of the more recent ones at the time of this update.
FE3 Houses Catherine GBA Swordmaster Battle sprite
A simple Catherine alt of the existing female swordmaster I made to go with the Catherine Portrait. I may do some edits and make an more complex alt animation for using Thunderbrand.
FE4 Lachesis
A Lachesis I did quickly in an evening for the a CCC submission, I looked at a few references for her and saw her and Eldigian are usually depicted with Gold or Red eyes, so I decided to try gold. If I would revist this, I’d probably re do her shoulders. On that note, her non TCG art armour doesnt make sense to me (wierd collar guard that rests on top of a shirt rather than a plate).
FE PoR/FEH Altina
When Altina was introduced into FEH I was estatic, because this was probably the first proper time to my knowledge we got a close up depiction of this badass of a swordswoman who wields both Ragnell and Alondite, both noted to require great strength and skill to wield (Ike’s description in Smash is noted that Ragnell is a two handed sword, which makes him wielding it one handed all the more impressive).
I like her design in FEH which is done by the Tellius main artist Kita Senri. Kita Senri (FE9&10), Wada Sachiko (FE6, 7 & 8) and Daisuke Izuka (FE11&12) are probably my favourite Fire Emblem artists, followed by Hidari(Gaiden Echoes) and Yusuke Kozaki (Awakening/Fates) and Soeda Ippei (FEH; Dorcas, Garon, Walhart, Arden, etc).
Shading dark shiny hair, is interesting and is quite different from standard Fire Emblem GBA hair colours, yet here we are. They always pose an interesting question on approach to me.
This was originally a Sprite-tober sprite, however the original results were vastly different to this that I spent much more time than the other ones cleaning it up.
FE4 Lester
A ways back (I was going by Kai Shiden as a username at the time) Arch made a call out for assistance for his ambitous FE4 Advance hack. It looked really impressive and he had this massive character sheet that basically was a hit list for spriters to trying and submit mugshots for. I submitted for Leptor, Byron, Lex and Lester. Ultimately I think only my Lex and Lester got accepted, and of those Lex was rightly so re done by The Blind Archer since that Lex was not that great. Lester however I was really proud of and it was probably for the longest time one of my better done custom mugshots. I decided to revist it recently and clean it up and put it out there for everyone because FE4 Advance obiviously isnt going to use it and I only ever made the mugshot for someone else’ use so why not put it out there.
In the past I have contributed to many projects, but I think to be honest only TLP was the only one to my knowledge that ever got completed, but who know? maybe I should search up what happened to those old hacks like Decay of the Fang.
FE5 Olwen
Trying to balance Olwen’s colours was a struggle, I’m impressed sometimes with how much colour some characters get and utilise, but I find using whites/light colours in clothing and in hair usually take up the most colour slots in a mug, so you always need to get creative with the rest of the colours.
I do like Friege siblings with Reinhardt being the Camus of Thracia. Also helps I like both of their designs from FEH, although cuboon does sometimes go a bit overboard with the curves, but I like the way they do their colours and shading.
FE 12 Marisha
This was a mugshot made for a CCC contest with this one, I wanted to try and make a balance between her grey/silver hair colour in her old art vs the blue from her in game art. Her hair ended up especially shiny.
FE 11/12 Athena
Another mugshot made for a CCC contest. I see most people try to replicate her base pose where she looks rather front on (actually is very front on in most of her official arts (including heroes). I have come to notice when looking at her other arts for reference, none of the artists really agree on how the back of her hair works with the ponytail/s.
FE 7 Erik
This mugshot was made for a CCC contest, I had an idea to repose Erik (his head is angled more akin to Valter and Linus, rather than his base and older look. His look shifted from being sneaky/conceited to a more braver look. His armour is a cross between his father’s armour and his FE6 one. Was actually how suprised with how into making this mugshot I got.
FE 6 “Brave” Klein
This was a CCC submission. I wanted to try a more dynamic pose for this mug and decided to try Klein out in his Father’s clothing. Using a heavy use of the border colour for the black of his clothes was more to stay in line with how both of them use the border colour for the blacks in their clothing in their original games. That and also I hit the color limit quickly with using blonde and white (usually these use 4 shades). While showing a friend this mug in progress they mentioned he looks a lot like Link and now that they said that I can’t unsee it.
FE 4 Zane
This was a CCC submission. Ah generic Geneology Brock of Agustria, I made his design based on some ideas from his generic portrait and his manga appearance. The scarf, head and collar are based on his generic appearance and his front button up, cloak and the idea for epaulets came from the manga. The manga had tassles off the epaulets but I find tassles either hit or miss and the metallic shading they ended up with I think looks good without tassels.
FE14 (Fates) Arete
This was a CCC submission. One of my favourite designed characters to come out of Fates. She had this air of superiority and refinement in that game with the way she carried herself in her artwork. Then FEH gave her a wierd face and demeanor. I had to get creative with the colour pallette for this one but overall was quite pleased with how this came out.
FE 13 (Awakening) - Kjelle
I’ve done it, I worked out how to beat Kozaki’s Awakening Knight Armour into a hackbox. Kozaki has nice character designs, but some of his armour designs are pretty on the extreme side. This was fun to tackle and I had to do it in layers. First doing her under armour then doing her shoulderplate collar guard thing. Honestly however I don’t think you could fit Kellam as easily in a traditional box since Kjelle is shorter than he is. In fantasy settings in general I am a sucker for cool and intricate shoulder pad designs ala Warhammer and Warcraft, in fact I do have a history in tackling another extreme shoulder pad set (Varian Wrynn).
FE 3 Houses - Manuela
Manuela from Three Houses, a fun character who interestingly is classed as an assasin if fought against post timeskip. I thought it would of been cool if you could of made her a dancer in the game although I suppose double dancer/singer could be broken. Although to be honest Three Houses was already pretty broken with the reclass system. Again like I mentioned in the Catherine commentary, I am a fan of most of the Seiros Faculty Manuela included. Can be sultry, cheeky and still a loser in love, demonstrating why in the game quite well.
+Winking Alt
Also formatted an alt of her winking as well for regular insertion
FE 14 Fates - Ryoma
A CCC submission. I think one of the coolest characters designed by Kozaki, that lion’s mane of hair is crazy. I decided if I wanted to try and fit it into the hackbox I had to make his pose face towards the screen more so you could shift the volume of the hair to more behind him. Still was a fun challenge to sprite.
I also did in addition to his Crown Hoshidan Prince garb I did a alt in the Crown Nohrian Prince clothing (Xander’s) and just for fun because of his hair, I also did an SSJ (Super Saiyan) colouring of his hair (it wasnt quite a 1 to 1 recolour because some of the colours didnt quite fit).
+Ryoma Nohrian Alt
+Ryoma (SSJ), Ryoma Nohr (SSJ)
FE 14 Fates - Hinoka
Also another CCC submission. I actually prefer Hinoka over Camilla of the sisters, although to be honest both of their intro cutscenes are ridiculous for different reasons (Camilla fanservice overload and Hinoka spear-copter). She has quite the volume in her head of hair. I think its interesting that her design wasnt originally meant be for the princess and that Kagero’s was going to be the elder princess. I suppose then we would of had a big buxomed sister regardless of the path so I suppose its helps contrasts the families a bit, even though the rest of the siblings kinda reflect eachother’s opposite well.
I also did an alt of Hinoka in Camilla’s outfit, which turned out to be much easier to sprite due to it just being a shawl/cape thing at shoulder height.
+Hinoka Nohrian Alt
Fire Emblem Heroes - Anna (Askr)
Another CCC Submission. Kozaki’s third take on Anna. Something I’ve noticed with Kozaki’s hair styles is that they often do a lot of layering on the the character’s fringes, you can see it in the Kjelle and Hinoka I’ve done as well. You know besides the wierd Askran Shoulder guards, Anna is dressed rather reasonably for a Kozaki character. After this CCC contest I think I’ll focus on using some other colours besides red. Part of the reason for doing the alts of all these submissions is because of the abundance of Red in their base designs. I’ll probably slow down a bit in October on sprites, because I have some personal spriting art projects lined up for October that probably won’t be posted on here.
+Anna (Shadow Dragon Jake Alt)
Fire Emblem Heroes - Laegjarn
Honestly I think the Muspell and Nifl OCs from Fire Emblem Heroes are probably amongst my favourite Fire Emblem Heroes OCs. Only problem with the Muspell and Nifl ones are their crazy hair gradients which severely impact the amount of colours you get to work with on the rest of the portrait. Still Laegjarn is amongst my favourite designed characters from FEH. I got design inspirations for her hair shading and styling from Meziosaur’s artwork of her (P.S Meziosaur has done amazing artwork of Fire Emblem characters, I suggest checking them out). It was a fun challenge working out how to distribute her colours, I considered sacking a skin tone to get an extra colour, but managed to rework the trimming colours to get a output I liked. The only thing I would add if I had more colours is change the black of her non cloak clothing to a more blue black. Its a shame her Emblem is so big, I’m quite proud of her cloak shading (interesting reverse colour shading similar to the colouring style of Ruby Rose’s hair from RWBY. In fact here is a screencap of the cloak with out the emblem on it.
Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon/Gaiden - Camus/Zeke
So I decided to try my hand at Camus/Zeke. While I like Daisuke’s art in general I really liked Hidari’s take on Camus, so I went with that design for the hair and face. Although I went with the Heroes rendition of Camus’ outfit. I really like how his hair turned out so that really egged me on to try and nail his clothing. I came to realise that there isnt a good perspective of Heroes Camus’ outfit for his shoulders and epaulets with thin strands like Zeke’s are still a pain to sprite. Still overall happy with how they turned out. Now I’ve done 3 of Fire Emblem’s Black Knights
Fire Emblem Engage - Saphir
So I suppose here is my first sprite of the new game. My S rank girl Saphir. Using white for hair is interesting, it forces a 4 tone hair like pale blondes so you need to get creative or hope your character doesn’t need that many clothing colours. I do like how her hair turned out, but if I were to revist this one, I’d spend the most time on her eyes, I wasn’t quite satisfied with how they turned out but I was eager to move onto other parts of her. I am also happy with how most of her armour turned out, except I think her far shoulder pads need to be a little bigger.
FE RD - Ike Vanguard
So I was looking through some pictures I saved to my computer and found cool artwork of Ike and a selection of the Greil Mercenaries done by Novice back in 2018 (reference to La Liberte guidant le peuple) and liked that pose for Ike in that picture. So I decided to sprite Ike in a similar pose since everyone else just usually copies his Radiant Dawn artwork. Funnily enough it ends up being similar to his Ranger pose from Path of Radiance instead. The advantage of this pose is his shoulder pad doesnt take up nearly as much as insertion real estate. I went with the FEH styled collar where the lining is more silver/grey than green, which helps with the colour limits. Overall happy with how this turned out, the only gripe I have is how his closer collar is overlapping his face which gives it a slightly funny shape, so for reference here is topless Ike to see his face better;
+Shirtless
Fullbodies/Halfbodies
P.S Also decided to do a Athena half/third body as well. Even though half bodies etc already breach the hackbox limits etc. I still like to restrict myself to the 15 colour limit (not including background) as practice for portrait insertion and creativity. Otherwise I would of coloured her arm fabrics a lighter blue rather than re using her hair colour.
I got so into making Erik I made a half/third body of him as well. I do have old fullbodies of the Reptor I posted and Black Knight, but the proportions on those werent great. The Black Knight was fun though for detail, I’ve placed that in the observation only.
Full Body Brave Klein
Hands… you either get them right or they always look off. In addition to this because Pent’s clothing is majority black I had to get a little creative with the shading in some spaces to outline his arms etc. I think if I could go back I would scale his body upsize just a little bit to better match the size of his head.
Full Body FE4 Zane
A bit more stiff in pose compared to Klein, but I think his height has better proportions. I didnt take all aspects of his clothing from the Manga because I felt the double unbuckled belt thing was wierd and his clothing at base was very plain (nothing wrong with that, I think over design or over decoration is a problem many characters have sometimes). I had a lot of trouble with his boots design and went over a few iterations before settling on this one (I found a limiting factor were the colours I was limiting myself to).
Full body
A lot more fancy pose wise compared to the other two and I think body proportion wise is the best of the three here. Her hands I think are one of the better ones I’ve done. Her pose was mainly based on her Fates artwork, however her cloak gripping hand was based on her FEH artwork. The leg pose I decided on for fun and I felt add to the refined elegant look. From here, probably slow down on complete full bodies because they chew up so much effort and time if you are not tracing it/colouring over existing artwork. Fun fact, some of my sprites such as the fullbodies are usually layered and have bits underneath that are also sprited. This is done to help me understand how I should shade things as well as get a look at things without layers on top, its a fair bit extra effort but it goes a ways to improving and practicing your skills.
Full Body FE 3 Houses Manuela
This full body was fun to do. I actually had another idea for her pose originally, but then realised it would be similar to the last 3 female fullbody/half body poses I have done and decided to go with what you see here. Was fun to do, however I still need to get shoes down pat (boots and flat foot shoes are easy, heels and fancy shoes on the other hand…) Also her coat, cloak thing isn’t quite well explained in her concept art and it doesnt really match her in game model, which doesnt really match her appearances in the FMVs either.
FE Fates Ryoma Fullbody (Raijinto is sheathed)
Other Game Franchises
World of Warcraft’s Jaina Proudmoore
I grew up playing Warcraft 2 & 3, never really got into WoW (thank you parents for saving me from that rabbit hole with our poor internet). I really enjoyed Arthas’ story and a lot of the characters and their art. I actually didnt like her younger originaly design because it seemed too skimpy for me, but I decided to try and sprite her newer design for Sprite-tober back in 2020. I would probably revisit her eyebrows and eyes if I were to go back to that.
Yukimura Sanada from Samurai Warriors Spirt of Sanada
I’m a pretty big Musuo fan (long before FE Warriors, which I actually dont rate that high amongst the Musuo games) and really liked his design in this game and the more closer in story telling approach. Koei did some good story telling around this gen at the time (my recommendation to people for Dynasty Warriors (DW7 for Storytelling, DW8 for Gameplay in that gen. Then play the franchise ones if you’re fans of those franchises (Gundam, Fist of the Northen Star, One Piece, Zelda, Fire Emblem, Berserk)) I’d say I really like complex and fancy armour, really dislike drawing/spriting them.
FF7 Aerith
I can’t say much about Aerith, another sprite done for Sprite-tober, I personally haven’t played FF7 or FF7R so I don’t have as much attachment but I enjoy her design and FF7R was the fresh hot thing that year so I figured I’d sprite her. I think if I was to revist her, I would adjust the neck.
FF7 Zack Fair
On the other hand I have played Crisis Core and watched Last Order. I really liked Zack’s character and the tragedy of it all. He is probably my favourite FF7 character because he reminds me of one of my good friends. He was the last sprite I did for Sprite-tober of 2020 and I was pretty faitgued from spriting at that point. Still I am happy with what I pulled off. FF protagonist hair gets pretty hard to fit into a hack box for most.
FFX Tidus
They say your first FF will be your favourite. For me this is true, FFX is my favourite and Tidus is my favourite protagonist (him and Zidane stand out to me compared to the others). This was my 2nd attempt at him and I am happy with how he turned out. If I were to revist, I probably would just do a new one entirely, just because besides the eyes (and they don’t bug me that much) I’m not sure what I would change. I recommend watching/listening to Resonant Arc’s FFX review podcast if you want some interesting takes on that game, or just play it yourself.
Graves from League of Legends
Not much to say about Graves, except I ain’t spriting in his cigar to keep with that joke. Another entrant of Sprite-tober. Also I don’t condone smoking kids.
Warring Kingdoms Nidalee
Another Sprite-tober piece, except this one was more interesting. I don’t like Nidalee’s base design and really liked this one as it reminded of Lian Shi’s (DW8 onwards) design which I also liked. It was a good practice for shading dark black hair and fun doing her hairpieces. I originally did the version too big for the hack box because thats how her hair is actually depicted and then did a shrunken version for the hackbox. I almost always now try to design from the base all my portraits to fit the hack box and colour limit. I find limitations promote creativity.
Dynasty Warriors(8’s) Cao Cao
I personally never perceived this character as a villain and like his character a lot for his pragmatism and value of merit. This is actually the 2nd time I’ve sprited him and I feel like I captured his face well in this attempt. Dynasty Warriors aesthetics have generally also been appealing to me and are fun to draw.
Human King Leoric from Diablo 3
I think he is a tragic character which is not explored well in the games too much. I liked his human depiction and the armour design and decided to sprite him. This is actually a older shot but I was happy with it and it seems quite generic enough to go for anything really.
Chandragupta from Civilization 6
I have spent an absurd amount of time on Civ 6 since COVID started. Clocking in 3.5k hours approx over 2.5 years. I figured I’d sprite this badass Indian as he had a cool design. Another Sprite-tober portrait
Captain Falcon Super Smash Ultimate
Although his origin game is F-Zero, to be honest his modern character is more or less a Smash character first and foremost. That said loved the anime and F-Zero on the N64. This is my 2nd attempt at Falcon and another sprite-tober portrait.
Master Chief Halo 3
Another sprite-tober entry, and a game I grew up with. I don’t like his Halo 4 and 5 designs, Infinite is alright. This is actually also my 2nd attempt at Chief. I did him and Falcon ages ago when I first started horribly doing full custom portraits.
Golden Sun’s Isaac
They say your first RPG will be your favourite RPG. Golden Sun probably wasnt my first. But it was one that left me with the strongest impression when playing it when it came out. It was probably the first one I was dedicated to playing and owning first (GS and FFX have fond places in my memories). Its sad that Isaac seems to be shafted by the smash brothers series, but I suppose understandable. It is criminal that this series is still sitting on a cliffhanger after a banger of the first 2 games. I specifically made the OG GS cast as close as I could to FE GBA styled this time round.
Golden Sun’s Garet
Garet was intersting to sprite and figure out a pose that will fit his hair into a hack box and still look like him. So he ende up with a young adult Gohan haircut. If you check his actual art, Garet’s hair would never fit his head plus a hack box. Maybe if you turned him 90 degrees and layed him flat and even then unlikely.
Golden Sun’s Ivan
I wasn’t sure how Ivan’s haircut worked when I did this originally and out of the 4 would probably the one I would redo the most. I would probably turn down the sharp contrast of his colours a bit as well when compared to the other 3 party members.
Golden Sun’s Mia
My favourite female adept from Golden Sun, your dedicated healer in the OG party with a lot of sass and guts for a healer and the smurfette of the OG party. I like how her hair turned out here, and would probably re do her eyes and shoulders if I were to revist it.
Guan Yu
2 Variants of beard hair, this mugshot is actually quite old however I revisited it to fix up his beard hair since the old one was really out of shape shading wise. This design is based off the Warring Kingdoms design for Tryndamere from League of Legends, however his far shoulder pad was made as a concession since his actual one was a bit too complex for me to work out at the time. I think if I reattempted it now, it wouldn’t fit the hackbox either.
Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga Diana
That title is a mouthful to say and write so I’ll refer to it as just Symphony of War. Its a SRPG but is more akin to Ogre Battle than Fire Emblem. Still its been a fun game to play (its on the short end and unless you play perma death its pretty straight forward and easy regardless of difficulty chosen). Diana is huge and was fun to sprite and is one of my favourite units in that game. I’m suprised how much mileage I got out of 15 colours. Still its hard to draw big muscular women sometimes without making them to masculine looking. Something to keep refining.
Street Fighter 6: Juri Han
I like Juri’s new design in Street Fighter 6 and that updated haircut compelled me to make this sprite This was also an experiment in trying a different body pose to the standard ones you see in Fire Emblem (although actually you do see it in basically any Tharja merchandise the lean over). I do plan on expanding this portrait into either a full body or half body so look forward to that.
Samurai Warriors 5 - Oda Nobunaga (Mature/Old)
Nobunaga has always had cool designs in the Tecmo Koei franchise, however they revamped the story and design completely in 5 so he looks less like Japanese Cao Cao and more brash and hot headed. However his aged design does sorta harken back to his classic Koei design. His shoulder plate feather things were really hard to sprite at this size. If I did this in a non GBA standard mug size I could probably do it more justice, but I always aim to make sprites in Fire Emblem GBA standards rather than something larger.
Pokemon Go - Sierra
Another Kozaki designed character and rival to the Instinct Team Leader Spark (basically Owain in Pokemon). Honestly the most interesting looking of the pokemon go design characters I feel. Well at least out of the Rocket bosses. Although I still dislike those random strands of hair that run inbetween eyes, like Iago’s from Fates. Also if you think she looks wierd holding the poke ball that way, thats how she holds it in Kozaki’s art, wierd yeah?
Ran out of colours for red for the ball so had to cheat and angle the ball to mostly show entirely the white side
Warcraft - Grom Hellscream
I grew up with Warcraft 3 and read Lord of the Clans and found Grom’s character cool but sad. Hes interesting in being one of the stronger Orc Warlords in spite of being one of the smallest (physically). His story is interesting in being the one to redeem the Orcs against Mannaroth, while also being one of the first to indulge in the fel blood and a considerably hot headed blood thirsty fighter. His story is always about whether or not his heroic actions outweigh his past actions. This glorification of his actions by Thrall would also screw them over later down the line in several WoW expansion storylines.
He was interesting to sprite being a non standard human character especially the mouth. If I were to revist, I would maybe re do his tusks and attempt his tattoo work maybe. When I tried in this attempt the tattoo work didnt look good and meshed too much with is existing skin and muscle tones. If I had more colours I’d atttempt his piercings too.
World of Warcraft - Varian Wrynn
I am a sucker for cool and intricate shoulder pads like Varian’s here. I made this ages ago, but thought it was appropriate to post at the same time as the Kjelle I have just done. There was some extreme dodging here to fit them into the hackbox. I’m not 100% happy with how they turned out, but it was a fun excercis none the less. Varian himself I thought was a cool character and was one of the few characters I cared about post Warcraft 3. I do plan on doing some more Warcraft themed mugshots further down the line so I guess expect some more shoulder pads galore later.
EDIT: I found an old formatted version I made ages ago, so here you go. Although I do intend on making a new one eventually down the line
Pokemon - Brock
This is an old mug I did years ago, but in the spirit of shut eyes Zane I decided to format and release him. This was based on a scene where Brock does a “sexy open” eyes thing in the anime (I can’t recall when, but he was probably trying to seduce someone). So in actuality I did the open eyes one first, however here is a classic eye shut version as well. I recall when I first showed this one off, someone suggested I should use the hair for Spike Spiegal from Cowboy Bebop. Maybe I should attempt him down the line eventually.
League of Legends - Garen (Rugged Skin)
Garen is one of my favourite champions from League of Legends (one of my first mains when I used to play ages back). This skin was one of the first ones I had for that game because me and a friend of mine thought it gave off a strong Fire Emblem vibe. It helps that hes voiced by Jamieson Price (ENG Lu Bu DW 5 - 8, FEH - Hawkeye, Virion and Zephiel) one of my favourite VAs (basically because of Dynasty Warriors (a lot of my favourite VAs are from that series)) that added to his appeal to me (that and the fantasy armour and shoulderpads). So I figured I may as well Fire Emblem him. I think if I revistsed this I would redo his undershirts, but the rest I’m pretty ok with.
League of Legends - Sejuani
So for those of you who don’t follow League of Legends, the Worlds Championship finished just last week and the team narratives for the finals was amazing. Probably the best Worlds I’ve followed since I started following. This year the reward for finishing a high enough rank (not me) is a Victorious themed skin of Sejuani, this champ. She was also heavily featured in the season start video for 2022 which is what I based the design of this sprite on. Even if you don’t play League or really like it, you can’t fault Riot’s cinematic teams. I made 4 variants of this portrait, Helmet or Helmetless and a version with her covered in snow specks (clean minds people…)
FF7 Cloud Strife (Modern Design)
So I’ve pondered for a while on how to fit Cloud into the hackbox and this is my answer. I decided to go with his modern design (Advent Children/Crisis Core/Remake) which has less exaggerated spikes. Then I decided to go with a back shot to even angle his head and hair further away from the viewer. It also kinda doubles a slight homage to that cover art with the shot of him looking at Shinra from behind him. I did get a bit lazy and not put the screws into his shoulder pad (I wonder how they got there in the first place to be honest, because the Soldier armour in CC doesnt have the screws). However this was also a sprite to warm up a bit since I decided to take a break over the 2022 Christmas holidays to catch up on some video game backlogs, that and I had a artist block on what to draw.
WH40K Lion El Jonson
I’ve wanted to do a Warhammer 40K sprite for a while (again sucker for stupid shoulder pads) and with this character returning to the time period (this is a major lore thing) I thought it would be cool to sprite him (especially his Lion Shoulder). So I’ve been on a bit of hiatus in terms of spriting, I ran into a pretty busy period IRL and then was working on a few personal art projects. So this is my first public one back in a while. Honestly I did get lazy with his chest piece and far shoulder, and was mainly focusing on his Lion Shoulder pad which I am happy with how it turned out. I’m not too keen on the colour of his armour, but I was torn between going Dark Angel Green or Lore Black for his armour, so a bit of both? Still the hackbox gymnastics required for Grim Dark shoulder pads is always kind of fun. We’ll see how my pacing goes for releasing more sprites.
The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom - Ganondorf
The story trailers for both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are what got me on board to buy into Zelda. Previously I only ever owned Phantom Hourglass. I did play Four Swords with friends back in the day and Oracle of Time, but never finished them. This Ganondorf reminds me of the Wind Waker with his clothing style a little bit. He has that cool Half Kimono/Gi thing going on. I did do a version where I attempted his shoulder/neck jewlery but wasn’t happy with it, so I decided on posting this one instead where those were removed.
Resident Evil 4 Remake - Leon Kennedy - Hero Outfit
I’ll say, the RE4 Remake has to be one of my most favourite games I’ve played in recent years. I loved playing the original one on the wii which was my first RE game. Leon is by far my favourite RE protagonist. This outfit and design is based on his “Hero” outfit with the eyepatch extra added, which was my favourite get up aside from his default look in Remake. It also looks like it could suit the medieval setting too. To be honest I’ve been sitting on this one for a bit, but decided to finish it off so I can move onto another sprite. I think I should of maybe made his clothes a bit bigger, so it avoids a bit of the long neck syndrome.
The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom - Purah
So I finished Tears of the Kingdom and I enjoyed it, I would say if you enjoyed BotW then TotK is definitely a sequel and has plenty of content and does not feel like DLC. I decided to do do Purah, and quickly realised how many colours she has on her. I had to get real creative with her colour pallette with her skin tones being used in pretty much every other aspect of her (hair, goggles, shirt/jacket). I really like her new design, I like it more than her AoC design, she seems more mature. I was going to do a hand pose or something along with this portrait, but couldn’t settle on a pose I liked, so decided to not do one in the end.
+No Glasses Alt
Fulbodies/Halfbodies
Juri Han SF6 Full body
Only after starting this full body did I realise her pants are wierd as. This is probably the first suggestive fullbody pose I’ve done and hopefully it doesnt breach any conducts or anything like that. She is fully clothed. Fun fact, I try not to do the boobs and butts pose because I find that anatomically impossible or it seems to be to me anyway, so when I try to do poses and such I always try them out myself. This is a possible pose, just not that comfortable but at least its not spine breaking.
Oda Nobunaga Halfbody
Actually pivoted on what his arms were doing in this halfbody to what I originally envisioned, but it turned out nicely. If I were to revist this, I would revist his Katana, because adding props/items to bodied mugs usually makes for difficult angling.
Non Game Franchises
Sun Wukong from RWBY
I was a fan of RWBY and Rooster Teeth, but havent really kept up with either for a while though. Another sprite-tober attempt. It was a practice of trying interesting body poses this time around and different skin tones. Also another realisation that trying to shade and colour modern clothing is a chore. Also some insight to how I sprite; I actually almost always now sprite my portraits topless to try and get poses right so charcters don’t look physically mishapen and their clothes hopefully follow physical logic as well (yes this means I do have topless variants of most of these, and no nothing below the shoulder line(I’m not confident/interested in doing nudes or lewds))
RWBY’s Ruby Rose (Season 1 design)
Another sprite-tober sprite. Theres not too much to say except that her colour scheme in the series sorta goes in the reverse of shading rules in Fire Emblem. Its how you get that funky hair and top colouring. Was interesting to colour and not the only sprite I’ve done something similar with (you can see it in Xander’s armour colouring). If I were to revist, I would probably do her later season costume upgrade.
Gundam 0083 Stardus Memories - Cima Garahu
One of my favourite Gundam series is probably Stardust Memories, it has a heavy 80s Top Gun style influence in design. I actually reckon that Petrine may have had some inspiration drawn from Cima Garahu. At face value shes a pretty one shot villain but her actions have a Qui Gon Jinn roll on effect on the rest of the UC series (her actions indirectly cause the rise of one of the more unambigiously evil factions in the series) and her backstory expansion adds some nice extra characterisation for her.
Yu-Gi-Oh! - Seto Kaiba
Just a mugshot for fun. Again limitations on colour pallette means getting creative with his eyes and undershirt colouring. Tried balancing the iconic Yu-Gi-Oh style artwork with the less sharp and tamer Fire Emblem styling while still maintaining the air and recognisability of the character. Maybe one day I’d attempt Yugi, but his hair would be really tough to fit in the hackbox. But hey maybe you could combine this mug with the blue eyes ripped from Jump Stars in the repository for something.
I did do an edit with the Kaiba Corp logo on his collar, but chose not to format it because if you flip it, then obviously KC is reflected and facing the wrong way.
Here is another alt with a dull eyes evil alt Kaiba
RWBY - Emerald Sustrai (Volume 8 Design)
Honestly didnt like her original design from the earlier volumes but really like this one. She actually has a similar haircut to Athena with two random long tail like hair strands that arent really visible front on. Probably my favourite of the human villains so far although I did also like Arthur Watts.
Her fairytale character basis is supposedly Aladdin.
Bleach - Ichigo Kurosaki
Honestly was always a fan of Bleach and I am glad they are finishing the Thousand Year War arc in the anime and hyped they changed his theme song with a much cooler remix. Ichigo is interesting in that he is kinda generic but still somehow distinguished and stands out. Maybe because Tite Kubo started to suffer from same face syndrome pretty badly towards the end of Bleach’s run. Still Bleach was my favourite of the big three during the peak of its manga run. I may do some more Bleach mugs down the line.
RWBY - James Ironwood (Volume 7&8 Design)
James is one of my favourite characters and he got a banging re design and theme song in volume 7 & 8. Having been in a somewhat similar situation of being under pressures from all sides in a working environment (not nearly the same extreme as he underwent) I had some sympathies for him during those volumes. Honestly got a lot mileage out of the colour limit in this one. I should look to do some more characters with less or no blacks in their pallette because I’ve done a lot of those recently and it gets a little tiring. However really did want to do Ironwood.
SPOILERS ALT
Also did a minor alt of him where he had snapped and his eyes are more unhinged. Ironically even though the unhinged anime look is usually the tiny pupils thing, its kind of hard to sprite. Liquid in TLP actually is a good sprite example of doing the unhinged look, however he did have the advantage of having a larger than average FE mug face. A general rule of thumb with spriting is the larger a sprite is in scale, the easier it is to add detail or improve the clarity of it. However this does mean it may no longer conform to the average set by Intelligent Systems in the GBA games (this is always a difficult balancing act for custom non splice works).
RWBY - Pyrrha Nikos
I did a Pyrrha for a couple years ago, but didnt like how it turned out, so I did this one which looks a lot more like the character. I decided to revist her after doing the other RWBY mugs recently and you can compare the old version to this one under the Observation Only section. I think one of the trickier things to get right in these portraits or in pixel art in general is eyebrows/eyelines underneath fringes and bangs. Its a common design seen in Anime and Anime-esque characters, but I find personally its hard to translate to pixel art and that depending on the character design its better off hiding the lines underneath what ever is covering them.
On a side note, Pyrrha is one of my favourite characters of earlier season cast and her representation in the Chibi series was always enjoyable to see.
GunXSword - Van
Ah “Van the Unemployed”, “Van the Freeloader”, “Hangover Van”, “Steel Van”, “Invincible Van”, “Pretty Boy Van from the Garbage Dump”, “Van the Unsung Hero who Gives It All He’s Got”, “Van of the Dawn”, “Daybreak Van”, “Nice Guy Van”, “Van that Weird Guy who Helped Out”, “Van of a Thousand Conquests”, “Van of a Thousand Naps”, “Van, The Devil in The Poisoned Tuxedo”, and “Van the Devil’s Swallowtail Suit”.
One of my favourite Anime characters and favourite animes, a short robot series with a nice succinct story. I had also done a version of him a long time ago, before the Brock mugshot I posted earlier, another character revist to see progress which you can see the comparison in the observation only section. In fact this time round I’ve added a few old portraits so you can see skill development and change. One bit of advice to any artist I can add is that you should revist/redo something you’ve done before after some time, it helps to see what changes you have undergone and will also let you see where you had problems in the past and help you focus on improving them. Staring at the same piece of art or non stop working on new things may sometimes hide flaws or problems to you.
GunXSword - Wendy Garret
To go with the Van mugshot, here is Wendy Garret. Unlike my old version of Van I was not happy with the old version of Wendy I had so I defintely had to re do her. To be honest I’m still not 100% on board with this version either. Mainly the fringe and the face shape still bug me a bit, but I think its a bit of the anime style not translating well to the FE GBA style. Sometimes I guess you gotta compromise on that fact.
Gundam The Witch From Mercury - Suletta Mercury
So I haven’t watched an anime series in a while (I didn’t watch any during the lockdown years) so WFM was the first series I’ve watched in a while. I didn’t go in with much expectations, but I do like this series. It starts off with a kind of Mecha school setting with an awkward protagonist (RWBY, Harry Potter, Three Houses) but this ain’t my first Gundam and looking at the context of things you could see the serious undertones and understanding the severity of the choices made definitely make this a Gundam series. Not quite 100% on board with how her clothes turned out, nor her hair shading, but I think it turned out well overall. Also for some modern clothed characters (for a lot of OCs I’ve done in the past (not posted)) I have also done fantasy alts of, which is why I did a fantasy armoured alt of Suletta, which was Wyvern Rider/Gundam Aerial armour inspired, with a colour scheme also inspired by the Aerial 2.0 Gundam (probably one of my favourite modern Gundam designs, reminds me of the GP01 fb, which is one of my favourites).
+Fantasy Alt
Fullbodies/Halfbodies
Gundam 0083 Cima Garahu Halfbody
You know what even doing halfbodies is kinda draining, probably cool off on those too. Tried another dynamic pose with this one. Also gave her a slightly less standard skin colour scheme (not quite morph, not quite female pale). As always limitation in colours means getting creative with shading.
I think this fullbody is the best one I’ve done so far especially in the body proportion department. The more you practice these things the better eye you get for them. Even those these wouldnt be that useful for insertion into current platforms I still restrict myself to the GBA 15 colour limit because it makes the challenge fun.
OCs/Misc
Muse Battle Sprite
An silly idea I had on a drive home and decided I really needed to get it down. Obviously Elvis inspired, but I think there may have been a silly hack that had something similar before years back. This is intended to be a bard or dancer replacement, but he can cast magic if needed (it won’t freeze like the vanilla dancers).
Keith
An old OC I had for a storyline that I don’t feel like building upon anymore. I really liked how his hair had turned out, but his head was far larger and mishapen than the sort of ‘standard’ for GBA mugshots, so I revisited this and fixed his face a bit. He is designated Keith because his inspiration at the time was of Chuck Keith from Gundam 0083 (mainly seen in his hair design, who I may actually sprite some time down the line eventually).
Chris
So for Spritetober 2022 I did a large personal project of spriting a friend a day. I won’t post those here because it was a personal project however I did like some of the fantasy designs I did for their clothing/armour and so for a select few I’ll OC-ify them and rename them to remove any resemblence to real people so they are free to edit or use. This character was made to be a Wyvern Rider.
Terrance
Another OC-ified Spriteober 2022 sprite. I like this one for the interesting shoulderplate design I settled on. To be hones the coat of arms plate on the left shoulder was put there because I forgot about how I was going to layer the shoulders after doing the right shoulder and chest and decided it was easier to put a Grey Knight (WH40K) inspired coat of arms plate over the top. The hair is also inspired by Dunban from Xenoblade Chronicles as well. This character was designed as a Paladin or mounted knight in mind.
Blaze
So for those who lurk around the internet, this character design is directly inspired around a Human styled Blaziken from ages back. Because the majority of my Spritetober projects revolved around darker realistic hair colours I decided to do another OC inspired by some fan art I found many years ago (the original fan art is a male blaziken, and is pretty sick. It was found on a tumblr page called the Gijin-ka dex, but I’m not sure if thats the original artist since there aren’t credits over there). So the change to use some more brighter colours was a nice change of pace.
–More to Come–
Observation Only
Kou Uraki and the GP01 Gundam
0083 Stardust Memories is probably my favourite Gundam, its so 80s Top Gun style wise. Plus the suits are all cool and I like the concept of Kou being an rookie underdog who has to work hard and get creative to compete with the other Aces. The GP01 Fb is probably one of my favourite Gundams.
GP01 fb basic attack animation and crit animation
I also dabble in battle sprites from time to time as well, I do actually have FE styled Gundam sprite sheets, as I once considered doing a Gundam themed FE. I probably would revist his crit because I got lazy part way making it and its not really conveying correctly what I want it to say. That and also make some ranged attacks before I would make this F2E.
TLP BenV2 and Emma
So if you like using Ben and Emma in TLP, you can thank me for their wacky stats, they were my submissions. The original Ben was a crappy Raven recolour on Byron’s(FE4) shoulders that I had submitted for FE4A backin the day. Then when I was helping Blazer at the time fix up a few mugs, map sprites and enemies (I also created Eligor, and did the map sprites for Galagar, Anakin and a few others) I also submitted this version of Ben, but at that point I think it was The Blind Archer/Dei who had created a better replacement for his mugshot already. Emma was updated to this version at the same time.
Gundam Zeta Quattro Bajeena, Char Aznable
I’m proud of how well I captured his likeness in this, not so much his clothing. This is actually a pretty old mug, and maybe one day I’ll revist it and make a proper line up of Gundam FE style portraits.
Kenobi?!?
This actually isnt Kenobi, but was an OC I made for a SRPG project ages ago, I’ll probably redesign the OC at some point later, but I recoloured it into Kenobi for giggles. I though it felt appropriate to post this considering Kenobi is currently streaming.
Super Smash Brothers 4 Roy
This is Roy based on his Smash 4 render. I was really hyped for his announcement and made this when it was revealed. Was really proud of his hair and face, then his shoulders were a disappointment. I’ll probably redo them at some point.
DND Characters
So pre covid I was playing a DND campaign with some friends and I had drawn art for all of their characters and then sprited them and some important NPCS. The characters are full custom and the NPCs are mainly splices with some custom work. The main party is in the top row going left to right, a Half-Elf Barbarian, a Elf Warlock, Human Rogue, Human Cleric. 2nd row are the NPCs, 3rd row are guest characters of friends that joined for a short bit, A Elf Druid and a Human Paladin and a super mode version of him. The last row was the Elf Druid actually being a undead banshee villain. It was a lot of fun to play and I enjoyed it so much I decided to sprite them to remember the campaign.
Master Chief then and now
Falcon then and now
The first Chief was made in 2007
and the first Captain Falcon back in 2009
I think its a demonstration of where I came from and where I am now. Its always intersting to reattempt characters you have already done in the past and reflect on your progress. I have several characters done who have multiple iterations and versions and I think is a good practice personally.
(FYI the Newer Chief and Falcon are F2E, however the old ones are not (I mean do you seriously want to use those old things?))
ODST design from Halo ODST
I actually like the ODST over the Spartans from Halo, the concept of people who below the best who got there through hardwork rather than augmentations and super tech. I did this years before the latest Master Chief, and actually made sure that the shoulders can fit a proper sprite head.
2 Mug submissions for DotF (Now Black Fang) (I have them listed as Elton and Vic, I’m not sure thats their final names)
Here are two mugs I submitted to help a hack called Decay of the Fangs back in the day. (I don’t remember which forum I was on at the time, but was probably going by Kai Shiden). I remember making Elton and making the aim to make a badass out of sad Eliwood’s base. His hair was based on Harken’s and his shoulders I think were Karel’s with the sleeves ripped off.
Vic was made with the idea if Erk was older and made to be the mage general, He was made with a formal Hector base. His hair actually is custom and not a splice of Erk’s because Erk’s haircut isnt made for that face angle.
FE9 Black Knight Full Body
As you can kind of see from my GP01 sprite, and more recent at the time of this update (Erik Half/Third body) I have dabbled in larger than mugshot size sprites. I did attempt a Black Knight at one point, but wasnt happy with the proportions in the end. (he is kinda short in here rather than the menacing hulk he usually is). Still the detailing was really fun to sprite and I think the cape is amongst my best cloth I did back in those days. Honestly I think its the legs that need lengthing here mainly.
GunXSword - Van (v1)
Here you can see my first attempt at Van (three on the left, new one on the right) and see the change in shading style, shaping, etc. I actually think the old Van was one of my better mugs from back then, however I was always bugged with his jacket shading and the fact I couldnt fit his hat in the hack box nicely.
Dynasty Warriors - Cao Cao (DW6 Design)
Ages ago back when Dynasty Warriors 6 was released I did a version of Cao Cao and Cao Pi from that game, in more recent years I have done a version of him based on his Dynasty Warriors 8 incarnation, however his facial design in those games has remained largely the same, so I still consider this a good comparison to review drawing style development. I wasnt very happy with his old mugshot and felt he was very bulky even though hes never depicted as such, which is partly why I revisited. That and his eyes and facial hair were not done justice either.
Final Fantasy X - Tidus
Back when Dissidia first came out, I also did a few FF characters based on their Dissidia art, all of which I deem currently quite poor, but its fun to look back on those. Here you can see the colours I chose for Tidus were more saturated and his body proportions and posing were really awkward. Since those days I take body posing and proportions into more consideration when drawing and sometimes I try doing those poses in real life to see if they seem feasible.
Other characters I did back then were Cloud, Sephiroth and Jecht, I may re vist Jecht again sometime, but I probably wont revist the other two for a while (I mean theres plenty versions of them out there, and I havent honestly thought of a way yet to get Cloud’s hair to fit the hackbox while maintaining the iconic look of his sillhouette).
RWBY - Pyrrha
The first Pyrrha I did, I was experimenting with body poses and angles. It also allowed me to kinda cheat and hide her head piece a bit, but I wasnt happy with her face and her shoulders in the end. Also that pose meant that I couldnt really sprite her clothing much, since its not visible at that angle giving her a more nude look. was glad ot revist and make her look more like her character as depicted in the show.
GunXSword - Wendy Garret
Alongside the first Van, I had also done a Wendy. The old one on the left’s eyes were really off and the shading was really harsh, a common thing amongst my older works. It didnt fit well with her clothing shading either and I think her eyes may have been a little too close. I did stick to her fringe style closer than I did with the recent remade mugshot though.
–More to Come–
Sillies
Half/Fullbody Silly Collage
Was rearranging one of my spriting files and wanted to measure Ironwood next to some of the others and decided to do something goofy, could make a funny meme template with this. Come up with a clever caption?
–Maybe More to Come–