I’ve updated the main post of this page with the below latest entries under F2E and updated Golden Sun Mia with frames (Gundam 0083 - Cima Garahu and Samurai Warriors 5 - Oda Nobunaga)
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.
+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.
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.
+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.
Updated the main post with the below latest entries under the F2E section (Yu-Gi-Oh! Seto Kaiba, Pokemon Go Sierra, RWBY Emerald Sustrai, Bleach Ichigo Kurosaki)
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.
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
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.
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 after a while 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.
Updated the main post with the below latest entries under the F2E section (FE 13 (Awakening) Kjelle, Yu-Gi-Oh! Seto Kaiba Dull/Possesed Alt, RWBY James Ironwood)
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 under the Observation Only Entry).
Here is another alt with a dull eyes evil alt Kaiba
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.
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).
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.
Also the below entry under Obersvation Only (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.
Are you referring to Varian? I wasn’t planning on it. Since I thought I would re attempt him when I got better. If you really want it I could format it for you.
Updated the main post with the below latest entries under the F2E section (World of Warcraft Varian Wrynn, Pokemon Brock and FE 3 Houses Manuela)
As per your requests, it turns out I did have Varian formatted a long time ago (may not be up to the same par as my more recent things) I just didn’t notice it until I went to make one, so as such he has been moved to the F2E section.
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
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.
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.
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.
I’ve updated the main post with the below latest entries under F2E (RWBY - Pyrrha and GunXSword Van) and the following entries under Observation Only (GunXSword - Van (old veresion), Dynasty Warriors - Cao Cao (DW6 Design), Final Fantasy X - Tidus (old version) and RWBY - Pyrrha (old version))
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
man, the Tidus on the left looks already pretty damn good to me, it’s just the colors that might need some changes in terms of brightness/saturation on the collar part.
the pose is fine too, probably it feels a little awkward to you because of the yellow shirt portion wich may look a bit too “windy”, and the hair color wich shouldn’t match the clothes color.
if you manage to fix those two portions, the mug by itself is already perfect in my opinion.
mind you, the version on the right is also fine, but the other one fits the character better in terms of appearence, since Tidus has always been a little buffed, being a Blitzball ace and all that.
after checking the original material, it seems to me that the left version looks more inspired by Dissidia, while the right one is closer to the original FF X.
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).
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.
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.
mind you, the version on the right is also fine, but the other one fits the character better in terms of appearence, since Tidus has always been a little buffed, being a Blitzball ace and all that.
after checking the original material, it seems to me that the left version looks more inspired by Dissidia, while the right one is closer to the original FF X.
The original was made based on his dissidia art, but the newer one is based on his OG art. However even taking that into account his far shoulder and neck dont quite make sense. I would demonstrate why it bugs me if I had my PC accesible at the moment
Bruh… you pop off with armor every freakin’ time.
Any tips on drawing armor? Especially the type that wraps around kinda oddly like pauldrons and collars.
Any tips on drawing armor? Especially the type that wraps around kinda oddly like pauldrons and collars.
Thanks for the compliment.
Some insight into my spriting method using Ryoma as an example. I work with layers;
First step is I draw the person naked so I can understand what their body is doing underneath all their clothing (also helps me visualise if something is off).
If a character wears a lot of layers or important layers, I usually seperate the clothing into seperate layers and work (eg Ryoma’s pauldrons are seperate to the rest of his clothing done because they sit over his clothing)
As for understanding the shape of things, it helps to look at multiple pictures if possible of a subject of reference, eg for Ryoma I looked at his Heroes, Warriors, Fates and Cipher art. Some different arts will get you different prespectives that help you understand the shape of things. Other times where reference art is limited I look at similar things or use experience to take liberties.
I’ve updated the main post with the below latest entries under F2E (GunXSword - Wendy Garret, League of Legends - Garen (Rugged)) and the following entry under Observation Only (GunXSword - Wendy (old version))
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.
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.
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.
Did you make a naked ryoma fullbody?
I do not have a detailed naked Ryoma fullbody, for fullbodies I dont tend to do much more detail underneath unless I intend to do something like a summer/swimwear version or give the character a lot of potential wardrobes, which I’ve only really done once.
So I haven’t updated this in a while, because I’ve been preoccupied for all of October, but here are some OCs to use. I have also updated the main post so it doesnt blow out the size of the post when you just expand the F2E section.
The main post has been updated with the below latest entries under F2E > OCs/Misc (Chris, Terrance and Blaze)
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.
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.
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.
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…)
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.
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
