So I am contemplating re arranging the main post again to categorise the Fire Emblem portraits into either their respective games/continents. Mainly because I do foresee making more obviously and that having them all grouped as they are just under Fire Emblem it may blow the post out again.
Plus it will be easier to do it now while there are less of them in total rather than later when there is a cast worth of characters per game.
I am also not sure if there is a image limit per post and wondering if I’ll hit that soon. I did a count and am currently in the 80s for F2E portrait submissions.
As for what I mentioned earlier for which game cast to sprite, I think I’m leaning towards doing Awakening, since I’ve done 4 of them now already (Priam, Kjelle, Flavia and now Miriel) so we’ll see.
I’ve updated the main post with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Awakening - Miriel) and F2E - Other Game Franchises (Warcraft - Arthas Menethil)
Ah hackbox my old friend, the gymnastics you make me do… I decided while working on a few tight portraits, that I may as well try Miriel with her hat as well. I decided when producing portraits to always restrict myself to the hackbox requirements and colours because in a way I find restrictions more freeing and creative than freedom (paralysis by free choice). Overall I’m happy with how this turned out. The hair I’m still iffy on, so if I ever revisit this, its the hair that is going to get the looking at. I also did an alt without her glasses because it was an easy alt to make (just remove the glasses layer) for usage too.
Hackbox… meet fantasy shoulderplates… fantasy shoulderplates, meet Fire Emblem hackboxes. So another western blonde chosen hero, corrupted by power and the desire to do good. If I do Anakin Skywalker too, I’ll hit the trifecta. This design was based on some artwork as there are many interpretations of his armour, but this one I could see transitioning into the pauldrons he wears as the Lich King. I spent a lot of my younger teenage years playing Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne, those were some good days and I was sad that Reforged broke a lot of custom games and discouraged people from making new ones. If we didnt have Warcraft 3, games like DotA, League of Legends, Legion TD wouldn’t exist. If I were to revist this one, I would probably go back to his face the most, I’m not sure why, maybe its the haircut but it looks smaller comparatively to other portraits, but his part way corrupted alt I did looks more in line (probably because I subtly exaggerated some features of that one).
So I went ahead and reformatted the main post again and decided to split up all the portraits in the Fire Emblem section amongst their Continents (Awakening is listed as Ylisse even though it covers Valm as well and Fates is Fates). I didn’t realise but I have actually managed to submit a character from pretty much every mainline series, which was neat. As of this posting, Jugdral and Tellius are tied for the most submissions from me.
I’m also considering also just releasing parts of these portraits for people to use in splices, because I have them in layers and it would be easier for people to splice with if they just have the part rather than the whole portrait. Although then the post my blow out even further. Does anyone know if mods can give me another post in the 2nd post slot of this thread that I can reserve for future updates?
I’ve updated the main post with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Sully) and F2E - Other Game Franchises (Adventure Quest - Galanoth/Dragonslayer)
Another Shepard, the red christmas cav of Awakening Sully. To my knowledge the only female christmas cavalier too. I preferred her over Stahl when playing through Awakening, but I liked both of them because when they promoted to either Palading or Great Knight they had their colour versions of those classes rather than the generic blue that others got (Except for Fredrick). That was something I liked in Fates and Awakening that some characters had unique looks in certain classes (and in Fates some had extra ones in other classes (eg Takumi Swordmaster is Sumeragi’s outfit)). I spent a while on Sully’s eyes but still not 100 percent with it. I wanted her to look downwards a little bit, but every variation I tried looked a bit off, so I settled for this one. Ah well now I’ve done a Mother and Daughter combo.
So back in the early days of the internet, I used to frequent a lot of old flash websites, to play flash games etc such as Flashring, Newgrounds, Neopets, the original Runescape and Adventure Quest. I always liked some of the overexaggerated fantasy designs of Adventure Quest and the Dragonslayer classes have always been a favourite. From my memory, they are led by Galanoth and although their designs have changed a bit between each game in the AQ universe (AQ, Dragonfable, AQW, AQW3D) I took some design elements from multiple iterations. Overall I’m happy with it, however I would reconsider the shoulder plates. The helmet was the fun part, but also the hard part. I made a variation on the frames where the eyes in the helmet do not blink, because from memory the eyes do not, but I thought some people would prefer blinking frames so I did both. To be honest most designs in AQ are probably too over exaggerated to fit into a hackbox, but maybe I’ll do another one someday.
So while working on Chrom I thought, on what else I wanted to sprite and thought to myself… Matt Mercer Emblem and decided to do another take on Ryoma again so now we have Ryoma v2. Especially after working on some tighter hackbox sprites recently, I figured coming back with some more experience and not under CCC pressure, I could give him some proper justice.
I’ve updated the main post with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Chrom and FE Fates Saga - FE Fates - Ryoma v2)
So besides Ike, Roy and a few old Marths that probably won’t be posted here anytime soon, I don’t think I’ve actually sprited many main lords. Just like what was done for Awakening, because Chrom’s design is very asymmetrical I have done a left and right facing version, with his default being the left facing (GBA standard) (Shoulder plate facing us). So up until October last year I was using only one monitor, then I got a 2nd one and sprite colours actually look different on both, I couldn’t quite get their colours to appear the same for me and Chrom’s hair on one looks really muted and hard to see the shades, but looks completely fine on the other. I was tossing up between making his hair brighter as it appears in his modern appearances or making it darker and muted like it appears in Awakening, so its kind of in between and the colour looks closer to his Brave alt art from FEH. I based his pose off a render from Fire Emblem Warriors rather than his Awakening pose.
So the last time I did Ryoma it was under a time constraint in a contest condition, to be honest wasn’t my best work as I was also working on 2 other characters, their alts and Ryoma’s fullbody at the same time, so everything sorta suffered. After working on Galanoth and looking at that pose, I thought to myself I could do a better Ryoma with a similar pose and give more justice to his hair and height. After looking at some more reference art, I also decided to angle his arms based off a Fire Emblem Warriors render where he isn’t in his Fates pose so it better fits his shoulder plates. Overall I am pretty happy with how this one turned out, it matches better opposing the Xander I made since they’re now similar heights rather than short Ryoma. I did play with the idea of shrinking Ryoma 3 pixels to exaggerate the hair more, but I think this design is more reasonable and a nice balance between his height and his hair volume.
Also just for comparison here was my v1 Ryoma submitted for a CCC last year.
AQ pog…
Kinda sucks that DragonSlayer as a class is only useful during the period of time where your best grinding spots have dragons but you don’t have any uber sets yet.
Edit: Omg a Ballyhoo sprite would be cool lol, and it just hit me that Robina Hood is just a Rebecca recolor
So after doing 3 male characters in a row I decided to move into 2 female characters. Still challenging hackbox limitations with these ones though. I have updated Chrom a little bit because after sleeping and coming back, I noticed he was quite rough (I did complete Chrom in one day immiedately, after finishing Ryoma in that same day (which took about 3 sessions)).
I’ve updated the main post with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Lissa) and F2E - Non Game Franchises (RWBY - Velvet Scarlatina)
So Lissa’s design is interesting to me in that Kozaki has used it and several variations of it in Fire Emblem for several characters, similar to how he has re used Cordelia, Tharja and Gaius. Lissa with her hair down is Ophelia from Fates (which I guess makes sense being her descendant) and her hair style is also re used and re coloured for Peri, but I think it makes sense from a production point of view that if you need to pump out 50 - 60 character designs per game, that you can play smart and re purpose or re use aspects of older designs. In a sense its like he is splicing his own work, which is something I do sometimes if I need a basis for a new sprite and something I’ve already done gives me a good base (eg my Ryoma v2 used a modified Galanoth as a base for his pose). Her hair was fun to do, her headpiece, buttons and frills… not so much, I feel like I ran 1 colour slot too short to be satisfied with them, but the only spot I think I can gain a colour is if I use the lightest skin tone in the hair instead of the lightest hair tone.
He was so preoccupied with whether he could sprite a bunny eared girl and didnt stop to think if he should. Velvet was an interesting character in RWBY in that she was originally created as a one off character to display racism in RWBY against Faunus (essentially RWBY Laguz (although they can’t transform, they can use aspects of the animals they are based off)). However her popularity made her into a more developed character that was brought back. Her abilities are cool in that she copies the weapons/fighting style of people she captures on camera and she can use them for a short period of time, an interesting twist on the copy fighter. On that note I wonder if anyone has successfully implemented a mimic character (eg Shadow Dragon and Mystery Emblem Xane) into a GBA hack. I did this portrait for two reasons, first was because I had drawn a few male characters recently and wanted to pivot for the next one. Second to keep going with challenging hack box limitations, I also wanted to do some bunny ears to see if I could get some decent looking ones in. Was actually quite happy with how this one turned out.
So it happened I hit the cap in the main post, so I’ve temporarily removed the Observation Only section from it. I’ll have to ask some mods if I can get a post under my control slotted into the 2nd post of this thread for continued usage if possible.
In spriting news I’ve continued producing Awakening portraits, completing the Christmas Cavs, the Prologue Shepards minus Robin and coincidentally Cherche.
I’ve updated the main post with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Frederick, Stahl, Cherche).
So I think Frederick started the butler/maid aesthetic/attitude for retainers in modern Fire Emblem, later seen in Felicia, Flora, Jakob, Dedue, Hubert and Vander. I think his looks is actually pretty cool, although it ended up being difficult to draw. His design is complex and yet simple uses simple colouring at the same time so I found it hard to sort of convey how prestigious his look is. I decided to go with a darker tone for his hair sort of cross between his FEH and Awakening pallette, except without the hair shine they get in those arts. The other reason being was I needed an extra colour slot for his clothing and had to sacrifice a hair colour slot, so his hair is actually using his darkest skin tone as well. However minus Robin we now have the immediate starting Shepards.
After looking back at a lot of art of Stahl, I noticed his hair is actually a tint of green, however it’s a lot less noticeable in Awakening. Very happy with how his shoulder plates turned out, but still find these weird collar guards annoying to draw. With every one of these portraits I’ve been tossing up with what sort of pose to go with for each character, however after looking through a few, a number of characters sort of share poses so I’ve been making some of these characters have different ones to their Awakening arts, so you will see that in future portraits as well. That and some poses are not feasible in the hackbox without huge compromises.
So I’ve been working on these portraits independent of the CCC results, so Cherche popping up their and here just happens to be a coincidence I guess. Maybe I’ll submit something different for the CCC, we’ll see if I have a spot open up in the list of things I want to draw. For Cherche, I decided to do a different pose from her back shot pose, mainly because I was getting tired of doing the more side on face pose for characters (there are a lot of those for Awakening). So if you’re not doing a side on pose, the over shoulder back shot isn’t really feasible. I spent most time working on the colour choices for this one going with a rose/brown colour choice for her hair. I think If I were to revisit this, I would go touch up her eyes and hand, since I’m not 100% on those.
So thank you mods for helping me re arrange the first 2 post positions. In between now and the next sprite upload I’ll re think how I want to structure my main posts, because the Observation only section is the 3rd smallest sprite section next to Sillies and F2E OCs, so that main post will fill up again. I’m thinking of making the first post purely Fire Emblem and the 2nd post everything else, but we’ll see.
In spriting news my newest Awakening portrait is Sumia, now we’re half way through Chrom’s possible marriage candidates (minus Robin) and for my 100th unique portrait submission to the repository (counting Zeke and Camus separately) is Lu Bu from Dynasty Warriors.
I’ve updated the main post with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Sumia) and F2E - Other Game Franchises (Dynasty Warriors - Lu Bu)
You know Sumia if you re colour her hair green and hide her ears, you could probably make a pretty good Flayn cosplay. This pose was based on her art pose rather than her awakening sprite, which is why she has the little lick of hair sticking out and why she isn’t looking more side on. The more Awakening sprites I do, the more I realise their pose is just look side on. I like how this one turned out, and surprisingly ended up with two colours left over (mainly because I didn’t need to sprite any under clothing for her. Overall I think if I were to re visit this one, I’d go back to her eyes again.
So this is my 100th unique character portrait submission to the Repository thread. The warrior worth 1000 (or the 100th portrait :p, although this is counting Zeke and Camus separately). I actually made an attempt at his Dynasty Warriors 9 outfit back in 2020 during COVID lockdowns, but wasn’t really happy with how it turned out, mainly because I couldn’t proportionately fit him in well. After honing my hackbox gymnastics, this is my second attempt at him. I decided to do a headdress less alt as well since its less busy design wise. This design is based on someone’s amalgamation of his DW 6, 7,8 and 9 designs (although I added the red eye shadow from 6). I’m happy with how his face look turned out, it does remind me a lot of him, where I think if I were to revisit this iteration, it would be his hair and his headdress. I also considered dressing him up in different costumes from the various games, but decided to move on and look towards the next sprite.
Maybe I’ll get around to doing Sima Yi, I do enjoy his character and although a lot his designs have impractically tall hats for the hack boxes, I’m not even sure my skills in hackbox gymnastics could maneuver those in although looking at his 9 design, its a bit less egregious.
In other news, I have updated the main posts now so that the first main thread post has all the F2E Fire Emblem sprites in it and the 2nd post will have basically everything else (F2E - Non Fire Emblem Properties (Other Game Franchises, Non Game Franchises, OCs), Observation Only and Sillies))
As for new submissions I’ve updated the main post with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Maribelle and Virion).
Ojou ringlet hairstyles/hair drills, I do have a soft spot for that design in characters (usually haughty princess/noble types). However they are kind of tough to sprite and take a while to get to look nice. Still this sprite was fun to do. I tossed around whether or not to do her parasol in her sprite, but decided to do her hand touching towards her mouth pose from her S support picture instead of her parasol. Hands are still the bane of many spriters myself included. I sometimes make them too big, or too small. Rarely does it look quite right. If I were to revisit this sprite, definitely the hand is getting a looking at and maybe her mouth and the shade of pink purple I have going. This is why I did do an alt without her hand for usage.
I always get a James from Pokemon vibe from Virion even though his haircut is similar to Sephiroth (FFVII) and Alex (Golden Sun). Another connoisseur of the cravat in Fire Emblem (I am starting to get Cravat fatigue, I think I need to do a non cravat character next… Anyway, overall I am happy with how he turned out. I had a bit of trouble with the colour balancing of his hair, but I settled on something I am happy with. The archer shoulder guards in Awakening are kinda cool in my opinion. His face however ended up just hitting the limit of the mouth frames, so that was interesting to play with.
Huh, I see where you’re coming from with the Virion and James vibes: both are kinda goofy, both come from rich/noble families, they ran away from home for reasons, and both have a female companion with pink hair… just missing a talking cat
Also loving the shading on Virion’s shoulder pad/guard, and that Cravat is so good
Decided to take a break from drawing cravats, although from memory I don’t immediately recall many more cravats if any left in Awakening.
The main posts have been updated with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Tellius Saga - FE PoR - Lord Ike and FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Olivia) and F2E - Other Game Franchises (Dynasty Warriors - Sima Yi)
So now I’ve done Ike in 3 of his stages. I liked his Lord/Commander Ike look from PoR when I was younger, it was the first time you see a class change affect a character sprite (portrait wise) and that was probably what helped cement it. Although on closer inspection he feels a little dull colour scheme wise compared to his Vanguard, Ranger and Hero outfits. This pose and look was based on artwork posted by @kyel_hyde_ on twitter. I thought that pose was really badass looking and wanted to draw that, however I found with the hackbox his Tellius style signature long shoulder pads made things difficult. I did like how it did turn out in the end though. His look kind of looks like a natural age up evolution between his ranger and his hero look.
Now I’ve nearly completed the Chrom marriage partners (missing Robin and Generic Village girl). On one hand I’m thankful for not having to sprite another cravat, on the other hand drawing pink hair has always been a bit difficult. Also her Awakening pose is kind of awkward to draw and convey on GBA in my opinion. Her shoulder actually sits even higher and closer to her face in her Awakening sprite than what I’ve drawn here. I think if I was to revisit this one, I’d look at her hair again and her head shape, maybe make it slightly slimmer.
So Sima Yi is an interesting character in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he is usually depicted as being very cunning, ambitious and a mastermind schemer and backstabber. However the way I view him usually is that he is really talented and one of the few people of his time able to deal with the opposing geniuses and talents in Wu and Shu. He then is shown to be loyal to those he deems deserving of his talents (Cao Cao, Cao Pi) and it wasn’t until incompetence and petty corruption filled the court of Wei that he turned on the Cao family (long after Cao Cao and Cao Pi both passed away).
This is why I decided to pose him facing away from the left, but still looking that way to give that deceitful look. I’m actually really happy with how everything turned out, the only thing I would immediately touch up if I revisited this, would be to adjust his hat to be a little bit wider.
So this time I’m uploading 3 more Awakening portraits and 1 older sprite that I cleaned up and made frames for.
The toughest sprite in this batch was definitely Kellam. The main posts have been updated with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Nowi, Kellam and Anna) and F2E - Other Game Franchises (Dynasty Warriors - Lian Shi)
There is also a Kellam alt under the Sillies section.
Despite being short, Nowi’s hair makes a hell of an experience spriting her. You know I’ve noticed a few of Kozaki’s character designs have pretty nuts hair or hair with thick volume (Sumia, Nowi, Lissa, Nowi, Anna, Camilla, Ryoma, etc) and so her hair is also where I have the most criticism for my own sprite. The blonde green colour is kinda hard to shade with my preferred style of hair shading. Otherwise I am also glad I didn’t have to sprite her bowtie or her bikini top thing, because I would of definitely ran out of colours then.
I didn’t hear no bell… thats how it feels trying to shove Kozaki’s General’s and Knight armour into the hackbox. I thought after doing Kjelle’s doing Kellam’s would be hard. Definitely thought of several angles, but decided the side on pose was best, to fit him. After working on Kellam, I think the hardest armour knights to fit into the hackboxes are probably gonna be Cervantes or the Feroxian NPC boss when you first go there. I have also made a joke alt of this placed in the Sillies section with most of the colour removed for the transparent colour.
So this is the 2nd Kozaki Anna I’ve drawn (the first being Heroes) and I think this one is definitely an improvement over the other, mainly due to the colour economy used. Still wish I had one extra colour to use on a gray for her buttons for her cloak/cape thing. I recall this Anna being a big deal being the first playable version of her (to my knowledge).
So this is actually an old sprite I did, that I noticed I had made insertable when going through my old folders so I cleaned it up a little bit and decided to upload it. Lian Shi was a new character added in Dynasty Warriors 7 to fill out Wu’s roster since the series since 7 decided to actually finish telling the story of the Three Kingdoms by extending the endgame scenarios to the rise of the Jin Kingdom (the final uniting one) Also to add another female rep (to the Kingdom at the time that I think had the most female reps already…) In her original debut, her specialist weapon was the crossbow which if built correctly was pretty beastly, but personally I always found that moveset to immobile to my liking. This design is based on her Dynasty Warriors 8 appearance.
It will probably be a while before I do another Dynasty Warriors sprite, and to be honest Xiahou Dun (my favourite, I’ve actually done 3 old ones of him) or Zhao Yun would probably come before Zhou Yu in terms of Kingdom mascots.
I mentioned in the past I was going to slow down in July, but then started pumping out sprites like crazy, now I actually am going to slow down a bit for while due to several IRL upcoming events taking up my time. That and there are some immediate game releases that I’ll playing (Baldurs Gate and Starfield) that will be sharing my spare time with spriting.
The main post has been updated with the below entries under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Panne, Vaike and Donnel)
After looking at the concept arts for Panne, etc I didn’t realise how naked she is all the time. Besides that, the hard part for this was shading her hair/fur. She has so much and they are the same colour so it was hard to kind of define them separately but I think I sorted it out by making hair flow and strand shade, while fur just has light shading. If I were to revisit, her I would probably look at her hair colours again.
Here is Teach to teach you a lesson. This one was surprisingly interesting to do, I originally tried to add some element of his original pose where he had his arm up, but I couldn’t feasibly fit in the hackbox so I decided to just leave his arm down. Despite that, his hair actually made it kinda hard to fit into the hackbox surprisingly. With all these Awakening sprites, even though there aren’t to my knowledge official heights of characters I am trying to vary their heights based on their sprites and how I imagine they are next to each other (Frederick and Kellam I think are the tallest characters I’ve done so far with Nowi being the shortest). I am proud of how the chains turned out on his metal collar, but other than that wish I had a 4th shade for his blonde hair to work with.
Aye the pot head. Donnel’s pot was actually fun to draw, however I think I should of made it slightly bigger width wise. The weakness I think for this portrait is the colour economy of his shirt. I think I could of probably distributed the colours better, but overall I think I am happy with what I made with the colours I had at the time. I also think if I revisited this, I would make the pot wider a bit.
Only one new sprite this time, been busy as I mentioned in my last post, still will be going forward at least until the end of August. Still I’ll like to try still spriting since its a fun pass time to do.
I’ve updated the main post with the below entry under F2E - Fire Emblem (FE Ylisse Saga - FE Awakening - Ricken)
With Ricken’s completion I have now sprited all of the original Shepards pre Robin. fitting in his hat into the hackbox was fun and simple. However I’m probably going to have to change Laurent’s pose when I get to him, since his main Awakening one would be impossible to fit the hat into the hackbox. The hat makes him look taller, but hes actually just slightly taller than the Nowi I did.
I’ve also updated the Siegfired Schtauffen sprites on his chest plate trimming decals since they were slightly off for his angle;
