Lord Glenn

You guys could be a little more helpful and descriptive, you know. Like answering the following: "Why is Amelia's (subjectively) better?", "What could be done to improve this one?", and so on. Personally, I can't see anything wrong with the image. Amelia's is nice, yes, but honestly, I'm not sure why y'all are making such a big deal between the two. Heck, it looks like they're not even using the same reference image for the sprites, given the slight angle in Amelia's. Plus, different stylistic approaches and stuff. (Yes, comparison is always subjective, but come on...) Anyway, if I did potentially see any areas of improvement, Miku's face might be a bit too round, given FE-centered styling and you might consider adding some shading detail to the hair to spice it up a bit.

Just send me the rough details in a PM or something and I'll try and crank them out once the semester finishes. Depending on what you would prefer, I can either stick them all on one sheet and send the sheet when they would all be finished, or I could send them individually when each one is finished. (Also, do you want them as BMPs for easier insertion or are PNGs fine?) And, I do intend on playing more of the project, especially with the new release. Well, once finals are done, that is.

My favorite tale is certainly *not* Tale 1. Haven't played any beyond it, actually. (Damn boss got lucky and killed Eliwood right before finishing.) You know, Arch, with all of these screenshots on display recently, I've become even more enamored with this. So much so, in fact, that I think I'd like to whip up a handful of custom weapon icons for the characters that need them. (Granted, I likely won't be able to start for another week or two weeks, but I figured I'd at least make the offer.) (And, I see no issue with extra content. Plus, I would think that a tale of one man taking on an entire army would be something that would be suited to telling as a story to a kid.)

Indeed it is (or at least that's what the filename and Google tell me), as was the much less awesome one I tried a couple of pages back or so. Celtic knots/symbols/designs tend to look cool and instead of doing a "starburst" type of pattern as I did in V.1 with the circles, I wanted to do something similar to like what FE10 had done for the circles behind the HP numbers when in battle. However, without rips and with only screenshots or what I could get a brief glimpse of on my TV, I just kinda went with a "Oh, there's a design on it. What could I use for a design? Oh, Celtic knots tend to be intricate. I'll use one of them." process.

It was referenced from this. The empty columns to the left and right of the template are there for when the template moves back and forth during hits and such in-game. So, when you're looking at the still frame at the start of a battle, the frame will be flush against the edges of the screen. From experience of the previous two versions of this thing, I've found that darker boxes for the weapon areas tend to make the icons or the text blend in too much, so I'm going to go with the lighter set for the moment. If it too looks odd in actual use, then I might change it.

Made some more tweaks based on your comments, VASM. As for the angel, there's an amusing story with that. It originally started out as a point/tip/spike/something like that with what was going to be bat wings beside it. I did the wings first and then had to adjust the spike since it was too short. While I was fiddling with it, I realized it kinda looked like a face (and thus an angel), so an angel it became. So, anyway, added in new WIP knots for the circles. Not really sure how to go about shading them right now... There's no way this is going to fit in the game...

I would also contend that the bend in the Santa Hat seems a bit off. From the experience of wearing one just last night, it tends to fall about as parallel to the body as it can get. I think the reason why the bend seems off is that the hat might be a bit more miniaturized than it needs to be. (Plus, no fur? *shot*)

Come on people, post already! More WIPness for the FE4R template. I have no idea if this thing is even close to insertion-eligible, but I'm gonna run with the design for now and I'll "trim" it later if it needs it. Help me out here, people. Thoughts? Comments? Ideas/Suggestions? TELL ME.

If that's implying that sprites will be required to fit inside the "hack box", then, despite the fact that I'm not a participant, I'm going to have to disagree here. This is first and foremost a spriting competition, not a "make sprites for hacks" competition. Sure, somewhat limiting the competition to "require" something that would be feasible for one of the games makes sense, but I personally feel that there's no reason to force a complete iron fist mentality of "IT HAS TO WORK IN THE GAME" on everyone, since that's not really what the competition is about. (Now, that's not saying that those that choose to meet the requirements of the games can't do so, because that's they're own prerogative.) It's about taking three base sprites and spitting out something that uses parts from only those images. Considering there's such a thing as creative liberty for art, artists (and by extension, pixel artists) should be allowed to do whatever they want in their art, including having reign over the sizes of their image (because, if they can knock out a giant half-body using only spliced parts and it took them a week to do, I'd say that that's fair game, personally) as well as colors and such (granted, I do agree that having something like 500 colors is absurd). FEU's splicing competition is run like an authoritarian state, limiting the artists with all of its rules and restrictions. That's a large reason why this contest is so much better than theirs, since we had creative stuff like the guy with the giant horn on his mask as an entry, simply because we don't have absurd restrictions for the rules. (Granted, it's entirely possible that I'm the only one that thinks this, but I digress...) (And, if your post isn't implying the above, then you can ignore most of what I just wrote.) I think, at the very least, you should leave the members involved in the changes, since they are the primary participants and the competition should be tailored to what they want.

I can't really compare the versions right now, since I'm not at my laptop and thus don't have access to stuff where I can zoom in, etc. I'll likely be back in my room in a couple of hours though, so if you can wait that long... As for what I can visibly discern at 1x zoom, I don't really see how using the darker shade for the "background" made the trim pillowed. It was definitely pillowed before the trim got tweaked and even with the darker shade, it was nowhere near what pillowed was originally. Maybe it's just this monitor, but at a regular zoom, it definitely didn't look pillowed. I'll have to leave more detailed hair stuff until I return to my laptop, but even though it was styled on Lyn's stuff, I guess the "issue" might be that there was slightly less hair area for Lyn than there is for Nicki in that spot, i.e. Lyn's feels less "flat" since there's less pixel area there that is being taken up by the lightest shade. I guess it really depends on what you're envisioning Nicki's hair to be like in terms of what kind of shading looks natural. I still might look at some of Vamp's hair and see if any style jumps out as being nicer and see if something like that works for Nicki. (I'll have to compare the fur stuff later.) And, Vamp, for the palette, it's really none of your say, since it's Trent's character... >_>

(Fail trolling attempt is fail.) Bull. It's entirely possible to create sprites that are creative and interesting; hell, look at most anything that waqwaq has done for proof (and that's only in the splicing realm; the realm of custom works provides even more possibilities). Nickt does raise a somewhat valid point that I've personally had a problem with in contests/competitions for some time now (despite the problem being far from readily solved), though. It's impossible to curb silly voting such as what was quoted, since one could easily come up with an alternative reason why they voted as they did (and, people do have their own preferences as to what they find appealing), however it does defeat the purpose of something like this being called a competition. Generally when one thinks of a competition, there is some set of guidelines that are used to measure and rank entries, contestants, etc. and those guidelines are generally used by a specific set of judges or what have you in order to actually do the ranking. In something public like this, sprites are often (and, I'll admit that I'm at fault sometimes as well) picked for simply their visual appeal or what they're of (say, someone spriting a character that is heavily ingrained in pop culture (so, for us, someone making a superb Sigurd mug using the three sprites might get a ton of votes, simply because it's Sigurd) and not on the technical merits of the work. Granted, judging solely on technical merits would likely eliminate a fair number of entries if, say, waqwaq entered after spending 2+ days of splicing to crank out something impressive and masterfully spliced; however, in competitions, things that are the best generally tend to win in the end. </rant> ------- As for the lack of entries, I'd likely guess that it has something to do with the fact that it's getting close to Christmas and homework loads have increased for students because of it? (Either that or the set isn't appealing to people...)

Everything but the trim section. (And, even for that, it'd be nice if you could make the dark area that's inset against the trim darker, but I have a hunch that those are the darkest skin shade and you don't have any spare colors so...)

I concur, much better. The hair shading is indeed better, but I also might suggest that you reference the top of the Ephidel!hair that Steven has in his sprite for the main part of the hair and how it heads back to where the ponytail starts at. Either that or the old sprite of Amera with the front of her hair (below the headband). Nicki's hair just seems a bit... bland in that big spot. (Maybe Vamp can be a little more helpful here on this one? A bunch of his sprites seem to have some nice uses of adding in that middle shade to show depth and hair flow.) I forgot to mention it before (which is odd, because I had reminded myself to make note of it before posting...), but it feels like the fur straps going over the shoulders don't really conform to Nicki's body. For instance, the one on our right doesn't really look like it curves back down Nicki's back to the backside of her robes. It just kinda... stops, if you know what I mean. Also, I'd try shifting the strap a pixel or two to the right, since it feels like it's a bit too centered (well, at least it looks like it might be; it's one of those things that I'd have to play with and see which looks better). Furthermore, I might shrink the fur by a pixel in width. It seems like it might be just a little bit too thick. (And, for the left strap, it just kinda looks like a clump of fur that's there. Though, that maybe be because of the following point and not the fur itself.) Another thing that seems to jump out to at least me is that it looks like Nicki's right shoulder is lower than her left shoulder coupled with the fact that her head is tilted towards said left shoulder. It just kinda comes off as an odd pose. Granted, I suppose there's nothing wrong with that since it's a normal bodily position, but I think it might be slightly more natural to have her right shoulder be higher than her left (e.g. it would need to be raised up back there and become more visible, which would likely require the fur to be changed as well) while keeping the same head angle. Granted, my artistic ability and sense of proportion and the like are pretty non-existent, so you might want some other opinions on this. As for the trim, it needs to... pop more. Once I get back to my laptop and can rummage through my reference files, I'll send over an example of some trim that you might want to look at. In the event that I can't find the image that I'm thinking of (or it's less helpful than I remembered), basically, I think that the brownish colors could be darker with some tweaked shading (it's pseudo-pillowed right now, but not really noticeable since there are only like two shades and it's in a limited area) and the trim could use some lighter accents (i.e. pull in some of the lighter skin shades and replace some of the current lighter trim tone with those) and could possibly be a bit thicker in places (namely the center and back pieces, IMO). EDIT - Oh, and about Toona's eyes: I blame IS and their inconsistent style. XD

With Mr. Daein Captain, I have to agree with what's been mentioned before: more pronounced trim and GBA-shaded armor. The FE10 style works in FE10, not as much in 8's style. (D:) I also think that the "back" part of the helmet (to the right of his face in our PoV) seems either pillowed or flat shaded. (The horns are quite nice though.) For Toona, I can't really say too much since it's still a WIP and I don't know the character. Only things I could point out are that the hair still isn't shaded very FE-like and that you've kinda got the MK404-Anime-Eyes syndrome going on with how large the eyes are. For Nicki, I think you could be a bit more liberal with the middle hair shade in the main part of the hair, since it's hella flat. I feel like the middle bang could be a more curvy on the right side (our PoV) as opposed to being a straight line. As for the clothes, I'd couple Uphir's suggestion with using something different for the clothes. Considering the custom work you've done on the mug so far, I wouldn't leave a heavy L'Arachel base for the clothes. And, since Nicki is a noble, it's kind of a given that she have somewhat fancy clothes, so... (Yeah, I got nothing specific for ya, except to either look at other character arts for ideas or sit down and ponder the character and what you could see them wearing.)

On the first map, the boats are far too small to actually be boats. Aside from that, something looks off with the tileset that you used. Are you using the same tileset that Ephraim!Ch. 12 uses in FE8 or a different one? Also, you've got a bit of a height issue with the walls up in the Arena/Vendor area. If the wall is going to be one tile high around the buildings, it needs to be two tiles high on the lower level. (See: FE8 Ch. 5.) On the second map, the grass tiles are "spammed" (needs more variation across the entire map) and I feel that there are a few height issues with the cliffs and river (notably how at the center area, the river is the same height as the top and bottom land masses, and then magically changes elevation to produce the falls on the left and right sides). Though, to be fair, Ch. 13 Ephraim has this problem to a much larger extent, so I suppose what you have still is technically correct.

It's not really supposed to be a carbon recreation of the image I linked. I merely took inspiration from it to make said icon (which basically amounts to the overall shape of the blade, minus the intricacies). And, there's a reason for why a couple of the icons on that teaser sheet are relatively different from what FE normally has: seeing the same damn stuff every time gets boring. (Though, I agree that an FE9/10 icon would allow significantly more detail.) As for the battle template, I can see where you're coming from, though I don't really know what to replace the brown with (especially since it's the same brown that the vanilla FE8 template uses). I'll try a darker gray (bordering on charcoal or something) and see how that looks. I might make a mock screen once I finish the template, but since it's still part of the ever-evolving FE4R template, it's mainly going to get its use in-game anyway, so...

Redid the bottom HP area stuff and very slightly tweaked the shading around the Hit/Dmg/Crit circle stuff. I think I need to extend the bottoms of the "trim" that are on the left and right of the circles' trims, since having two rows of brown in between is a bit too noticeable. inb4reysaysthatthismakestoomanytiles I'm really stabbing blindly here with this template, so any suggestions would really be useful.

Not normally one to post who I voted for or why, but I felt the need to this time, since a large number of the entries were extremely well made. (Props to ALS/Trent for the sets AND the option to pick between them; with the creativity in this week, I almost think that this should be a once-a-month "challenge" style round.) Anyway, I ended up voting for Lumi since, of all of the armored characters, the splice just seemed to fit the best. Waq's was certainly detailed, but I just felt that it was almost *too* detailed, to the point that the "simpler" armored character that Lumi did felt cleaner. The armor just kinda struck me the right way when it was first posted. Though, it's not like it was an easy vote for Lumi. Amelia's was about 2 cm behind it, and I flip-flopped down to pressing the Vote button as to which should get it. The pseudo-Sigurd/Celice was just extremely clean and had just the right amount of detail on it. (It actually kinda reminds me of a cross between Sigurd and Yuan from ToS...) However, while it was a great splice, I felt that Lumi's use of Idoun for armor was a bit more challenging and was still a clean splice. Of course, Vamp's sprite was clean as always, Spykor gets a few points for turning Karel into a dragon-demon, and 47948201 gets huge points for making a monkey out of this set. (Seriously, how?) (So, tl;dr summary: Vote: Lumi / Honorable Mentions: Amelia, Vamp, Waqwaq, Spykor, 47948201.)

Not really sure what kind of sword it's closest to. A friend linked me to this image a few years ago and I liked the design enough to find out what it was, get a quality image of it, and base the icon on it (you'll notice that the icon is solid the whole way through and the blade's overall structure is really the only similarity). And, yeah, I could have moved the "sparkle" to the left more, but then it would have covered too much of the icon, so... Not gonna comment on the MotSD comment? :(

Yeah, it's a mace. But, it makes sense to group it under Axes, so... EDIT - The Anima icon is "based" on the icon on the bottom left of this image (courtesy of Ice Dragon) (i.e. I had it up as a reference, but sprited the icon myself).

Tweaked the FE4R template after Yeti suggested a couple of fixes: Also, a very minute teaser set of icons for something I'm working on... (From left to right, top row to bottom: Sword, Lance, Axe, Bow, Anima, Light, Dark, Staff, Palette) Thoughts? Comments?

You need to install the Mono framework and then download Nintenlord's UPS Patcher, NUPS.

IOS has a post that has them earlier in the thread: Here.

Not Banpresto. They're only the developers of the series. Atlus currently has the localization rights in NA, as far as anyone knows (considering that they haven't announced Endless Frontier EXCEED or Lord of the Elemental, it's possible that they don't have the license anymore). Their reason not to localize OGs is largely speculated to be the above (Sony said that the games must have at least English VAs (hence why we actually got Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love on the Wii, since NISA had to do the English VAs for the PS2 release) to be released) coupled with the fact that they figured it wouldn't sell, using the past precedent of OG1 and OG2 selling like rocks. Which, of course, the latter is purely Atlus's fault, since it's kinda hard to have people buy a game when they don't even know about it. Not once do I remember seeing any advertising whatsoever for either OG1 or OG2 (and this was back in the day when I still read Nintendo Power, EGM, etc.), and I wouldn't even have known about the series at all if a friend hadn't told me about it. ------- On topic though, I honestly can't think of too many Japan-only DS games that I'd really care about getting localized. For that matter, I can't really think of too many Wii games that are Japan-only that matter enough to be localized either.

[spoiler=My Answers]Q1: Name me five enemies you wish could be recruited (any FE game). Ishtar(FE4/5), Eltosian(FE4), Areone(FE4/5), Bryce(FE9), and Dheginsea(FE10) (and a free sixth, Izuka, simply so that I could let him get mauled by a bunch of Laguz) Q2: Which is your favorite Cavalier duo? Cain and Abel, Alec and Noish, Kent and Sain, Lance and Alan, Kyle and Forde, or Oscar and Kieran. Oscar and Kieran. Q3: Name any characters who canonically die that you can remember off the top of your head. Assuming you're not counting bosses that get rampaged through in each game: Most of FE4 Gen 1, Leila, Hector, Karla, Zephiel's father, Greil, Elena, Marquess Caelin, Uther, Athos, Ninian (technically), Ephidel (since you don't kill him in battle), King Ramon, King Ramon's wife, Fado, Ismaire, Vigarde (since he's already dead when you fight him), Orson's wife, most of the Serenes clan... and that's about all I can think of. Q4: Which FE boss is the most unmemorable? Beran(FE8) - Ranger in the chapter where you get Duessel. Q5: Where do you think FE characters go when they die? Be creative. It's hard to be creative for this question, as there's typically a theological perspective shown in most of the recent games (FE4/5 had churches, FE6/7 had the Church of Elimine, FE8 had the Theocracy of Rausten, FE9/10 has the whole Ashera thing going on, etc.). So, the general heaven/hell consensus seems like it would fit for the majority, though it's entirely possible that there are other theological factions in the countries (like how there are many denominations in today's modern world) and that each character in-game has their own theological preference and thus goes to whatever that preference has available. (Maybe a ton of the palette swapped characters believe in reincarnation, which is why we have to keep fighting characters that look like them?) Q6: Think of a character that you typically use as cannon-fodder. State that character's name. I don't really throw my characters willy-nilly into the middle of a ton of enemies, especially since FE doesn't really care too much about turn limits. (Now, if this was Super Robot Taisen or something, then I'd definitely have plenty of options here...) I guess the closest I can think of would be... Ike(FE9), maybe? Or perhaps Shinon in the early levels to pull enemies for the rest of the team.