Sagely Spriting Showcase

[Blaze the Sage]

Heyo! If you saw my Intro thread, you were probably expecting this. I consider myself at least a halfway decent spriter, even if all I really do is splices and minor freehanding. I'll start with a few portraits. A lot of these sprites have RP characters to go with them (generally from Elibe), so I'll give a brief description of them, too.

[spoiler=Portraits]

((Yeah, this guy's also in my avatar, whatever)). Teonass Reklawnus: A Wyvern Rider of Bern who ended up deserting. He has a strong hatred of mages after a rogue group of them killed his fiance while on the run from Etruria. His fierce temper is held in check by the calming presence of his otherwise fairly fierce wyvern companion, Sabellian.

Nikholas Harmarth: A friendly, if somewhat grumpy old man with great magical skill. He absolutely despises cold weather, but nevertheless tends to favor cold and ice-based magic in combat. His scarred, bald head is a result of an accident back when he was first learning, with his very first attempt at a Fire spell.

Rayzul Azza: A former pirate captain from the Western Isles whose signature weapon is a quarterstaff tipped with vicious spikes at each end. He is very charismatic, and tends to have a huge weakness for pretty women. Shame the opposite doesn't seem to be true. His eyes glow an eerie gold color, though he insists it's not natural. He doesn't speak on it any more than that, however.

((Not as pleased with this one, simply because of how large a portion of it is just a Lloyd recolor...))

Lee Degrahth: A young leader of the former mercenary group, "The Burning Blades". A short-lived, but wildly successful company up until their historic, crushing defeat. Only three members of the group survived, each ignorant of the others survival until meeting up later. Lee was also partially transformed during the battle, though whether as a bizarre, unforeseen side-effect of another spell, or a failed attempt to completely transform him is uncertain. Of course, this is only him before he grew a coat of fur...

((No, I will not be posting a post-fur portrait. I've tried before. It sucked. <.<))

And now a few miscellaneous others:

Portraits however, have never been my strong suit. I prefer battle sprites. So let's get to that.

[spoiler=Combat Sprites]

[spoiler=Lances]

A simple dismounted Cavalier. Originally used it for a character of mine, but I've since given him a better one. I stuck the cavalier on the Hero's legs, but I also tampered with the chest a bit, because it puffed out a lot, and looked weird as it was without his horse.

...It counts as a lance, right? >.> But yeah, simple bishop, but I freehanded the weapon head. I still have NO idea what the hell to call this kind of weapon, I've heard about a million different names.

A simple general edit. Not much to say.

This one was assembled by a friend of mine, but he asked me to color it. My first thought was: "Wow, that's pretty neat, he did a good jo-OH SWEET JESUS THAT IS A BIG SPEAR"

I love this dude. The character he made it for was a Knight (it was on a forum with a battle system) named Rook. lol, chess jokes

Brandon Arrius: Childhood friend of Lee Degrahth. He's well known for his appetite, both for food and for a challenge. He discarded his old, large bulky armor shortly after the Burning Blades' formation in favor of mobility and precision. He's said to be able to throw javelins and spears with deadly accuracy, even from great distances.

((This is the dude the dismounted cavalier was originally for - the first two are his new unpromoted sprites. The promoted ones came first, and since I used promoted Hector for them, I felt he should have unpromoted sprites based on normal Hector. The little spear fluff was inspired by the Dynasty Warriors games, but so far as I know was used in actual history to act essentially as a blood sponge. On a different note, I've tried several times now to make a portrait for this guy, but I just can't find an appearance that satisfies me. It's kinda frustrating.))

Generic versions of Brandon's sprite. I'd have done the green "other" scheme instead of the blue player scheme, but I couldn't find it. These color schemes were, for the record, ripped directly from the game, from nameless generic units (I even codebreaker'd one of my guys into a nameless unit for it and took a screenshot, but I did that part ages ago)

EDIT: Actually, looking at some generic in-game enemies, I'm not so sure I ripped these from in-game. The blue one I'm pretty sure, the red, not so much.

[spoiler=Swords]

Lee Degrahth, post-fur. The animation was done by someone else with a spritesheet I provided years ago. I don't remember who anymore. But yeah. Lots of fun. There's a REASON his group was called the Burning Blades, you know. The Mercenary is really really old though. At this point, if I went back, the main thing I'd do is turn that tail upside down so it goes up instead of drooping down like that. The tail in general is one of my worst freehanding jobs though, to be honest.

Something I did for giggles a while back. Lee on Halloween! Disney's Robin Hood!

Trace Legacy, from the webcomic "Twokinds". Based on some fanart I saw on deviantart.

A generic male version of Lyn ^^ I went with Sol Katti for the promoted sword pose because the normal sword pose would have been HELL to turn into a guy. Not that these weren't, but...

A Rogue without that godawful bandana and those eye-burningly bright colors. Rogues are supposed to be stealthy. Wearing BRIGHT ORANGE is counter-productive. The tail is an RP thing, it's stitched to the back of his pants. Also, I stole it from the wolf monster thingy from FE8.

[spoiler=Axes]

Let's say it together, folks: Holy crap, he has a shirt! Yeah, this is the second incarnation of these sprites. The first version looked far too much like spandex. It was my really really early spriting days. >.> But yeah, I'm very proud of that Berserker, especially the animation. That took a LOT of detail work. To see why, compare him to Hawkeye.

Yeah, I just sorta went nuts on this guy's Axe. This is Teonass from up in the portraits section, by the way. The weapon was actually based on a weapon carried by a few specific NPC's in World of Warcraft. I want it so badly as an RP weapon, but the model isn't obtainable by players T_T

[spoiler=Others]

...yeah, this was just me getting colossally bored one day and deciding to make a ridiculously tanky healer. Well, that or I decided to piss off Zephiel. "WHAT HAPPENED TO EXACCUS?!?"

Just a humble Mage Knight without his horse. Might be good for some sort of unarmed noble or merchant or something.

Hi, Rayzul! Yeah, not much to say here, they kinda speak for themselves.

Good old Nikholas. You grumpy old bald bastard, you.

Ok, these turned out a lot better than I thought they would, if only because of the fan itself. The fan is freehanded, the rest of it is just recolored Bishop/Monk poses (though I did fiddle with the arms in that first Monk pose). Based on Zhuge Liang of the Dynasty Warriors series. Also, I just wanna say, in the idle Bishop pose, that little hand sorta cradling the fan was added as an afterthought, and I'm really glad I did, because it looks SO much better for it. Amazing what about nine pixels can do.

What do you think?

Edited October 16, 2011 by Blaze the Sage

[Phoenix]

...It counts as a lance, right? >.> But yeah, simple bishop, but I freehanded the weapon head. I still have NO idea what the hell to call this kind of weapon, I've heard about a million different names.

A naginata?

Favorites:

Rayzul: Kinda reminds me of one of my rp characters with the lance (unarmored soldier)

Tailed Rogue: Looks cool

Brandon Arrius(and the generic versions)

General Guy with the gigantic lance: Nough said

Dismounted Cavalier

@ Small General edit

It kind of looks like the unhelmed head is just sitting in front of the real one. Is there something else back there or are they actually not wearing any helmet or hat of any kind? It's hard to tell and like I said, at first glance it looks like the new head was just pasted over whatever was there before.

[Blaze the Sage]

That's actually part of the head - I grabbed it from the FE6 Bishop, and they have a little hat.

[Phoenix]

Ah okay, I can kind of see it now

[deranger]

I like dynasty warriors guy (wind magic yes). The last mug seems to be mixing fe7 and fe8 colors (BAD). Decent work.

[Nanami Touko]

Huh. Something decent in the spriting section. That doesn't happen often :> No I'm not being sarcastic

Well, I suggest you work on your colors just a tad, because the choices don't flow that well on some of them Like mr. blue cape, yellow armor, and don't mix FE6/7 with FE8 colors. The hues/saturations are way too different between games, and the colors don't work as well together.

Otherwise, your splices are clean, and some of them are kinda creative. also, an RPer, eh? Go look at the Abysmal Souls RP, think about signing up :3

[Blaze the Sage]

Well, I decided to give one more go for a portrait for Brandon Arrius, and here was the result:

The bottom of the chin bothers me a bit, but...

In any case, the reason I went for the more... run-down armor for him is because the character, history-wise, used to be a full-fledged Knight, but upon leaving the formal military and joining the Burning Blades, he didn't just discard his old Knight's armor. He dismantled it, kept some parts and not others, and pretty much cut it down for the sake of mobility, rather than get himself newer, lighter armor.

I tend to picture him as a bit of a bigger guy, he enjoys what he does, he loves a challenge, he's a thrill-seeker, so I ended up using Wade's face, with someone else's eyes (to be honest, more to change it up from Wade at least a LITTLE bit than anything else). Still looks too much like Wade for my liking, but oh well. The expression is really what does it, and it fits Brandon too well to really change it.

[Blaze the Sage]

Ok, I'm hoping for some feedback on this one, cause something about it bugs me, and I can't quite put my finger on what it is.

I just finished this one a few minutes ago, but something about it just... feels off. Like his head's too far forward or something, I don't know. Help?

[Phoenix]

The head does look like he's nosing forward a bit but it may or may not also be that that cape thing is too big (more so on the left side than the right). Also it doesn't look quite finished with only a light shade and a dark shade, I think.

Edited October 18, 2011 by Phoenix

[Blaze the Sage]

Actually, regarding the shading on the cape, I actually took it from one of Hector's sprites, and there were actually only the two shades on it to begin with. Maybe I'll just make it darker or something...

EDIT: There we go.

The edited version, as compared to the old:

Minor edits, but it made a fairly big difference, I think.

Edited October 18, 2011 by Blaze the Sage

[deranger]

recolor rath's bandana.

[Phoenix]

You got it from Hector? Well that explains why it's so big. Guess you used this one?

Hector (Formal)

Well it looks sorta fine on a darker color but on a brighter one it looks half finished IMO.

[Book of Ereshkigal]

The cape has no AA to the shirt, so it looks really separated.

And the left (ours) side of his cape doesn't look like its going over his shoulder, it just stops. Looking at the old one, lol.

Edited October 18, 2011 by L95

[Blaze the Sage]

Rather than focus and obsess over one single portrait, I've decided to try my hand at a few more (since inspiration sorta struck).

Shading on the bandana in #3 bugs me, but other than that I'm fairly pleased with how these turned out.

[Book of Ereshkigal]

Interesting. On # the part where the bandana meets the ear looks odd.

[Blaze the Sage]

Well, one more wave from me out of my current source of inspiration.

This one I got a little lazy on in terms of trying to make it look unique. Mostly because it was the fourth of fifth attempt at such. I officially HATE working with female portraits like this.

A minor modification of #3 above - his bandana is no longer slicing through his ear.

I like how this girl came out. Those eyes made a huge difference.

I was going to try and get rid of that earring, until it occurred to me... there is not a SINGLE male nomad portrait without one. Go ahead, go look. Rath, Uhai, Dayan, Shin, even the generic boss nomad portraits from FE6 have earrings.

And this guy. Probably the least inspired of the lot, honestly. I tried to make it look like it was from 6 or 7 or something, but honestly, I'm not really aware of exactly how the visual styles are separated, so I probably failed.

[deranger]

#2 needs shading where his hair meets his bandanna/headband.

I'm not a fan of the purple green combination, but maybe that's just preference.

And Sealen has no earing.

[Blaze the Sage]

True enough about Sealen - but then, his portrait isn't a dedicated Nomad portrait. Playing through the game through a fresh cartridge, the first time the player would see that portrait is on a Warrior, specifically Oleg from Chapter 20/21 - remember that Sealen appears only in Hector mode.

So my statement can still be considered accurate - provided you consider only portraits used EXCLUSIVELY for nomads. And thank you for noting the shading bit - I've been having a hard time making that bandana look right. I might decide to just make it a different color altogether. The character it's for is supposed to be a kind of... rebellious sort, the kind of guy who turns his nose up at authority and does things his own way. Maybe I'll make it red?

[deranger]

If you have left over colors, go for it. You'll still need to shade the hair near it. I'm pretty sure your colors are one of the few things I don't like about your work.

[Blaze the Sage]

Truth be told, I don't really keep track of how many colors my sprites have. I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that many of my sprites or portraits go over the limit - I don't make them with the idea of putting them in a game in mind, really.

Hell, a lot of them are too big, too, I think.

(And yeah, colors and shading tend to be my weak point. I consider that berserker animation up there to be one of my greater triumphs in that regard. Just sayin'.)

[Phoenix]

This one I got a little lazy on in terms of trying to make it look unique. Mostly because it was the fourth of fifth attempt at such. I officially HATE working with female portraits like this.

I think cleanness is more important than uniqueness(recolor sympathizer alert).

I like how this girl came out. Those eyes made a huge difference.

Looks nice

[Blaze the Sage]

Got a few more for ya, guys. This time, ones I did for other people.

This one, aside from the area in and around her (our) left eye, it turned out half-decently, I think. I don't like that eye at all =\ (that and my attempt at de-trimming the armor didn't go so well <.<)

Again, his (our) left eye gave me a bit of trouble that I'm not quite certain I managed to resolve. The image he had for the character had a sort of v-neck thing going with his chest armor, so I did my best to replicate it rather than cheaping out.

This one was for a closer friend, a sort of representation of his Paladin from World of Warcraft. He suggested the color scheme for the armor, and from there I just sort of went off what I know of the character.

This one's for the above portrait, really more of a gag sprite than anything. He doesn't really see the character as the type to be big on mounted combat, but since he's sort of a mount collector, I went for it. And since he's a paladin, I decided to go for it and gave him the glowy shiny sword, and the disembodied wings are meant to represent the ability "Avenging Wrath", which does in fact visualize in-game as a pair of glowing disembodied wings behind your character. I also decided to vaguely mimic the Paladin "Judgement" armor set for the helmet.

Went for a Great Knight instead of a Paladin sprite because the character in question is a Tank.

Edited October 24, 2011 by Blaze the Sage

[Blaze the Sage]

It suddenly occurs to me that part of the wings on that last sprite there got hit with the transparency stick. I didn't realize it was the same shade as the background till' I posted it on a forum where I use a dark skin D8

Oh well. MORE STUFF!

Just a random dude with sharpened pointies. Nothing much to say here.

Little bitty Ross with a bigass sword. (though I think part of the sword got hit with the transparency thing too ><)

FLAILING AXE WOMAN OF DOOM

Actually based on one of my own WoW characters. She is a very angry lady. She has two axes. She makes things really really dead.

Rawr.

Uh-oh, looks like doggy found hisself a whuppin' stick!

---

Yeah, nothing terribly serious in this one. Just me screwing around, really.

Edited October 25, 2011 by Blaze the Sage

[Freohr Datia]

I think cleanness is more important than uniqueness(recolor sympathizer alert).

Actually recoloring in GBA sprites is quite easy =] As long as you know how to select the right colors, or are good at customing your own.

Got a few more for ya, guys. This time, ones I did for other people.

This one, aside from the area in and around her (our) left eye, it turned out half-decently, I think. I don't like that eye at all =\ (that and my attempt at de-trimming the armor didn't go so well <.<)

Again, his (our) left eye gave me a bit of trouble that I'm not quite certain I managed to resolve. The image he had for the character had a sort of v-neck thing going with his chest armor, so I did my best to replicate it rather than cheaping out.

This one was for a closer friend, a sort of representation of his Paladin from World of Warcraft. He suggested the color scheme for the armor, and from there I just sort of went off what I know of the character.

This one's for the above portrait, really more of a gag sprite than anything. He doesn't really see the character as the type to be big on mounted combat, but since he's sort of a mount collector, I went for it. And since he's a paladin, I decided to go for it and gave him the glowy shiny sword, and the disembodied wings are meant to represent the ability "Avenging Wrath", which does in fact visualize in-game as a pair of glowing disembodied wings behind your character. I also decided to vaguely mimic the Paladin "Judgement" armor set for the helmet.

Went for a Great Knight instead of a Paladin sprite because the character in question is a Tank.

For the first one, try making the second shade in her hair a teeny bit darker. And draw in a bit more of the darkest shade for the bangs as they touch her forehead. They look light colored while there are random spots in the middle of her hair that are dark.

The outline seems to stick outward on the right side of her neck too, but I think that might be from her hair? But also the neck seems to be too skinny, when comparing to the collar and to her head. I would just draw the outline to be one pixel to the right. Don't drag the neck to the right though, because I think that'll just make it too skinny... Actually, I believe the neck would probably actually extend to the ear, so maybe extend it 2-3 pixels ^~^

Also the trim shouldn't be just one shade. Usually for dark colors they also use the outline color as another shade. That may help it look better.

And finally, there's a part on the bottom of her ponytail where there's a huge space that's just the second shade. I think from the area of her head, try drawing a line going down in the 3rd shade to emphasize a division in her hair, or add some more of the lightest shade on the left side (or maybe even both =o)

For the one that looks like Eliwood, try making either all of the trim have the dark outline going around it (like where it connects to the armor) or make it all not have that. Some parts just stand out too much, to me, with only some of it having that dark outline. And there's one strand going down his forehead that has one itty bitty little spot in it that makes it seem like a tiny chunk of his strand fell out XD You can probably see, but if not, it's the one above his right eye, from our point of view.

For the third, there are random little pixels in his hair that look kinda strange =D And while using FE 6 coloring (I believe it's 6?) using such bright red makes a huge contrast to all the rest of the mug and I'm seeing it's mostly that it makes the outline look a little too light and pale-colored to be an outline.

And I don't do battle sprites, so I can't help you there since I'd have no idea what I'm talking about XD

[Blaze the Sage]

I figured I should put something new up.

Looking back, I was shocked to realize just HOW MUCH of Harken I had in my old portrait for Lee. His armor, which I didn't even change the colors for, AND his hairstyle. So I figured, no, screw that, I'm making him something else. I kept Harken's colors on the armor, just because it's become too heavily associated with the character for me. But, I changed his head around. Yeah, I've heard that Lloyd gets a bit overused, but really, oh well. Combined with the eyes I used, it portrays the character's personality well.

And you know those last two bunches of portraits I posted, that aaaaaall had that green and occasionally purple) color scheme? Well, they were all old members of Lee's old group, the Burning Blades. These days, only a select few are still alive - though the old gang coming back to "haunt" the survivors is a common plot element for them - when I told one guy about it while submitting one of the survivors as a character in an Elibe-set RP, he even decided he was going to incorporate it into the plot he had going.

So, I figured it was a good opportunity to do something like this: Morph versions! With red eyes because what the hell why not.

(for the record, in that last one, I'm aware of parts on the clothing's trim that use pixels the same color as the darker shades of the skin tone. Some got replaced, others didn't, I was being lazy and doing a quickie with the eraser-tool-right-click-trick thingy in MS paint.)

Edited November 1, 2011 by Blaze the Sage