First piece in a long time

[Alecazaam]

Hey guys. Many moons ago, when the western black rhino ran plentiful across the grasslands, and the cisticola soared high in the skies, I was a semi-regular poster on FEPlanet and Fire Emblem Empire. I also helped run a website called Fire Emblem Evolution. It's been quite some time since I've posted on a message board, but after a long marathon of GDQ speedruns, Gwimpage's Tellius speedruns inspired me to do some FE GBA splicing. 

As a teenager I thought I was really good at this, now I'm not so sure. But I had a lot of fun over the last hour or so making a portrait. Done in MSPaint - It's mostly splicing with very little of my own shading or whatever. What a blast! I can't believe I ever stopped doing this, and for so long. It was a thread on these boards that gave me the resources, so I figured I'd pop in and say thank you.

Feel free to leave any comments. I know it's not very good, but if that's all you have to say, that's okay.

Due to the way I work in MSPaint, I've got kind of a progress image that I'll post below.

 

I started with Dieck (FE6) as a base. I saw his portrait - one of my favorites - and decided it needed to be beardier. (Not pictured: Dieck with Atos' beard which *really* did not work.)

I replaced the head with Fado from FE8. Then I added Pereth's (FE6) beard. Next I used Marcus (FE7) for his eyes and eyebrows. At this point I began recolouring. I'm sure I messed up the skin tones a ton, but it's not noticeable to my rusty eye. I used Kyle's (FE8) armor colour, and Erk???'s (FE7) hair colour. I shaded out the scar on Dieck's shoulder - which is where I should have stopped. Instead, I added Dozla's (FE8) shoulder piece so that the warrior battle sprite made a tiny bit more sense. Finally, I recoloured the warrior battle sprite and did my best to remove the helmet, add a bear, and make the chest bare.

I feel silly for such a long write up, but, like I said, I had a good time.

Cheers,

Alecazaam

 

[Capibarainspace]

I think its a good splice, I really like the design. However I can see some problems,

• First, it has 35 colours! Get on Usenti and strim those down to 16.
• 4 colours on the hair doesn´t really add much, besides it makes the shading have less contrast. Some parts of the shading look weird like the cross shape shading on his left side of the hair. I would stick with 3 colours and follow the shading from the original mugs.
• The beard is a nice touch but it needs the outline from the original mug. Without it his beard´s right side looks chopped off.
• His left shoulder needs shading below the armour piece and less outline colour.

Have fun getting back into splicing!

[Alecazaam]

As for the first point, that's the only thing I'm not really gonna worry about at the moment.

Four colours for the hair being a mistake makes sense! The beard as well, I get what you mean. The right side of the beard was a bit I added with the pencil - Pereth's beard seemed to be missing something on its own. Do you mean using the portrait outline colour? Or were you recommending to just stick to the splice if I'm sticking to splicing?

I added like 1 line of pixels at the shoulder - I couldn't figure out the best way to add shading given the the situation.

Thanks so much for the feedback. The next one will be better for sure :)

 

EDIT: Was in the middle of working on another one when I read your feedback. Tried to narrow down the colours used a bit. It was a wonky fun one tho.

 

Edited October 23, 2017 by Alecazaam

[Capibarainspace]

On 23/10/2017 at 5:11 PM, Alecazaam said:

The right side of the beard was a bit I added with the pencil - Pereth's beard seemed to be missing something on its own. Do you mean using the portrait outline colour? Or were you recommending to just stick to the splice if I'm sticking to splicing?

I´d suggest to use the outline colour and then see how it looks. It will probably be more noticeable if you need to do custom or stick to the splice.

I added like 1 line of pixels at the shoulder - I couldn't figure out the best way to add shading given the the situation.

I would just get rid of the outline colour shading and shade with skin colours normally. I feel Outline colour shading is best used where it´s probably too dark to see from the outside. (like the inside of the armour or armour crevices like on Dozla´s case). not sure if this makes sense

EDIT: Was in the middle of working on another one when I read your feedback. Tried to narrow down the colours used a bit. It was a wonky fun one tho.

This creeps me out, :D. The face is really nice but I´d suggest doing something with the hair because I´m just getting an angrier and manlier Sue, lol.