Misc WIP projects
Foreword
These projects will eventually get their own pages. Some of the stuff already has a proper page, but is waiting to be integrated.
NES
Zelda
I had a brief encounter with my Zelda 1 project in March 08. It's a little strange that I don't have more art done for it, since it's one of my favorite games.
Link has turned into a pretty boy, just like Pit from Kid Icarus. It kind of takes away their character. I wouldn't go quite as far as I've done here with Link though, in staying faithful to his sprite appearance. But his nose really was 2 pixels long on that 16 pixel sprite.
With the rough concept to the right I wanted to explore the stone statues you see when entering the first level / dungeon. Possibly the statues are meant to look like Zora (which looks like 'the creature from the black lagoon'), and Aquamentus (dragon pony thing).
I feel that the newer are too linear and have too much errand running. The original is not beyond criticism though, with the tedious security though obscurity bomb every tile burn every bush mechanic.
If I were to make a Zelda game, it's be a persistent simulation of Hyrule, with Ganon producing troops, the Cave Elves forming a resistance. Little battles taking place. The player rising up to be a hero in the midst of that.
The overworld and dungeons seem architected, sterile and orderly. I can imagine that long ago some architect built Hyrule. The trees still grow in the same orderly lines. The dungeons, unfurnished, yields no clue as to what their original purpose was.
Metroid
I've worked a bit on my Metroid image. Well, I just added my Ripley concept in, and Armourless Samus. The pink tights are a way to adress the odd palette for the skin tone in the game. The color placements here are pretty close to the sprites. I figured out that I could give Samus some pink 80's tights, to explain her odd skin tone. The patches of black very roughly corresponds to black pixel placements on the sprite.
Megaman
The recent news about Megaman 9 being NES style made me want to return to my MM project. I've been experimenting a bit, trying to find a scale and style which works, but it's difficult. I'm not a fan of the cone legs seen in the X series and later. Here's the standard Chibi approach with stick legs. I prefer a pale yellow face rather than a skin colored one. Also, the power pellets should be in the style of the first game.
I've been drawing Megaman stuff since the game came out. It's a way for me to measure how much I improve over the years. However, when it comes to drawing people interacting in environments I'm still very inexperienced.
So, I've been attempting to do a paraphrase of the Megaman 1 (PAL/EU) cover.
Somewhat pleased with:
+ The characters in the corners are deflecting escaping... eye beams.
Worried about:
- Left bottom corner... and the foot going down there... I can't have people standing on the border.
- I tend to spread out things too everything evenly with no overlapping. I need to learn to use empty areas to guide the eye, rather than just adding more stuff at every free spot. However, I do want a busy feel, kind of like the SMB1 cover.
- Megagirl is too central? I nudged it a bit to the right. It's nowhere near rule of thirds though?
Maybe I should add some foot splashes in the snow (around the feet), to make it less static.
Should Elecman be removed in favour of Iceman shooting (increasing the action)? I might try and remove Elecman and scale up Iceman.
The shadow in the snow could suggest more strongly that there's a target outside of the image.
Since the levels are generally very blocky, I've got a bit of a problem with more organic ground shapes. I've started throwing in some structures. The skull castle isn't on the ice level of course, and nor are the other bosses. I'm thinking the castle is just a portal, because it doesn't appear to be able to house 4 levels otherwise. The colors are from the game pretty much (hence the sky color).
As for the story, I'm thinking that Dokurobotto overhears Wily mentioning that he regrets not ever meeting an evil Missis, passing on his legacy, etc. So, Dokurobotto builds a mechanical daughter, Wilma (Astroboy plot, yeah). Unfortunately Wily never finds out because Dokurobotto bites the dust (or Wily jealously rejects Wilma when she outdoes him). Wilma ends up on the scrap heap, but is found much later. She's programmed with Wily's kind of personality, and promptly starts causing trouble, constructing a set of robot masters. Her hair has Tron Bonne / Oni influences.
And right below is an attempt at Splash Woman with legs. I'm not really sure what this is for though, I just wanted to draw something. Designwise, I'm borrowing bits from Z and ZX. Maybe it's Venus Girl, since she's got a shell to ride on. Everything yellow is pointy. Japanese swimsuit. Kind of haphazard design overall though. Yeah, BubbleGirl needs a breathing apparatus despite being a robot. Design flaw.
Probotector
Using designs from both Contra and Probotector. I prefer the Probotector robots over the boring Contra muscle men. The chick is from the Arcade poster.
Bionic Commando
I gave my Bionic Commando redesigns another shot, although I need to iterate them more to get rid of nonsense detailing and get more fluid in my expression. Anyways, I tried to stay close to the source sprites (ref http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/BionicCommando/BC-Enemies.html). The placement of colors and masses is important for achieving likeness, but I took the liberty of varying the colors a bit to liven things up. I kept the extra colors close to the main colors, e.g., purple and brown, skin tone and white, and sky blue and light gray.
There's a little specular light pixel on the boots of the sprite characters, but I made it into a gray detail instead. If my redesigns had gloss boots and were rendered in a game engine then the specular might move around or disappear, thus reducing likeness. I'm trying to think of the sprites in a nonfigurative way and more like a collection of color blobs. It's less important what the pixels portray. The type of likeness I'm after is more on a 'corner of the eye' or 'flashing by' level. In video games that kind of rapid identification is very common.
Valkyrie no Bouken and Tower of Druaga
I'm staying somewhat close to 2-bit (4 color) restrictions here. Technically, you can overlay sprites to get more colors on a character, but here I just wanted to create a NES feeling. There's some artwork of the flying baboon guys, the jumping Kiwi-ish birds, and I've incorporated some of that into the sprites.
Rather than just palette swapping to produce variants, I made light-medium-heavy versions of some enemies. It's a way to widen the range a design (making it less than a single point), and the universe feels more solid if there are variations of things rather than just clones.
There's some logic to the colors, with a scale going from yellow, to blue, red and black.
Unlike many, I like the trees being flat slices. The houses gave me a lot of trouble until I realized that I could make them less blocky by sloping in the roofs. This also suggests perspective in a way. I copied the way Final Fantasy 1 puts the shop icons on the front of the houses.
The background stuff / map tiles probably shouldn't use black. This will make the moving characters pop better.
As for the angles of the characters, I thought I'd do four angles pointing diagonally, with horizontal flipping.
The original sprites have been included for reference (in gray fields). The sprites were drawn to be viewed at 2x.
At the bottom is some Tower of Druaga Sprites. I'm skipping the black outline at some places. It's a way to vary line weight and suggest contact or lightness. The slimes worked much better with no line underneath, because it suggested contact with the floor, whereas a black line would suggest... 'floatage' due to the shadow effect. On the top side I often skip the outline too, because it gives me one more pixel to work with, and the top side can have a thinner line (i.e. none) because it's the lit side.
Quox, the dragon in Tower of Druaga, and Zouna, the evil antagonist in Valkyrie no Bouken, were iterated a lot. Some of the other designs were too, but I cropped the failures out.
Rygar
This sheet has the pencil thumbnail which spawned the chibi scale which I use nowadays. I like how the scale might work as a cute in-game scale (readable big head) without being so SD big head that it's difficult to portray feminine form or gender.
By peeking around in the game ROM, I managed to find out that the shadow enemies in the last castle actually have details if you manipulate the palette. Perhaps the designers felt that the enemies were more creepy as silhouettes. Regardless, I enjoy doing research like this, and I incorporated the hidden details into my redesigns.
Blaster Master
I may have some new stuff for my Blaster Master / Metafight project page, but I'll just put it here for now. This new jump-tank design is more faithful to the color placements of the sprite.
Journey to Silius / RAF world (Rough world?) - Sunsoft
Ref: There are no (good) sprite sheets. I doodled these while watching a 'let's play' (pausing for ref shots) and listening to the excellent music.
This game was apparently intended to be based on Terminator. The story seems to have been changed last minute or something, and it doesn't really work with the gameplay. The main character (only character) is pretty flat too.
Perhaps some dimension can be brought to the main character if it's revealed that he's actually a machine built by his father, and that the father also made the terrorist robots by mistake (and that they killed him). That would give the ending some tension, with the main character finding out that he killed his own kind, or that he needs to insist that he's different from them. Maybe the terrorist robots only wanted their own lot in the universe. Maybe the main character has... a... ssssisstahh?
So, yeah, I made the main character into a chibi thing, again. There are 3 or 4 versions of the main character. The Japanese cover, the Japanese sprite, the US sprite (no helmet and more chibi), The EU sprite (same as the Japanese one, I think). There might be some art in the instruction booklets too, but I have not researched that far yet. Anyways, other than basic use of colors, I didn't stay close to any design in particular. The Japanese armoured version has more blue on it, and the US one has a more white baggy pants look.
The enemies I just made quick roughs of. While the designs in the game are really haphazard, I think there is a fun thing going on with the white nonsense lump look.
I'd love to turn this into a 'metroidvania' or 'controid'.
The US main character got some kind of thing going on with a black bar over his chest. I interpret that as some kind of hole/shadow under a collar of some sort.
Mario
Mari is an original character of mine. I'm thinking that... she's fighting legions of robotic turtles, and maybe some kind of mushroom-like creatures. Instead of using doors, she gets to places using some kind of tubes. Crabs are awesome too. They could get really angry when hurt and start running around. Another neat feature could be that... Mari starts out super chibi and then she eats something and grows up or something?
Misc characters from NES games: Turtles, Castlevania, Hebereke / Uforia, Megaman, Milon's secret Castle.
The name Faxanadu is apparently a joining of Famicom + Xanadu. Xanadu is the second game in the Dragon Slayer series (MSX, PC88, etc). The NES/Famicom also had Legacy of the Wizard (aka. Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family). DraSle might be short for Dragon Slayer. When looking at the sprites from Xanadu (Dragon Slayer 2, 1985), I could spot the Drasle family members. There are also many other interesting sprites showing ties to Tower of Druaga (84), Hydlide (85), Zelda (86), etc.
Anyways, I don't like Faxanadu as a game, but I rather fancy its aesthetics and unique atmosphere.
Sega Master System
Psycho Fox
This is a Sega Master System game which I have fond memories of. It's one of those games which I only played a few times at a friend's place, so it kept its magic, never seemed repetitive, etc. It is certainly better as a memory. There are not enough enemy variants in the game, and the few existing designs are kind of all over the place. There's a Shinto (?) theme showing here and there, but the overall theme is... silly/nonsense.
You can't see ahead of yourself much, which is bad because you can potentially run quite fast. The levels are linear but offer some degree of exploration (horiz+vert scrolling). Unfortunately there's not much to find, because there are so few power-ups / collectibles.
The main strengths of the game are character switching, cuteness, and a feeling of happy-fun. There's also a few interesting mechanical devices in the game, such as the folding stair cases and pneumatic 'springboards'.
The enemies in the game feels too simple, lacking 'range'. Most of them are just a lump body with eyes and some kind of appendage. I tried to nudge the enemy designs a bit to make them more interesting, but there's not much I can do. They might be cybernetic, so there's an idea to play with. I'm thinking of using the existing enemies as a base and extrapolate new heavier designs from them. Right now I'm pretty much just drawing the stuff from the game to gain a feel for things. A first iteration.
You defeat the enemies by: Punching them. Gradually stomping them into the ground. Throwing the fuzzy bird at them. Using the voodoo doll. Using the super potion (invulnerable).
Yeah, I forgot to mention the guns. I'm not really into the Shinto thing, so I played with the idea of a 'darker' (but happy-looking) sci-fi setting, because it feels so disjointed from the original concept. Fantasy Zone is pretty dark, a tragedy even, if you look at the story line. It's also one of the cutest games around, and I like that contrast. Dai Mahou Touge is another example.
Also, the cybernetic/robotic enemies would belong to a sci-fi setting. I'm a big Megaman fan, and I liked what Sonic did too. It was fun to watch the cute animals appear from the destroyed enemies. Maybe in this game, cute small animals are piloting the robotic enemies. I like games with small figures piloting stuff. In Megaman Legends the Servebots would emerge from the wreckage of destroyed vehicles. Such things add life and dimension to the enemies.
I think the characters become more interesting if they can carry stuff. Otherwise they're limited to standing there with their arms at their sides.
Ref: Psycho Fox video, maps, screens.
The SMS had more colors per sprite than the NES, but I haven't really seen a SMS game with delicious pixel art. Maybe I just haven't seen enough games. The SMS used a 6-bit_RGB palette, and according to the gfx specs it used two 16 color palettes with colors from the 64 color (r4*g4*b4) palette, one for the FG (sprites) and one for the BG.
Commodore & Amiga
Exile
I wish I had discovered the atmospheric exploration game Exile when I was younger. I'm not sure if it's because I'm older, having seen a lot of games, knowing how they're made, but the magic feeling when playing games is now almost gone for me. Similarly, I no longer look at the roadsides for strange mechanical devices which I can use to build robots. My imagination has been tamed, perhaps. However, when I found Exile I got a glimpse of that old feeling... finding strange looking sprites which could be fantastical things.
Utopia
I have some new stuff which I need to upload.
Mega lo Mania
I found out recently that there was a Japanese version of Mega lo Mania. It had some new graphics for the God-faces and a new intro and extro, but it was for Genesis/Megadrive and is much less playable than the Amiga version where you can use the mouse. Anyways, I had this idea that the Gods push to establish their favourite race on the planet (rather than humans with differently colored clothes). It means a lot of art assets though as everything gets multiplied by 4.
There was a MlM 2 in the works once, but it got abandoned after a few weeks. MlM was developed by Sensible Software who used the Super Deformed style in a lot of their games. Reference: Sprite sheets: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=19661 Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBVDbTT0kzU
Pretty boring piece. Shadow of the Beast doesn't seem to be much of a game. I didn't play it back in the day. It's too busy being graphical. The animations and enemy patterns are stale and lazy. The monotonous running and punching... could be fun if the kinetics and animations made you feel powerful.
Arcade
Athena
Athena is an old arcade game by SNK. It's (afaik) the first game to feature the character Athena (a somewhat well known fighter game character). There were a few ports of the game, including one for the NES. The game kind of reminds me of Xexyz in how it has a fun atmosphere, unrealized potential, a shitty jumping mechanic, amongst other things.
The most awesome thing about it is the (arcade) intro where the heroine falls down a chasm and loses her dress. Someone remarked that it's like Metroid backwards. You start in a bikini and find armour later on. The armour and weapon upgrades are actually shown on the sprite, but the animation for the weapon swooshing kind of sucks. Some of the enemies are pretty sweet, with crazy deer knights and brain-in-a-jar soldiers in the ranks. You can destroy the environment (blocks) with weapons and Mario-style headbutting, and there's a bunch of mystery items hidden inside some blocks.
There are two related games which need to be mentioned: Psycho Soldier, which I know very little about (need to research). Apparently the main character is an incarnation of Athena. Then there's Crystalis, which was know under the significantly more awesome name God Slayer in Japan. It had an awesome title screen. It was developed by SNK too, and featured some enemies and characters from the Athena universe. Last, there was a sequel to Athena for the mobile phone, but it's really obscure.
Below are some pencil thumbnails which are pretty unprocessed. Some of them are more like notes which I made while playing the game than actual drawings. I just scanned the sheet and arranged the candidates with some potential onto lineup guides. Usually as I color and refine the designs needs to be re-evaluated against each other and a lot of them have to change significantly so that they'll work together to present a whole.
The game does a lot of head swapping for the enemies, so I thought I'd try to vary the body types a bit to avoid that.
Wonder Momo
Wonder Momo is a strange game because you actually play an actress playing the heroine in front of an audience. The lewd photographers in the audience will stun you if they manage to take an upskirt pic.
The enemy designs seem to have a retro scifi feel with the clumsy men in rubber/robot suits. I like how things look more strange than cool/menacing. I think I'm gonna redesign the heroine's suit to look something like Kamen Rider's. Maybe she's got several forms. There's this super heroine which can transform into a ladybug, and another who turns into a fire post or something. That's a direction I want to explore.
Many of the pencil thumbnails were drawn quite small and are just some kind of starting point.
Source/Ref (find/highlight ワンダーモモ to locate the screens and sprites).
It would be fun to experiment with faster animations which freezes at the delivery/impact point. That's how the guys in Power Rangers etc, move. Also, (like takkurumoe) perhaps you have to hit the air in front of the enemies to damage them (and if you actually touch them you just hurt yourself). To continue along those lines, enemies could actually do the take-hit animation when the player has started the move (before the hit), when taking the hit, or a bit after taking the hit. This would simulate poor timing by the actors.
Actors playing dead would stay on stage. In the original game they disappear but that kills the immersion, especially in this case since it's just actors. Actors appear on stage by elevators from under the stage. The backgrounds would be scenery flats. Maybe there's a giant scale set too, with small skyscrapers, giant monsters, giant robots, etc.
The intro story could be played on stage too, with actors who does not know their lines or slow to deliver.
The gymnastics ring does not work too well since it has no effect outside of the screen and takes a lot of time to return. I'm thinking it might be better to have it go off stage so the audience can toss it back up.
Enemies do not attack during transformation scenes!
Some kind of headband could be used as a transformation device, it would work with forehead V-shaped stuff.
I think some of my designs are not silly enough, so I might silly them up or move them to a different 'Tokusatsu' project. I've been watching Power Rangers for research purposes. Jungle Fury had the best enemy designs I think (the Phantom Beast Generals), and Operation Overdrive had the best mechanical designs (no cheap CGI Zords) and maybe a better story too. Didn't like RPM much.
Golden Axe
Random Pinup. did a bit redesigning of the armour (bikini).
Golden Axe rough sketches. Needs a bit of color to become identifiable though.
Alien Syndrome
Alien Syndrome is an old Arcade game based on Alien. There's a few ports and sequels, but the arcade version has these odd pastel colors* which clash with the horribly-mutated alien theme. I thought it would be fun to play around with that. None of the sequels did.
* Note: I may be wrong about the pastel colors. Like Contra, the game looks quite bright when emulated (with the black lines popping out). I think the arcade cabinet monitor was put behind a dark toned glass. As a result the emulated stuff looks too bright. Still, the game is kind of cute and not really scary visually.
I can't say I'm excited about the game though. There's an endless stream of aliens which just teleport in from the screen edges, and then there's a stressing time limit. Time limits are a sign of weak game design I think. They seem to be used when there's no practical reason (within the game world) for the player to 'move on' or whatever, so an artificial incentive (God is counting) is used. This kills immersion for me, and I'd rather see a properly devised foundation for the gameplay instead. RPGs irks me the most, especially MMORPGS where the primary game mechanic isn't to keep players entertained, but to keep them playing & paying. This results in a lot of stupid rules like "You have to be lvl 40 to wear these boots because otherwise someone could just give them to you when you're lvl 1". It's like some cosmic nanny is slapping my fingers.
It appears I've written more about this game:
Alien Syndrome is an Arcade game born in 1987. It's a top-down run and gun game based on the Alien movie. The game itself isn't much to hang in the Yule-tree, but it does have one thing going for it. The art style clashes with the scary alien theme in a humorous way. All the aliens are drawn with happy pastel colors and don't look very scary at all (* see note above). Unfortunately all the sequels and ports have completely ignored this defining aspect of the game and went for a more serious gritty look instead. What a pity.
The gameplay consists of searching for comrades (other humans) who have been stranded on various space ships. Each spaceship is like a little maze, and you have to find a number of comrades and reach the exit. When you pick up a comrade (by touching) they will just disappear. Maybe they're beamed off the ship. They're also immune to the mean aliens while the player is not. The player can not leave the ship until a number of comrades have been saved. There's a time limit which stresses the player to move along. The aliens just teleport in, and although only a certain number of them can appear on screen at once, there's no shortage of supply.
Certainly, the game is not meant to be realistic. The use of abstractions can be handy when trying to deliver an arcade experience. However when devising an simplified rules of something that is realistic, it's easy to start accumulating exception rules to patch things up. In the case of Alien Syndrome you have infinitely respawning aliens, and the player has infinite ammo. This creates a scoring problem. The player could just stand and accumulate easy points all day (and hog the arcade machine). To patch this problem a timer was introduced (a self-destruct, time bomb or whatever).
Robotron aside, I don't really care for highscores, and a timer not only stresses me, it kills immersion too. It's like something outside of the game is counting and checking up on me. It's a bit like not being able to put on high level boots in an RPG because I'm low level and using the boots too early would break the (poorly devised) game.
If Alien Syndrome had been for a modern PC, a lot of fun stuff could be made. Finite ammo, health and pickups could keep the player moving about looking for loot. If the alien reproduction is integrated into the gameplay then various tactical situations could emerge, such as destroying the queen, food supplies, blocking off paths, etc. The larvae could develop into different things depending on what food they find. Maybe the aliens use smell trails like ants do, and the player could manipulate those. The Comrades could barricade themselves in, engaging in firefights with the aliens, holding until the player arrives. The missions could vary in nature and the solutions could be improvised.
Yeah, well, enough feature creep and brain farts for today.
BaRaDuKe (aka Alien Sector)
Air fortress has a similar character, it could be a homage. If I understood it correctly, the female protagonist from Baraduke later married the DigDug guy. It came out in 1985, so it predates Metroid with a female heroine in a yellow space suit. Baraduke plays a bit like Section Z, but is linear. The huge weapon has a significant recoil.
Old DOS
More Star Control
Z - Bitmap Brothers
Ref: Bitmap Brothers official site, Maps
Since the sprite and 3D version of the robot looks different, I took the liberty of picking the cherries.
The 3D guys had a nasty solid red (or whatever color) look, making them look like plastic soldiers. I decided to use the light gray (looks kind beige) torso color from the sprite to break up the monotone. The ribcage area (and perhaps the whole chest) still needs some work.
The eyes are green on the smaller sprites, but not on the portraits. I went for green eyes even though it's cheap (glowing cool eyes) and not as expressive as the organic eyes in the portraits. I thought it would be a good way to mark the face with a special eye catching color contrast.
I did draw some inspiration from the 3D designs. The belly disc was fun and serves to break up the red armor plating theme. It suggests some kind of core / engine.
I was trying to keep the 90 and 45 degree angles which are often used in the pixel art.
The darker piston parts are intended to break up the red with something of a darker value.
The rifles and grenades are based on the designs in the game. The head is just some kind of average of all the different portraits in the game though.
I made the drill sergeant a human because I like to add a familiar scale reference. The design is pretty much made up by nonsense and needs some work. The torso clothing splits in two around the abs, just like on the 3D robots. The beige color comes from the drill sergeant. The rifle is a modified version of the sniper rifle in the game.
The sketches are the exploration thumbnails which I haven't explored further, but I wanted to try and go for light, medium and heavy designs.
Starflight
I have a Starflight page.
PC
StarCraft
I was always more of a TA guy, but SC had its moments. The sprites didn't quite feel like the characters in the video sequences, so I wanted to interpret them. This image is still a WIP and I'm using ref. Sometimes I keep the ref on the same canvas that I draw on. It's a good idea to get ref showing many angles, animations, etc. This way the average look can be approximated.
The Dragoon was fun to use because I don't like micromanaging and prefer 'fire and forget' units. I tried to match it primarily with the sprite which looks quite bulky to me. The Goliath seems to be a mix between ED-209 and a beetle (I liked the beetle look). Messed up the feet placement. The Zealot appears to have a long alien skull of some sort on the sprite. The details on the body are kind of haphazard, but since I didn't really like how the Zealots looked up close so I wanted to try a different approach. Since the units are seen from above, I chose to put some brown team color on the shoulder arcs.
The Marine is one of the best designs in StarCraft. I think the red version appearing in the Ghost trailer is very nice looking with the simple barrel arms flowing nicely into the shoulders. I didn't really do much redesigning with my version.
This Dragoon based on the old sprite in terms of general color masses. I'll have to do something about my Kerrigan since I don't like it.
TA and Mecha
Old stuff, new stuff not scanned yet. Actually, you might see some of the new stuff at the bottom of my Mecha game page, but I'm filing off the serial number, so to speak.
Quake and Tribes
I need to rework more of my Kawaiik concepts, incorporating my new chibi style. Also check out my Tribes page for some Gloom sketches.
Jetpack
Here's a Jetpack lass. Jetpack is an old DOS game. I've never played it.
Cave Story
I liked the idea of a robot war on the surface. I didn't play through the entire game so what actually happens in the game is still a mystery to me.
Just poking fun at the new game (it's a paintover of a screenshot). Now it looks like a scene from a sitcom :o
Concept art and fan-art by Arne Niklas Jansson. No infringement intended.