Ayarane Project

Now that Disgaea 4 and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky have stopped nibbling on my soul for awhile…

What’s this? “HD” Hikaru? (in b4 stupid gag about how her initials are also HD. trolololo high definition)

Have some Numair, too. Because it would be nagging me forever until I did just ONE frame.

RT graphics fodder, yes. And probably I shouldn’t have gone right to the final equipment, but this is just an HD test to see what the minimum fullsize I can comfortably work at– in this case, 800×800 to be shrunk to ideally 150×150 but no smaller than 120×120 before too many details get lost and I have to dive back in for repairs. Both field and battle sets will be done like this for consistency (as opposed to the current system which has, uh, low-res sprites for the field and “SD” sprites for battle).

“HD” is kinda misleading– high definition implies you can jam in more details, right? Yes and no… you can certainly add some, period, but not too many since you have to account for things being blended or nearest-neighbor absorbed in the great shrink.

Drawing HD sprites like this… well, it demands a bit of a drastic shift from my usual tactics. For one thing, I have to make the head about 10% bigger than normal– that is, I have to turn off “anatomically/proportionally-correct” because otherwise on shrink, most of the face details are lost and would necessitate a repair dive. And then, of course, I can’t go drybrush at all– the paintjob is ENTIRELY 3px Detail Brush out of the Acrylics subtools, and restrict to 3 colors per “thing” (skin, armor, hair, etc.), exception being metallic parts where I can have two midtones, a shadow and a highlight.

Hikaru’s going to be the most time-consuming to convert, of course, since being the main character she has THREE outfits (cavalry plate with and without the Majestic Goat, and the Maximillian), a mount, and more “emote” frames than the others. Oh yeah, and a freaking DRAGON. Oh well. That’s what you get for being the main character, after all. :P

Shiny armor is shiny!
Remake of Hikaru’s original FE Bromide. Numair’s probably getting a remake, too, but I’ve not yet decided on how that’ll look.

Also, I’m going to preemptively address a particular detail– that is Excalibur that Hikaru’s about to draw out. Not a…
Gah.
Maybe I should have just given her Omega Crescent, I forgot how Excalibur has a handle that has unintentional phallic optics if you can’t see the rest of the sword. (Of course, I remember a “WTF OUT OF LEFT FIELD” moment in Level 2 Drawing back at Chaffey in which my otherwise-awesome professor pulled some crazy interpretation about Excalibur and now I can’t unsee it and ohgod why am I going there?!)

…

I’m going to sit over there now.

No WIPs this time, just BOOM, arts.

So I said last post I’d be sketching Blastoise’s mecha body, right? Turns out I fail at drawing mecha, so I’ll, uh, put that aside for now. Have some RT!Kestine in shiny Dark Paladin armor… which may have entailed more Grand Theft FF4. (Specifically, I looted the shoulder plates and boots from Dark Knight!Cecil.) The detail was nowhere NEAR as much a pain in the ass as, say, Aries’ FE Bromide (which, as you know, is also Grand Theft FF4, sup Golbez armor) but then again this isn’t exactly ultimate-grade stuff.

For being a Dark Paladin, Kestine doesn’t have much in terms of plate armor… then again, he’s also a freaking Black Dragon. Sure, he COULD be plated to the teeth, but why bother when, should he get tossed around, he could just heal it all back anyway? Mmm, regen.

I need to scribble his Stem Gunner gear, since that’s what he wears in Episode 0’s main story. Stem Gunners get a mass-produced, simplified version of the Sneaking Suit. Also a hat. (Somewhere, Defeen’s ears perk up…)

You know, I could have totally pulled the whole “gender correctness” and added (and Sis) in the title, but… screw it. When she’s off duty, Hikaru wears guy clothes ANYWAY. I mean, she freaking wears BOXERS.