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coda-blue · 1 year

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(This is a crosspost from my Patreon. To see the rest of the free, accompanying art dump, click here.)

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I've decided to do my first ever summary of my entire year. Frankly, this has only been made possible because I've gotten into the good habit of sharing my weekly victories over in a separate dev server, so recalling won't be a stress-fest.

I'm going to address my progress in various aspects of project development and personal development. Here's my massive dump:

Project Summary

Art

I mostly made art concepts and game assets for several visual novel projects in varying stages of production. The styles between them all are intentionally different and makes for a good test of skill for me. Notably this year, I felt no strong desire to draw for myself. Actually, most attempts were met with a deep-seated repulsion of the idea in a way that is hard to describe, because rationally I obviously want to draw, but subconsciously there was this violent blockage. It may be some form of burnout that is either unaffected or overridden by my sense of obligation to collaborative projects, considering I am admittedly a workaholic. Hopefully I can overcome that in 2023, as there's things I'd like to do just for my own self-betterment.

In 2022, I made...

A character sprite and graphical user interface overhaul, and brand new game page assets for my published visual novel, This Life Escapes Me

Incomplete character, storyboard concepts, and animation studies for my other personal visual novel, The Corpse Lieutenant

18 monster concepts of 6 side characters for Drop Dead Daters

Fae and human concepts for the cancelled MaFAEa by Katy133

Main character concepts and final render for Sails and Silk by Ryan Aldred

An entire point-and-click background, alternate interactable states, and prop and inventory assets for The Greatest Escape(room)! by Destini Islands and Allie Vera

A couple chibi character commissions for personal clients

A few pixel art doodles

A couple sketches

Writing

Almost all of my writing this year was produced for visual novel projects. And almost all of these works have some sort of fantasy element to them, but a few projects were developed for a younger or more general audience than the late 20s to early 30s target I usually write for (aka myself), so actively thinking of the language and voice to use for these different narrators and characters was fun. Unfortunately, the same issue of lacking a desire to create more short personal works shows up here as well, but maybe that may change in 2023.

In 2022, I wrote...

Line edits for Teisatsu by Pacchi Studio

The short epilogue story for This Life Escapes Me

Clarifying lore and research notes for The Corpse Lieutenant

Several short stories (and designed their respective quote graphics) published on my Ko-fi account

A short smut fanfic that I will never link here, lol

Edits up to a third of the 90,000-word common route second draft for Primrose Path

My assigned route and script annotations for Drop Dead Daters

My chosen route "Explore" for Blanket Cat by Studio Ghost Legs

A writing style guide, character bios document, appendix, three full chapters, a bonus chapter, script annotations, and in-character product marketing quotes for Maledictorian by Wisteria Realms

Audio

I lent my voice acting and voice editing skills to a number of small projects this year. All of this was volunteer work. I truly do love voice acting, but unlike art and writing, I don't currently view it as a career path to actively pursue, as the online hustle culture and general "grindset" of it is intensely wearisome. Outside of my network, I only apply to what seems interesting and pays fairly, but within, I am usually approached by fellow game devs for game jam opportunities. And I love to contribute to those! So it's no surprise that this year, all of my voice acting was a direct result of game jams. As for voice editing, while I have the skills, this year I only ever did them when the team needed a helping hand.

In 2022, I have...

Voiced the goth lesbian Saoirse in How We Show Love by tofurocks

Voiced the unpredictable spy otherwise known as Boss in Teisatsu by Pacchi Studio

Cleaned, edited, and mixed my fellow voice actors' lines in Teisatsu

Voiced the brain-eating amoeba-infected Marlowe in Parasite In Love by Night Asobu

Voiced the dimension-warping disgruntled employee otherwise known as The Game Master in The Greatest Escape(room)! by Destini Islands and Allie Vera

Business

I've shifted my business identity into the Coda Blue alias over the year. My social media presence expanded as well, though in the past month, it feels like it's also diminished. After a series of bad decisions from other corporate entities—the general NFT wave, Twitter's buyout and gutting, DeviantArt and ArtStation doubling down on siding with unethical AI generator art harvesting—I've made decisions that ultimately protect me of being subject to further platform failures and other people's valid yet wearisome doomscrolling. I am looking forward to creating an easier system for updates across platforms and potentially streamlining onboarding for certain client services.

In 2022, I have...

Made several moves to arrange my work and solidify my identity under my alias Coda Blue

Set up with various payment processors for better ease of client transactions and game sale payouts

Selectively offered story and project consultation services for narrative-focused game devs

Worked on my unpublished personal website

Created a Carrd to arrange my various site links

Created a Ko-fi for writing commissions and cross-posting devlogs, the latter of which I've just been too tired to do since the idea's inception

Created this Tumblr for cross-posting devlogs and promo, though it's quickly becoming my timeline replacement for Twitter

Deactivated my DeviantArt account

Deleted my ArtStation account

Personal Review

Career

The biggest and best decision I made this year was deleting various unused or unhelpful job board and portfolio website accounts. I had such a fixed idea of what my success was "supposed" to look like—working as a 2D character artist in a local art studio—and relied on sites and services that did not accommodate my atypical work history (transitioning out of almost a decade of retail and customer service into freelance game development). I became embittered when I kept getting passed up, tying that to a view of my worth. It wasn't until I killed off everything and just focused on my own projects that I felt so much happier, naturally producing what I wanted to, and ended up freelancing in more enjoyable ways. It's possible that I keep working for myself in a self-employed capacity, but ideally, I would switch from specialized labor into an administrative and/or consulting role. It's less tiring and distressing when you feel exhausted from making calls all day versus the frustration of burnout when your livelihood relies on the physical output of drawing and typing.

In 2023, I will move into an associate or assistant position in the producer, product management, or project management role, or a full-on art director role for a steady day job. I just want the money to roll in so that I can invest it into what I actually have a strong interest in, which absolutely are these narrative-focused projects and the talented people working on them.

Hobbies

My biggest concern for me is figuring out why I had an entire year of doing barely any creative personal work for study or fun. I'm afraid it will extend into the new year, and with it, consequences that may creep into my collaborative output as well. While I'm not sure, I believe that if I do end up needing a break from art and writing, I think my collaborators will understand as I discuss with them expectations and next-steps in private. But my guess is that my dwindling desire to partake of my hobbies is that my hobbies have become work, so I need to engage in new, different, and exciting ones. I think doing so will rekindle my old flame by bringing in a new passion into my life.

In 2023, I will try a new hobby. I've been thinking about whittling or playing bass guitar as a start. I may try the former, as it is more accessible out of the two.

Health

I made massive strides towards my physical and mental health this year. I was finally able to identify with a proactive doctor an underlying health issue I've been having, and in going on a specialized treatment, so much was corrected in a matter of months. I had more energy, my general moodiness vanished, my appearance improved, and I returned to exercising (my usual de-stressor). I have a better understanding of my body and I can now make more informed and conscious decisions on my health. That said, towards the end of this year, I have started to become anxious and depressive with the change in seasons. I recognize this as seasonal affective disorder, so aside from getting back on proper medication for it, I realize that my current work environment is stifling.

In 2023, I will go back to exploring the public. I'm a people-person extrovert, so I get energized by socializing, even against depression's best efforts. The various, simultaneous public health failures have made me more anxious of being back outside, but I need to make a conscious effort to go out and be immersed in nature, in cultural enrichment, and just your usual recreational activities. I need the uplift for my sanity and creativity, and as long as I continue to stay masked and up to date on vaccinations, I should go back to the adventurousness I used to have a few years back. I'll start by choosing one new event to visit every month.

Final Words

I did plenty, and I'm proud of every single bit. I'm thankful for those who support me, who encourage me, and who keep me company. You help me be who I am today.

#devlog #eoy 2022 #visual novel #interactive fiction #new year resolutions #original character #oc #game development #indie game dev #artists on tumblr #still figuring out how to use tags on this goddamn site #there's just too many possible ways to tag something #notice me tumblr

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nonbinaryaubrey · 1 year

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1, 15, and 29! picked random numbers tbh fdjh

"1: favorite omori character? (main 6)"

UHMM .. i am . never consistent but. most often its between Aubrey (obviously) and Mariiii <333 (maybe sometimes Hero is up there idk .love him tho hes definitely very close to the top). it just tends to be hard for me to pick a fav because i love them all. very much. but aubrey has always been a top fav of mine and i. just like mari a lot she takes up a lot of space in my brain. my favorite normal girls

"15: favorite memory of the game? (what stood out to you the most?)

OHH thats . tbh kind of hard for me to answer .. uhh. for the game itself. tbh whenever i find something new on a playthrough its always super fun to me. i got . embarrassingly excited when i found this in rain town on my last full playthrough since i had no idea about it before

umm. but a lot of my fun memories from the game come from me playing it with other ppl! its a very fun way for me personally to play and i love experiencing the game with others, especially if they havent played before. its fun!! got a bunch of little funnies from doing that.

also. Basil 2 my beloved

miss him so much

"29: Has Omori introduced you to any new games or hobbies in any way?"

uhhh.. hmm .. im honestly not sure. I think pixel art! while most of . what i do with pixel art is small edits or animating unused sprites it was something i hadnt done until i wanted to do it for omori stuff :thumbs up:

[OMORI ask game]

#asks #cowardlychimera #aubrey.txt #ask game

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topblokechase · 2 years

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Big Bertha Final Post Part 4: The End for Sure

After getting the mechanics up and running, I needed to get the menus working and the wave based gamplay working.

Unfortunately at this point I was making the game almost completely solo. I managed to get some sounds together for the gameplay, they turned out great. I am particularly proud of the missile reloaded sound I added at the request of another playtester. By speeding up a creaky door sound 2 or 3 times, it became a very convincing shell reload sound. I loved it and my playtester loved it too. I also didn't get any of the sprites I asked for (except for 2 edits), so I had to stick with what sprites i had. I unfortunatly have no experience with pixel art, and I didn't have the time do commit to making more myself. The menu screens I made turned out ok. The layout was solid but the visuals are obviously placeholders.

Regardless, I got the menus functional, and got the upgrade system working too. I made the decision to tone down the "fun" high attack speed, high movement speed gameplay to something deliberately sluggish. I wanted the upgrades to feel significant, so having the player be subpar while the waves were easy meant that once they invested a few upgrades into a catagory, they were rewarded with noticable improvements.

When creating the wave system I found another speedbump with GDevelop; there are few ways to do for loops easily when you want psuedo random results. I wanted to use a difficulty score to spawn different kinds of enemies in different numbers based on their difficulty. I had planned for each enemy type to be worth different amounts that would subtract from this value until it ran out and that would be the wave. This would have added variation between runs and made it more diverse. After a lot of trials, I unfortunately had to scrap the idea due to time constraints, and go with a simple increase in the quantity of enemies, not diversity.

Overall I think the game turned out good. The visuals are ok, but what really shines is the gameplay. I find it to be very satisfying and has a lot of replay factor thanks to the upgrade system. At one point I actually just booted up the game and played it for about an hour without making any changes or edits at all. I was simply enjoying the gameplay, which I think is a good sign this game has potential. Here is the most recent footage I have of the game, I hope you enjoy:

(Excuse the lazy gameplay but I wanted to show off everything a little)

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frankiesmileshow · 3 years

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Another Casual Pixel Shack done! Here is the roundup of all entries I could find so far. We worked with screenshots from the strange NES gem Monster Party!

Here is the sprite sheet I provided, from the very memorable middle point of the first level!

The idea was to either edit either of these, redraw them, or do something else!

For my part, I decided to try animating a proper spooky transition between the two states of the graphics. Then of course I made the spooky version a little bit spookier!

(just imagine the tree is screaming and never stops) I cheated quite a bit with colors here, but it was fun to draw a real meaty texture like that.

Whooops! Spooky! More of the entries are after the jump:

Jacob J. Ritz (@UltraJDude) redrew the scene with a style inspired of Zdzisław Beksiński! We were just talking about his work on stream too, for an unrelated reason, and bam, he shows up and posts this! We got Beksinski on the mind... I suppose we<’re in a Beksinski kind of time.

Axolotine (@AxolotineArt) made a really nice redraw here, the new tiles are very sleek, with those nice white highlights. Love that style. Makes me want to play the game! And the face is legit spooky, too!

Lurdiak’s (@tweeterisawful) entry is EXTREMELY CURSED. Instead of a bloody nightmare world, the level transforms into the much more horrifying world of Online. Horrifying.

Gabriel Harju (@Gabriel_Harju) has zeroed in on what everybody was thinking but was TOO AFRAID to SAY: that tree sure god dang looks a bit like that one cactus enemy from them final fantasies that does that one attack that deals 1000 dmg, huh! Well there you go, now its on the table.

And finally, Scarodactyl (@Scarodactyl) has made a real nice and fluid animation inspired by one of the games’ many bosses, the one where you need to just wait and watch it do the whole dance to win the fight. Did I mention Monster Party is good? Folks, its good.

And that’s it for this weeks roundup! Next week, we’ll be working with art assets from Heroes Of The Lance for the NES. A really janky D&D-ish side scrolling game that looks absolutely awful! Feelin inspired yet?

#Frankie's Casual Pixel Shack #pixel art #monster party

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onebizarrekai · 3 years

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v3′s art is comically terrible for a professionally distributed game in a series: a compilation

in this not-essay I will list all of the mistakes and problems I have spotted in v3′s art. don’t worry, it’s entirely for fun and I’m doing this on a whim, so please feel free to not take this seriously but also it’s hilarious and embarrassing how ridiculous this is like what happened did they speedrun the whole production or what

see, there are some things you can take as meta like “they made it bad on purpose to allude to the downfall of tv shows that have been on air for much too long” but I have a very strong feeling this is not the case due to the nature of some of these errors

disclaimer, the more I study this art, the more I fear that the artists were underpaid and underslept, so if this is in fact the case, I am so sorry to all of them but also I’m going to make fun of the art anyway

anyway let’s get started!

if you study this image for longer than 5 seconds, you will see that kaede is the only one fully shaded and keebo is literally just his normal sprite pasted into the image. every other character is just an ordinary ref, hence most of them facing the exact same direction with neutral expressions on their faces. it looks like a bad edit, and is probably one of the worst pieces of art in the game. it kind of gets better from here on, but my roasting will not.

with that out of the way, here’s the problem that officially bothers me the most and clarifies my viewpoint of “this is not meta and an actual lack of company communication”

this freaking cg, which seems normal at a glance, but some wiseass was like “oh, kaede is a girl, so obviously she’s going to be shorter than the Male Protagonist™” ah, that’s funny. because if you look at the character bios, kaede is, in fact, one inch taller than shuichi and not like 6 inches shorter as she is shown here.

also shuichi’s shoulder is disproportionate and horrendous and he looks vaguely like a jojo character, but I wasn’t even thinking about that until right now.

thanks guys, 50% of the fandom who has never bothered to check these bios thinks that kaede is like 5′3 (did the developers really put so little thought into her to the point where drawing her correctly in the game didn’t even matter??)

also I would like to point out that, even though this isn’t related to the art itself, yes, a character kaede’s size being only 117 lbs is unfeasible, but this applies to literally every character in danganronpa ever and it’s not new news that it’s unrealistic

update: someone in the tags informed me that in versions of the game that use centimeters, like the japanese version, kaede is actually shorter than shuichi, which just adds another thing to the list of weird decisions the localization team made for no reason. that said, after confirming this, kaede is 167 cm in the original, while shuichi is 171 cm, which are approximately 5′6 and 5′7 respectively, but one inch is still nowhere near as drastic as it is depicted above. (in spite of this, I would rather depict kaede as slightly taller, so I’m probably going to keep doing that.)

the journey continues!

bro if you want kaede to have shoulder length hair then stick to it to begin with

you can pretend this is at an angle all you want but they definitely committed the shorter kaede sin a second time

wait a goddamn second.

DO YOU SEE THIS

no………… it wasn’t kaede who shrank. it was shuichi who got taller

speaking of which, can we talk about how shady the perspective is in this elevator pic? look at shuichi and kokichi in comparison to kaede. kokichi, who is canonically 7 inches (edit: or 5, if you’re loyal to the original) shorter than kaede, looks taller than kaede. he’s growing too. what steroids are these gays taking

running into the room, electric boogaloo: I don’t think tsumugi is supposed to be the same height as kokichi

gonta… gonta you’re lookin a bit like a jojo character there

I love how kaito’s head looks kind of like it was pasted onto his body. why is he the same size as shuichi? shouldn’t he be high school bully size or something? his torso is teensy

ah yes, white angie.

I love this cg but why is shuichi’s right hand so much bigger than his left hand

I also love how this cg looks like they literally took pictures of trees and pasted them into the background, especially on the left. the shadows are so weird, especially closer to the ceiling, it’s difficult for me to believe they didn’t do exactly that.

return of Enlarged shuichi

puberty update: kokichi is now taller than shuichi in spite of shuichi never missing leg day. what crimes will he commit

I have to mention it, guys. this has to be one of the worst danganronpa cgs. kokichi’s facial proportions look atrocious. look at the way his face sticks out like his jaw is in the wrong place. his scarf is a pasted texture. that’s it. this moment was so iconic but the cg just looks so… so… off. like something is terribly wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it.

you know what? let’s get into that ‘pasted texture’ thing.

let’s imagine you’re an artist working on a professional game. you’re assigned to draw cgs of kokichi ouma, who has a checkered scarf from hell. sure, it will be terrible to draw, but you only have to draw it once at a time! plus, perspective is pretty important, right? can you be bothered? nah, actually. let’s just copy paste a checkered pattern into the cg, because I’m sure nobody will notice. it’ll blend right in with the other cgs that someone actually put effort into drawing his scarf in, right?

no. the answer is no and I very much noticed. this genuinely looks terrible and I would understand taking a shortcut like that in fanart or even an indie game but this is a full price pc and console distributed game

(an addition: look at kokichi’s TINY HANDS in that last one)

meanwhile, they straight up forgot to color in kokichi’s scarf in this cg.

dude. I forgot about whatever the hell this cg was. anyway look at keebo please just look at him

lovin kaito’s baby arms

real talk, maybe you could argue that he’s missing muscle because he’s deathly sick, but most of his cgs don’t line up with this, and his arms just look disproportionate to his torso size (granted this is a consistent problem across all danganronpa games and a lot of characters have this weird problem, like hajime, but also kaito is bigger than hajime so I kind of have higher expectations of him) maybe it’s his stupid goatee and the way he reminds me of yasuhiro?? it creates this illusion that he’s older than he is and so I keep expecting him to look more like an adult

oh, also rantaro is missing some of his accessories in that video he made–you know the one–but I don’t wanna go back and screenshot it

also you may have noticed that I’m skipping all of the monokub cgs because I literally do not care about them and I’m not even bothering to check and see if they have artistic mistakes in them

JIMMY NEUTRON???

hey um uh kaito you seem to be missing your neck

hey guys do you like my pregame fanart

so, that done, the sprites are also pretty terrible at times. they’re not as interesting to go through, however, and downloading the full sprite sets for every character and studying every single one of them will drive me insane, so I’ll just sum some of the ones I noticed up. I made things for kaede and shuichi before deciding I wasn’t going to get into it, so here are these.

that said, other mistakes include kokichi missing his purple highlights in all of the sprites encompassing a specific pose, stray pixels all over the place on everyone, and everyone also has heavily inconsistent shading, but literally all I think about is how pregame shuichi is unshaded and two of kaede’s pregame sprites have glaring outfit change mistakes in them

anyway, thank you for taking the time to read my ridiculous ramble. in all seriousness, there’s this looming presence of some lack of communication in the development team, like with all the art and design inconsistencies, pieces and sprites that look rushed, stray pixels, and missing basic proportional stuff. these are the kinds of things that you supposedly have to pretty much have in the bag in order to get jobs in professional businesses, so it’s really weird to me that this game suffers from so many of these problems. it’s like they tried to make the art so much more crisp than the other games, but it fell on its face as they realized it was going to take longer to draw everything and they started to rush. it’s weird, because the coloring itself looks normal–it’s just sloppily drawn, and the proportions are a mess once put into the context of perspective. many of the cgs look like they were drawn by different people, and I’m still not over the fact that half of kokichi’s cgs have his scarf pasted in as a texture.

the moral of the story is that if you’re selling a game at full price that also happens to be in a series that has had 3 very good games in it already the stakes should probably be higher than this. v3 has been out for more than 3 years and it’s still $40 (did it cost more than that before? I sure hope not), and the overarching quality of the game is just not as high as the other games. I’m not saying that the other games don’t have any problems with their art at all, they’re just not as glaringly obvious and every artistic choice in those games feels intentional.

regardless, I had a blast roasting the art at 2am, so maybe you got a kick out of all this chaos.

#god I keep telling myself I'm gonna stop rambling about v3 #v3 spoilers #drv3 spoilers #ndrv3 #random stuff #but making this… it sounded so fun #danganronpa

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galaxygermdraws · 3 years

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Hermitclones Master post

I post a lot of Hermitclones content so here’s all of that stuff in one post

NPC Grian Concepts

NPC Grian Jukebox Night

Evilworm Holiday Doodles

Evilworm Emporium AU

S8 Ex n X Doodle Dump

Bearers of the Curse

The Wedding Saga

Wormman UT Sprite Edit(No Mercy)

Wormman UT Sprite Edit

Evil at the Emporium Ch 1 Fanart

Unorganized MS Paint Doodles

Abyss n Wm break into HC Recap

Stained Glass Window Ex

Digital crayon Ex n Wm doodles

Apathetic Xisuma design

Hermitclone Super Mario AU

S5 + S6 Ex Doodles(feat. Wm n X)

Ex design comp

Side by Side(Pixel Art)

Wm n Ex but Fall Vibes

False Empire

MS Paint Doodles

Best Of Friends + Gif

Sheep Wormman Concepts

Wormman Doodle Dump 2

Hels Kitchen Patrons

Ex n WM jukebox night

"I can't do this" EF Redraw

"You'll be alone forever"/"You're not alone"

Ex and Helsknight Doodle Dump

Ex and Helsknight Doodle Dump 2

Hermitclone height chart + color ref (batch 1)

Evil X doodle dump feat. Jevin n Jeff

Death's Victims

Evil X jukebox night

"Not fun anymore?"

Hermitclone Concepting Doodle Dump

"You can't escape who you are"

"Did you really forget him?" Comic

Ex doodle dump

Ex doodle dump 2

Forgotten Heart

"I know this and I love you" meme but Ex and Wm

"Souls of the Innocent" meme but its Wm, Ex, and Jeff

Requiem AU Doodles

Refined Hermitclone Doodle Dump

Trapped Heart/Jeff Hivemind Wormman Doodles

Saturn Lyric Comic(Ex and Wormman)

S8 Ex Portrait(Feat. Jeff The Minion/Nightmare)

Wormman Doodle Dump

Wormman Jukebox Night

Ex in edgy modern day clothes

Ex Character Progression

Evil's Fault inspired Doodle Dump (feat. Wormman)

Zedeath reference

Wormman Character Progression

Ex Correct Quotes Doodle Dump (feat. Wormman and Xisuma)

Ex is a Wormman Stan /hj

Xisuma and Evil X Doodle Dump

“You never came back”

Wormman vs Tangno

Tangno Jukebox Night: Keep Myself Alive

“Any last words?”

Abandoned

“So... this is season 8″

Helsknight’s birthday

Robot Grian(Roby)’s birthday

“Spoon?”

4 Year Wormman on HC Anniversary

Moonlight SMP Duo

Wormman n Ex Doodle Dump

Wormman n Ex Doodle Dump 2

Wormman n Ex Doodle Dump 3

Wormman n Ex Doodle Dump 4

“I Hear a Symphony” Lyric comic

Hermitclone Doodle Dump

Ex’s birthday

Diabolical Lyric Art

Helsknight Doodle Dump

Helsknight Incorrect Quote Doodles

Evil Hermits

Cam Accounts

Hermitober Prompts

1: Wings(DuckWoman and PoultryMan)

2: Fire(Helsknight)

3: Soul(The Dreamer)

4: Duo(Wormman and Evil X)

5: Magic(BadTimesWithScar)

6: Game(Zedeath)

7: Prank(Evil X and Helsknight)

8: War(Evil X, Jeff the Minion, and The Dreamer)

10: Knight(Helsknight)

11: Void(Evil X)

12: Hels(Zedeath and Apathetic Xisuma)

13: Clock(Zedeath)

14: Pet(Zedeath and Wormman)

15: Crown(Red King. Yes. This counts.)

20: Crossover(Grifter and LazyBeans)

21: Flower(Renbob)

22: Memory(Evil X and Wormman)

23: Sword(Helsknight and Evil X)

24: Winner(Wormman and Tangno)

#masterpost #master post #hermitclones #germ's art

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mikeperrucci · 3 years

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20 Years of Mazeguy Smilies, 35 Years of Pixel Art

It's been twenty years since I first shared my smilies with the world! To celebrate the occasion, I made this collage:

Coincidentally, this year also means I've been making pixel art for about 35 years. I've written an article about my journey which you can read here, but I'll recap a few highlights:

1986: Dazzle Draw

The reason Mazeguy Smilies exists is probably due to Dazzle Draw, a painting program released by Broderbund Software in 1985. My family had an Apple IIe computer at the time, and I believe we bought Dazzle Draw the following year. I was eight years old at the time.

Back in those days, I didn't have a Wacom tablet, and drawing freehand was difficult. I figured out that the best way to create the curved lines and details I wanted was to zoom in and draw one dot at a time. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was learning the basics of what would later be called "pixel art". Today, I create smilies using the exact same technique.

My siblings and I had a lot of fun with Dazzle Draw, filling fifteen floppy disks (the ones that actually WERE floppy) with over 100 paintings. Unfortunately, only one has survived to this day. This portrait of Bowser was converted to black and white, and printed in my junior high school's newspaper.

1992: Mario Paint

My next drawing program was Mario Paint for the Super Nintendo. I loved the fact that you could combine art, animation and music to create multimedia. I still have my copy of Nintendo's Official Mario Paint Player's Guide, even though it's quite worn out from reproducing video game sprites and songs.

Mario Paint included several "stamps", small pictures you that could paste onto the canvas or use as a paintbrush. A Stamp Editor tool let you edit existing stamps or design new ones on a large, 16x16 grid. Sound familiar? Thanks to Mario Paint, my pixel art skills were refined a little further.

So, what kind of videos did I make using Mario Paint? Well... Um... Stuff like this...

1994: Game-Maker

Game-Maker was developed by Recreational Software Designs. It's a collection of design tools that allows users to create their own DOS games. To test out the software, I made a simple game in which a guy tries to get through a maze. Yes, this is where "mazeguy" came from. Somehow, it became my nickname, then the name of my website.

Mazeguy grew in complexity, and eventually morphed into Invasion of the Blobs, which later got a sequel. Both games required drawing and animating backgrounds, enemies, and heroes. Title cards, level intros, and cutscenes were also illustrated pixel by pixel.

2001: Flash Kit and Tripod

At the beginning of the new millennium, I started using Flash for the first time. I needed help learning how accomplish certain tasks, and discovered many helpful tutorials at FlashKit.com. I joined the forums, and found a thread titled "Smiley Award Winners". A user named ThundaChunk, a.k.a. JohnnySix, was awarding a small banner to the best smilies submitted in an earlier thread.

It was too late for me to participate, but after fifteen years of creating pixel art, the idea of making smilies intrigued me. I made a whole bunch and put them on my Tripod website. While I was having fun seeing how many emoticons I could come up with, I was also secretly hoping that another smiley contest would be held in the future, and I'd get my own Smiley Award.

Then, on March 29th, 2001, The all new FK members smiley thread appeared. I quickly posted a link to my collection. And so, after a little prodding, I got my Smiley Award.

Over the next two years, my website would get more traffic, and suggestions from visitors helped make my smiley collection grow. Both of these factors caused the site to routinely go over Tripod's bandwidth limit. My free web hosting service was no longer sufficient, so I registered Mazeguy.net on October 25th, 2003.

2005: Hoagie's Revenge

My brother and some of his friends formed a film group, and they needed an animator for one of their short films. It's about a man challenged by his roommate to complete a brutally difficult video game. My job was to build an original Nintendo game that is so unfair, so impossible to beat, that the programmers didn't even bother creating a second level.

You can read more about Hoagie's Revenge, the game within the movie, as well as complete sprite sheets here.

2013: Wordlock

Fifteen years after completing Invasion of the Blobs 2, I revistited Game-Maker and made a puzzle game containing 100 riddles. The graphics weren't particularly complex, but I think the sci-fi font I designed was pretty neat.

You can learn more about Wordlock and how to play it here.

2021: What's Next?

The introduction of emoji have pretty much made smilies obsolete. One avenue that might be worth pursuing is Twitch Emotes, but I've kind of moved away from creating pixel icons.

These days I spend most of my time working on my webcomic, Chuck's Devils. Sometimes I depict the main characters in pixel form, as seen here:

While the series is nowhere near as popular as my smilies were, or even my domino toppling videos (which is a story for another day), I like the process of creating wacky misadventures for Candace, Yu-Ri, and Lily. I hope you'll check out the comic and follow along. :)

#smilies #smileys #emoji #emoticons #pixel art #chuck's devils

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lgbtqpixelart · 4 years

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if you want this url for non-pokemon pixelart lmk

also if i use a flag by an asshole absolutely let me know, especially if you requested it

hi ^^

i make those for fun while listening to uni stuff, so just take them and use them for whatever tbh

i do take requests ^^

you could request a flag to be done, or a pokemon to be done, or other pixel art (tho i’d appreciate a blank form of the latter or even better one with colours so i know what im working with ^^ )

update: tag system

(oh btw if you see an error or mistake in something like a shading not being the darker colour or me forgetting to change one colour or something just lmk, my eyes are kinda shit lmao)

i make sprites now instead of pixelart, yeet (can still do pixelart tho if you want)

pixel art i’ve already done or am currently doing or have planned would be too much for the pinned post, but i might do separate posts and link them later, so i'll just keep the cut and the category names but there's nothing there

(well now i moved old portions of this post there so there's not a huge pinned post cause oof)

already done

requests

am currently working on: (okay honestly lmao if i start working on them i either finish them immediately or they got lost in the void that is my mind and never will be finished so why bother listing them kdsfjg)

requests: (okay honestly i do these like the moment i get them lmao i love requests i don't get too many)

...

i am

far too lazy to make these lists rn sorry dskfjlg

---

old portions of this post i wanna cut but don't wanna cut lmao:

if you need a single charmander or whatever i did lmk i can copy it from my file it'll probably be better than cropping the image i upload (edit: this only goes for like the first four or five i did cause those were all in one file, now i upload them individually anyways, hence why i moved it below the cut lol)

UPDATE: i can now make transparent ones and it has gotten way easier and faster to do them for me cause i found a neat af site and i can make basically any existing pokemon sprite (i can also make them be pixel art like the first charmanders, but im going to work with sprites much more from now on i think cause now i can do those and they're easier than the pixel art rn)

#blog stuff

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decision-paralysis · 4 years

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just wanted to give a brief thanks to all the support i’ve got here recently. i started making pixel art just over 2 months ago, and it’s really encouraging to see even the most basic support.

i thought maybe others would be interested in getting started in pixel art like i did, so i’ll briefly walk through how i got started under the cut.

it started off with watching Brandon James Greer’s youtube channel - the videos are really well made and informative, plus his art is always so pretty. i’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a tumblr but you can see his stuff on instagram. so basically one night i was watching his video on different pixel art programs, and he mentioned a few that were free to use without needing a download. so i basically thought why not and started out messing around with Piskel.

my first creation wasn’t exactly “good”, but it was enough to give me a sense that i could actually do pixel art and get better at it. so the next day, i did my first redraw and felt like i significantly improved it, which just felt great. i stuck with Piskel for a couple of days, but quickly realised i wanted to stick at this little hobby. so i bought Aseprite, which is what i’ve done all my art in since. at first i mostly stuck to doing fan art from reference pictures, but i’ve also done a lot of work based on physical objects. i find this quite a lot of fun since you can really inspect the way the shapes and lighting work in three dimensions. another common technique i use is basing new art on previous pieces, which is the main method i use for making new Dragon Ball sprites.

what i really love about pixel art is that even if you’re an absolute beginner, you can spend the time making lots of little edits and end up with a pretty good result (versus something like drawing where you need to practice quite a bit before you can really make anything decent). it’s really beginner-friendly, and i hope if you’re reading this you give it a try. Piskel is a great starting place, totally free and no downloads so there’s nothing to lose in trying it out. well, if you slogged through all this ranty nonsense, thank you so much for reading. i really appreciate all of you out there. <3

#piskel #aseprite #pixel art #Brandon James Greer

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vespiiqueen · 4 years

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List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the ask box of the last 10 people who reblogged something from you (if you want !! 💛💖)

Wow I rambled a lot with this but i can't add cuts bc I'm on mobile rn DHSISHSJ sorry :"))))

1. Ik Ik "haha how cringe are you" of me to say, but honestly? Homestuck. Homestuck helped me in a time of need and when i so desperately wanted something to latch onto. Finally, I caved into my friends telling me to read it-- and it's been a blast!! The epilogues / hs^2 make me feel kinda sad though, because so much of what I loved about the original was yeeted through the nine circles of hell and into the trash. I love Y/ffany's (I call her Yippi tho) design, the art is really pretty at times, Harry is a major dork, I LIVE for seeing Vrissy bc honestly?? Her design is 10/10, very early 2000s emo style and I also live for that. Tavros is cute and a nerd and I think that's swell!

But in terms of story and how any of this happens, it makes me sad to see it happen. If Vriska could return as Vrissy, why not OTHER beta trolls? Where's my Eridan fish man, writers?? Give me the boy or perish by my fury.

2. Also super "haha how cringe are you" but,,, murder cats (Warriors), esp the early 2005-2015 amvs and stuff. I remember watching Flightfootwarrior's "I Will Not Bow" Scourge amv for HOurs and having no clue what was happening, but all these edgy kitties were KITTIES! It's introduced me to a lot of music I still listen to to this very day (Imagine Dragons, Young/the entirety of Hollywood Undead, Breaking Benjamin). And yknow what?? This new arc is absolute chaos, but in the good way.

I'm an "OG Fan". I prefer the first arc, The Prophecies Begin, to almost any of the other arcs. I just could never get into the other arcs-- not to say I haven't read them, I HAVE and the Fire Scene was probably one of my favorite moments beside grumpy Jaypaw, god complex Lionblaze, and fear the gods Hollypaw. I thought the build-up for it was SUPER satisfying. Gray Wing is my baby and I fully embellish in the Gray Wing is Silverpelt theory.

This new arc is definitely something new for the universe. While I didn't read aVoS (but I may do that if i can find the files for it), and so I don't know the major events of it other than what I've seen M.A.P.'s (Multi-Animator Projects, for clarification,,, bc unfortunately that term is also something disgusting). There's fucking cat possession and all the Clans questioning their belief system, yo. Shit be on fire.

Also the Imposter is 100% Ashfur, that's canon now, yeah??? Also im sorry but fuck Root x Bristle that's the dumbest shit I have ever seen. Give me Root x Shadow or face the wrath of my dragon plushies.

RiverClan is my Clan and my gov assigned warrior name is Fireshell 🌟🌟

3. As much as I hate the author,,,,, Harry Potter. It's been a major part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can never really remember why, but I've always just loved it- the movies, the books, the extra little merch that would pop up in my local Walmart. Of course my favorite character is Draco Malfoy. I could go on and on and ON about how I think his character arc was SHIT and JKR didn't have the balls to make him a confident gay man that was always implied through the text (at least, my lesbian ass thought it was implied but i may just be projecting, idk). I could ramble about Draco for HOURS and what I think his character SHOULD have been and how his parents are horrible (more specifically, Lucius bc Narcissa [?] Actually showed a few good moments), and a child should never have to pay for their parents sins.

Oh noo, Draco's a villain because he's a victim of major abuse and peer pressure? He's a villain because a literal child can be horrible and they'll always always always stay as a horrible little fiend?? Fuck that. He's a child.

Unlike manchild grease pan Snape, who was a racist piece of shit and shouldn't have became a fucking school teacher but it's okay because he was ~~~in love~~~. No, fuck you, he was a creep. James Potter n Co may have been a little posh bitch to you, Snape, but that's no fucking excuse to continue to bluntly be a little cunt all the way into adulthood. You're an adult who flatly changed your PATRONUS to imitate Lily's. You have no excuse. And Harry went and named his child after you LIKE JESUS CHRIST, DID RON'S SISTER NOT HAVE A SAY IN THE NAMES TOO?????

I also fully adore the idea that Muggles can run into Hogwarts and their patronus can 100% be a made up, fantasy creature. Imagine you learn the patronus spell and suddenly fucking ARCEUS comes from your wand. Imagine learning the spell and CHTULU (i did not spell that right but im so tired) comes from your wand-- an entire ass fucking Lovecraftian, Eldrith horror is just the embodiment of you. What if it was a fucking Homestuck character like Vriska? How fucking METAL would that be?? Hskajssowjjsjs get on it fandom.

4. Hee hee very evident by my url but Pokemon is another major thing of mine. While vespiquen isn't my favorite (that title goes to Hydreigon), it is definitely up there!

I've ALWAYS enjoyed the idea of Pokemon. You run around, training up these fight monsters and collecting them. I remember playing my sister's Ruby version on her flip-up Gameboy. I couldn't even read but I ran around catching god only knows how many of the same pokemon wherever she was. Apparently, I had fought for hours in the same area and leveled her Blaziken up to lvl 50 something and left her lvl 30s in the dust LMAO.

I got my first game when it was Pearl/Diamond. It was Pearl, and it still holds a very fond place in my heart. I could barely read, I could barely write-- I had named my Turtwig something along the lines of "MmorpHy" and my player boy "ZbsibJ". Yes I remember the names slightly. I really didn't get far-- I barely got to the first gym but I was just so happy to play it.

I eventually lost the game, as a 5 year old would do, but I can still vividly remember what was happening when the game arrived. I had just came back from the dentist and was quite tired from fighting the dentist bc I was super scared. Mom suddenly handed me a box and said it was mine-- my overseas (at that time) dad had bought me Pearl and my sister Diamond, because I lost my shit about it when he visited one time.

Well, tdlr, I played it for about five minutes while struggling to stay awake against the loopy gas they made me take. I fell asleep listening to Twinleaf Town's soundtrack. Every time I play a rom of Pearl and I get to where the player's house fades in and I hear that first tune of the song, I get a huge smile on my face and cry-- as.. Weird as it sounds.

A few years later, I had gotten Pokemon Black bc I liked Reshiram on the cover. Now, this one I could actually READ when playing, but I don't remember a lot of things about it. I probably lost this one too, as a 8/9 year old would do. I DO remember, I chose Snivy and my sister chose Tepig (hrmm there's a theme here of grass/fire goin on......) and vibing to the music. I was so amazed by the sprites moving, I just kept getting into encounters to see the sprites move (oh boy, no one tell younger 7-9 y/o me about Zelda......oh wait....)

Playing Pokemon NOW, as a 17 year old """gifted""" chick, I stil have very fond memories. I recently beat Pokemon Black again and GOD the OTS SLAPS. I fucking adore the soundtrack-- the track that plays when you battle a trainer, the low health dings being turned into a legit song that also slaps, the battle! gym leader themes-- and oh my gOd, the legendary theme is amazing? It really tells you just how glorious these pokemon are supposed to be. It's not intimidating like Groudon/Kyroge/Rayquaza's themes. It's not action packed like Palkia/Dialga's is, it's not filled with tension like Giratina/Arceus's is-- but it radiates the GLORY that the beasts portray. And I live for that. (Also, Kyurem's version is my favorite because it glitches in the beginning and that's rly cool)

P/D/P and BW/BW2's stories, imo, are some of the greatest ones. Yeahhh, US/USUM's is cool and I haven't played XY nor SwSh-- but the ones I can find memorable are PDP and BW/BW2. I love N. I love Barry. They're my sons. Ghetsis is fucking terrifying, Cyrus needs a hug. Giratina scared the piss out of me when I was younger, which was NOT helped by Giratina and The Sky Warrior.

I think my favorite movies are the gen 4 ones. The Rise of Darkrai having a tear-jerking theme for such a mysterious pokemon (i still tear up when i hear Ocarion), Giratina being spiteful is a mood and Shaymin was cute, Arceus being angry is also a mood. Yeah, Pokemon 4Ever made me cry my eyes out over Celebi, Mewtwo Returns made me again cry because Mewtwo accepting who he is, I remember how vastly different the BW movies are-

I just. I have a lot of memories with the series, even if Gamefreak and Nintendo kinda do the series dirty a lot (your top-grossing thing and you made That monstrosity for the Switch? How dare you.). It's comforting to be stressed and pull up my roms for the games and to play them. Mystery Dungeon is incredibly fun to play, Pokemon Ranger is really fun with the concept (Shadows of Almia continues to kick my ass to this very day and FUCK the Jungle Relic, I hate the Water Challenge fucking gyarados bullshit). I remember the pokemon I got for MD (I got Time, my sis got Darkness) was Mudkip, if that is any help.

I love my little fictional pixel monsters.

5. Yup, someone told tiny 7-9 y/o me about console games. The legend of Zelda. My first Zelda game was Twilight Princess on the Wii and BOY did I play the fucking SHIT out of that game.

Honestly, looking back and looking at playthroughs now-- I still love TP. Twilight Princess is still one of my top favorite Zelda games-- yes, even after playing OoT, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, the anniversary four swords edition for the DS where you could play by yourself (Nintendo pls bring that back, I don't have friends to play it with ;-;), Phantom Hourglass- ect.

Something about Twilight Princess grabbed me by the head and yeeted me into the world. I can remember playing it for hours with little to no breaks. I, a tiny 9 y/o, had gotten the hang of the controllers and managed to get past the tutorial quite easily. And then, I was launched into the game and I wasn't stopping for NOTHING. Mom and Dad would have to force me to save and get off to go and eat dinner. THAT sucked.

I had done everything on my own up until the first temple, the forest temple. Not where/when you saved the dumb kid, but when you were saving the spirit's light. Theeeeeeennn I got stuck on the fucking Forest Temple for deadass six months straight. I'd play for hours, running around in circles, unable to figure out where to go, and because I didn't grasp the temple's purpose of being that way- I'd get angry and get off. It wasn't until dad looked up a walkthrough and talked me through what I was supposed to do that I learned how to get through temples.

I had gotten to the last little fight with Ganondorf before the Wii broke and i could no longer play. Despite the Wii being broke and we got rid of it, I was ADAMANT on keeping the game, and I kept that game for YEARS. It was an original copy out of a sealed box, and I eventually lost it when I left it accidentally at my now ex-friend's house.

She had a Wii and I went "hey I have a Wii game!" And I brought my Zelda over. Worst fucking choice of my goddamn life. Mom called me to come home and said I couldn't sleep over like the original plan was, and that was it. My ex-friend stashed my Zelda and I never saw it again. And, even if I wanted to-- I couldn't get it back, which makes me upset. We had a BAD falling out. She likely doesn't even remember it's there, or sold it to the local game junkie kid who buys ALL games.

But I still love the game. Midna was amazing, and I loved how snarky she was and she has a very cute design! The game's OST is fucking phenomenal. Midna's Desperate Hour makes me cry bc goddamn it really sells how serious that situation is. I love Hyrule Field's theme in this game. I love the Twilight Realm's song. Zant was fucking hilariously scary. Ganondorf's design in this game scared the piss out of me when I was younger.

Midna and this game's Link and Zelda are def my favorites. Yeah yeah, Sheik is cool and all I Guess but dhsushwishs Midna holds the special place in my heart. She was totally my gay awakening BUT

For other game antagonists, I adore Ghirahim-- let's go you funky little queer-coded villain. Skull Kid was great, I love the entire dynamic of him. Prankster lost soul stumbles upon Majora's Mask and the mask makes him act out due to powers-- which, I actually took very heavy inspiration from for one of my OCs. The moon falling to Hyrule was a fucking terrifying looming threat.

But the game series holds a place, and I've yet to be able to play BoTW-- although, I'm fairly certain I'll like it. The playthroughs I've watched of it are all fairly decent! I just. Gotta save up enough money to buy it haha.

Dang guess I gotta go watch a Twilight Princess playthrough again.

Honorable Mentions:

Avatar: the Last Airbender, specifically Book 3

my OCs definitely make me happy, they're my children and I'd ramble A LOT longer if given the chance WHEEZE

My friends, but I didn't add them here bc it's more fictional stuff, I presume

Baking. I love to bake cupcakes.

Painting is fun. I'm an artist and goddammit im going to use painting as an excuse to make a mess.

Fire. I rly like fire, down to a pyromaniac level. However, i hate the fires that happened to my home town, the Great Smokey Fires of 2016-- THAT pissed me off. How dare you burn mountain landscapes to the ground. Perish.

History. I'm a history nerd.

I'm also a science nerd.

But fuck math, I cannot comprehend math to save my life.

For some reason, I rly like learning how the human body works??? like did you know, organs are actually sticky when touched by a bare hand?? Did you?? How fucking cool is that.

Bakugan. I love Bakugan, esp the DS game. I love my Darkus Leonidas. Give me back the online world, you peasants-- I want my Darkus Dragonoid. (Also fuck all my friends from when I was in kindergarten- my theory that Alice was Masquerade was somewhat correct.)

#admin ace #admin ace speaks #communistvriska #inbox tag #homestuck #warrior cats #harry potter #pokemon #legend of zelda

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betweengenesisfrogs · 5 years

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Homestuck is My Favorite Sprite Comic

Yes, you read that right.

Homestuck is my favorite sprite comic.

Those of you who remember the earlier days of the internet are probably looking at this post in disbelief right about now. Others of you might be scratching your heads, not knowing what I’m talking about.

But here’s my pitch: Homestuck is the culmination of an entire genre of internet art, and the tools that make it so powerful are the very tools that made that genre once so reviled.

Homestuck is the greatest and most successful sprite comic of all time.

And honestly, I’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, so let’s do it.

WHAT SPRITE COMICS WERE

Many of my readers are probably too young to remember the era of sprite comics. So: what were sprite comics?

Sprite comics were a genre of webcomics made entirely by taking pixel art from video games – especially character art, called “sprites,” but also backgrounds and other images—and placing them into panels to tell a story. They were near-ubiquitous on the internet in the early 2000s, emerging right as webcomics in general were seeking to establish themselves as an art form.

They were not, shall we say, known for their quality. The low bar to access meant that art skill was not an obstacle to starting one. The folks behind the huge swell of them tended to be young people, kids and early teenagers recreating the plots of their favorite video games with new OCs—not the most advanced writers or artists. They were the early 2000s’ quintessential example of ephemeral, childish art. Unfortunately, they look even worse today—blown-up pixels don’t hold up well when displayed on higher-resolution monitors.

Today, they’re mostly forgotten, remembered only as a weird, strange moment in the youth of the internet. Someone who evoked them today, such as a blogger who compared them to one of the most successful webcomics of all time, would be inviting good-natured teasing at the very least.

It would be unfair to dismiss them entirely, though. In this low-stakes environment, comics where the author could bring more skill—engaging writing, legitimately funny jokes, or especially, a real ability to work with pixel art—really stood out. (Unsurprisingly, these authors tended to skew a bit older.)

The obvious one to mention is Bob and George. Bob and George wasn’t the first sprite comic, but it was the most influential. Conceived initially as Mega Man-themed filler for a hand-drawn comic about superheroes, it quickly became a merging of the two concepts, with the original characters made into Mega Man-style sprites, full of running gags, humorous retellings of the Mega Man games, elaborate storylines about time travel, and robots eating ice cream. It was generally agreed, even among sprite comic haters, that Bob and George was a pretty good comic. Worth mentioning also are 8-Bit Theater, which turned the plot of the first Final Fantasy into a spectacular and hilarious farce, and of course Kid Radd, my second favorite sprite comic. (More on that later.)

But even if you weren’t looking for greatness—there was something just damn fun about them. The passion of sprite comic authors was clear, even if their ideas didn’t always cohere. To this day, I think the sprite comic scene has the same appeal pulp art does—it’s crude and rough, full of garbage to sift through, but every so often, something deeply sincere and bizarre shines through, and the culture of its authors is a fascinating object of study in itself.

Okay, full disclosure: I was one of the people who made a sprite comic. I’ve written about my experiences with that in more depth elsewhere, but yeah, I was on the inside of this scene, rather than a disinterested observer, and from the inside, maybe it’s a lot easier to see the appeal.

Still, let me make this claim: even with all their flaws, sprite comics were doing some incredibly interesting things, and Homestuck is heir to their legacy.

TAKE ME DOWN TO RECOLOR CITY

One of the problems people always had with sprite comics was the sprites themselves. They’re the most repetitive thing in the world. You just keep copying and pasting the same images over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks. That’s not really being an artist, is it? It’s so lazy. Re-drawing things from different angles keeps things dynamic, develops your skill, and makes your work better in general. Right?

I’m mostly in agreement. Certainly I think it’s fair to rag on the Control-Alt-Delete guy, along with other early bad webcomics, for copy-pasting their characters while dropping in new expressions and mass-producing tepid strips. And to be fair, digging through bad sprite comics often felt like an exercise in seeing the same slightly-edited recolors of Mega Man characters over and over again. You got really tired of that same body with its blobby feet and hands.

(It should be noted, though, that there were folks in the sprite comic scene who could pixel art the quills off a porcupine. I salute you, brave pixel art masters of 2006. I hope you all got into your chosen art school.)

All this said, I think the repetitive and simplistic nature of sprite comics was often their biggest strength.

THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION

In his classic work Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud makes an observation about cartooning that has stayed with me to this day.

McCloud notes that simple, abstract drawings, like faces that are only few lines and dots on a page, resonate with us more strongly than more detailed drawings. This is because our minds fill in what’s missing on the page. We ascribe human depth to simple gestures and expressions based on our own emotions and experiences – and this makes us feel closer to these characters as readers. Secretly, simple cartoons can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling. If you want your readers to fall in love with your characters, draw them simply, and let them fill them in.

Video game sprites work very well in this regard. They have that same simplicity that cartoons do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a huge part of the success of SNES-era RPGs was simple, almost childlike character sprites drawing people in. I think sprites did the same for sprite comics.

Here’s the weird thing: Bob and George worked. Despite four different characters being variations on the same friggin’ Mega Man sprite in different colors, they immediately began to seem like different people with distinct personalities. For me, George’s befuddled, helpless dismay immediately comes to mind whenever I picture his face, while with Mega Man himself it’s usually a wide-eyed, childlike glee. I would never confuse them. This, despite the fact that the only actual difference between their faces is that George is blonde. It’s pretty clear what happened. The personalities the author established for them through dialogue and storytelling shone through, and my brain did the rest.

Sprites, in short, were a canvas upon which the mind could project any story the author wanted to tell. Even the most minute differences in pixel art came to stand, in the best sprite comics, for wide divergences in personality and ideals, once the reader spent enough time with them to adapt to their style of representation.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Character designs that focus on variations on a theme, with subtle differences that nonetheless render them instantly recognizable?

Oh, right.

Look at what greets us on the very first page of Homestuck. An absurdly simple cartoon boy, abstracted to a ridiculous degree—he doesn’t even have arms!—followed a whole bunch of characters that follow suit. Though many other representations of the characters emerge, these little figures never quite go away, do they? Why is that?

Simple: they’re very easy to manipulate. They’re modular—you can give John arms or not, depending on whether it’s useful. You can put him in a whole variety of poses and save them to a template. You can change out his facial expressions with copy and paste. You can give him a new haircut and call him Jake. It’s all very quick and easy.

Sprite comics proliferated because they were very easy to mass-produce. Andrew Hussie’s original conception of Homestuck was very similar: something he could put out very quickly and easily, where even the most elaborate ideas could rely on existing assets to be sped smoothly along. We all know the result: an incredible production machine, churning out unfathomable amounts of content from 2009-2012. I’d say it was a good call.

But it goes way deeper than that. The modular nature of sprites always suggested a kind of modularity to the sprite comic premise. George and Mega Man were different people, true, but also two variations on a theme. Was there something underlying them that they had in common? Perhaps their similarity says something like: We exist in a world which has a certain set of rules? One of my favorite conceits from Bob and George was that when characters visited the past, they were represented by NES-era Mega Man sprites, while in the present, they were SNES sprites, and in the future, the author used elaborate splicing to render them as 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites or similar.

Suppose there was a skilled cartoonist thinking about his next big project, who wanted to tell a story centered around this kind of modularity, a narrative that was built out of iterative, swappable pieces by its very design. He might very well create a sprite comic named Homestuck.

Homestuck is a story about a game that creates a hyperflexible mythology for its players, where the villains, challenges, and setting change depending upon what players bring to the experience, yet which all share underlying goals and assumptions. What more perfect opportunity to create a modular story as well? Different groups of kids and trolls have motifs that get swapped around to produce new characters, whether that’s through ectobiology, the Scratch, or the eerie parallels between the kids and trolls’ sessions. And yet each character can be analyzed as an individual.

This is an incredible way to build a huge emotional investment from your readers. Not only does this kind of characterization invite analysis, the abstractions draw readers in to generate their own headcanons and interpretations. A deep commitment to pluralism is at the heart of Hussie’s character design. Then, too, it encourages readers to build their own new designs from these models. Kidswaps, bloodswaps, fantrolls—these have long been the heart of Homestuck’s fandom. And what are bloodswaps if not sprite recolors for a new generation? With the added bonus that now a change in color carries narrative weight, evoking new moods and identities for these characters in ways that early sprite comics could only dream of.

In Hussie’s hands, even the dreaded copy-and-paste takes on heroic depth of meaning. Even when Hussie moves away from sprites to his own loose art style, he continues to remix what we’ve previously see. Indeed, Hussie talks about how he would go out of his way to edit his own art into new images even when it would take more time than drawing something new. Why? Because he wanted to evoke that very feeling of having seen this before—the visual callback to go along with the many conceptual and verbal callbacks that echo throughout Homestuck. This is at the heart of what Doc Scratch (speaking for Hussie) called “circumstantial simultaneity:” we are invited to compare two moments or two characters, to see what they have in common, or how they contrast. Everything in Paradox Space is deeply linked with everything else. And Hussie establishes this in our minds using nothing less than the tool sprite comics were so deeply reviled for: the “lazy” repetition of an image.

(It’s fitting that some of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous images in Homestuck—dream bubble scenery and the like—are the result of Hussie taking things he’s made before and combining them into fantastic dreamscapes.)

But it all started with the hyperflexible, adaptable character images Hussie created at the very beginning of Homestuck.

And if you need more proof that Homestuck is a sprite comic, I think we need look no further than what Hussie, and the rest of the Homestuck community call these images.

We call them sprites.

THE FIRST GENRE-BENDERS

Was Andrew Hussie influenced by sprite comics in the development of Homestuck? It’s hard to say, but as a webcomic artist in the first decade of the 2000s, he was surely aware of them. It’s likely that he quickly realized that his quick, adaptable images served the same purposes as a sprite in a video game or a sprite comic, and chose to call them that.

One purpose I haven’t mentioned up until now: sprites lend themselves very well to animations. In fact, in their original context of video games, that’s exactly what they’re for: frames of art that can be used to show a character running, jumping, posing, moving across a screen. It’s not surprising, then, that sprite comic makers quickly saw the utility in that.

Homestuck was, in fact, not the first webcomic to make Flash animations part of its story. There were experiments with various gifs and such in other comics, but I think sprite comics were among the most successful at becoming the multi-media creations that would come to be known as hypercomics..

Take a look at this animation from Bob and George. It represents a climactic final confrontation against a long-standing villain, using special effects to make everything dramatic, but ultimately, like many a Homestuck animation, leads to kind of a pyscheout. The drama and the humor of the moment are clear, though. This relies in large part on the music—which is taken directly from the game Chrono Trigger. This makes total sense. Interestingly, it also contains voice acting, which is something Homestuck never tried—probably because it would run contrary to its ideals of pluralism. What I find fascinating is that in sprite comics, animations like these served a very similar purpose to Homestuck’s big flashes: elevating a big moment into something larger-than-life. Another good example is this sequence from Crash and Bass. Seriously, it seems like every sprite comic maker wanted to try their hand at Flash animation.

(By the way, it’s a lot harder than it looks!! I envy Hussie his vectorized sprites. Pixel art is a PAIN to work with in the already buggy program that is Flash.)

The result: because of the sprites themselves, sprite comics were among the first works to play around with the border between comics and other media in the way that would come to be thought of as quintessentially Homestuck.

What it also meant was that another genre emerged in parallel with sprite comics: the sprite animation. Frequently these would retell the story of a particular game, offer a spectacular animated battle sequence, parody the source material, or all three. Great examples include this animation for Mega Man Zero, and this frankly preposterous crossover battle sequence. Chris Niosi’s TOME also found its earliest roots as an animation series of this kind. You also found plenty of sprite-based flash games, in which players could manipulate game characters in a way that was totally outside the context of the original works.

The website the vast majority of these games and animations were hosted on?

Newgrounds, best known to Homestuck fans as the website Hussie crashed in 2011 while trying to upload Cascade.

What’s less talked about is that Hussie was friends, or at least on conversational terms with, the owner of the site, hence the idea to host his huge animation there in the first place, and other flashes, like the first Alterniabound, were initially hosted there as well.

It’s hard to believe that Hussie wasn’t at least a little familiar with the Newgrounds scene. I suspect that he largely conceived of Homestuck as part of the world of “Flash animation—” which in 2009 meant the wide variety of things that were hosted on Newgrounds, including sprite animations.

The freedom and fluidity sprite comics had to change into games and animations and back into comics again was one of their most fascinating traits. Homestuck’s commitment to media-bending needs, at this point, no introduction. But what’s less known is that sprite comics were exploring that territory first—that Homestuck, in short, is the kind of thing they wanted to grow up to be.

PUT ME IN THE GAME

I would be a fool not to mention another big thing Homestuck and sprite comics have in common: a character who is literally the author in cartoon form, running around doing goofy things and messing with the story. This was an incredibly common cliché in sprite comics, no doubt because of Bob and George, who did it early on and never looked back. You might have noticed that the animation I linked above concerns a showdown between Bob and George’s author, David Anez—depicted, delightfully, as another Mega Man recolor—and a mysterious alternate author named Helmut—who is like Mega Man plus Sepiroth I think? It’s all very strange. I could ramble for hours about the relationship between Hussie and the alt-author villains of Homestuck and what it all means, but I’m not sure I can nail anything down with certainty for these two. Maybe Bob and George was never quite that metaphysical.

But yes, bringing the author into the story in some form was already a cliché by the time Homestuck started up. Indeed, I think that’s why Hussie’s character refers to it as “a bad idea” to break the fourth wall—he’s recognizing that people will have seen this before, and are already tired of this sort of shit. And then he goes and does it anyway and makes it somehow brilliant, because he’s Andrew Hussie.

Homestuck breathes life into the cliché by taking it in a metaphysical/metafictional direction. I don’t think that was really the motivation for most sprite comic authors, though. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

I think the cliché kept happening because sprite comic authors were writing about a subject that very closely concerned themselves: video games. I’m only kind of joking. The thing about video games is that even though they’re made for everyone, playing through one yourself feels like an intensely personal experience. You develop an emotional relationship to a world, to its characters, that feels distinctly your own. Now, suddenly, thanks to the magic of sprites, you have an opportunity to tell stories about that world for others to read. Of course you’re going to want to put yourself in the story in some form.

When it wasn’t author characters in sprite comics, it was OCs. You know Dr. Wily? Well here’s my own original villain, Dr. Vindictus. You know Mega Man? Here’s my new character, Super Cool Man. He hangs out with Mega Man and they beat the bad guys together. Stuff like that. Most sprite comics retold the story of a game, or multiple games in a big crossover format, with original elements added in. There was quite a lot of “Link and Sonic and Mega Man are all friends with my OC and they hang out at his house.”

What’s interesting, though, is that because these sprite comics were very aware that they were about video games, this was where they sometimes got very meta. It started with humorous observation—hey, isn’t it funny that Link goes around breaking into people’s houses and smashing their pots? But sometimes, it grew into more serious commentary. Is Mega Man trapped in a never-ending cycle, doomed to fight the same fight against the same mad scientist until the end of time? Is it worth it, being a video game hero?

Enter Homestuck. What I’ve been dancing around this whole time is:

Homestuck is a sprite comic…because Homestuck is a video game.

Or more specifically, Homestuck’s a comic about a video game called SBURB, where the lines between the game and the comic about the game blur as characters wrestle with the narratives around them, both those encoded into the game and those encoded into our expectations.

Homestuck presents the fantasy of many a sprite comic maker: I get to go on heroic quests, I get to change the world and become a god. I get to be part of the video game. And then it asks the same question certain sprite comics were beginning to ask:

Is it worth it, to be that hero?

I want to tell you about my second favorite sprite comic, a comic called Kid Radd.

Kid Radd distinguished itself from other sprite comics of the time by being a completely original production. Its sprites looked like they could be from a variety of NES and SNES-era video games, but they were all done from scratch, and the games they purported to represent were all fictional. Kid Radd used animations with original music, and sometimes interactive, clickable games, to tell its story. It also used all sorts of neat programming tricks to make it load faster on the internet of the early 2000s, which was great—unfortunately, these same techniques made it break as web technology evolved, something Homestuck fans in 2019 can definitely relate to. The good news is, fans have maintained a dedicated and reformatted archive where the comics can still be seen and downloaded.

Kid Radd’s premise is that video game characters themselves are conscious and alive—more specifically, their sprites. Sprites developed consciousness as human beings projected personality and identity onto them, remaining aware of their status as video game constructs while also seeking to be something more. The story follows the titular Kid Radd, at first in the context of his own game, commenting on the choices the player controlling him. He must endure every death, every strange decision along the way to save his girlfriend Sheena. Then the story expands into a larger context as Radd, Sheena, and many other video game characters are released onto the internet as data. They try to find their own identities and build a society for themselves, but struggle with the tendency toward violence that games have programmed into them. The story culminates in an honestly moving moment where Radd confronts the all-powerful creators of their reality—human beings.

It’s a very good comic.

The first sprite comic authors wanted to fuse real life with video games. Later sprite comic authors decided to ask: what would that really mean? Would it be painful? Would you suffer? Would you find a way to make your life meaningful all the same? Despite the limitations of sprite comics, these ideas had incredible potential, and in works like Kid Radd, they flourished.

Homestuck is heir to that legacy.

It takes the questions Kid Radd was asking, and asks them in new ways. It tries to understand, on an even deeper level, how the rules of video games shape our own minds and give us ways to understand ourselves.

At its heart, Homestuck is a sprite comic, and it might just be the greatest of them all.

EPILOGUE

I’ve seen a lot of good discussion recently on how Homestuck preserves a certain era of the internet like a time capsule: its culture, its technology, its assumptions, its memes.

I think sprite comics, too, are part of the culture that created Homestuck. Do I think Hussie spent the early 2000s recoloring Mega Man sprites? No, probably not. But what I do know is that sprite comics were part of his world. The first webcomic cartoonists came of age alongside an odd companion, the weird, overly sincere, dorky little sibling that was sprite comics. Like them or hate them, you couldn’t escape them. They were there.

And maybe a certain cartoonist saw a kind of potential in them, in the same way he summoned Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from the depths of bad gamer culture.

Or maybe he just knew, as some sprite comic authors did, that the time was right for their kind of story.

On a personal level—Homestuck came along right when I needed it.

Around 2009, the bubble that was sprite comics finally burst. People were getting tired of them, or growing out of them, and blown-up sprites no longer looked so good on modern monitors.

I was more than a little heartbroken. I’d enjoyed Bob and George, read my fill of Mega Man generica, and fallen utterly in love with Kid Radd. I’d been working on my own sprite comic for a long time out of a sense that there was huge potential in them that we were only scratching the surface of. I’d dreamed of maybe someday doing something as amazing as the best of them did. But I was watching that world disappear. I had to admit to myself that my work wasn’t going to continue to find an audience. That I could live with. But it was painful to think that the potential I sensed, the feats of storytelling I wanted to see in the world, would never be realized.

And then, in the fall of 2010, a friend linked me to a comic that broke all the rules, that mixed animation, games, music, images and chatlogs. A comic that crafted its own sprites, just as Kid Radd did, and remixed its images into an ever-expanding web of associations and meanings. A comic that took on the idea of living inside a video game with relish and turned it into a gorgeous meditation on escaping the ideas and systems that control us.

That this comic would exist, let alone that it would succeed. That it would become one of the most popular creations of all time, that it would surpass other webcomics and break out into anime conventions and the real world, that it would become such a cultural juggernaut, to the point where it’s impossible to imagine an internet without Homestuck—

I can’t even put into words how happy that makes me. It’s the reason I’m still writing essays about Homestuck nearly eight years after I found it.

And it’s why Homestuck will always be my favorite sprite comic.

-Ari

[Notes: The image of the kids came from the ever-useful MSPA Wiki—please support and aid in their efforts to provide a good source of info about Homestuck! They need more support these days than ever.

For more on Homestuck’s place as a continuation of the zeitgeist of early 2000s experimental webcomics, this article by Sam Keeper at Storming the Ivory Tower is excellent and insightful.

Thanks for reading, y’all.]

#homestuck analysis #homestuck #homestuck's influences #hypercomics #understanding homestuck #sprite comics #internet culture

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