Joey & Charmander

From looking at this blog and talking to me in real life, it should come as no surprise to you that I really like Pokemon.  I have been playing the games since I was young and actually think they keep improving.  I realize that the primary mechanics of the game haven't changed much since the original games, but the additional monsters added each generation, the improvements made to old favors, and tweaks in the mechanics do make each new one at least worth a try, in my opinion.  I still find them fun to play, to the point where one of the biggest things I did at PAX East this past weekend was battle the PAX Pokemon League for badges.

In fact, one idea I have been planning to do for a while is to play through the original Blue game using only my starter Pokemon in battle.  I wanted to go with Charmander for this because people think that he has the hardest time going through the original games.  Admittedly, Fire is actually one of the worst types in the original games*, and vulnerabilities to the first two bosses does not help Charmander's situation.  However, I have heard that Charmander actually fairs surprisingly well in-game, with his other qualities being able to far outshine his type.  I will have to see that for myself when I actually motivate myself to record game footage.


Why do I bring this idea up?  Well...

PAX East + Lucids: Ken "Thunder"

Before I talk about this week's picture, I just want to say that I will be attending PAX East this weekend.  PAX East is a game convention hosted by the crew behind the popular web comic Penny Arcade, featuring a showroom of upcoming and recently-released video games, various presentations from people related to games (developers, players, archivers, even Internet personalities like the Runaway Guys), and various rooms where people can play video games and talk about them.  I am pretty stoked about this.  (If only I could use my Keldeo against the PAX Pokemon League...)  Meet me up there Friday or Sunday if you want to hang out.

Now with that out of the way, by now I have posted and talked a bit about Sakura Miyazaki, one of the main characters of this "Lucids" series.  I have yet to show off some of the other characters I have in mind, though, so this week, I want to give you a proper introduction to the male lead of the series: Ken "Thunder".

Sakura Redrawn

Remember my "Lucids" concept?  I've been thinking about it, and I want to nail the look of those characters down.  So, lately, I have been trying to draw them a little more frequently.  Perhaps some day soon I can utilize them in comic form or animated form or something.  But before that can happen, I want to be sure that these guys will look the way I want them to look.

To that end, allow me to reintroduce Sakura Miyazaki, the female lead of this "series", in a drawing I made a few months ago.  How did this one turn out?

Paint Boy Process & "Helper Clip"

I've been talking over the last two weeks about this game project I made some artwork for involving a character that travels through computer programs to fight intrusive enemies.  His name was Paint Boy, and he could swap out the kinds of shots he fired Ikaruga-style, only instead of black-and-red vs white-and-cyan, Paint Boy worked on a red vs green vs blue system.  I not only drew the original concept for Paint Boy, but I also drew some sprites for the project, some of which I showed last week.  How did I make those sprites, though?

Apologies may be in order for this first image, but I needed a rather large canvas for these sprites.  You may have noticed that the sprites from last week were rather rough-looking.  We wanted to make the sprites look like something drawn with crayon or chalk, so I ended up making the sprites huge first and then shrinking them.  You can see the results of the shrunken sprites here.  In addition to the Calculator enemies, I also had some designs for enemies in the Word Processor level.  They included various letters, as well as a semi-colon that I think was supposed to be some kind of bomb.  This sheet also includes a number of other elements from the game, including various bullets and a triangle meant to try and demonstrate the relationship between colors.

But what fun would a space-shooter be without a boss to fight at the end of a level?
 

Here we have the idea for the boss of the Word Processor level: Helper Clip.  Obviously, this is meant to be a parody of Clippit, the somewhat obnoxious assistant character in Microsoft Word.  He is possessed by the force trying to conquer the computer and offers to "help" eliminate Paint Boy.  The idea was to make this go through three phases.  First, he simply winked or blinked to shoot bullets at you.  You shot at both of his eyes until they darkened, at which point, he would start crying semi-colons.  Once both eyes started crying, Helper Clip would block shots with his tail, making the player overcome a secondary-color shield.  With the tail shot off, Helper Clip would become mad, and the final phase would begin.  His weak spot was his mouth, but in addition to the explosive teardrops, the stump of his tail would also spray out bullets.  Once you shot his mouth away, then Helper Clip falls in defeat.

And so ends the saga of Paint Boy.  We had big plans for the project and some ideas for later stages (I think Longcat was supposed to be the final boss), but my group only worked on this for a couple of months before we just stopped.  I would love to be able to work on a project like this in the future, and maybe I will return to it at some point.

If you'd like to work with me on a project like this, or if you need a sprite artist for a project, please let me know.  For now, though, that is pretty much it for Paint Boy.  Next week, something else.