Get Paid to Play Games

Ah, nothing but quality games out of these guys.

Wait...my mistake, they were the exact opposite of what I just said! Ha ha ha, how did I mess that up? No, I was talking actually about Square (or Square-Enix now).

Or Squaresoft...you know what? Whatever.

Anyway, Square(soft) was pretty freaking great back in the day. Aside from making 3D World Runner, which I love, they also made tons of RPGs on the side I guess? And now you know Im just messin with ya. Lets get on with the sprites. 

Suck it, Garland!

The first picture is a bit zoomed out, but you get the point. Garland is the first boss in FF1, and thus I figured wed have our team fight against him. Its worth noting that this ISNT the team I usually pick; Id have a fighter in there and probably no thief. 

A wizard did it!

Fighter and Black Mage are instead confronting Sarda in a tribute to 8-bit theater. Seriously, that comic is hilarious (and actually ended, which is amazing).

I have a lot of pictures of these, so bear with me.

I LOVE Final Fantasy 6s sprite work. From the characters that convey so much emotion despite being so small to the absolutely gorgeous enemies, this is probably my favorite game in terms of pixel art. While Ill admit it isnt as straight up artistic as games like Chrono Trigger or the later Secret of Mana games, it has a style I just love, and making the sprites was fun.

Emperor, Kefka, and Magitech armor.

The Magitech armor was tricky because, again, we didnt have the proper colors. I ended up ditching the original brown/tan scheme for a sort of gray/cream variant. This was because if I didnt there wouldnt be any contrast between the soldier and the armor he was in. Kefkas hair was also tricky (I switched out the colors probably six or seven times before finally coming to that conclusion) but it boiled down to the gray/blonde colors available didnt blend well and thus made the sprite look bad, so I ended up with a darker brown. Took ten years off Kefka, let me tell ya. 

Esper Terra, Cid, Leo, and Banon.

This is sort of the "Misc" group (and will be with the Chocobo when I finally get around to doing it). Esper Terra is probably my favorite sprite out of the bunch, despite being the simplest. She just looks...badass. I never really cared for Cid so I made him dull, and Leo didnt really have a lot of poses. Banon, again, should probably have grayer hair but whatever...blame Perler. 

Terra, Locke, Edgar, Sabin, Celes, Interceptor and Shadow, Cyan, Gau, Setzer, Strago, Relm, Mog, Umaro, Gogo.

A "dud" version that I eventually recolored.

First off, thats SIX perler trays, so you get a sense of size here. Second, he is VERY tricky to do. Remember when I said I do outlines first and then go from there? Look at the black beads on this guy. Theres no rhyme or reason behind it. Its super tricky!

After I fixed him.

I took out all the dark purples and replaced them with dark grays. Every. Single. One. With tweezers, one at a time, while staying true to the original sprite. I then replaced all the light purples with dark purples. I also experimented on the tentacle to try and find a better color mix and it ended up being much better. Just to point out: Ultros has something like six shades of purple, and I have only two shades of beads (and only three that really work well together). Because of that, some colors had to do double duty, so the sprite isnt as color detailed. It basically boils down to what shades best and still looks like the original sprite, which Id like to say my background in actual pixel art helps in deciding. 

I love his teeth. Sorry this one is blurry.

So you can see I used considerably less purples here. I also had to compensate for lack of teeth colors as well, as theres really only two shades of yellow and an off-color "creme" that I never use for anything. 

All finished!

I ended up shading the purple into a purple-pink and then to a pink and to a white because it seemed to blend best. The pink still "pops" a little much, but its the best you can get. The dark grays were actually dark purples in the sprite, but they really just make the shadows a little deeper when Im fine with. I think he ended up looking really good, and an accurate representation of the original sprite. 

The famous opera scene.

And this is him finished on the wall, with Maria/Celes. I really like the Celes sprite too. Ultros is pretty dang big, about as long as my forearm, and I had to use some clear on the curving back tentacle. He was also a mess to try to iron but my wife managed to pull it off. From a distance, he looks fantastic!

View of the wall leading to the video game room pt 1...

And from a slightly different angle.