09/12/2008: The Dragons of Ouen (with new Polaryu)
I finally settled with a design I thought looked decent. :D I'd messed around with a few different ideas but none really came out well. And then I just went all dithering-crazy on the wings and it actually worked out fairly, I think. I also shrunk the near wing a bit, shortened the right arm (our left), added a mouth and moved the base of the wing, which many had pointed out was placed too low.
The previous version of the scratch, if you want to compare, looked like this:
So, since I've probably finalized at least the designs for now, I'm going to go on a bit of a trip down the memory lane about the designs of the Dragons of Ouen.
It all started on November 18th 2003, when I made these earliest versions of Thunderyu and Volcaryu. I did make Polaryu as well, but I overwrote the file later with the one that comes after it; it's not much of a loss, since I believe all I changed was a few pixels of outlining and the fact that originally the insides of his wings retained the color that was on the R/S Charizard's wings. As you can see, Thunderyu looked downright amazingly awful, but it did have the basic idea of being yellow, slender and with huge wings. Fair enough. It was made from the R/S Aerodactyl, slightly modified, as a base with the Yellow Charizard's wings and R/S Charizard's head and arms, also slightly modified. Volcaryu's sprite was far too big with the tacked-on tail and he was almost unrecognizably lean, with wings not that small. And his armor plates were eye-hurtingly red like the rest of him. And his belly even more so. It was made from the R/S Aerodactyl (head, wings and tail), R/S Kangaskhan (legs), R/S Charizard (body) and R/S Feraligatr (arms). Polaryu was made from the R/S Charizard with the tail end scratched and an edited Gold Dragonite's head.
I made these in October 2004. Yes, I was scratching Thunderyu's wings that early, surprisingly enough, and what's more is that I did it well enough that I never felt the need to edit the shape of the wings when reconsidering the sprite later. Thunderyu and Volcaryu were entirely remade, but as I said, Polaryu stayed pretty much the same aside from the color of the inside of the wings. Thunderyu is still made from the R/S Aerodactyl's body and tail with the R/S Charizard's arms and head plus scratched wings, while Volcaryu now uses Kangaskhan's body as a base, has new demonic horns and a scratched tail.
Two months later, in December 2004, I reconsidered the color of the insides of Thunderyu's wings, making it darker than the main color instead of lighter. An improvement, if you ask me. The other dragons were not changed.
These familiar versions were actually not made at the same time, now that I look at them. I decided that Volcaryu looked awful and needed a remake (mostly because of the horrible colors) in June 2005, creating this drastically improved version; it was not until December that I followed it up with a considerably less bland-looking Thunderyu (all scratch edits except for the FR/LG Charizard arm that replaced one of the R/S ones) and a Polaryu with, uh, darker insides of his wings, slight shading tweaks, the FR/LG Charizard's arm and slightly edited head frill thingies. Yeah, I've been mean to Polaryu over the years. Though to be fair it was mostly because initially it was my favorite of the dragon sprites by far so I didn't think it needed as much work. The shinies were made in January for the fake Pokémon section I was making on the site.
Aaand it's the new 100% scratched ones, with shinies. I won't bore you by repeating all I've said about the sprites themselves, but the shinies have had their colors completely reconsidered; basically I decided to go with colors somewhat associated with their element if not as much so as their real color, making Thunderyu blue, Volcaryu orange and Polaryu off-white.
So yeah. Ramble over.
COMMENTARY DONE
Comments
shadow_lugia (09/12/2008 21:39:27)
The new sprites are awesomesauce :D
Please wait while I try to bring Polaryu home with me.
Emerald Espeon (09/13/2008 01:09:58)
The shinies look amazing…especially Polaryu :D
elyvorg (09/13/2008 14:30:11)
After having looked at the Fake Pokémon page on the main site with the DP-styled versions of the Leta line and the dragons…
DP Scorplack? >D
Butterfree (09/13/2008 17:12:10)
I'm not sure. Thing is, I really like the current Scorplack sprite; I still think it's one of the best spriting anythings I've made, ever. I'm not sure a D/P version could ever top it. I mean, the dragons and Leta line always had their problems. Scorplack at most has a few pixels I'd like to fix. :<
Fox McCloud (09/13/2008 21:02:31)
Heh. These came out really nice… I think you need to remove the references to "Lucky Drawing" on the site. >:D
Butterfree (09/13/2008 23:39:26)
No. I don't. Seriously. Just because I made a couple of decent-looking dragons that I've been designing and drawing for years doesn't mean I can whip up a sprite of some random fake Pokémon you give me.
Happy (09/14/2008 03:07:40)
I think those dithered wings are fan-freaking-tastic, though now Thunderyu's wings are a bit flat in comparision. :B
So, their revamps are finalised? Wow, they certainly weren't pageant queens in the beginning. :P Amazing job with the new sprites!
Zzzzzzzzz480 (09/14/2008 10:49:06)
Wow, I missed the new Volcaryu and Polaryu. I must say, first off, that you are an excellent spriter. Polaryu is what I think of as by far your best, then Volcaryu, followed by Thunderyu (who I still think looks more of a sprite-sized pixel-over, referring to old post in Thundery update). Volcaryu also looks like a pixel-over (to me), but it's just too cool to diss, and Polaryu looks perfect. One of the things that I don't like is that now Volcaryu's wings are almost as big as Polaryu's. You may now begin dissing me, Butterfree crazed fanz.
Butterfree (09/14/2008 14:23:45)
I'm not precisely sure how something can "look" like a "sprite-sized pixel-over". The only ways in which pixel-overs differ from sprites are the method of their creation and their size; when you've got a pixel-over except it's not actually a pixel-over of anything and it's the size of a sprite, it is a sprite in every sense of the word.
And holy crap, Volcaryu's wings are not as big as Polaryu's. o_O Or rather, they're close in actual size, but Volcaryu's body is much bigger, and the ratio of body-to-wings is what matters.
Zzzzzzzzz480 (09/14/2008 15:11:48)
Gah, terrible use of terminology on my part. I just can't describe it another way. It looks more like a drawing to me. It's probably just me, though.
Once again, mistake on my part. But I miss the old pathetic wings.
elyvorg (09/14/2008 17:21:41)
It just struck me that while the undersides of Volcaryu and Polaryu's wings are a totally different colour to their body - their "secondary colour", if you like - those of Thunderyu are just a darker shade of his yellow. So, to keep in with the fact that if something's the same in two of the dragons, it needs to be the same in the third as well, perhaps they should be the same blue as his gems? It'd add a bit more colour variety to Thunderyu as well, because right now he's got more problems with being monochromatic than Polaryu has.
Butterfree (09/14/2008 20:10:38)
You're drawing from their color palettes here instead of the actual point - the insides of Polaryu's wings are both essentially darker versions of the main color and the secondary color at the same time, making it break no pattern. They don't use the same actual colors, palette-wise, but they're darker blue while the body is lighter blue.
Meanwhile, what I mean by monochromaticness has very little to do with how much the colors are used overall. Because there is some blue in Thunderyu against the yellow and it's not all in one place on the sprite, it breaks up any potential monochromaticness, irrelevant of how little blue there actually is in total (blue is particularly effective here because it's the opposite of yellow - it also helps that we perceive the color on the insides of the wings as being brown more than yellow, hence why the shiny Thunderyu looks a lot more monochromatic, what with all of it except the gems being perceived as "blue", even though the gems still save it from really looking problematically so in my opinion). Polaryu is as monochromatic as you can get, because it is all blue - different shades of blue in fairly balanced amounts, sure, but we still perceive every single pixel of it as "blue", and that is what is problematic here.
…actually, speaking of the shiny Thunderyu, I've been thinking about making it a bit lighter for a while; it's been bugging me that it doesn't really look like a shiny because of how dark it is. *edits*
Happy (09/17/2008 07:10:01)
I think what Zzz means is that your style isn't quite like the official sprites. I'd have to agree, but how exactly eludes me.