Four months today since the last time I updated my first art thread. And since then, I've turned 16, gotten on a team, set up a deviantART account, started looking at colleges, gotten in trouble IRL and have been let off of it. Yes, I meant to tell you, but a couple of weeks ago my parents decided that I could have everything back, and the scanner was taken away for quite some time. The understanding is that I can get all the homework done that I need to for the following day. And I feel so dumb about what I said about them: I'm feeling a lot more confident about my grades this quarter, I'm feeling much more organized and I haven't argued with my parents in days.

Anyway, onto the art show. I made this today for ClassiCal, but *laughs* I don't know if it's worthy of meeting her eyes:



It ran thru my head today during school— "When I get home, I'm gonna draw Supâku-chan for ClassiCal." I'm not sure why I decided too, but I think it came out okay.

It's one of the first works where I've changed the shading style a little. And I made the pupils a darker shade of regular her eye color instead of black because I thought it made her look softer.

I think the neck and the electrode on her head are a little too small, but I think the biggest problem I had was with her lips. 'Tis a limitation of a manga-based style (although I do draw defined lips for certain characters in my manga Gray Area.)

Other than that, I think it looks okay, but I'm amazed that it took almost 3 hours for me to make the whole thing!

Those are some massively detailed eyes! Nice job!

Also, don't worry about the lips, they're hell to draw for everyone but the best, methinks. Also, Classi herself said that she changes lip styles every time she draws her characters, heheh.

Thankyou for your version of Spark! I enjoy fanart very much because I can see how people picture my own creations. Well mine and Rich since he designed the new Spark suit.

You did a really nice job.

Thanks guys. Like I said on dA, I was worried it wouldn't look that good, but I guess the way I colored in the eyes helped also. I thought it made her look sweeter, warmer and more motherly. I wonder how many different people have drawn Supâku-chan since Classi joined the Mechanical Maniacs?

I might as well throw in my dA account name right now. It's SaturnSaionji, for those who haven't found me there yet. I've also imported two more pieces from there:



Zen Skullman. Zen, yoga and the like weren't what inspired to make this pic, but that's what the pose reminded me of during my three and a half hours fixing up and coloring the original drawing on Photoshop. It's because I've applied to be Cossack's Comrades' new Skullman and I hope I get the position. If I do, I thought I'd get a pic ready to put in the profile on their site.

This one took a long time to make. I had trouble deciding what filter to use for the background on this, but before that, I had to do a lot of cleaning up after scanning it in. My idea with the Skull Barrier was that having all those small skulls fly around Skullman is fine for Mega Man 4, but for a three-dimensional piece like this, you'd have to make the shield look completely impenetrable. How effective is a shield which leaves you completely open on two sides?



Eight-Bit Cinema. My first try at making a sprite comic. There's two reasons why there's only one panel to this: 1) I think it's best to show off all the Cosmic Gladiators quickly, and 2) I only have one frame for each of the sprites. I haven't gotten the chance to finish a full sprite sheet for any of them yet. The background is some panels from the first Mr. X stage in Mega Man 6, courtesy of BGHQ.

Everyone else has been updating their art sections today, it seems, and so shall I:



Same As It Ever Was. Basically, I'm letting my laziness work for me in this one. The rest is self-explanatory.



I finally got around to making a Megaman & Bass-style CD pic for Saturn's Neostardroid armor. I've already got it as my avatar on the Cosmic Gladiators' forum, but I thought I'd put it here too.

And… I haven't put these on dA yet, but part of the reason is I don't know where I should put them as a category. I made my first sprite comic a scrap since I had no idea then.

That's an awesome sprite. From what I've seen, you seem to be good at working with the CD sprites. I'm impressed!

Thank you.

*Eyes widen* I just remembered I have so many other surprise art projects for the CG that I wanted to finish and get up here online. I'm so behind! *panics*

*ahem* Hopefully we will see more sprite comics if I ever get around to finishing the 8-bit sprite sheets for everyone. But that might take a lot of time and some motivation…

Speaking of, I forgot to give BGHQ credit for the backgrounds in my second sprite comic. The sky is from Cossack Stage 4 in Mega Man 4, and the rest of the background tiles came from Wily Stage 2 in the same game.

The sprite comic is nigh impossible to read...

I apologize for that. Those were the same colors I used for each character's text on the first one, and I guess I didn't expect them to blend in that much with the background. Looking back, I probably should've gone with Wily Stage 1 from Mega Man 5 for the background instead. Here's all the dialogue except for in Panel One if it helps:

PANEL TWO
Mercury: Flexing your muscles again, Neptune?
Neptune: Looks like.

PANEL THREE
Mercury: I'm starting to see pattern here: Nobody can find anything better to do today!
Neptune: Why don't you go find Saturn? I mean, he IS the one making this comic.

PANEL FOUR
Mercury: Hey Saturn, I was wondering why— what're you doing up there?
Saturn: Preparing to throw a Saturn Ring from midair. As usual.

PANEL FIVE
Mercury: Why?
Saturn: Well, my comics have been experiencing technical difficulties lately. Namely: I only have one sprite per each character.

PANEL SIX
Mercury: You had me worried we were all frozen by some unseen force! I should KILL you for that!
Saturn: Too bad you don't have a weapon-launching sprite like I do.
Mercury: Oh, crap…

REX Barron as Mattrex. I cannot believe how time-consuming this particular piece was, but I like to think it was worth it. It took about five hours to draw it on paper, another five or so to smooth out all the lines and correct "erasure mistakes" (as my geometry teacher last year calls them) after I scanned it in— I don't like to ink my works since I'm incredibly sloppy with the ink, so I correct it to look inked on Photoshop— and two to three more hours spent to put in the color. I wonder what else I could've done in 13 hours… sigh…

The result: My new character, REX Barron, as Mattrex/Burn Dinorex of Critical Mass. In case it's hard to make out the title of the book, he's reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, one of my personal favorites.

Okay, now THAT is commitment. I mean, damn, that looks wicked awesome. So accurate too... I guess patience does help out in the long run.

Now that Mattrex pic I really like... the time and devotion was definitely worth it. Best drawing so far I've seen from you. Keep it up! ^_^

Holy Jeebus! o_o That looks way better in colour. Awesome.

REX Barron in his Human Form. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a close-up of yours truly: the handsome, intelligent, powerful, cultured and sophisticated Remington Everard Xerxes Barron. I highly doubt that you can draw a better picture of me.

Putting aside the split personality for a second, I honestly like the way it turned out. As you can tell by the personality-influenced part of this post, he's very arrogant, and his futuristic dressy-casual wardrobe solidifies it. I loved the background (which uses the same colors as the flames in the Mattrex pic) and the fact that the bright eyes are so penetrating. I typically use one of three different eye styles for male characters; the first was used for drawing Saturn (in my dA avatar) and usually denotes a heroic protagonist or such, the second was used for drawing Uranus (see my dA page) and usually indicates that a character is energetic, and the third is used here and on the picture of Neptune (also see my dA page) and usually indicates either a serious and mature character or a dark one. REX fits both of these categories as he's also known to be violent and hot-tempered around the most insensitive, immature or idiotic of humans and Reploids.

As I've mentioned in my profile on Critical Mass's site, REX has the ability to shift between his human form and Mattrex's armor. When he transforms from human to Reploid, first his eyes become more reptilian and his perfectly aligned teeth are replaced with Mattrex's sharp metallic ones. Then, the nose flattens into two triangular nostrils, and the head changes its shape as orange, claw-like markings appear just below REX's eyes. REX's ears retract, flames come to his body and form the armor parts and tail as his skin becomes deep red (except around the eyes, where it pales), and his size takes a big step from a normal 5'8" to a towering 15 feet. Finally, the claws behind the hands protract and flames spout up on the tail and spine. (And naturally, changing from Reploid to human precisely retraces the steps.)

This is actually part of a much larger picture; I should have that up sometime over February vacation (next week).

This looks actually nice.

I can't see it.

I had to shorten its file name so I could use it as an avatar here, but I hadn't yet changed the URL in the post to match before you comented. It's fixed now, however.

[I]Hi! everyone! I'm a newbe and I thought that I could first of all tell Gauntlet that I love the mechanical maniacs website. My favorite sections are the art and sprites sections. Megaman is my favorite video game character and hope that the Megaman sequels and spinoffs will keep going forever.

Is it straying a bit off topic here?

anyway, this looks nice.

Those are great, MMN.

Tracii. This is the first drawing I've made of an original character I created for Critical Mass. Her name is Tracii; she serves as navigator for the Critical Masters when they go on their missions. She had originally worked for the Maverick Hunters but, feeling that she was not helping them in any way, she quit and worked on her own before being found and taken in by Critical Mass.

You might notice that her left hand appears to be holding something. I had originally intended for her to be a mechanic for the team; when Enigma applied with the character of Dr. Zap, I realized that such a role was then taken, so she was recast with the navigational responsibility typical for female Reploids in the X series. Thinking about it, her design is sort of a combination between those of Dynamo and Alia, her pose is based loosely on that of Douglas in his official picture in the Mega Man X5 manual, and the background comes from the stage select screen in the same game. And yes, her name is a reference to Tracii Guns, a former Guns N' Roses member, but that's because I like the band and the English names for the X5 Reploids.

EDIT: Also, please don't ask me why she has both goggles and a visor. I liked the way it looked, but I haven't yet decided whether the two allow her to see different frequencies of vision (e.g. infrared) or one allows that and the other helps her analyze and process data much more rapidly.

Ah, so that's what she looks like! =D She's cute.

AAAARGH! WOMAN! Run, Data!

The New Neptune. It's about time that the Cosmic Gladiators have a full roster once more. We've decided to make Sapphire Knight, a real-life friend of Magnus, our new Neptune, and with the new member comes a new armor design (found here). This marks only my second attempt at 32-bit spriting, with the first being making a Kryptoman sprite for Cossack's Comrades (which simply pales in comparison to the 32-bit Krypto sprites made by Gaia and Zymeth). I'd like to see who can guess the base I used for this one.

MSP edit? It looks nice. Good job. Probably better than anything I could make. I like the trident, nice touch for Neptune. It's really unimpressive to just have his with his normal power, I think. Even though it did beat SA Waveman.

Thanks. And yes, it was Metal Shark Player at first; I also took the legs and head from Dynamo and the trident from a minor robot in Web Spider's stage in Mega Man X4.

I'm surprised you honestly think that sprite is better than some of yours, though; I've been thinking of asking for permission for your Mercury sprite in case the others want to replace the 8-bit sprites used in some of the Season 1 epilogues with 32-bit.

Nice edit, MMN. The trident gives Him a nice touch also.

Magna Pioggia di Mercurio, Vieni a Me! Stardroid Henshin… Yeah sure, why not? I think it was Susan's comic "Sailor Stardroids" that led to me deciding to make several henshin frames for each of the Cosmic Gladiators. Never mind, I'll come out with it: I'm secretly a fan of Sailor Moon; just stop looking at me like that.

For right now, however, I'm just doing the final poses for the henshin. I've only done Mercury's final frame so far; but I'm close to finishing the final poses for Venus, Mars and Neptune.

The title, by the way, is Italian for "Great rains of Mercury, come to me!" I did a little rummaging around on YouTube to get inspiration for this project, and what I found out was that the Italian dub of Sailor Moon has the characters call the power of whatever planet they represent to come to them at the start of the henshin. I liked the sound of it, and I decided that each character's henshin should start with them calling for a force of nature or some abstract quality (rather than for "power," potere). The fact that it's the Neo Armor called for another word for added effect, so I put the word magno— "great"— into each battle cry for the Neo Armor.

You're making one of those for ME?! Great, as if i didn't lready have enough issues...

Don't mind Renard, he's just not too happy about the inperation for that drawing. It's really good, and isn't it based off of Enigma's Mercury Sprite?

Well, I actually did it based more on the drawing of Mercury and then just chose more vivid colors. The pose was original. I remember that this one took a bit longer to draw than the others, but that was mainly since I had originally intended to just use it as a pic of Sora with the planet Mercury in the background before we had to change members and I came up with the henshin idea.

That's pretty badasss art, MMN. I like the colour effect also.

Venus is now up:



Magna Luce di Venere, Vieni a Me! It took me a long time to decide on the background for this one. I finally picked this once, and though I wanted something that contrasts a bit more, I think this is appropriate since Venus is known to Japanese as Kinsei, the gold planet. And, quite obviously, the word luce in the battle cry means "light."

Venus does look great. Keep up the good work, MMN.

Well, here's Mars:



Magne Fiamme di Marte, Vieni a Me! I had trouble drawing and coloring Mars's right hand in a different position from the one used in Magnus's picture, but I think I did all right on that. Other than that, I think that my biggest problem was keeping the light source consistent. Not much else to say.

I might also be able to put Neptune up tonight, but no promises there. After that, I need to draw Pluto and then I'll be ready to start coloring the second stage select group.

Pardon the double-post; I thought I'd try making another 32-bit sprite for the Cosmic Gladiators:



I'm not so sure about this one. The colors all came from the Mega Man & Bass style CD pic of Neo Armor Saturn that I made some time ago, but it was a bit difficult to transfer them in to recolor the parts from X6's sprites of Dynamo and Shield Bastard— I mean, Sheldon. The spikes on the shoulders were made by hand with some reference to the Magna Centipede sprite in X6. If there's anything that I could do to improve it, I'd like to hear some advice.

*writes something down* Someone... got... an idea... from... me. Got it!

I saw the transformation pictures on the CG forum. THEY ROCK!!

Hey, that's actually quite good! Outside of the pose and the arms, it doesn't really look too much like Dynamo, and I would never guess that you used parts of Shield Sheldon as well. As far as improvements needed... perhaps, the hat could use more shading (use a light source), as could the pad on his right shoulder. Maybe make the stripe on the pad thicker as well... also, I feel as if the ring could use a darker outline on the bottom. I'd also like to nag about the shading on the darker parts of his outfit, particularly in the leg area... but, I notice that is purely Capcom's fault, not yours. XP Since you were working from an X5/X6 sprite. But yeah, I'd make the lighter parts darker there.

I also like the idea of your Stardroid pics, even if their proportions are a little off. But they look really neat regardless. ^_^