Apophis324

Hello amiibos and amiibas,

Isn’t April just the strangest months in terms of weather? Right now it’s 20 degrees Celsius, but they predict that temperatures are bound to drop back down to 10 in the coming week. They even said something about snow, but I don’t think that will happen. Weather is weird!

Time for an update on things. Not that there is much to update. But still, wanna bet I can fill at least one page with ramblings?

I think I might as well start with the good news. I have started the next part of my Ace Attorney fan-art project! Earlier this week I started on the first sprites based on the characters that appear in Dual Destinies, the first main-line game published on Nintendo 3DS. So far I’ve made six sprites, out of 36-ish that I’ll be making this time around. That means I’m already a sixth of the way done! Woohoo ^^

Keep in mind that some of these are simple costume changes. For example, I decided to make Trucy Wright slightly taller, as she is older than last time we saw her, but that (mostly) meant I just had to add one row of sprites. I doubt anyone will even notice the difference!

Thankfully there are plenty of new characters too. Those are usually more fun to work on. Even if they’re just a box! We’ll see if I still feel this way once the last one is done, huh?

In the meantime, I also saw there was a new tutorial to work on. A cherry blossom one! Of course, that festival is already over, but I’m pretty sure you can still get the badge. I shall do my best to draw something before the end of the month. Look forward to that! …or not. It likely won’t be any good anyway

Ah, I’ve started playing Princess Peach Showtime! last week. It’s pretty fun. Don’t let anyone tell you the game’s just for kids because it only uses two buttons (which is wrong, you use three, four if you count the start button). And let me be a testament to the fact that it’s not just a game for girls either, despite everything being Peach-y pink!

In the meantime, I have yet to fully conclude Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice. I’m forcing myself to play Coloring Pixels in between cases, but.. It’s really hard to stay motivated to play that game, so profess is slow.

There doesn’t appear to be much news in regards to SMITE or SMIITE, so I still don’t really know if I’ll continue with that. Maybe I should finally get around to re-sizing the Roman deities. I keep forgetting that’s the only pantheon I haven’t updated yet. I guess I was expecting Hi-Rez to add a new deity to that pantheon someday, but for some reason they never did. Yet the Greek are overflowing! So unfair…

Anyway, I think that is all I need to report on for now. As expected, I’ve filled about one page of ramblings. Thank you for reading my stuff! I hope you’ll have a wonderful, worry-free day!

Hello amiibos and amiibas,

And just like that, the year has already entered its third month. Don’t you just hate how time flies? There’s just never enough time to do all the things you’d want to do! I wonder if people felt that way in simpler times too…

Anyway, how have you all been? I think I’ve been doing well. More mentally stable than at the end of 2023, that’s for sure Not.. that anyone cares for my mental stability, not even me~!

Time for an update on past, present and future. And since I have no crystal ball, nor the interest in discussing real world events, I shall stick to myself. As usual.

Past:

I can be brief about this, as most of what I’ve done this year has been uploaded already. Because I haven’t done all that much~! That.. probably isn’t a thing to be proud of… I don’t know what happened honestly, I don’t think I’ve been busier than usual?

Things that kept me from spriting things, probably, were a couple of videogames. I’ve played through the main story of Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, with just the DLC bits remaining. While I liked the game, I feel that Dual Destinies was better.

A second game that kept me away from my PC was Another Code Recollection. That game is certainly an improvement from its DS and Wii counterparts. At least in the visual department. Not so much in terms of creative gameplay that company CING was known for. But hey, at least we now have some resolution to Another Code R: A Journey into Lost Memories’ persisting mystery of what happened to Matthew’s father and where he was now. Not that.. it was a satisfying resolution, but it’s still more than nothing! Anyway, I’m almost done with that game (although I once again failed to collect all empty cans, grumble.. Unless the vending machine token distribution isn’t scripted, in which case I failed to collect the “random” golden token).

Of course the sprites that I have made and that you haven’t seen yet were all the remaining costumes of Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE. As you know, those will be uploaded every last day of the month (with the exception of October). Fun!

Present:

Moving on to the here and now (and very near future). What am I working on?

First and foremost: I have begun working on a small collection of sprites based on the Netflix original animated series Hilda. I already made sprites based on that back in 2019, but I felt an update was in order. I’ve reworked Hilda and Twig (though not by much…) and I’m adding a few additional characters to it, complete with a new background. That’s the plan at least!

There are also four new badges to collect! Three that have something to do with a new adoptable party and choosing sides? I.. can’t say I care much about that, but.. Badges!! The fourth badge is linked to international women’s day, which was this week. I shall be working on those things shortly!

In the meantime I also have a giant stash of “new” Yu-Gi-Oh! cards to put away, which will easily take up a week’s worth of time as well. The way I do it anyway. So things will still be relatively slow for now.

Future:

What are the plans for the slightly more distant future? I’ve only just scratched the surface of what I want to do with sprites this year and the year is already almost 1/3 of the way over. I’m sure I can make it though~!

The main thing I will be focusing on after putting away those pesky TCG cards will be my Ace Attorney collection. Now that I have as good as finished the final game in the series (*sob*), it’s finally time to tackle the characters that appear in Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies. I didn’t want to start that before finishing Spirit of Justice, as I was afraid of seeing spoilers. Already saw some while working on Apollo Justice’s collection… But anyway, that’s around 36 individual sprites, including costumes. Some more fun than others, I already know that much

Now, in regards to SMITE… Nut is potentially the final deity released for the original SMITE game. I am under the assumption that the team behind the game is fully moving on to SMITE II (which I will now also refer to as SMIITE), which will likely contain most of, if not all of, the previous game’s deities, heroes and monsters.

The problem is… I’m not sure if I’m going to care. So far we only know of one new deity to join the Battleground of the Gods in this sequel, being the Greek goddess Hekate, but her current card art is… actually kind of boring. If the entire game is going to adopt this kind of style, I… might just hang my hat and call it a day.

Only time will tell! I might even be wrong about no more deities coming to SMITE!

Oh and then there’s the release of Princess Peach Showtime this month. I ehm.. I might be busy playing that, if I get it on launch… I might also want to do some updated sprites of Ashley Mizuki Robins. We’ll see~!

In any case, to recap:

TL;DR: Skip to here!

• I’ve been having fun with Spirit of Justice and Another Code Recollection.

• You can look forward to seeing more Hilda flavoured sprites coming to my gallery.

• I will do my best to collect this month’s new badges too!

• I’ll be continuing my Ace Attorney art project this month. Dual Destinies is next!

• I don’t know what to do about SMITE…

That is all really. I hope you’ll have a good day, week, etc. And a good start of spring too! Talk to you again later!

Hello amiibos and amiibas,

How are things today? I’ve come to you with an update on how things are on my end of the screen.

As you probably have noticed, I haven’t exactly uploaded anything yet this year. However, I have not been super lazy! I have taking things a little slow, giving a bit more room for games like Baba is You and Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice, as well as Coloring Pixels and Smash Ultimate (which suddenly received more spirits to collect). Many games to play, so little time~!

But just because I took things slow, that doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything. My goal for this month was to create all ten costumes newly introduced in Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE - Encore. And… I did! It’s very weird to think that I started making all the costumes (almost) seven years ago now and I’m finally done*! Again!

It was fun to go back and give every main character a new costume, but it also made me realise that back in 2017 I had a lot less experience with drawing proper poses. I used the same bases now that I used back then, not allowing myself to make any changes to said bases. And dang do some look weird Then again.. what I make always looks weird, so…

“Hey, I see an asterisk besides done, what’s that about?”

Good question! While wrapping up work on the final of ten sprites yesterday I kept thinking about one costume that I never made. One costume you technically can’t buy at Anzu and you can’t wear during battle.. but that does appear under certain conditions.

And that outfit… is Tsubasa Oribe’s swimsuit. The blue one that she wears during Amrita Shower ad-lib performances (a special move that triggers at random when performing a lance attack).

Originally, in the Japanese WiiU release, she’d also wear this outfit during chapter 2’s photo shoot segments, but that was censored out of the worldwide release (and removed from the Switch re-release in all regions). However, for some reason, this outfit was kept in during the Amrita Shower special move in all versions of the game.

Now, I’m not a fan of drawing characters in swimsuits, especially female characters. It makes me mildly uncomfortable to stare at pictures of ladies in swimsuits just to recreate their outfit. This is also why I (VERY LIKELY) won’t make sprites of the costumes worn by Eleonora Yumizuru and Maiko Shimazaki in the Japanese WiiU game during that same photo shoot segment, as well as the extra hot springs DLC outfits. You know, unless someone really wants to see those too?

In any case, now that I have all but one costume that I have personally seen in MY versions of Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, it just feels wrong to exclude this one outfit, just because it’s a bikini. Also, as I mentioned in my previous journal entry, it would give me eleven things to re-upload rather than ten, meaning I’ll have something for every month of the year (except October, for spooky reasons). So, albeit reluctantly, I shall make the Amrita Shower bikini as well.

To give a bit more of an idea of how I’ll upload things, I’ll talk about that now.

Starting tomorrow (January 31st) I’ll be re-uploading all my Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE sprites. This will be done in their regular size, as well as a 5x size increase, as I often do with older works. How it will look exactly I can’t say yet as I’ll work on that today.

I will work in order for the first seven months (January: Rebellious Joker, February: Stellar Grace, etc.). Then, when August hits, it’s likely quite fitting to re-re-upload Tsubasa with her new swimsuit. Look forward to a gap in her new upload sheet! Afterwards I’ll probably switch things up a little, saving Tiki for December.

For the first seven months (January-July) I will also re-upload each Mirage that’s linked to their main character (January: Chrom, February: Caeda, etc.).

>>There won’t be any changes to old material (save for the footwear on Maiko’s My Complex outfit), it will all just be uploaded in a new size with a new costume for the main cast and nothing new for the Mirages.<<

Enjoy how it looks like now while you can. Things will likely look different by the end of the year ^^

Okay.. I think that’s all pretty clear now. If not, feel free to leave a comment below this journal. Also, give yourself a pat on the back for making it all the way down here :D

That’s all I wanted to report on today. I hope you’ll have a great day and we’ll talk again in the (near) future. And yes, I know, Nut exists in SMITE now. Shh. I’ll get to her eventually.

Hello amiibos and amiibas,

[TL;DR SKIP TO SUMMARY]

Happy New Year! Wow, time flies, huh? Just 365 days ago I was looking forward to 2023 and now that it’s 2024 I’m glad it’s over. Of course 2023 has some lingering status effects, to stay in gaming terms, but I’m sure those won’t *totally* ruin this new year, right?

Okay, time to make up the balance. In the nick of time I uploaded the last sprite of SMITE season 10, Bake Kujira, yesterday. In case you have missed it but somehow did stumble upon this journal, you can find him HERE! As you can see I kept the background colour in, to better make the ethereal blues pop!

I have also completed fan-art for THREE Ace Attorney games last year. That is 87 new* sprites. Okay, fair enough, some are reworks of earlier sprites (like that one pixel difference between Kristoph and Kristoph (Convict) in Apollo Justice), but still. I think it shows I didn’t do nothing last year, even if I don’t have much to show for it.

Not much aside from the month of October that is. Man, Drawtober was fun.. but so draining! I need to save up all my creative juices in case I do something similar this year! If I do do something like that again, I hope I can make more other kinds of art, like pictures, scenes, or crafts, rather than filling the majority of the days with sprites again. It was fun.. but not very creative.

Wait… I just counted what I have created for Drawtober, and it turns out only 13 of 31 days had new sprites uploaded. So it’s not even that bad. Huh! Still, it would be nice to be even more creative this year, if there’s another Drawtober event (for badges!). With a few disappointing days mixed in to give me room to breathe of course.

What else.. There were a bunch more tutorials to follow this year, which is always fun to do even if the result usually looks terrible. At least they’re all hand-made. I’m not using AI tools! Ignore that one llama I “Dreamed” up. That was for a badge.

Six new SMITE sprites this year, plus one for Artemis’ remodel. Can’t forget that one! ^^ To be honest, most of the SMITE sprites have become more of a chore than a joy to work on. I don’t exactly do well with non-humanoid characters and four of these had things to make them more difficult like horns… or a flipping ferry. I hope SMITE season 11 will be more fun again!

I didn’t do a lot of random stuff this year, at least not for anything other than Drawtober. Just a few birthday sprites, really. I’ve been too busy with Ace Attorney it seems!

Alright, that’s all for the recap of 2023. Now let’s take a sneak peek into the future, to see what lies ahead.

I haven’t said as lofty goals for my sprites this year, aiming to do only two Ace Attorney games. Of course both titles hold more new characters than their predecessors, so there’s still plenty to do. Not a lot of returning faces either.

Those will be a bit away however. I’m going to do a bit of relaxing now that I don’t have the end of year pressure tip-tip-tipping me over (yes, I watched Encanto last year and it was amazing, shush).

What I WILL be working on soon, sometime this month is the plan, are the final costumes for my Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE collection. In 2022 I played through the re-release of the game (as I talked about here too!). While this game didn’t add as many new things as I had hoped, it did give all characters new costumes.

This will also give me the opportunity to re-upload all sprites in proper resizes, as I’ve been doing for a lot of my older work. I will make it clear which outfits are new, but I haven’t thought about how I’m going to upload them yet, or when. Ooh, maybe I’ll upload one every 1st of the month, starting February. OR one every LAST day of the month, to make use of the uniqueness of there being a 29th of February. Fun ideas. After all, I used to upload them in advent calendar fashion too.

Anyway, I will give new outfits to: Itsuki Aoi, Tsubasa Oribe, Touma Akagi, Kiria Kurono, Eleonora Yumizuru, Mamori Minamoto and Yashiro Tsurugi, the main party, as well as Maiko Shimazaki, Barry Goodman and Tiki, the supporting cast. Yes I wrote that all without looking up their names before checking (only made one tiny mistake) and yes I did that to brag about knowing names. Bite me

That’s only ten characters and there are 12 months. Maybe I’ll skip October, as I usually upload something else on the 31st. Something spooky. We shall see!

I think that is all I wanted to talk about right now. Let’s do a quick summary:

[TL;DR SKIP TO HERE]

Summary:

• Happy New Year~!

• I did quite a few things this year, making like.. 100 new sprites!

• I also collected… at least 16 new badges!

• I hope SMITE season 11 will be more fun again.

• I plan on working on two more Ace Attorney game sprites this year.

• But first I want to make the remaining costumes for my Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE collection

That sums is all up! Why did I need over 800 words to say just that? Who knows? Maybe because I still have hope that someone, somewhere, enjoys reading my ramblings…

Have a good 2024!

Hello amiibos and amiibas,

There we go. The end of the year is almost upon us. Time for a final update on where things are now that Christmas draws closer and the year is almost wrapped up.

As I’ve reported in an earlier journal, I have been hard at work in order to finish all the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney sprites I wanted to make before Christmas rolls around. And now I am happy to report that I’ve done it

It took me a month and a half, but all 33 sprites are done! Of course that includes some new outfits for older sprites. The one that was the least work literally required me to change ONE pixel! Of course I was extra fancy about it and it still took me a couple of minutes, but that is beside the point.

I shall be getting the upload ready shortly and then I’ll unveil it on Christmas day, Monday the 25th, sometime during my day (so it might still be the 24th for you, no clue). I hope you’ll be looking forward to it, because I had actual fun making them. And the result is… presentable!

With these sprites finished, I’m happy to have hit almost all my sprite goals for the year. At the start of 2023 I had set goals of things I wanted myself to make. Due to Drawtober popping up in between I won’t be able to hit them all (though there are other reasons too), but that’s okay. I’ll save the things I couldn’t do this year for January of 2024!

And then… there is the elephant in the room. The elephant in the shape of a whale. *sigh* SMITE, why are you doing this to me? I had hoped to make the final deity of season 10 before the end of the year too… but then they thought it was fun to make the final deity a monster. Or a yokai to be more precise. Bake Kujira, Yokai of Despair.

Humanoids I can do fine. Humanoids on a boat.. sure. But giant, floating, spectral/skeletal whales? That’s not something I can do in a week! Especially with all the Holiday stuff going on. I shall try to see how far I can get!

What else… Oh! The Snowflake Tutorial! I did that too. I’ll probably upload it tomorrow. Yay a badge!

As far as non-spritey things go, I’ve also wrapped up just about everything I wanted to do in Fire Emblem Engage, after 240 in-game hours. My yearly Nintendo Switch overview showed that Engage was the game I played most in all 12 months. So boring!

I’ve put a pin in Culdcept Revolt. Beating the story was fun, but I’ve hit a bit of a brick wall with the challenges and that just sucked all the fun out of the game. I might return to it at a later date, but for now I’ve had enough.

I shall be playing Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice soon. That’s the last AA game I haven’t played yet! Such a shame that I won’t have any left afterwards, but at least I can make more fan-art? Yay!

I should be done with that before Another Code: Recollection launches next month. Remakes of such overlooked gems? Yes please! I don’t often buy remakes of games I already have, but with this one.. I couldn’t say no ^^

I think that’s all I wanted to share. So let’s do a quick summary of my ramblings:

(tl;dr SKIP TO HERE)

• I am done with Apollo Justice. Sprites for it that is. It’s coming on the 25th!

• Maybe I can make Bake Kujira before the end of the year? I would like that…

• Snowflake tutorial is likely coming tomorrow.

• I’ve finished FE Engage, I’m done with Culdcept Revolt and will start playing Spirit of Justice soon!

Since this is the final journal of the year, I want to thank you all for sticking with me for another year (or less if you joined me this year!) and wish you all a very good Christmas and a bright New Year! I hope things will look up for me too… Surely!

Until next year~!