Leaf - Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen

Leaf is the original female protagonist of the Pokemon series. Unfortunately it took them three generations to get to her.

There are rumours that she was planned to be used in the original Blue/Red games due to the official guidebook containing a female with a Squirtle on the cover. Unfortunatly she didn't make the cut. I doubt they got very far into the planning stage for her as usually things that are cut at the last minute will sometimes still be included in the sprite-sheets in the back end of the game.

Here's an alternative version where all the Pokemon have all grown up. The image is pulled from the Red, Green & Blue chapter of the manga.

 I'll let you draw your own assumptions on this one.

Kat - Gravity Rush

This is Kat, from Gravity Rush, and if you're wondering why she's upside down then you've never encountered this game or it's amazing concept art before. Here let me enlighten you.

The game was developed for the Playstation Vita, in other words no one's ever played it. Although she's a DLC character in Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, so there's a chance you may have bumped into her anyway.
These pieces were done by Takeshi Oga. He's worked on Final Fantasy XI Online, Final Fantasy XIV as well as a bunch of other Sony titles. He's well worth checking out

Nyotengu - Dead or Alive

So Dead Or Alive 5 Last Round is coming to PC at the end of this month. I pre-ordered it like a month ago, and then the game instantly got delayed, so already not off to a great start. But I would rather a finished late game than a broken piece of crap.

The system specs for the game also came out very very recently which has rung alarm bells with fans as the specs seem to imply a PS3 port of the game rather than a PS4 version. This means no "realistic" boob physics and flare textures are from the old version. However the game will support 4k resolution.

The game also won't have online multiplayer for three months after launch.

There are murmuring whether this is shaping up to be a sub-par port on purpose to give a good excuse to not have to do another PC port of the game. It may not be a total surprise considering what game director Yohei Shimbori had to say about the modding community "We have to deal with mod issues from an IP holder perspective, We would like to ask PC users to play our game in good moral and manner. Otherwise, we won't be able to release a title for PC again."

Hear that guys, if you make nude mods then they won't give you another one. That's coming from the guys who released this as a promo image for Nyotengu.

Edit: Producer Yosuke Hayashi and director Yohei Shimbori made a follow up statement to their "Good moral & manner" statement. Check it out here.

Patricia Wagon - Mighty Switch Force

Patricia is another character created by WayForward Technologies, the company that invented the previous heroin I 8bitted, Shantae.

Mighty Switch Force and it's sequel are puzzle platformers about shifting blocks in and out of the foreground. It was developed for the 3DS and later got a HD WiiU port.

Patricia was voiced by Stephanie Komure, who has done the voice for Phosphora in the latest Super Smash Bros and you can totally hire to voice whatever you like. Apparently she can do a mean middle aged southern American man accent*.

Here's some music, sans middle aged southern american man accents.



*The joke totally doesn't make sense now that I alerted her to the fact she had "middled aged male" ticked as an option.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

I first became aware of Shantae when I was first digging into the pixel girl series. I believe Matt found her for me. She's from an oldschool Gameboy Colour game which has quickly gathered a life of it's own.
The fan animations of her are totally adorable, Negilim is a super talented animator it seems.

She first came out on the Gameboy Colour in 2002. Unfortunately the Gameboy Advance had come out a year prior so the game didn't really go mainstream even though it had GBA support.

That didn't stop the game from garnering a cult classic status as one of the best Gameboy games ever. Since then it got a re-release on the 3DS and quickly built up three sequels. Go hunt down the PC and iOS ports if you can be bothered.

A fourth sequel has been successfully crowd funded on Kickstarter. Mariel Cartwright, animator of Skullgirls is on the team animating Shantae. The new look is very Rayman: Origins to me.

Expect to see more characters from the studio and the series soon.

Karin Kanzuki - Street Fighter

Karin doesn't appear in a lot of the Street Fighter games, but she's still managed to be one of those characters that's recognizable from the series. There's no 3D versions of her, so all official ingame art is still sprite based, even though there are some cool illustrations out there.

Her main appearance was in Street Fighter Alpha 3.

Apparently you can customise Lili from Tekken to almost look exactly like her. Her character is based on Nellie Oleson Dalton from little house on the prairie. Except I guess in an alternative universe where she can kick the shit out of people.

Q-Bee - Darkstalkers

I was just about to do a Gears of War character then I was like, "Screw it! I don't want to do a character with the colour palette of dirt!"
So I didn't, and I was pretty happy with the way Q-Bee turned out.

Q-Bee was designed by Akira Yasuda (Akiman) who worked with Capcom from 1985 to 2003. He's done everything from Final Fight all the way up to Street Fighter III 3rd Strike.
I don't have a whole lot of time left to write anything about this character cause I'm in the process of going out the door to get my eyes checked for some new glasses. Hopefully they don't find any of my secrets in my eyes. It was embarrassing last time.

Blobby: Vacuum Monster

18/20. Did you know that Blobby people can get maimed and even die? It's true.

I've been caught up with Elite Dangerous for the last couple weeks, which has slowed my drawing considerably, which isn't cool. But that game man. It just draws you in! I can't get enough of it. The community is interesting as well. I'm pretty sure at the tender age of 25 I'm dragging the average age of the players down. Mostly everyone are oldschool fans of the original Elite from 1984, a time I'm incapable of remembering.
Anyway, it's hardcore and fantastic and you all suck for either not playing it or waiting for Star Citizen instead.

Zarya - Overwatch

Blizzard has announced a new tank character for their upcoming Overwatch, Zarya. I recommend you check out Renaud Galand's (senior Character artist) Artstation account. He's where I heard about this character coming out first. This new character totally ruins my entire cast lineup of all the characters as well. Damn.

Fun fact! She was modeled after a real person, a blizzard employee who worked on Diablo 3, Tamara Bakhlycheva. She's from Russia and you can check out her Deviantart here.

Blobby: Without A Fight

17/20. Since I've moved into my brothers place I've had an extra half hour on the bus (2 and a half hours more a week) and that's just way too much time to blow not being creative. So I've managed to knock out a full script for a piece of lore that fits into the blobby world. I don't think it will fit with this current set so it might be used to kick off the next one. I probably shouldn't be talking about "Next Ones" as that's something that usually creates an unbearable weight for creatives. We can barely handle the weight of what we're currently doing let alone future projects.

Planning new projects before your current project is done is just a bad idea in my opinion. But I figure that since I only have 3 more pictures to go with this one it's a pretty safe assumption I'll finish this current thing.

After I've done all twenty I'm gonna have to do a cover and look into printing costs and then get it made into a real solid object. Kickstarter you ask? Nah. Kickstarter is for chumps (who have fans.)