Project 12: Chrono Trigger Sprites - Lucca

Not even a year later ... I finished the next sprite in my Chrono Trigger Perler Sprites. Everybody, let me introduce Lucca.

I managed to work on Lucca much more quickly than I did on Marle so I actually managed to build a bit of a process. I'm hoping I'll be able to quickly move through the rest of the cast. I also got to get a little better at using The GIMP and Omnigraffle, so this feels like a productive project.

The Lucca Sprite

I started by determining all of the colours in the sprite and which sprite colour of Perler bead I would use to match them. I did this by taking the original sprite from The Spriter's Resource and then making a new layer for each colour in the sprite and removing all other colours. I also compiled those colours into the grid below. (I gave them names, but they weren't great names, so I think I'd just use the hex codes next time).

There's a few cases where I don't have a bead that's a perfect match. Particularly, the Dark Green should probably be Olive and the Bright Green, Fern. Apparently it's about time I put in a new order of beads. I also beaded a test block in the same pattern so you can see what does or doesn't match.

I've broken out all the details below so you can see which colours are which parts of the sprite and how I matched them.

Sprite Part	Hex Colour	Perler Colour	Notes
	---	---	The Original
	#302838	Purple	Again I'm using purple for the "deep shadow" parts of the outline.
	#281820	Black	The main outline of the sprite.
	#B86817	Butterscotch	The (single pixel) highlight on the blaster barrel.
	#482830	Dark Grey	Most of the shading.
	#F8F867	Yellow	The (again single pixel) bright spot on the blaster barrel.
	#F8800F	Orange	Highlights in Lucca's outfit.
	#F8E0A8	Rust	The leather bits of Lucca's outfit.
	#F89868	Peach	Main skin colour
	#801800	Creme	Skin highlights
	#586029	Dark Green	Hat and sleeve shadows
	#F8C028	Bright Green	Hat and sleeve high lights
	#f8f848	Gold	Leather High lights.
	#ffffff	White	Highlights and her glasses.

You can also download the my .xcf file.

Process

As with the Crono and Marle sprites I decided to do a little addition to make sure that the fused sprite would be sturdy. I also levelled the bottom so that the sprite would stand up right. The only big change that was needed was filling in a couple of sprites on the right side of her face. I wonder if those were a glitch somewhere in my process or even in the sprite.

 

The sprite was pretty easy to build. I did make a good choice in laying out all the necessary beads in the same pattern as the blocks above in a project box.

I found the easiest way was to work from the top down doing a few beads of each colour at a time. 

Success of the Sprite

I'm exceptionally happy with how this sprite came out. Part of that is the improved process I've used, so I managed to go from sprite to fused within a week. That definitely kept my the whole project in brain which made it much, much easier. 

I definitely need to put in an order to get the beads I'm missing. I generally think Lucca looks good, but a little bit off from how she'd normally look. Olive and Fern beads might have helped with that. Overall I don't think she looks completely off from the other two though.

The one thing I'm not sure about is using purple as that "deep shadow" colour. Given that I *have* dark grey beads now, it seems like it might make more sense to use those in the future. I started with the purple for Crono, which I think worked because there were fewer deep shadow pixels. I'm going to keep on with the purple / black arrangement for the rest of this batch and then I'll come back for a second and see what overall changes I made.

The next sprite is Robo and I'd like to wrap it up by July 15, 2020. (I was thinking Frog, but I'm going to wait until I buy a few more green beads.)

Blog: Games of January 2020

January was a little bit about catching up from last year. I finished the Chrono Trigger play through I started and finally finished up Dragon Quest. Both have a new game plus to tackle, so I'm not really done, but it's good to get some games finished.
My top five games (by play time) for January were:

1. Dragon Quest XI S - I'm finding this one a little hard to keep going with. The story hasn't really grabbed me, but the grinding is fun and the game has just enough of that RPG build that I've had fun.
   
   

   

   The Darkness Before the Light.

   
   


2. Chrono Trigger - Still one of the best games of all time. I'm feeling a bit rusty with this play through, but I'm also trying to spice things up a bit and play with someone other than the Crono, Marle, Lucca power house.
   
   

   

   The Light After the Darkness.

   
   


3. Europa Universalis 4 - Well, I've now experimented with running up as much debt as possible (well kinda), now I'm trying to see if I can go the other way.
   
   

   

   The Austrians are Coming to Eat Me.

   
   


4. Super Mario Maker 2 - I haven't spent too much time making levels. I'm finding the switch interface a little harder to love. I think I've played enough that the weird artificial feeling I had earlier on has faded, but it does feel like it lacks a little bit of charm over all.
   
   

   

   The Team in the Dungeon.

   
   


5. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Fest - Keep on keeping on.
   
   

   

   The Ambition of Alpacas.

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for January:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Games of December 2019

2019 was a long year (long decade?). So it was really nice to be able to chill at the end of the month and the end of the year.

My top five games (by play time) for December were:

1. Chrono Trigger - I was a little bit inspired by Chuggaconroy playing this during the year, but also there's just something about the December break that calls for SNES games for me. I'm pretty fascinated at the number of things I've learned about Chrono Trigger, having played the game pretty consistently over the last two and a half decades.
   
   

   

   An adventure awaits.



2. Dragon Quest XI - Continuing along, I enjoyed playing, but the game does feel a bit slow.
   
   

   

   Fight! 



3. Cursed Treasure 2 - I love tower defence and out of all the free tower defence games available to play while avoiding marking this is the very best. I think I'm going to try to make my own TD game this year.
   
   

   

   In trouble, but happy.



4. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - The tradition continues.
   
   

   

   Last concert of the year.



5. Super Mario Odyssey - Out of all the games I played this year (more on that soon) this one is the one that calls to me the most to pick it up again. The game play and flow are enticing and it just always a joy to play.
   
   

   

   A game with a view.

Here's my total play time chart for December:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Project 12: The Chrono Trigger Sprites Live - Marle

Once again, I've made some progress on my Chrono Trigger Perler Sprites. This time I got Marle done.

It's been a long, long time since I started working on these. In that time I've moved at least 3 times trucking an unfused sprite around with me. A little while back I finally fused the Marle sprite, and now that I have a little time and space, I'm going to try to push on. I'd like to finish the 1-to-1 sprites before September and then I'll see if I still want to do the double sized sprites.

The Marle Sprite

Similar to the Crono Sprite, I started by determining all of the colours in the sprite and which sprite colour of Perler bead I would use to match them.

The colours in the Marle sprite and Perler Beads colours

Thanks to the lessons learned on the Chrono Sprite, I produced a map for each bead colour in the form of a separate sprite image (and included the bead colour in the file name, which I really appreciate returning to these two years later). The table of those colours are below.

Sprite Part	Hex Colour	Perler Colour	Notes
	---	---	The Original
	#381838	Purple	Again I chose to outline the sprite in purple which gives a good definition to the outside. Might look a little better with the top and bottom filled in as well.
	#f8a838	Butterscotch	Highlights in Marle's hair.
	#584848	Dark Grey	Darkest shadows on the crossbow.
	#807060	Light Grey	"Metal" in the crossbow.
	#f86810	Orange	Low lights in the hair, belt and shoes.
	#488878 and #205040	Parrot Green	Two sprite colours into one perler colour. Largely shadows.
	#f8a8a0	Peach	Pinker skin tone.
	#80f8b8	Pearl Blue	Pants.
	#801800	Rust	Shadows and Crossbow Body
	#f8d8d0	Sand	Skin tone highlights, a little more beige than the true colour.
	#a0a8a8	Silver Perl	Crossbow highlights.
	#f8f848	Yellow	Hair highlights.
	#ffffff	White	Highlight pixels and filler for the crossbow.

Success of the Sprite

I made sure that the full bottom of the sprite was level all thew ay across. This allowed me to avoid the problems I had with Crono where he tips over if not propped up on the edge. Possibly not a problem in some applications, but if you want your sprites standing, then they need a consistent bottom row. I think here I added in a little extra purple on the bottom to make it stand (although looking at the purple pixels, I can't really see). I hope that me!from-3-years-ago knew what he was doing.

The other change I made was filling in the crossbow. It's technically empty in the real sprite, but for structural integrity I opted to fill it in so that the sprite would be much more rigid and robust. In terms of looking at the sprite in the real world, you barely notice and I think it still looks good.

I'm quite happy with the sprite. I have it sitting next to the Crono sprite in my office window and they look very good together. I am especially enjoying being able to see them from the garden outside.

The process of putting everything together was a bit rough. This project fell way down my priority list, so the couple of times I jumped back in there was a long figuring out what was going on period. On the plus side, I was much more organized about generating the sprite-part sheets, so building the sprite and putting together this post was fairly straight forward.

My next sprite is Lucca. I haven't started yet, but I'd like to have the sprite finished and the next blog post in the series made by August 23, 2019.