Blaze the Cat - Retro Style Sprite Sheet

[Lilly]

Just encase a few of you somehow remember me, I used to be 11up on the older Pixeltendo message boards, (The fact that I'm still using my 11up_photos account on Photobucket is probably proof enough.) and this sprite sheet has been sitting on my backup disc for nearly two years now. It's about time I submitted it here!

Direct Link : http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg38/..._WIP-1.png



If walls of text set your eyes on fire, you can easily skip this spoiler tag and read the tl;dr version below. Jeez I can be so verbose at times!

Spoiler

I've been working on what is possibly the last fan game anything I get myself involved in, and it's simply labeled "Sonic & Blaze", which draws heavily from the retro style, but I lacked a complete sprite sheet for Blaze the cat. Despite how much I loved the look and color of CylentNight's Blaze sprites, almost none of the frames were actually useful for a real game, consisting mostly of useless poses, so I decided to "finish" it.



Although the sheet is still missing her jump sprites and the trademark corkscrew run, it's complete enough to implement into a Sonic 2 rom hack (Which I wanted to do, but lack mad ASM hacking skills, and SonicSprite sucks at replacing sprites larger than the ones originally there. It keeps cutting off her tail and hair!) or a classic-emulating fan game.

As for the jump sprites, I just recolored Tails' ball animation (without the tails, obviously.) and rendered a trail of flames over it in the game engine, so that will never get done. The same goes for the corkscrew run, as every attempt to make them resulted in a nightmare, and I have much bigger plans than to recreate one forgettable gimmick from Sonic 2.
Why two years, you ask? Because that's when work on this fan game started, in Game Maker 5.3a, (Call me crazy if you will!) instead of 7.0, for a lot of reasons. Since I have a totally new Special stage concept that doesn't involve faking or using a 3D environment, I didn't think forcing people to have hardware-accelerated graphics just to play the game was completely unnecessary, and using the older version increased overall compatibility with older operating systems. It's been a long hiatus due to some real-life stuff, but now I'm able to pick it back up, finish it, and move on to some more original indie game concepts I'd like to explore.

A lot has changed inside me in the past two years...and that's when I actually used to be way too "obsessed" with the Blaze character. Not only do I not care about her anymore, but Sonic and the rest of his friends no longer interest me either. I'm pretty much through with Sonic the hedgehog, and will probably never buy a new Sonic game ever again. In fact, I've given away, not sold, a lot of my Sonic games!
So why do I return to the fan gaming scene? Because I still loved the older megadrive games, and the cool level design concepts they used. Besides wanting to finish what I started, I enjoy making Sonic-themed platformer levels, and desire to capture that joy and sense of speed as accurately as I can in my celebration of what made them so much fun in my childhood. I guess you could call it nostalgia, but my passion for lava lamps and anything chrome is a more legitimate nostalgia craving than a couple of two-decade-old video games.

Hi guys! I noticed this place doesn't have a complete Blaze sheet yet, so I took Cylent Nite's Blaze standing sprite and finished a complete set of sprites for the hot feline in high heels; go nuts fan gamers! All credit goes to the aforementioned spriter, as I used his sprite's head as a base, I just simply animated it and brought it to life! Animation is my undying passion! (Btw, the rotated sprites were rotated using RotSprite, and then cleaned up by hand.)
Also, the Title screen sprite was drawn from scratch. I could have done better with the shading around the eyes, but some attempts to fix it have been messy, and the end result was fair enough for me to use in my fan game, so I'm happy! Since my strange fan game project won't be done for some time, I felt the need to release this sheet so everyone else can benefit from it as well.

EDIT : I forgot to make this clear. The sheet IS in-fact done, because I don't plan on adding any more animations to the sheet. Although I am open to criticism if any of the completed animations here are lacking in anyway.

EDIT 2 : Ah geez, I forgot to upload a preview thumbnail! Well, here it is now. =P



I hope my New Year's Eve release is up to par with the Spriter's Resource's standards. Enjoy!

[A.J. Nitro]

It's not that often our newcomers have such good customs. Great work!

[Davy Jones]

Reminds me at the Modern Genesis Sonic Project.

Very good =)

[DJane Coco]

Yeah, that's amazing Keep up the great work!

[Miles07]

S3&K style, or S1/S2? Can't tell.

[Belial]

At the bottom of the sheet there is an alternate palette for Sonic 2, so I'd say its S3&K

[Lilly]

The sprites don't conform to any of the palettes in the megadrive games, I'm afraid, so it's neither Sonic 2 or Sonic 3&K. The shading style, however, does fit with Sonic CD and Sonic 1 quite well, so I'd say it conforms to those games the best.

As to why I included the Sonic 2 palette : I just wanted to show that the game's palette already has all the right colors for it to work, which might encourage a geek or two in the Sonic hacking community to put Blaze in their hack, or a character hack in general. (Like Sally in Sonic 1, for instance.) I'd do it myself, I really would, but I just don't know where to start, and lack the time to figure out 68k assembly, or the right tools to implement the sprites themselves.

Reminds me at the Modern Genesis Sonic Project.

Very good =)

I remember that project, Deebs and her contributors accomplished a lot of amazing work. I actually wanted to wait for Deebs to finish her own Blaze sprites, but something told me that wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and she hadn't posted enough sprites of Blaze for me to work with on my own, (At least enough for me to remain true to the style she was going for.) so I gave Cylent Nite's Blaze the royal treatment. Outside of that, I'm still tempted to use her Sonic in my fan game, but I'm conflicted, 'cause the shading would conflict with the Sonic 1 style shading on Blaze and Tails.

Anyway, I'm relieved that the sheet is receiving positive attention. I get so overcritical about my work, at times, I almost didn't post it. That feeling's gone now!

Also, this more than likely won't be my only submission. As I work on graphics for the mostly original bosses I have planned out for my fan game, I may submit those too as I complete them, if they're original enough. I would post up my background art as well, but almost half of that is recycled from other Sonic games, so you couldn't call them customs at all.

[Dazz]

This is fantastic - I've put it up on the site for you now

[TGE]

Yay! This looks nice! I wonder if someone could port this to Sonic 2?

[Shade]

This is like two months old Thegameexplorer.

[Garamonde]

Yay! This looks nice! I wonder if someone could port this to Sonic 2?

I won't warn you, but please be mindful of post dates because you have necroposted a few other times.