#DarkLight Reigh

[stardestroyer81]

It was bound to happen sooner or later, though after extensive work and a close eye for attention to detail, I've created promo artwork for the Deltarune AU @itsactuallyreigh and I have been working on, DarkLight: Parallel Worlds, based off of the artwork Deltarune uses in its file select menu!

(And there's quite a tale behind its creation, too, of which you can find a deep dive and additional insight for underneath the cut— concept art included!)

Since Reigh and I began talking about creating a Deltarune about a month or so back, we knew that at one point we wanted a version of the one piece of Deltarune art featuring Kris, Susie and Ralsei beholding a behemoth of a billowing, blue dark fountain (Unintentional alliteration + 100).

The only difference being, naturally, that in place of the usual three heroes of the Delta Rune legend, it would instead feature the DarkLight trio: Reigh, Micah, and— a character that a lot of the Deltarune fandom could argue deserves much more lore relevance— Rouxls Kaard.

I mean, how hard could it be, right? Said artwork is entirely sprited, and if you know me, I've quite a history in pushing my spriting expertise to the limit... though, let's take a closer look at the original's sprites.

Upon closer inspection, the silhouettes of Deltarune's trio are not only shaded a very specific way, but also have parts of their outfits flowing valiantly in the wind. The more I began to look at it up close, the more I wasn't sure if I had the skill to make something of this caliber for DarkLight— I even would have to sprite the trio from the back!

Though, I didn't want to conclude that it couldn't be done, not without at least giving it an attempt. Really, all I needed to do was sprite DarkLight's trio of the legend, as I already had a good, pixel-perfect asset of the fountain itself. So, I took to MS Paint and hastily drew out what the end result would look like.

Key word: Hastily.

As it turns out, it was easier than I thought it would be whipping up silhouettes of the cast by mouse, though I knew for certain that I would have to add a lot more details and accurate shading if I were to attempt a final version.

It was at this point that I discovered a sneaky trick that would, effectively, give me silhouettes that would actually look good, and from then on, all I'd need to do is shade them. The trick in question? Just upscale their overworld sprites, redraw them as solid black silhouettes, and flip them horizontally!

It worked out a lot better than I thought it would, too, and all that was left to do was heavily reference the shading style of the original. I noticed that, in the original art piece, the upper halves of Susie and Ralsei are at a very slight angle— it's easier to see with Susie, as you'll notice her jacket is flowing mostly to the left, so I'd have to account for that for Micah and Rouxls.

So, I got to work in shading. It was during this process that I made the realization that I would have to draw in some details so that the silhouettes would look better, most notably, having Rouxls holding his hands behind his back (Which, as any artist who's drawn said pose from the front, is nowhere near as easy from the back).

Here's what the fruits of my labor yielded! Eagle-eyed observers may notice that Rouxls' coat flaps are drawn differently than the original silhouettes so that they look a bit more flowy (Rouxls Kaard fanatics may also notice that his whole design looks a bit different, and the reason behind that is... well... Reigh fixed it!).

This was quite a fun little project to work on, and it won't be the last time you'll see this art in action, either, though more on that in due course... in the meantime, I hope you've found my sprite process for this piece to be fascinating because I'm REALLY proud of it!!

[stardestroyer81]

This past weekend, a small teaser video I made was uploaded by my good friend @itsactuallyreigh for a Deltarune AU they and I have been working on called DarkLight: Parallel Worlds, and let me tell you, the entire process of batting ideas back and forth so far has been nothing short of a thrill!

We knew early on in that we wanted DarkLight's protagonists to feature self-inserts of ourselves (You can check out Reigh's right here!), and I found that to be the perfect opportunity to use my fursona as my respective Deltarune self-insert as well as getting to design a Dark World variation for him, too! And after working meticulously to sprite my fursona in Deltarune's spriting style...

I can finally show him off!!

I had Micah's Light World design (Pictured on the left) designed long before I had even played Deltarune (Because... well, he is just my fursona), so having his base design ready when going in to sprite him in Deltarune's style made the process very easy.

However, what I didn't have was a clear idea on what I wanted his Dark World design to look like. There isn't necessarily a consistent theming in terms of the Lightner's Dark World designs; sure, I suppose Kris' armored stature and Ralsei's wizard-esque outfit kinda leans more toward a fantasy approach... but then we have Berdly, who is clearly just Falco Lombardi.

After some thinking, I had an idea— what if I were to combine design aspects of select video game characters into Micah's Dark World design? It was an idea that seemed sound enough to work, so I began to look toward some of my favorite video game characters for influences.

Perhaps the most obvious design aspect I I took inspiration from is Micah's shoulder cape, which some of my followers may recognize as being near-identical to Clairen's. I can't help the fact that the panther wife has such a cool cape, and I wanted Dark World Micah to have one, too!

Micah's Dark World design also features a chestplate and arm gauntlets that are heavily inspired by the armor of Shovel Knight, and while it's not exactly prevalent in sprite form, I based his boots off of the boots you see in the Mega Man franchise, namely that of Mega Man's own!

Lastly, you might notice a very specific coloring throughout the design. If you look specifically at the scarf, chestplate and boots... his color scheme draws inspiration from the Bi flag! This was an idea that I had when beginning to outline the sprite, and I'm STILL surprised I managed to get it to look good!

And, as per most of my recent sprite posts, here is the design process I went about when spriting Micah's Light World variant! You can see a lot of the early steps involve outlining the head, and then once the torso comes in, you can see the exact moment when I shrank everything to be appropriately sized. I was able to get him to be two pixels smaller than Susie's sprite!

At some point later this month, I'm hoping to draw out his Dark World design so you can get a better idea of what the smaller details look like, but for now, I hope that you've enjoyed the spritework and insight on the design process!

[stardestroyer81]

DarkLight is clearly the real deal, Deltarune is just the AU lol.

SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK 😎