#evoland arthus

[quibbs126]

And now I’ve made this

I was going to go to sleep, but there’s a football game tonight, and I am now realizing that I happen to live in the dorm closest to the stadium, and this year on the side facing the stadium, and more importantly, the pavement everyone’s using to travel around at this time. With loud music. So eventually I decided “fuck it, I’m probably not sleeping anyways, I’m gonna go do Arthus justice with his sprite”

Hopefully this lack of usual sleep does not affect me tomorrow, as I have another shift starting at 9 and then after that, I have to actually do homework that I’ve been neglecting that’s all due that night. Which is a note for next week on how to not wait until Sunday

But anyways, back to the actual edit, it’s based on his card and intro designs

I really don’t know why his original sprite looks like that, it’s just a cloak and some pants. He is the Demon King, as well as Menos’ father, if you aren’t going to give him the respect of a talk sprite, you can at least give him the decency of an accurate overworld sprite

You could say it’s because we only see him for like, 3 minutes, but I’d argue that there are other characters who have the same amount of screen time, if not less, and still get more. Young Prophet gets a unique sprite, old Dalkin (it’s not that special, but far enough, he’s retired now), young Reno and Ceres, the latter of which only shows up once for like, a minute, and most of those characters get a talk sprite with them. And sure, you could argue that’s because they’re important in other Eras. And fair, but as I’ve brought up time and again, Lothair, who has just as much relevance if not less, and he gets a talk sprite, and quite frankly, an awesome overworld sprite

A character like him who literally does nothing should not get this cool of a sprite. Or at the very least, not without his counterpart also getting one

Anyways, sorry about the rant, I’ll stop now

I think the edit looks its best on the front sprite, I’m not so sure about the other sides. I guess I need more practice when it comes to sprite editing

I probably could have kept the hair color the same, but his hair’s a lighter, more warm shade of purple in the other designs, so I thought I’d change it. I did end up using his original hair color for his gloves though, since they’re purple in the intro and I can’t see them on the card, so purple they stay. Better than more blacks/dark greys

His outfit’s a lot of blacks, so I wonder if it all blends together a bit too much

He’s got a cape in his card but not his intro design, but I thought I should keep it because it might look cool. Also adds a pop of other color. Should probably do a capeless version too to see what it looks like

Anyways, I don’t remember what else to say, and it’s getting a bit late. Noise seems to have died down so hopefully I can get some sleep now. Meanwhile, hopefully you can enjoy this sprite edit. Provided you can see it

I need to figure out how to upscale sprites

Edit: I have found a way to upscale them, it’s just that I can only do it on my computer. But I have the power now!

[quibbs126]

No literally, why would you do this to us, and to this poor man?

He has literally done nothing wrong and he does nothing but suffer

Though to be honest, I kind of think his dad’s hotter, at least in that opening cutscene

Evoland II gave me a dilf and keeps hinting at a bad ending why would you do this to me

[quibbs126]

So basically I made this due to me looking at sprites for too long

So I was getting sprites for all the characters I would assume I need for drawing, and I was able to find Young Reno’s sprites, along with some others

And one thing I noticed when I was looking at the sprites in Procreate is that he doesn’t seem to wear shoes. His feet color are the same as his normal skin tone, so I can only assume that he doesn’t have any

Young Ceres also doesn’t wear shoes, but I can excuse that since she literally just escaped a laboratory where she was being experimented on. I doubt Giro was providing her with footwear when she wasn’t supposed to ever leave. Reno though doesn’t really have an excuse. Like Menos, Arthus, one of you, get the child some shoes! You’re his dad and grandad, make sure he has proper protection from the wild attacking his feet!

I know it doesn’t mean anything realistically, but it just led me to making this. Specifically because I was out with my friend today and didn’t have much else to do

It’s just a silly little thing I thought was funny

I used Reno’s overworld sprite as a reference more than his talk sprite, since that was where the feet thing came from

But also just a note because I’ve been looking too much at sprites, the Past sprites have a couple inaccuracies

Young Reno has a jacket like he does in the Present, but his talk sprite does not, Young Ceres has a pink outfit in her overworld sprite while her talk sprite wears blue, and Arthus is mostly just wearing a red cloak over his outfit, whereas in his card and the intro cutscene, we see he wears mostly black/blue and wears no cloak, instead having black fur(?) lining, as well as a red cape in the card design. I mean, maybe with Arthus they just wanted to be lazy, considering we wouldn’t see him ever again. Not sure about the other two though

And I know all that is entirely inconsequential, but I know it and have no one else to talk about it with, so now you do too

[quibbs126]

I’m very much not done with this character, but I guess I wanted to at least display what I’ve been trying to work on since yesterday. It has been a struggle

So this here is another character who’s part of that Evoland 2.5 thing or whatever I’m calling it, being specifically related to these guys, as Solus’ father and Juno and Jovi’s uncle. And also, the current leader of the Demons

Brain worms have been telling me to call him Glaucus, and so Saturday night I decided to actually look up what Glaucus is and meant, and honestly I think it works

So Glaucus has a number of ties, but it’s the name of a Greek god of fishermen, which works with Juno and Jovi’s names being Roman gods, as well as apparently the son of Minos. Which also works because he’s supposed to be the direct descendant of Menos in the story. Glaucus is also a genus of sea slug, specifically the blue dragon ones, which I thought sounded cool, so all in all I decided to stick with that name for him

It also made me think of what to do with the character to tie him into these inspirations, which kickstarted me actually thinking about him proper, and so I decided to start trying to design him

I think in the original vision in my head, Solus’ father was supposed to have purple hair and skin, but with the name Glaucus having a lot of ties to blue, I figured I should probably make some part of him blue. I chose hair since blue skin and purple hair is literally already Arthus’ color combo, and he’s Evoland 2’s Demon king, so it’d be too close for my liking. Also that’s the color combo of Menos, which could tie into the “Glaucus, son of Minos” part

When I was first trying out his colors, I thought he looked like a darker color version of Menos, and it needed more tweaking. I eventually got it looking how I liked it in the younger version of Glaucus. I admit that in that one, his hair color is more similar to Menos’, but his skin is dark enough that I think it looks distinct

That young Glaucus is probably my favorite here, and it’s gonna be my main reference for him going forward. Which may cause problems because he’s much older, but whatever

I want to give him a large ponytail, which I actually sort of took from this one small sketch on one of Menos’ pages, which is basically my only look at proper concept art of Menos

But in all honesty, I’m struggling with what to do for the front of his hair. Yes, I could stick with the hair slicked back into the ponytail, as I had on the original

But my main problem with that is, if I were to do that, Jovi here would literally be the only one of these guys to not have slicked back hair in any way. I already feel like I’m struggling to diversify the hair styles, and this does not help

His wife maybe doesn’t need the slicked back hair, but she has a reason to have her hair like that

I’ve also been debating giving him a beard, but the problem there is that I still don’t know how to draw beards right. It’s why I haven’t drawn Arthus this time around. But I also feel like it would make sense to give him a beard, so I don’t know

There’s also generally the issue of how to draw him older. I’m bad at drawing age on my characters. I think I’m learning, at least with some face things, but I’m still not good at it. He’s supposed to be at least in his mid 50s-60s relatively, given Solus, his son, is around 30 ish

But right now my main big issue is that I don’t know what kind of outfit to give him, I’m really struggling

I’ve tried to search up monk character designs on here, since that’s kind of the vibe these guys are supposed to have, but the additional problem was making him look formal enough, since he’s supposed to be the current Demon king, even if that title is a bit lesser than in Evoland 2 times

I think I need to solidify what this group of Demon’s style is, and what I want to do. Because I’m mostly working off the idea that their style is derived from the Temple of Menos Demons. This would be true, but also these guys are supposed to be 500-600 years later, and most don’t live there anymore, so they should probably have some change

I have some ideas for a new Solus design, so it may help me flesh things out, but on this page I still don’t know what to do

Now I might as well talk about the ideas I have for Glaucus, because what I drew isn’t indicative of everything I have in mind for him

So as mentioned, Glaucus is the leader of the current Demons, as well as Solus’ father, and Juno and Jovi’s uncle. He had a younger sister who was Juno and Jovi’s mother (I also drew something of her above), but she and their father died when they were children, and so he took them in, and he’s basically their dad now (at least for Jovi, who was basically a toddler when his parents died)

Glaucus has somewhat of a water/sea affiliation. As a child, he really liked to fish (is maybe autistic for marine life? I don’t know), and it is still a favorite past time of his, as well as something he’s taught his charges. He also wields a spear and probably has an amount of water powers. I personally imagine one ability of his is to create water clones of himself during a battle, as well as probably clones of his spear

In a hypothetical game, you would definitely have a boss fight with him. In the story, he’s supposed to be under some evil influence, so he’s an antagonist, at least initially

He’s fairly powerful, though not as much in brute strength as Menos or Matchos

There’s also his wife, aka Solus’s mother. She’s still alive, but she doesn’t live in the tower with her family. She still lives in the Temple of Menos, as an active custodian of it, which is considered more important, so she stays there. The temple isn’t that far though, so she still sees them relatively often, whenever they come to visit. I don’t know what to name her

Funny enough she also ended up basically having Juno’s old color scheme, but it works here. Her having the long braid and slicked back hair is also because she’s even more based on the Temple of Menos guys, since that's literally her job

I don't know what to name her though. Maybe something sun/light related, I don't know

There's also Glaucus' sister, whom I also don't know what to name. She doesn't really have anything about her, in part because she's long dead in the story and I really only need her and her husband to figure out Juno and Jovi's genes and how their colors are supposed to work. I think I'm sticking with that color scheme though

Oh also one more thing I forgot to mention, so the Demons were supposed to have come back to the surface around 200 ish years prior to the story or so. And with this, Glaucus and his generation would thus have been the first generation born back on the surface and not at the Temple of Menos. I haven't done anything with this concept, but it is a fact and I need to figure out how to incorporate it

I think my biggest issue with Glaucus, as well as the other two, is that I don't have enough ideas to know where I'm going when drawing. I know part of the point is to try and work out your ideas while sketching and drawing, but I don't have enough of a road map for it. So I guess I put Glaucus in more stasis until I fully figure out what I want to do with him? I'm really not sure

But I guess I'm posting this to show off and talk about what I got, because I want to. I was hoping to have something more fleshed out and an actual character by the time I was done with this, but alas. This is how I am now

But at least hopefully some of you get value out of this. Provided you care at all about this

[quibbs126]

Okay one last Evoland 2 thing before I sleep

So as I was looking at the artbook again today, I got the feeling that the Demons were supposed to have a lot more of a role than they ended up getting. Like they in particular have a lot of cut content

The concept designs of the Demons were of civilians, things we never saw in game (though it could just have been for fleshing out the concept of them than anything else), the actual Demons we do see in game almost all have one of 2-3 generic designs, depending on era (which is a thing for the the Human soldiers too, but these are also some of the only Demons we meet), I’ve mentioned many times Arthus being snubbed of a talk sprite and even a cool overworld sprite despite Lothair being on equal grounds and getting the good stuff, the artbook mentioning something called the Demonia Spires that we never see or hear about, the Genova page and circus designs implying that the Demon Trio had been planning on infiltrating the capital via a circus and likely causing a big conflict in Present Day, Reno’s lack of screen time in the second half of the game and debatably even first (yeah fair he’s dead, but also he really feels like he shouldn’t have been forgotten like that), and in general, at least to me, his artbook page implies to me he was supposed to have a bigger role than he ended up getting (but that could just be my bias). Also the Demon card, the one supposed to represent the generic Demon that we see in game, has a design we do not see elsewhere in the game

My working theory for the weirdness of the game in some aspects is simply that whatever the developers had originally planned was ultimately too ambitious, so they had to simplify and cut things for whatever reason, and while it’s mostly formed fine, there’s areas of weirdness where it doesn’t feel complete, at least narratively

And I’m wondering now why it seems that Demons got so much cut. What was there going to be originally?

[quibbs126]

Also today I brought a pencil in addition to my pen to work, so now I have sketching capabilities, so my drawing is enhanced! Takes a lot longer though

Anyways, so I decided to draw some of the concept Demons from the Evoland 2 artbook today (after sketching a bit of Solus), and I just want to talk about them color wise. Which means my sketches are not that relevant to the topic. But I’ll still show you anyways for those interested. It isn’t much though

Anyways, so back on topic, looking at the concept Demons, they have a lot more range in colors between them

Like to show you what I mean, I’ll just show you all the concept art with full Demon characters (outside of Menos, since his designs really only boil down to hairstyle differences)

Like if I’m looking at this right, we have a WAY bigger range than the game ever led me to believe

Which does bring up the question of whether I should really even consider this in any way, since maybe these were just concepts before they settled on the small color range we got in the game. But also, the game barely has any Demons in the first place, so if I want range, there’s nothing stopping me from using concepts in the artbook. I don’t have enough evidence to say otherwise

But yeah, I noted this on the sketch paper, but let me describe the ranges of colors in Demons, at least according to these concepts (and if you consider these canon, at least option wise)

Skin tone:

Light pink to dark purple/blue. They can be anywhere in that range, whether in hue, saturation or brightness

Hair color:

Bluish green, like an emerald color, to a reddish orange. Yet again, can be anywhere within the hue range, and the colors seem to range from dark colors to light, as seen with the blues

Though in game, everyone except Arthus in his overworld sprite (and also Ceres) seems to follow the lighter color side of things. The one rule does seem to be that the color has to have an amount of vibrancy to it, outside of grey hair on Reno in that one concept

Like compared to the game, purple hair is the least of my worries

Though I will say, blue skin, at least in a tone like Ceres and Arthus, seems to not really be a thing, it’s mostly just a range of purples

I guess this isn’t that important, but it is at least a note for me that I don’t have to stick to purple skin, and then red blue or purple hair for my Demon character designs. I can go crazy with colors

Also one last thing to note, specifically with Plum and Cherry’s concepts, I notice that one design does in fact have the same hair design as a beta Ceres design, and at least two of the other designs have similar outfits to other Ceres betas. So maybe some of her designs did try to incorporate her Demon side more. But also, it makes me wonder if Reno and his group were supposed to have more connections to Ceres than they ended up having. Or it could just be a case of reusing design details. Either/or

[quibbs126]

Can we just take a moment to appreciate how beautiful this artwork is?

For context, this is the opening sequence of Evoland 2, if anyone was curious. I’ve been wanting to back and replay it for a while and I decided today is the day

[quibbs126]

Aight, so there’s this game, Evoland 2 (everyone should go play it, it’s a really good game) and I’m currently having a conundrum.

Okay, first let me give context. There’s this thing the game does where the names of things are 1 letter differences to something else

Examples include:

Smog = Smug

Mana = Maana

Super Mario = Super Morio

Vikings = Wikings

There are others, but those are the only ones I can think of right now. It’s so shameless I honestly I find it hilarious.

Anyways, another thing they do is have names be references to something else, usually with a theme going on, and sometimes they’ll mix it with the one letter difference

Nibiru Village = Nibiru, the Ancient One (Yugioh)* (Edit: apparently Nibiru is actually a reference to the Nibiru Cataclysm, some disaster people thought was going to happen in the early 21st century, according to Wikipedia)

Genova = Jenova (Final Fantasy 7)*

Ceres = Ceres, the Roman god of agriculture (there’s a good reason for it, but I won’t say here for spoilers)

Cherry & Plum = cherry plums

*I don’t know if this is their actual reference, but it’s the best I can find

Anyways, so then we come to a particular group of characters, and from what I can tell they all share a similar naming theme of mythical kings

First, we have King Arthus = King Arthur from Arthurian legend, king of the Round Table

Then, we have Menos, who after a while I realized = King Minos from Greek myth, who’s I believe the namesake and guardian of the Minotaur, if my cursory glances at Greek myth are to be believed 

Anyways, so here’s my problem: there’s a third member of this group and his name is Reno.

Only problem, I don’t know who he’s named after, and it’s really bugging me

Does anyone know any mythical kings one letter off from Reno? Please I need the answer 

[quibbs126]

More pop culture references, now in the coliseum

Also for the name thing, it’s more than a one off joke, as certain people do call you by whatever you call yourself here

Personally I always pick Mega Clink, because in the first game the main character is Clink, you know it’s Clink -> Mega Clink. If I were to have an Evoland 3, there should be a point where you’re able to call yourself Super Mega Clink, just to continue the joke

Ah, so we meet Emperor Lothair. I’m still not sure why he’s allowed a talk sprite but Arthus, his Demon counterpart, isn’t. Because spoiler warning, this is the ONLY scene where we see Lothair, he never shows up again. So why doesn’t Arthus have one? Yeah he’s only in one scene but again, so is Lothair. And it’s not like he isn’t important, at the very least he’s important to one of our main characters! Why didn’t you give him a sprite, Shiro Games?!

…*ahem* sorry, I just get heated when talking about that. I’ll probably bring it up again whenever Arthus shows up

But going back to the actual dialogue posted, yeah I’d imagine he’d want to be there, given who this challenger is

And as for the three shown here, from left to right the rankings go: honestly not a bad guy, you’re decent but I don’t know enough about you, and die

…oh you ain’t wrong there buddy

Wait, you DON’T know who this guy is?? How??

He’s pretty important to the Demon cause, how do you NOT know who he is? You had to have met him at some point, right? I mean you weren’t JUST made Emperor

And even if he knows the guy, it’s just that no one told him who exactly the Demon was, why didn’t they? Again, he’s important to the Demon cause, and he has to be known amongst the Empire’s ranks because of it, did no one think to tell the Emperor about who they just captured?? I’d think that’d be pretty important news, plus, you can use him in a hostage/exchange situation! You probably could have ended this war if someone had just told him! Lothair isn’t about mercilessly killing Demons, he wants this war to end “quickly and cleanly” as he puts it

Anyways, I think that’s about it for this place