#the sprite edits i made inspired me

[stellarbunni]

makes an undertale au in our good year of 2024– or is it an ISAT au….? anyways say hi to Startale!

[pixelatedraindrops]

Yuma Kokohead.

~

AKA The easiest character for me to torment with illness 😷

A prime whumpee candidate.

I gave him a sprite edit for every basic illness known to man and made this category chart. I may have a problem. This sprite editing is addicting.

~

Shinigami you're not helping.

The lactose thing is just a headcanon. I've seen a lot of memes and shitposts with it and I was like, yes this is canon to me now

Shinigami just causally eating that ice cream right next to him to rub it in his face while he struggles to intake the milk, god what an asshole

TW// Emeto

alsotheaftermathofthesecondrow

Poor baby... ;-;

At least Shinigami has a non-existent warm beverage for him lol

Credit to this mini-fic for the nausea edit inspiration

~

Feel free to share your sick headcanons w me if you got any for him.

[milkwayshake]

I recently made myself 2 homestuck ocs that maaay or may not have been based on 2 homestar runner characters!…

So i decided to draw/edit them over some bases i had because i have way too fucking many of them to count

This here’s the first OC of the 2, She may or may not! be based off of homestar himself!

Annd the second oc…who i did not do nearly as much sprite edits of….is a troll counterpart who was based off of strong bad

(+I would’ve made their glasses blue like the little gem thing on him but it clashed too much with the other colors)

…also theyr an olive blood… but I decided to break the normal canon boundaries by making their scelera a shade of their blood color, rather than yellow, cause I thought it looked easier on the eyes.

[deepseaspriteblog]

I sprited the ever famous butterfly top today, and as always, Juno has to model it. I should ALSO make this into a base at some point, though maybe I'll group it together with more fashionable bases.

[unseelie-grimalkin]

I'm going for gold, lads, lasses, and other gendered classes!

Do you like visual novels? Do you like stories about the fey? Do you like your entertainment as EDUTAINMENT?

IF SO, BOY HOWDY DO I HAVE A VISUAL NOVEL PROJECT FOR YOU.

The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe) is a lore-rich and choice-driven romantic visual novel inspired by Irish mythology. Play as an Irish tenant farmer from the mid-19th century, whose path becomes inexplicably entwined with fairy affairs after getting robbed by the roadside and lured into the mythic and war-torn world of Tír na nÓg: A once unified land, now divided into the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Will you escape with your stolen belongings? Or does fate have something else in mind?

OKAY, BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU, SEEKER OF SEROTONIN?

6 wonderful romantic/PLATONIC options (each love interest can be pursued entirely platonically)

a visual novel whose philosophy is less on anxiety-inducing, arbitrary choices to get a good or bad ending, but instead focuses on if you, the player, are interacting with a character in a healthy or unhealthy manner, leading to player freedom and choice

intelligent and reflective writing that is reflected within character moments and dialogue

and MORE! (so much more!)

WHERE CAN I FIND MORE OUT ABOUT THIS GAME?

Here is the bio link, which has links for the indie developers' social media accounts (Tumblr, Twitter, Discord Server) along with the link to their official website, which has a deep dive into every main NPC and the philosophy of the game. The demo is out now and free on both Steam and Itch.io

(As an official statement: I am in no way employed or affiliated with Moirai Myths and I was not approached in any way to make this post. This is me being a feral fan on main, blazing this post)

EDIT:

HELLO EVERYONE! DID YALL KNOW THE KICKSTARTER FOR THIS GAME JUST LAUNCHED TODAY? NOW YOU DO! MORE DETAILS AND MORE FUN TO BE HAD!

They’re doing voice acting reveals this month, along with an early bird special to see blushing/flirty emotes!

EDIT THE SECOND:

WE HAVE REACHED FULL FUNDING WITH THE GAME! Which is excellent, because it means that my little hyperfixation is gonna be made!

However!

It would be very nice if we could reach some of the stretch goals (which go into depth here: x). Not only are they fun (MC customization, a switch port, expanded voice-over work, more sprites, mini-games, side stories), but I think they'd spark a lot of serotonin for folks playing (myself included).

If this post has interested you at all, please, please, please check out the Kickstarter above! Thank you!

EDIT THE THIRD

Since this is still getting notes beyond my wildest dreams:

Hello! It's been a while! The Kickstarter ended a bit ago (I did not update this post when it did end, due to being ecstatic to how much the project managed to get: 130% funding!), but development is ongoing and strong! The first two routes are in development right now. Please keep tuned at @moiraimyths for official development updates!

[sorunort]

anybody else think about how tales of symphonia inspired in stars and time? i think about it. i love the tales of series sm guys...

given isat and symphonias connection, i wanted to make some sprite edits of the cast!! and a fake skit!! they look SO GOOD IN THE TALES STYLE AAAH this was rly fun set to do :D

i also need to direct everyone to this wonderful piece of art of another fake isat-tales of skit by 4328fox, that gave me the push to make these sprite edits :DD

if anyone wants to see the final edits and base sprites + FORBIDDEN COLOR VARIANTS, ill put them underneath the cut!

AAAAH COLOR ITS SO SCARY!!!WHERES THE GREYSCALE!!!

i'd like to say off the bat, i got these sprites from tales-of-asteria-rips which were all ripped by Suyooo, as stated in the blogs description [thumbs up]

so first off is siffrin! i picked Iria from tales of innocence mostly because i liked the post, it felt very reminiscent of siffrin's menu art, plus i could easily edit the hand into a scissors sign. also i just liked how petite iria is lmao

mirabelle!! and meredy!! i didn't have to search for a potential base for mira for very long, i just kinda immediately went 'oh yeah meredy is perfect for her. round eyes, same demeanor, perfect.' i liked this meredy in particular because she could be making a paper hand sign and i could adjust the fist to hold her rapier! in hindsight, i shoulda made her rapier longer but eh. i'll live with it :)

next is isabeau! as stahn! ...to be perfectly honest, isabeau gave me the most trouble! again! history repeats itself from the color hc set i did!! i had a tough time finding a good base for isabeau given that he has a very square head but Big Oval eyes but hes also buff!! and i refused to trim him down!! i considered eizen and just photoshopping someone elses head on, but my friend howl dropped this stahn and it was too perfect to pass up. i tried to square-ify stahns head and round his eyes some, i also made the arms a little more buff too eheh.

in the end, my efforts to make him Wide were for naught. those darn sleeves covered him up... ah well......

Odile!!! as jade. this isn't surprising to anyone whos played abyss and isat. same character. heaven smiles upon odile for her good deeds (thats cant possibly be true). i don't have anything else to say, it was just too good to pass up and works scarily well.

last but not least, bonnie and genis. [scratches head] i did bonnie last and realized i didn't actually use any symphonia characters despite the ties between the two games. friend howl linked this genis and it was a perfect fit. just reposition the arms a bit, slap seles' hat down, draw over it, and there we go!

i think bonnie might just be my favorite of the set- they fit into the tales style SO well.

and before anyone asks "wheres loop" "wheres the king" "wheres euphrasie" i forgot about them. i probably wont get to them either. sorry :P

[aquarius-cookie-jar]

Dark Cacao and Dark Choco sprite edits, but I made them look more korean-inspired. Idk, it kinda bugged me how they looked vastly different from the rest of the Cacao Kingdom.

Also, idk why Dark Cacao looks squashed, I didn't mess with his proportions at all. He looks naked without his ugly shoulder pads lmao.

[bravedanganronpa]

Hi there. (UPDATE POST)

I'm quite sorry for neglecting this blog. I am most definitely not dead, just a while ago I had moved onto mainly posting updates via the bird app and YT Community Posts because it was a lot easier for me to update there for some reason. (Maybe because it felt like I had to make formal posts here on tumblr due to its format? Like this one?) But I am still greatly sorry for neglecting my audience on Tumblr, which I know is how a lot discovered my project (and who i hope are still around... haha...) So yes, it's been a few years since the prologue, and I am very sorry 'bout that. I had a lot going on in my personal life that slowed stuff down as I am the only one working on the production of art/editing/scripting besides the VAs and my proofreader(s), so when I slow down, everything does.

Here's an update for those not following me on other avenues:

By this point, the prologue sprites are quite some years old and not up to my current standards, as well as being really low resolution so it was obvious when I blew them up. I also played RAINCODE and Komatsuzaki's new style with the rimlighting inspired me and made me jealous and so In order to satisfy my own creative needs and to give these characters the best I think I can do I made the executive decision to start a whole castwide sprite revamp.

Here's an example. If you are following me on my other channels you will know that I am almost done with the full revamp sets with only a few characters left to fully finish all their edits. I will be slowly migrating most of the update posts/art I have been doing to here as well.

I hope for the people who have patiently waited and are still interested to please allow me some more time to make CH1 the best it possibly can be.

If you want to, please consider checking either my youtube community tab or my twitter at twitter.com/gitarooMain for more frequent updates, but I will try my best to update here more frequently.

[emilylsart]

Felt like doing some fanart of Ramona from the Juile Powers vs the World (Scott Pilgrim Role Swap) AU by @lakesparkles! She plays the role of the big bad (Gideon) in this AU.

I got inspired by a recent @that-weirdmango2 drawing of her that made me want to do it myself for digital drawing practice more.

And here's a bonus sprite edit of Ghost (Nega Ramona), also made by @lakesparkles! Had some fun on this one too a while back.

[cyandreamz]

❁Pearl Fey and Trucy Wright hanging out❁

Today I finished this drawing and honestly, I love it so much! makes sense since I drew most of this with my left (main) hand (used right hand for a good chunk of the sketch to help maintain being somewhat ambidextrous) and, got to use an art medium I haven't used in almost a year, after buying some cheap alcohol markers (cheaper than sharpie's cheap) a few weeks ago.

(rest of post has minor spoilers for AA2-5, mostly AA4-5 but I do mention very minor spoilers for AA2-3)

I've been wanting to draw Pearl for a while, especially after seeing her in the DD DLC case (which is my fave case from DD) but than on the 18th I read this fanfic by Samioli and, it was so cute! It made me want to draw Pearl even more! To clarify this isn't fanart of the fic (idk if I ship Pearl and Trucy but I do see them as childhood bffs) but, I do hc Pearly as lesbian thanks to the fic and, I still wanted to recommend it cuz it's such an amazing fic and, it motivated me to draw Pearly hanging out with Trucy.

okay now back to talking about the drawing XD. I decided to re-design both girl's hair-do's and I'm very glad I did. I like Trucy's canon hair but as mentioned in this post I originally thought her official sprite had a bob, and now that I drew her with a bob I think I might continue doing so! Also I don't think she has an ahoge in canon but, I think it suits her so I will always give her one :3 (Edit, turns out she does have an ahoge and it's even cuter that the one I gave her so in future I will draw her with her canon ahoge)

As for Pearl, I dislike that her model in DD basically is just a taller version of her child sprites in AA2-3, so after making some thumbnails on a different page of hair-do ideas, I decided on a hairstyle that's similar to her canon hair-do but, more interesting imo, especially since I made the braids heart shaped on purpose cuz it references her love of romance (very on the nose, but being on the nose is kinda on brand for AA).

I also had a lot of fun designing these outfits for them both! Trucy's bag is of course a playing card and I picked 8 of diamonds cuz she has a diamond motif in canon and, was adopted by Phoenix when she was 8! Her jeans also have a two patches, one of her first daddy's hat/her hat when she was a child and a bunny, cuz that's magic related and cute lol. Also gave her a bracelet that kinda references Apollo but kinda doesn't, because it's on the wrong arm (didn't want it to crowd the hand holding pose!) and it's sliver because I didn't want to add yellow to the colour pallet :P

Pearl's outfit was loosely inspired by fairy-kei fashion as I feel like Pearl would enjoy Fairy-kei and Yumekawaii but not strictly follow a jfashion style. I also gave Pearl glasses. Not only make her look more unique compared to her canon child design but also, cuz AA doesn't have enough characters with glasses imo and I think they look super cute on her! I did consider giving her heart lenses but, I think that might be over doing the heart motif so I made them round instead :P

[pixelatedraindrops]

RAINCODE SICKFIC FINALE (SPOILERS)

My awaited finale to my RainCode Sickfics of the Heart Series is finally done at last!! This took me a couple of months to put together but I figured since I mentioned it months before and delayed it, I had to get it done as my next project. It's the MakoYuma sickfic where Yuma takes care of a seriously ill Makoto.

This fanfic is officially my longest RainCode fic to date, even beating HIWTHI's word length, so make sure to read it only if you have time! It's the final sequel to that fic as well.

Be Warned: This fic is on the angsty/extreme side with a few trigger warnings. Such as Vomiting, Psychological Trauma and Implied Suicide. Please take caution/care if you read!

__

Also yes! This is the second commission I received from FTAngel! (if I'm gonna commission someone for official looking work, then I'll ask for both my targets getting cared for hehe :3) This illustrates a scene toward the end of Chapter 7 (the fic will feature it as well)

There are actually a few people I'd like to shout out/credit for this fanfic's creation. So thank you all for unknowingly inspiring me ^-^

@gardenofskeletonss

Your art and thoughts of Makoto's past as a test subject were very helpful fodder to make this fic super angsty and tie to how much this poor thing has likely suffered. Helped me write down some good dialogue for the hallucinations and freakouts in the delirium stage. So Thank you for that!

@alfiely-art

Your small fic where Makoto age regresses when he got stressed gave me some good thoughts for writing Makoto's delirious behavior. Although I'm not a huge fan of age regression, reducing Makoto to a vulnerable and needy child-like state when super ill was a lot of fun! I love the idea of him being reduced to that since he never could be a child (and he is 3 freaking years old lmao)

@shiut

Those sprite edits you made really fueled my juices to continue wiring this fic. Having a picture in my head of what a vulnerable Makoto looked like was such an inspiration boost so thank you for taking the time to make those edits! I hope you don't mind me using some of them in the fic's 5th Chapter. Also your theory and thoughts of homunculi not being able to die from illness was briefly mentioned as well.

@draconicsparkle

Thank you for being my beta reader. I usually don't trust others to read my work but given how well your reading does with the community and in general, as well as you being a Makoto superfan, your encouragement really helped me feel more confident in continuing and getting this done. Thank you so much again.

With that out of the way, I hope you all enjoy the story!! I will still write more sickfics for RainCode, but this is the final one that I consider to be canon/post canon.

So I hope it delivers well!

Eat up RainCode and MakoYuma fans!

Hope the meal is to your liking~ ^-^ ♡

[gamebunny-advance]

NSR Fandom, Help Me [RESOLVED]

Edit (6/29/24, later in the day):

Alright, with some help from @anger-ey (thanks again for the help ^o^), I think I finally have the answer to where this came from.

SO, it looks like this "fact" was originally on Kliff's page on the Metronomik wiki as unsourced trivia. Back then, it seems like the site was prone to people just writing whatever they wanted, so I guess I read it there first and internalized it as a fact.

(Even though when I first posted about it, I acknowledged that it wasn't said on record, so *that's* the part that I forgot.)

(Source)

-----------

Edit (6/29/24):

So yeah. It turns out I actually did just make this up from nothing, and just forgot that I made it up.

"Just something I was thinking about a few days ago. I don’t think it’s ever been said on record that Kliff’s design is inspired by Dio, but I’m pretty sure that’s true. There are a bunch of other Jojo references in the game, so I don’t think another one is that far-fetched. Not that I know anything about Jojo anyway." (source)

So yeah, sorry about that, but thank you to everyone that tried to help me out~

----------------

Original Post:

So, early on in this fandom's history, my "job" was essentially collecting trivia for the game. If you look at some of my oldest posts tagged "NSR," that's mostly what you'll find in between the bad fanart. Character trivia gleaned from dev livestreams, details about certain bugs or rare events, etc. As such, I have a good chunk of knowledge about incidental details about the game.

However, there's some trivia in my brain that says, "Kliff was lightly modeled after Dio Brando from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure." but I don't have a source for that, and it's not written in any of the trivia posts I've made before.

I have 0 interest in Jojo, so I don't think it's something I would have observed and concluded for myself. It's also somewhat supported by the fact that there are other Jojo references present in NSR, (like Retdex's sprite pose, and Zuke's pants pattern). I am 90% certain that someone, somewhere, officially said that, but I can't remember who or where.

Can anybody verify that for me, or did I really convince myself that this was true based on literally nothing?

[nonsensical-questions]

Errmmm annual update,

How are things goin for ya (not about sensetale specifically, just in general)

I appreciate the general check up as i haven't posted anything in a bit, but for a little update i guess, got a new job, pays me more and doesn't give me as many hours, this is a good thing as i can pay my bills just fine without having to work as much, but i am getting called in a lot and i need more money in general so i'm sorta trying to build stuff up... got a new name, i'm still keeping my old one i just have two first names i switch between now so that was funky but it made me feel a little better so it's nice got on HRT a while ago and it's fucking with me emotionally i think either that or i'm experiencing periods as it's not all the time, but it's too soon to tell if it's this or that so right now i'm just enjoying the general effects of it and learning how to deal with stronger emotions, this is a good thing i no longer feel as dysphoric about myself but it still comes from time to time as for projects and stuff i'm working on? got quiet the load honestly, no progress on sensetale for mental health and general self confidence issues, it's still on hiatus until i can get good enough to make the sprites i need or find someone willing to help me out but in non-sensetale related projects... well... i did wanna keep some stuff a secret but some of these have been in the work for a while so... what the hell might as well show some off I appreciate the general check up as i haven't posted anything in a bit, but for a little update i guess, got a new job, pays me more and doesn't give me as many hours, this is a good thing as i can pay my bills just fine without having to work as much, but i am getting called in a lot and i need more money in general so i'm sorta trying to build stuff up... got a new name, i'm still keeping my old one i just have two first names i switch between now so that was funky but it made me feel a little better so it's nice got on HRT a while ago and it's fucking with me emotionally i think either that or i'm experiencing periods as it's not all the time, but it's too soon to tell if it's this or that so right now i'm just enjoying the general effects of it and learning how to deal with stronger emotions, this is a good thing i no longer feel as dysphoric about myself but it still comes from time to time as for projects and stuff i'm working on? got quiet the load honestly, no progress on sensetale for mental health and general self confidence issues, it's still on hiatus until i can get good enough to make the sprites i need or find someone willing to help me out but in non-sensetale related projects... well... i did wanna keep some stuff a secret but some of these have been in the work for a while so... what the hell might as well show some off

vs. mad mew mew genocide route edition! i love mew mew as a character and i've been really inspired to make something relating to her i just didn't know what to, well recently i got my insperation and have been coding it out, don't know what the ending is currently but i have a rough idea of what i want to do, hopefully you will all enjoy it the song is Dummy! from UNDERTALE: Alternate, thank them so much for letting me use the song! couldn't hope for a more fitting battle theme that just so happened to accidently match with the character i was making the fight for lol I have more projects i'd love to show off but tumblr only allows for 1 video so you'll have to have the shitty gifs instead

after undertale yellow released I loved the concept of everything so much but i really wish some more attention to the lore had been put in, but hey there was still some really cool stuff they did like i loved the guns and ammo types, so i decided to work on what it would look like for the blue soul which i nicknamed melody as her healing things are music notes and clovers are well clovers, this spawned a whole thing where i started making characters and ideas and... honestly i don't think it will go anywhere soon.... if at all but hey a mouse can dream huh? well i might as well show off some characters with little to no context huh?

not all of these are major characters but just stuff I wanted to show off, if people wanna make art or ask about it, the au name is official "Undertale: Era of Integrity" but for now you just get the designs and simple mechanics that i showed off, i have more to talk about

an underfell project! this was mainly learning to code KR and fuck around with my idea of an underfell au that takes the canon version and makes small tweaks here and there, i made some sprites to show what i mean

again not really giving out much info, if people wanna know more let me know i guess! no official name just some underfell concepts i've been working on I do wanna make some playable fights eventually but i'd need to work out some kinks first to make it all work some other projects that feel too small to sorta show off stuff of are a Tale's end sans fight (like from the comic) i was working on with friskbits actually helping quiet a lot and a help_tale sixbones fight (again from the comic) both are almost done but also both have big hurdles i'll need to get past before i finish it, for tale's end it's just... writing, frisky is normally busy and i had major writers block, writing for what you may ask? the comic surely has most of what i need right? haha I wish, there are so many options and it all comes back to that stupid flower, i have like 20 endings based on if you kill or not and then reset and do a certain action, I have the main endings coded but the great flowey remembering my resets makes it way harder to actually finalize the sixbones fight is mainly the absorb stuff, as we never saw that in the comic so i sorta had to improvise and making it looks cool! but I'm sorta just winging it i guess i'm also working on a mettaton date, this one with an overworld, you know how alphys, undyne, and papyrus all got dates? oh and sans too sorta, well toby literally mentioned dating mettaton on the kickstarter and never delivered! so i'm doing it myself, date the sexy rectangle... eventually i'm still on the overworld stuff and need to finish designing mettatons room fully, i'd show some stuff off but i'm not sure how long it's gonna be plus this post is already hella long so just gonna cut this here and maybe talk about it later there is some other stuff here and there but it's mainly just ideas, I had an idea of something something deltatravelers something something OFF but i'm prob not even gonna do that, maybe i'll make some sketches or mock ups for it later but eh i wanna finish projects first i have too many on my plate currently I know a lot of people might be mad, that i'm working on other projects and stuff while im supposed to be working on sensetale, but I'm trying to improve skills and general get better at making the content so people can enjoy it more, and when i was ready i would try and work more on sensetale maybe remake the area do new poses make new characters or sprite something unique and cool, one of the reasons i don't post or even answer questions on this is i don't want to get people's hopes up that this will return soon, i really want it to return soon but I don't have the resources or time to commit to it I had a thought that maybe, I should make this a general au project stuff, so I can show off more stuff and see what people like but i've had 20 or so projects i've never finished. I wouldn't want to show all this cool stuff off and never deliver on it. But perhaps if that is what would everyone would enjoy more, seeing progress and stuff i'm working on, if people would be okay not seeing sensetale in favor of more content? just food for thought, i want to see what people think before i act.

[underdespair-au]

🎄 Merry Christmas!

The pixel sprites are free to use (at the permalink attached to this post) as long as you don't make profit, claim ownership, edit and/or modify them!

If you wish to use them for a fan-made game related to CPAU, Undertale, Danganronpa and/or any of the combination of the fandom I mentioned, please contact me beforehand, otherwise credit me for using them.

Lastly, the pixel art is based on Danganronpa with the character designs inspired from the Christmas Party AU comic by @loverofpiggies.

NOTE: By the time I post this, not every character's sprite is completed, but it'll will be updated, fixed and add later.

[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #5: Bob and George

Pages read: 4/1/2000 – 4/5/2002; 718 pages (including author’s commentary)

Reason for selection: Bob and George was a pioneer of the ‘sprite-based’ comic genre, where video game sprites (or custom sprites) are used in place of original character art to reduce the artist’s workload. B&G is also famously meta, almost entirely disregarding the fourth wall.

Original run: 4/1/2000 – 7/28/2007; daily updates with 2658 total pages. Completed before Homestuck began.

Content warnings: homophobia and mild ableism (comic), cultural insensitivity, centrism, and severe ableism (author’s commentary)

Overall thoughts:

‘Now, there is something to say of the nature of creativity. How creating a fictional world makes you akin to a creator god. You could say that, sure - if you were fucking nuts. It's a fucking story. It's not real. I don't give a fucking dick's shit how many readers there are, how fucking huge it is - every fictional world is exactly that, fictional.’ – John S.

‘The jokes are bad, the art is plagiarism, and I firmly believe the only people that can appreciate this comic are 14 years old or younger.’ – Cesar R.

Some people on the internet like to spend large amounts of time talking about things they hate, and both of the above quotes come from Bob and George reviews on blogs dedicated to discussing webcomics the authors think are bad. I don’t personally have much respect for the Avowed Hater, but I cannot express how much I love these quotes.

However. I think this webcomic rules.

Here’s a brief overview. David Anez invents two characters – the titular Bob and George – in middle school. Aged 20, at the turn of the millennium, he decides to make a webcomic about these characters, despite having no idea how to draw. He plans to start on April 1, 2000, but can’t source a scanner by then, so begins making placeholder comics using 8-bit and 16-bit sprites from Megaman games, telling a potential audience that the comic isn’t ready yet – meaning that from day one, Megaman knows that 1. he’s in a comic created by an author, and 2. he’s not supposed to be the main character.

Months later, Anez sources a scanner and begins to draw Bob and George. They’re two college aged brothers who are also a superhero-supervillain duo. By this point the strip already has readers, and they don’t like this format as much. It’s also more difficult for Anez to make, so he returns to the Megaman sprite comics, but also edits some sprites into representations of both Bob and George, who become characters transported to the Megaman universe from another dimension. The story cycles through ‘retellings’ of the first six Megaman games interspersed with original storylines, dimension hopping, time travel, predestination paradoxes, alternate versions of characters, fan created characters, at least two characters who are explicitly the author, and other characters reading the comic they’re a character in. It goes from a simple story about George passing the days at his summer job before college, to a huge, whirling, spiraling mess of continuity and temporality.

In July 2007, after just over seven years, Anez brings the story to a conclusion, goes through the archives to add author’s commentary to each and every strip, and then… disappears. He focuses on his day job and his wife, and he never does another internet project again.

I genuinely love amateur art. I think Anez can be too self-deprecating in his author’s commentary – because he’s right, the jokes can be repetitive and don’t always land, the hand drawn art is ridiculous, the characterization is inconsistent and the ideas are unoriginal, but art can be all those things and still be meaningful. ‘I could have made this’ should be a compliment. It should mean: this makes me think I could create; you have achieved something and have inspired me by doing so, because this is within my grasp, too.

Unlike Cesar R. above, I don’t think sprite comics are plagiarism – these are firmly transformative works. Anez rearranges the Megaman sprites, gives them dialog and puts them in situations, and recaps and expands on the game storylines. He credits Capcom with the sprites’ creation, and wrote a homage to the games, not a substitute for them. However, due to the copyright issues, sprite comics are famously un-monetizable. Some original-art comics were occasionally able to turn webcomics into income, but even when Bob and George was at its peak of 25,000 daily site visitors, Anez wasn’t able to sell character merchandise or books and could only source small donations via PayPal. In this way, he sits among hundreds of big name fans who have created wildly popular fanfiction and fanart that’s almost entirely unpaid labor.

Anez’ author’s commentary is sometimes highly problematic but gives fascinating insights into his process. On October 19 2001, Anez included the Author - an established character - in the day's comic, wearing a helmet for the first time. In the author's commentary, he states that 'the Helmeted Author was never intended to be a new character' and that the helmet's inclusion was necessary due to artistic limitations with the sprites. However, the Helmeted Author stuck around and became a separate and important character. Similar instances recur in the commentary, where an accidental continuity error or an out-of-character moment ends up being folded into the overall story, becoming smooth and seamless in retrospect despite being entirely unplanned. It’s an open and honest look into how serial narratives work in practice.

An ice cream joke followed immediately by a self-deprecating joke is pretty standard issue for this drivel. Seriously, look at yourself. You're reading a sprite-based webcomic with Megaman characters, and they were just arguing about the merits of ice cream. I can't believe you read this stuff. Hell, I can't believe I wrote it. That being said, it's a fun way to waste your time, isn't it? – David Anez (author’s commentary for 10/23/2001)

Relevance to Homestuck: [ooc – vague spoilers for the entirety of Homestuck]

Bob and George feels like a rough draft for a LOT of things Homestuck would end up doing in (relatively) more artful, complex ways. It’s often painfully explicit about what it’s doing, hammering its own themes and experiments into the ground via the small amounts of dialog there’s space for instead of advancing a plot – but it’s the earliest webcomic I’ve personally looked at that’s actually testing what the medium is capable of. Anez begins with a simple four-panel strip, and primarily sticks to this style throughout, but from early on he thinks that some strips would look better animated and that the fourth-panel punchline format is a ‘severe restriction’, especially with battles.

As time goes on he begins to experiment with art size, style and aspect ratio, animate part or all of some strips, include interactive strips where readers can click through the panels at their own pace, and include panels in the wrong orientation or that aren’t physically connected as they should be – all elements that would become hallmarks of Homestuck. Characters even comment on the change in panels, and in art style (such as their own change from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit sprites). In commentary for July 2nd 2001, Anez says, ‘I suppose these comics are my non-animated contributions to the infinite canvas nature of webcomics, huh?’

B&G never reaches the extremes of Homestuck, but it’s still a multimedia story. It recaps its own storylines, celebrates its own anniversaries, and folds fan contributions into its main arcs. Prominent fan creators have custom sprites made of them which are included in panels, including the Second Party arc, where a character ‘interviews’ fancomic creators and references their work and their activity in the forums and chatrooms. As such, to have a complete understanding of B&G, it’s necessary to also read prominent fanworks, and to understand its surrounding community – much of which is no longer archived. ‘Subcomics’ are differentiated and elevated from officially-hosted ‘fancomics’ which are again differentiated from fancomics which didn’t make the cut, and a hierarchy based on official recognition is born in the community, not unlike the elevation of Homestuck fanartists to official contributors.

B&G is similar to Homestuck in themes as well as form. From early on it asks questions about the meaning of ‘reality’ and an ‘official’ or ‘canon’ timeline, and explores ideas of what it means to have free will (or not) when you’re a character in a story, you know what’s going to happen next, you’ve met the guy who wrote it, and that guy may or may not be dead. It’s about physically two-dimensional characters who are in both a video game and a comic, and continually blurs the boundaries between those mediums. In both comics, an author – born in 1979 – has grown up witnessing the birth of technology that is going to change everything about how the world operates and break down our interactions with physical space and time, and they’ve made weird, longform, and often technically ‘bad’ art exploring what that means. These comics are holding hands as two links in a chain of a broader artistic movement.

Continue reading? I cannot WAIT to read the rest of Bob & George.

[smudgesticksgonnasmudgingflip]

Fun fact! I tried to do drdttober- but a certain horseboy sprite edit got me distracted- I only did days 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and I also had attempted day 9 via giving Veronika multiple limbs in a sprite edit since she has enough eyes but gave up

DRDT spoilers below!

And I'm sorry I didn't do the whole thing T~T thank you @/librariansrose and @/mikmiho (I believe I got the @ right-) for DRDTtober, I'm sorry if I missed someone-

Bonus funny at the end- and trigger warnings down below because it has spoilers as well

TW: Morbid humor, referring Levi to Jesus and also talking about how Ace basically told Levi to kys

Day one: Hitman/Assassins! Fun fact! This was made before the MM Xander design

Day three: Puppet! I was going to draw it but I had given up- so I made a quick sprite edit ig

Day four: Apocalypse! This was what inspired me to make the sprite edit of revival AU ace, but I worked on it for several days and kinda got tired so I only did a few more and Ig I'll just put the drawing

Day five: Royalty! This was my first time drawing rose I believe!

Day seven: Aquatic! Morbid- If you look closely you can see gills and a fin ear ig

And here's the bonus!