Glitch Man, fully equipped with Hard Knuckle, is raring to perform one of his favorite game-breaking bugs in Mega Man II... but Magnet Man isn't having it.
Back in August of last year, I made a post showcasing a sprite piece unlike any other one I'd shown before on this blog— a sixteen-bit rendition of Shovel Knight, sprited in the style of Mega Man 7 on the SNES!
I've only ever attempted to sprite in MM7's style a few times before (The linked post above being the most recent example), and from having a whole year of sprite expertise under my belt between said post and now, I figured it was time for me to try spriting something else in a SNES style... but just like last time, it was a little tough to decide on a subject.
Sure, I had chosen Shovel Knight previously, and would have been more than content with spriting somebody else from the Shovel Knight franchise (King Knight, perhaps), though this time, I wanted to chose a Mega Man character, one that would look plenty cool in Mega Man 7's style...
... so why not choose one of my own?
Thus, everybody's favorite guru of glitches was quick to receive a visual upgrade, and I am very much pleased with what I was able to come up with!
(Check under the cut for the usual Star Insight, Glitch Man's spriting process and a little bonus!)
When I decided on spriting Glitch Man in Mega Man 7's spriting style, I sampled Mega Man 7's color palette, grabbed all of the colors I knew I would need, and set up MS Paint accordingly for the creation of the sprite! However, where Shovel Knight's sprite was hand-drawn from the ground-up, the process I went about in SNES-ifying Glitch Man was a slight bit different, so I'll let you in on my top-secret, highly confidential process in starting his sprite...
I just upscaled Glitch Man's original sprite to roughly match the size of Mega Man's sprite in MM7 and traced over it.
To some, I understand that this method would be something of a copout, but when you take into consideration that doing so would cut down the production time significantly and allow for more room for finer details, it's actually a fairly viable technique. Plus, it's not like other sprite artists don't use this method— Rockman 7 FC instead took the SNES sprites and downscales them to befit the look of the NES Mega Man titles, seen here!
With a good idea on how to approach the lineart, all that was left was to actually draw it and color Glitch Man. Since I went into spriting him with every color I needed, applying a base color was plenty easy, though to stay true to Mega Man 7's spriting style, I would have to shade him in a very specific way.
You might notice that, in the above spriting process, I would draw lineart of a certain area of Glitch Man (Like his head), apply a flat color, shade it and then move onto the next area. I also had to make absolutely certain that one of his legs was a single pixel shorter than the other, as you'll notice is how every character is drawn in Mega Man 7 if you look closely!
And after about an hour of work, Glitch Man was complete! I'm certain I'm finally getting a hang of spriting above my usual 8-Bit limitations, and definitely intend on choosing another member of the Synth Legion to SNES-ify for a future post! Hope you've enjoyed reading through the insight behind this sprite, and expect more Mega Man 7 styled sprites to come!
