Another nice ask! You. Yes, you, inspired me to start drawing Paula with star earrings! I literally own multiple such pairs irl but hadn't even thought of it! Here's an old drawing of her from a larger piece I never finished! I thought you might be interested in Paula earring lore.
Paula.
AW THIS IS SO CUTE THANK YOU FOR SHARING <3 star earrings stay winning forever. if the world is against giving characters i love little star shaped accessories then i am against the world
tentatively considering posting pencil doodles here if i really like them so that this blog isn’t just left to rust when i’m struggling to get anything drawn digitally. vote now on your phones do you guys want quantity or quality
every night i go man i should post some stuff from artfight here to prevent my blog from dropping off the face of the earth again! and then forget to do that
care woman!! her infodump is, as per usual, under the cut
care woman is a mental health specialist, licensed as both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. she works mainly with clients who struggle to open up to human specialists for various reasons, such as trauma or neurodivergence, with the idea being that a robot might feel less threatening to communicate with. the idea behind her was very experimental, but she's seen a lot of success so far! being a robot master makes her uniquely suited to her job - as a computer, she can assess and diagnose possible mental health issues without any risk of forgetting crucial details, while her human-like personality and emotions make for a far more welcoming experience than just plugging symptoms into a database
her personality is slightly more engineered than those of most robot masters, all with the intention of making her more approachable. she's kind, soft-spoken, and patient, and always considers others' feelings before acting. while she usually defaults to being as calm and level-headed as she can, she has a good sense of humour and enthusiasm that she can play up or tone down depending on the needs of whoever she's talking to. she's also programmed with a particularly high level of empathy, making her especially good at navigating emotions at the cost of tending to stress out on others' behalf. she's prone to anxiety and overthinking any small mistake she makes, but recognises this problem as well as she would in anyone else, and has plenty of strategies to keep her mood up and her anxiety in check
she often tries connecting with her clients via their interests, which means reading a lot of books and watching a lot of movies, shows, and video game playthroughs in her spare time. this eventually led to a more personal interest in media, especially movies! combined with her inherent instinct to analyse everything from an emotional perspective, care is fascinated by the way movies put together a compelling story in just an hour or two, and is something of a buff for writing, animation, and cinematography tropes. she's generally most invested in emotionally driven stories, especially when they have happy endings, but she's open to just about any genres or themes that are recommended to her. the only genre she can't handle is horror, which just makes her worry too much about when the scary parts are coming to focus on anything else
since she works in a medical environment with particularly vulnerable people, care is hard-coded on every possible level not to harm humans, moreso than any robot before or since - not even dr. wily could remove this restriction from her, so even after being reprogrammed and instructed to take over the world, she refuses to do so in any way that endangers humans. she's otherwise fairly standard in terms of code and abilities, not outfitted with any fancy experimental tech. she does, however, have some built-in speakers in addition to the one that produces her voice, which she uses to play things like white noise or music for clients who find it relaxing without compromising her ability to talk. these secondary speakers were heavily modified to produce white noise at such a harsh frequency that it can damage computer components, giving rise to her weapon, psychic cry. aside from this, she doesn't have much in the way of combat capabilities, and relies mostly on using her intricate understanding of body language to predict and dodge an opponent's attacks if she's dragged into a fight
care's weaknesses are based on common fears, tying into her aversion to horror and association with emotions. she takes the most damage from eerie pulsar [fear of ghosts], with a secondary weakness to harpoon shot [fear of the deep ocean], and while it doesn't deal any extra damage to her she's vulnerable to the stunning effect of her own weapon [fear of sensory overload/being yelled at]. eerie pulsar also gives her trouble because its area-of-effect nature makes it impossible to dodge or meaningfully block, forcing her to take the entirety of an already powerful attack that she just isn't physically equipped to handle
once again showing my archie bias, she was built by dr. lalinde! while she isn't as deeply involved in the family dynamic as tempo and vesper woman are, given that she lives and works elsewhere, she still very much considers them both her sisters. originally about half of the roster were going to be lalinde's creations [initially i had the idea for a game where lalinde was the definitely not being forced to work for wily 'villain', but i've shelved the idea for now], but care is the only one who retained that connection. i took a lot of her design elements from tempo and vesper, most obviously the necklace-like decal and distinct earpiece shape they all share, but also tried to make her stand out with things like a different shape for her torso and limbs. aside from that, i mostly aimed for something simple and cute - her design isn't too fancy, but i think that works better for her than a really detailed or unconventional look would
that's it for the care infodump, and for this series of posts as a whole! thank you for asking about her, and thank you so much to everyone who's shown interest in my silly little mega man ocs! here's her unfiltered and transparent artwork, as always
Do you have a robot master OC (of the eight plus Drum) that you’d say is your favorite? If you haven’t done an infodump for them yet then you should do that one next
i couldn't choose a favourite if i tried, i love them all, but since you mentioned drum i thought i'd give her some new art and a proper dedicated post too! infodrump [ayyy] under the cut
drum, serial number SWN-002, is my take on the popular [????? i'm still a bit of a mega man fandom newbie i don't know hjdfn] 'wily equivalent to roll' oc template! she keeps things running at the various castles and fortresses and hideouts and whatever else her dad holes up in, whether that's by doing housework, planning schemes, or dodging taxes. whenever wily is trying to take over the world, drum acts as his second-in-command, ensuring that everything goes according to plan and ordering around the latest group of robot masters
she's every bit the edgy mid-00s teenager she looks: sarcastic, apathetic, and always talking back to her dad. she's more obedient than bass is, but she doesn't care for her job at all and will resort to any flimsy excuse or act of malicious compliance she can come up with to slack off. due to her purpose as an organiser and commander, she's a bossy control freak who's quick to anger when things don't go exactly her way, although when she's off work the worst of these traits recede in favour of more conventional teenage apathy. she sees herself as above the time and effort it takes to go out of her way to be mean to people like wily and bass tend to do, but she's equally uninterested in being nice on purpose and her default attitude is squarely on the nastier side
when she doesn't have work to focus on - and sometimes when she does anyway - drum is the lead vocalist and guitarist in a garage band, of which she is [currently - a friend's ocs get involved later, but that's a whole different post] the only member. i'm not good with music terms but she's into whatever genre stuff like wake me up inside and crawling in my skin is [i know those aren't the names hdfjf it's just the words i know people will recognise]. the sort with the crunchy guitar and the very loud lyrics about being sad and/or angry. playing or blasting music helps her to calm down when she's in a bad mood, which is pretty much all the time. the first warning sign of a new wily plot is a spike in search popularity for my chemical romance
i haven't gotten around to designing it, but drum has a non-armoured form like most of the other more explicitly kid-like robots, which she mostly uses for loitering around malls when she has an excuse to not be at home. she rarely buys anything, just hangs out and radiates an aura that makes suburban white women hurry their three kids into the next shop. drum often ends up hanging out with like-minded teens in the same vague area of the goth/punk/emo venn diagram she occupies, and makes a bit of a game out of seeing how honest she can be about her life without revealing that she's one of the world's most wanted robots. she tells herself that it's just something she does out of boredom and curiosity towards humans, but it mostly stems from loneliness and the desire to have literally any friends that aren't her brother's dog
as a sort of contrast to the healthy and positive relationship between their lightbot counterparts, drum and bass absolutely DESPISE each other and make no secret of it. each of them thinks of the other as an insufferable prick and they'll get into petty arguments over just about anything, from whose turn it is on the xbox to who treble loves more. [for the record, it's drum. she lets him hang out in the kitchen while she's cooking and sneaks him food scraps when bass isn't looking. he's the only family member she has an even remotely positive relationship with.] pretty much the only thing that can get them to stop fighting is mutual hatred of a bigger prick, and so far the only person to consistently get them to put their differences aside like this is wily himself - as much as the wily kids hate each other, they hate their dad just a little more, and have a history of teaming up just to mess with him. sometimes mega man can spark that spiteful cooperation, but drum's total apathy towards the light-wily family rivalry means she usually sees him as not worth her time and just finds bass' obsession with beating him even more annoying
drum wasn't made for combat, and as such she doesn't have a signature weapon or any fancy tricks like the copy chip. usually she just orders other robots to do the fighting for her. however, she is equipped with a standard arm-mounted buster, and can hold her own in battle with a 'fight smarter, not harder' approach if she has to. she's also outfitted with the same treble adapter that bass has, so if she's backed into a corner she can call on him for a power boost. treble is capable of supporting both adapters simultaneously, so as an absolute last resort they can all combine into treble-boosted drum & bass, who theoretically has all the combat power of bass plus the strategic thinking from drum and the boost in power from treble. in practice, though, drum and bass are so at odds with each other that they can barely hold together in the same body without either fighting for control or outright splitting apart to argue harder. again, it takes a lot of spite to get them to work together, but if something draws their combined ire and convinces them to cooperate they're an utterly terrifying force to be reckoned with
the game idea i vaguely have in my mind would feature drum as the final-not-final boss before wily reveals he was the mastermind behind it all and surprises absolutely nobody. she was put in charge of the latest world domination attempt, probably as the result of a 'why don't YOU take over the world if you're so smart' conversation, and in true drum fashion she follows a standard wily plot outline to the letter - including the blatant flaws, like all eight of her chosen robot masters forming a rock-paper-scissors wheel just begging to be exploited by the copy chip, and making a clear path from just outside the death fortress to her base of operations. after she's defeated in combat, she sarcasically wonders aloud how mega man could have possibly bested her plan and then helpfully points rock directly to wily's castle. she didn't wanna do the stupid scheme in the first place
again, i love all my ocs too much to possibly choose a favourite, but i'd say drum was the most fun to come up with if only because i had the help of some mates in a discord server. someone was like 'hey if there's bass is there a roll equivalent called drum or something lol' and i SPRINTED to microsoft paint to rough out a character design and the next entire day was just a constant stream of all of us bouncing ideas off each other and creating the meanest girl in the universe. her design changed a little bit from the initial sketch, most notably she used to have the half-shaved hairstyle that every gay person tries at some point before that changed to a midpoint between phoenix wright and sonic the hedgehog, but overall everything about her as a character flowed really well from the start. while she's fallen mostly into my hands since the initial brainstorm, she absolutely wouldn't exist without those friends' input and i feel that that's important to mention!
i'm very tired and i've been working on this on and off for the past day so i'm gonna call the infodrump finished here - thanks for giving me the excuse to talk about her! unfiltered and transparent versions of the art below as always
i love him too so i can absolutely talk about him!! tide man infodump under the cut
tide man is an aquatic robot master who works in coral reefs! he's more or less an undersea janitor, hauling garbage or debris that's damaging the ecosystem back to shore. he also monitors the health of the coral and resident marine life, and helps with efforts to cut down on pollution and improve the water quality of the ocean. he lives in queensland, australia, where he's part of a massive ongoing effort to clean up the great barrier reef, but he's been called out to help with other coral reefs all over the world. he's based on the unused concepts for ocean man both in-universe and in real life, the same way vesper woman is based on the concept art for honey woman, and he was redesigned and built by dr. astil! unless archie mega man returns from the dead and gives the number to someone else, his official serial number is DAN-002
he's very easily stressed, even by small things, and his perfectionist tendencies only make this worse. he often places unrealistically high expectations on himself due to the [largely incorrect] assumption that, as a robot master initially designed by dr. light himself, they're the expectations that everyone around him also has. because of the unnecessary pressure he puts on himself, he's chronically anxious and prone to panic attacks, and struggles with depression and very low self-esteem. he has a short temper and tends to shout at people when he's freaking out, but he tries really hard to keep this in check and quickly apologises to anyone he upsets. once he's had some time to calm down, he's polite and good at working with others, if a little socially awkward. life isn't easy for tide but he's trying his best
despite the stress it causes him, tide is committed to his job and takes it Very Seriously. while it's partially due to his desire to be seen as competent and valuable and deserving of praise, his dedication mostly stems from a genuine love of the reefs he watches over. he has a high level of empathy for nature, especially sea life, and feels he has a responsibility to protect it. because of this, he's very conscious about things like recycling and treating natural environments with respect. he's appeared in a handful of psas about recycling and keeping the beach clean and not littering and all that to help raise public awareness about taking care of the environment. nothing angers him more than senseless littering, and he has a particularly seething hatred for plastic waste due to the damage it causes to ocean ecosystems
like many water-themed robot masters before him, tide is more suited to moving underwater than on land. his body is much denser than it looks, allowing him to sink to and walk along the ocean floor without assistance, but not so heavy as to impede his swimming speed or agility. he usually moves very slowly so that he doesn't accidentally break any coral or scare any marine life. the harpoon gun on his left arm is mostly used to pull up particularly large pieces of debris - he's permitted to use it for self-defence if he absolutely has to, but so far he's never fallen into such a situation. his weight and lack of a left hand make him clumsy above water, but the caution he takes while moving helps to alleviate this somewhat
tide absolutely loves animals, especially the sea life he interacts with on a daily basis. he tries his best not to give them attention and risk disrupting their behaviour patterns, but a lot of the fish and other animals in the great barrier reef recognise him as nonthreatening by now and will come up to him or swim alongside him of their own accord. being around animals calms him down, and if he's having a panic attack he can usually bring himself out of it by going to the beach and chilling with some seagulls or fish for a while. usually if he isn't busy he'll just sink gently to the bottom of the ocean and watch all the sea life swim past and get lost in that for a while. his absolute favourite animals are sea turtles! he loves the way they look and move and finds their social patterns fascinating. he couldn't choose a favourite species if he tried, though. don't ask him. he will get decision paralysis and he will cry
when he gets his laws of robotics surgically removed, tide man forces every human and man-made influence on basically the entire coast of queensland out of the ocean with the threat of gratuitous robot violence, then goes to sit at the bottom of the reef and scowl and occasionally vent his frustrations with incredible destructive force at any ships unlucky enough to still be floating through the area [then spend a few hours cleaning up the mess he made]. it's unclear how this gets wily any closer to world domination, but at least it gives tide something to do with his pent up frustration. the pressure of having to take over the entire world dials up his stress responses even further, shortening his temper from irritable to outright explosive. he sometimes tries to take charge of the group or set an example for his fellow robot masters, but in practice he isn't nearly intimidating enough to give anything stronger than a suggestion
his stage begins with a scramble through the robot-infested wreckage of a ship he took out his anger on, then once you reach the end and jump out it becomes the obligatory water level. there's a lot of downward movement in the second part as you travel deeper and deeper into the reef to find him. naturally his stage has plenty of thematically appropriate hazards - shards of coral as spikes, bubbles as temporary platforms, robots based on all his favourite marine animals, the works. in true tourist-in-australia fashion rock teleports in and immediately gets swooped by 40+ seagulls
tide is weak to sleet foot because he isn't well equipped to handle the cold. he was built under the assumption that he wouldn't ever encounter freezing temperatures, since he lives in queensland [one of australia's warmest states] and coral reefs only form in warm waters. when he gets cold, his movement becomes stiff and even slower, and if ice crystals manage to form in or around his joints they can quickly and completely incapacitate him. sleet foot being a low kick also gives him trouble, since his body's density means it takes some time for him to get up if he's knocked over
designing tide was interesting since i was actually referencing canon mega man designs instead of just making stuff up. in addition to basing him on ocean man's concept art, i also took a lot of design cues from plant man, since he's the only other robot master canonically built by dr. astil so i thought it'd be nice if they had some design elements in common! it's probably because of this heavy referencing that he arguably looks the most like a 'real' robot master in terms of design. [i don't think that by itself makes him a better or worse character design, it's just something interesting i noticed!] i'm particularly proud of taking the pattern on ocean man's helmet and turning it into the coral-like decal that tide has on his, even if it's a bit of a nightmare to draw lmao
due to sharing a creator, he and plant man consider each other brothers! their work doesn't overlap what with them being in different countries most of the time, but whenever they both have time off they take the opportunity to catch up and talk about how things are going. having each other there really helps them both with their depression [one day dr. astil will finally make a robot who isn't chronically sad], and while he's too shy to admit it tide really looks up to plant and is kind of awestruck by him. this is objectively a bad idea because plant is an emotional disaster, but tide is a baby sibling so he's too busy thinking his big brother is cool and awesome to notice
i think that's a good place to wrap up the tide man post, thank you so much for asking about him! as always here's the unfiltered and transparent versions of his art
glass man!! he looks super neat i must know more about him :O
glass man!!!!! big ol infodump about him under the cut :D
so glass was created to help out with archaeology! he surveys land that's being considered for dig sites, and he explores ruins that might be too dangerous for humans to go through alone or at all. he has heightened senses, mostly sight and hearing and to a lesser degree touch, to help him both survey land and stay safe in dangerous ruins. he can't switch this hypersensitivity off or turn it very far down, though, so he's prone to sensory overload in everyday life where everything is much brighter and louder
personality-wise i'd say he's roughly a slightly less british professor layton [who i tentatively have as his voice claim, and if you've ever played a layton game you'll understand when i say that a robot made of glass that explores ruins would fit into them pretty well lmao] - he's very polite, well-spoken, not exactly a jokester but has a good sense of humour, nice to kids and doesn't talk down to them, maintains his composure even when things aren't going well, badass but very casual about it. he maintains his sense of chivalry when he's turned evil, but is much colder about things so it comes off as terrifying rather than welcoming
glass absolutely loves his job and is a total dork about it. when he's not on a dig, he's probably reading about one. he also volunteers to come to schools and universities to give talks about archaeology in his spare time! this man knows his way around a powerpoint presentation and kids and college students alike love him for it. he jumps at any opportunity to gush about his special interest and the things he's helped find, although his enthusiasm for dead people and the gruesome collapse of ancient civilisations makes him come off as WAY more morbid than he intends to. even if you know that he's harmless, he can still come off as creepy sometimes
he is also made partially of glass! i don't know why and i don't know how that works and i don't know what would possess anybody to make a robot out of glass. it's purely for rule of cool. if wily can make a robot out of wood then i can make one out of glass, damn it. the green parts of his body are glass, while the brown parts are the standard metal or ceratanium or whatever robot masters are usually made out of. while i took some liberties with the colour range and how shiny it is i based the glass parts of his body on desert glass, since if you squint it makes thematic sense and i think it looks really pretty
i'd had the idea of a robot master that does archaeology for over a month before i finally manifested the whole gang, but for most of that time he was just a message in my personal discord consisting entirely of 'robot master idea: archaeology guy'. i still didn't have a name for him when i sat down and started to officially Think About Them, and glass was the first vaguely archaeology-related word that came into my brain. i decided to go with it because i thought it'd make for an interesting design, and while i agonised over how to draw him for longer than any of the others at first i think he did indeed turn out looking really cool!
he's weak to beat drop because of the whole thing where you can shatter glass with a loud enough sound at a specific frequency! technically psychic cry is also a sound-based weapon, and it's one of his secondary weaknesses, but psychic cry is just white noise without a very consistent frequency as opposed to the precise pitch control mega man would probably get from beat drop [i'm not explaining this well but look up how sound shatters glass because i promise this makes sense]. it's also because the man has sensory issues and violently playing a loud noise at him would be distressing
he's probably the most fragile of the eight mathematically [although i don't feel like running all those numbers], taking double damage from the mega buster and being at least slightly weak to five out of eight weapons. however, he also has two outright immunities, those being pixel firewall and eerie pulsar, because they're both at least somewhat electricity-based and glass is a really good insulator!
i haven't thought much about what his stage would look like beyond 'underground ruin because archaeologist bot,' but i imagine it having some sort of lighting gimmick! either it's like bright man and [like 30 seconds of] quick man's stages where the lights will go out and come back on depending on some sort of action, like destroying particular enemies in that case, or it could be more like sandopolis zone act 2 from sonic 3 & knuckles where the lights automatically dim over time and you have to turn them back on with switches throughout the level. after typing it out i think i'm leaning more towards the second, but ultimately until and unless i learn how to code it doesn't really matter :pensive:
also i think it'd be neat if he occasionally works with pharaoh man! they can be buddies :)
that's about all i have on glass man so far but thank you so much for asking about him!! love this guy so much it's unreal..... also here's the art without the dramatic lighting for colour picking purposes, i tried to put them at the top but tumblr formatting has decided it would rather be terrible :/
