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Description
(Here, have some music from the game to listen to while you read the usual wall-of-text I type out when I post new stuff. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhXw4_… )

So hey, it's been almost a year since I last uploaded a thing, time to post some sprite art.
Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis was one of the first RPG games I owned, and even though I loved playing it, I never actually finished it (it's really kind of long, and the dungeons are pretty expansive with a lot of backtracking -- plus I kept getting lost in, like, the second dungeon or something.)

(Update: as of January 10th '14, I finally beat Dark Sol and cleared the game )

After learning of the death of Greg Martin -- the man responsible for the game's cover art, as well as that of many other games in the 90's, I got a sudden spark that said "Hey, that game's been haunting you for long enough, let's beat it once and for all".

So now I got farther then I ever have before, and am actually in the final dungeon as I write this.

To take a bit of a break though, I felt like doing a little of pixel artwork.

You see, the mugshots that the game's menu gives you are just plain silhouettes -- which, while understandable due to palette restrictions, still kind of disappointed me even back when I first played this, because the characters look pretty cool on the cover art, and since the entire game takes place in first-person view, you don't really see them often, aside from when you recruit your 2 partners, Milo and Pyra.

After I went around looking for artwork of this game (which is VERY scarce), I stumbled across a pixel art piece by SuzuriHeinze of the game's designated damsel in distress, recreated in Hama-beads.

A small comment-conversation later, she mentioned the same thing that bothered me, that in-game art of the main characters is hard to find, which kinda inspired me to take matters in my own hand.

So then, I "filled in" the silhouette profile shots the game gives you, and gave the characters some proper faces -- all of which recreated as best as I could from what little art exists of the characters in-game.

Pyra and Milo from when you recruit them, and Hiro from his "naked" equipping sprites and the box art.

I took care not to meddle with the outlines in any way (besides making them black, obviously), so to best recreate them as I feel they might have appeared, had they been given proper mugshots in the game itself.

×3 resized versions on the left, original-resolution version on the right.

In-game reference for Milo: www.oocities.org/timessquare/b…

In-game reference for Pyra: www.oocities.org/timessquare/b…

Shining in the Darkness © 1991 Sega Enterprises

Bonus fun trivia for reading this far: Milo and Pyra are named "Bilbo" and "Merlin" in Japanese, respectively. Some silly little tidbit I found out while looking for art of them. I suppose considering Milo's a hobbit and Pyra a mage, they just took the most obviously straightforward names they could find.

Description
(Here, have some music from the game to listen to while you read the usual wall-of-text I type out when I post new stuff. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhXw4_… )

So hey, it's been almost a year since I last uploaded a thing, time to post some sprite art.
Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis was one of the first RPG games I owned, and even though I loved playing it, I never actually finished it (it's really kind of long, and the dungeons are pretty expansive with a lot of backtracking -- plus I kept getting lost in, like, the second dungeon or something.)

(Update: as of January 10th '14, I finally beat Dark Sol and cleared the game )

After learning of the death of Greg Martin -- the man responsible for the game's cover art, as well as that of many other games in the 90's, I got a sudden spark that said "Hey, that game's been haunting you for long enough, let's beat it once and for all".

So now I got farther then I ever have before, and am actually in the final dungeon as I write this.

To take a bit of a break though, I felt like doing a little of pixel artwork.

You see, the mugshots that the game's menu gives you are just plain silhouettes -- which, while understandable due to palette restrictions, still kind of disappointed me even back when I first played this, because the characters look pretty cool on the cover art, and since the entire game takes place in first-person view, you don't really see them often, aside from when you recruit your 2 partners, Milo and Pyra.

After I went around looking for artwork of this game (which is VERY scarce), I stumbled across a pixel art piece by SuzuriHeinze of the game's designated damsel in distress, recreated in Hama-beads.

A small comment-conversation later, she mentioned the same thing that bothered me, that in-game art of the main characters is hard to find, which kinda inspired me to take matters in my own hand.

So then, I "filled in" the silhouette profile shots the game gives you, and gave the characters some proper faces -- all of which recreated as best as I could from what little art exists of the characters in-game.

Pyra and Milo from when you recruit them, and Hiro from his "naked" equipping sprites and the box art.

I took care not to meddle with the outlines in any way (besides making them black, obviously), so to best recreate them as I feel they might have appeared, had they been given proper mugshots in the game itself.

×3 resized versions on the left, original-resolution version on the right.

In-game reference for Milo: www.oocities.org/timessquare/b…

In-game reference for Pyra: www.oocities.org/timessquare/b…

Shining in the Darkness © 1991 Sega Enterprises

Bonus fun trivia for reading this far: Milo and Pyra are named "Bilbo" and "Merlin" in Japanese, respectively. Some silly little tidbit I found out while looking for art of them. I suppose considering Milo's a hobbit and Pyra a mage, they just took the most obviously straightforward names they could find.