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Description

This was my first time taking a crack at utilizing sprites I ripped using Fighter Factory and I have to say, I am most definitely using this tool again because dear lord it is fantastic. Now for those of you who may not know, Fighter Factory is a program made to interact with characters and stages created for the freeware fighting game engine M.U.G.E.N. It's a program I've actually used a few times myself and yet for some reason, some mind-bogglingly stupid reason, I never thought for one moment that the program that was made specifically for crafting this stuff would actually allow you to rip them nor did I think it would be made to be as user-friendly as possible and so I've kind of stupidly avoided using it until now because as I've said before, my technological prowess sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. Anyway, originally the spark of inspiration came when I was thinking about the sprites created by Balthazar and Cybaster (I hope I'm recalling that correctly.) who are a part of the team behind Hyper Dragon Ball Z, a full-fledged fighting game that's being created utilizing the engine which can best be described as FighterZ before FighterZ was a thing it is that good with one of the most notable aspects of it to me being the absolutely gorgeous aesthetic it has and how willing it is to just have fun with the franchise and not take it so seriously which leads to various completely unexpected cameos by various characters from within and outside of Dragon Ball which includes things like a cameo from Optimus Prime and originally? The spark of inspiration was that I would just make Optimus into his Shattered Glass self and leave it at that just for the sake of a fun edit. Then of course I got to thinking a bit more and so I thought that I'd make an image featuring my three favorite evil doppelgangers, Goku Black, SG Optimus and Scourge whose sprites come from Jack-Hedgehog who is a very talented custom sprite maker I'd highly recommend checking out. Now is there a story-reason behind these three being together? No I just thought it looked cool though I have to say, making this provided some intriguing challenges. In particular, getting the shade of purple on Optimus Prime just right was supremely tricky since not only was I already going to be toying with filters but also for the sake of it, I just like this Prime to be darker in color and more muted with me being very meticulous on that aspect. It was also tricky with Goku Black since while he is going to be coming to HDBZ in the future, of course the character is not out yet so I had to settle with modifying the existing Goku Black palette for Super Saiyan Goku which has been used a lot by various sprite animators... in spite of the fact that he's supposed to have a sort of skirt while most leave just the black pants. Now considering I am not at all what you'd call a sprite artist? Doing the necessary modifications to get it to where I was at least happy with it was rough and even looking at it now? I'm still not sure if I truly like it.

Now in terms of other things I did? I added slight glow effects on each character and the stars to make them stick out more, I opted to give Optimus in particular a light trail effect inspired by visuals I've seen every so often in Gundam and I also applied a filter or two. Now I could've probably gone for the more recognizable choice of Nemesis Prime for the evil Optimus rather than SG but honestly, considering the color schemes were purple and pink for the most part? I felt SG Prime just went with this a lot better. That being said, I hope you all like this fun little image and that you'll all take care.

Description

This was my first time taking a crack at utilizing sprites I ripped using Fighter Factory and I have to say, I am most definitely using this tool again because dear lord it is fantastic. Now for those of you who may not know, Fighter Factory is a program made to interact with characters and stages created for the freeware fighting game engine M.U.G.E.N. It's a program I've actually used a few times myself and yet for some reason, some mind-bogglingly stupid reason, I never thought for one moment that the program that was made specifically for crafting this stuff would actually allow you to rip them nor did I think it would be made to be as user-friendly as possible and so I've kind of stupidly avoided using it until now because as I've said before, my technological prowess sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. Anyway, originally the spark of inspiration came when I was thinking about the sprites created by Balthazar and Cybaster (I hope I'm recalling that correctly.) who are a part of the team behind Hyper Dragon Ball Z, a full-fledged fighting game that's being created utilizing the engine which can best be described as FighterZ before FighterZ was a thing it is that good with one of the most notable aspects of it to me being the absolutely gorgeous aesthetic it has and how willing it is to just have fun with the franchise and not take it so seriously which leads to various completely unexpected cameos by various characters from within and outside of Dragon Ball which includes things like a cameo from Optimus Prime and originally? The spark of inspiration was that I would just make Optimus into his Shattered Glass self and leave it at that just for the sake of a fun edit. Then of course I got to thinking a bit more and so I thought that I'd make an image featuring my three favorite evil doppelgangers, Goku Black, SG Optimus and Scourge whose sprites come from Jack-Hedgehog who is a very talented custom sprite maker I'd highly recommend checking out. Now is there a story-reason behind these three being together? No I just thought it looked cool though I have to say, making this provided some intriguing challenges. In particular, getting the shade of purple on Optimus Prime just right was supremely tricky since not only was I already going to be toying with filters but also for the sake of it, I just like this Prime to be darker in color and more muted with me being very meticulous on that aspect. It was also tricky with Goku Black since while he is going to be coming to HDBZ in the future, of course the character is not out yet so I had to settle with modifying the existing Goku Black palette for Super Saiyan Goku which has been used a lot by various sprite animators... in spite of the fact that he's supposed to have a sort of skirt while most leave just the black pants. Now considering I am not at all what you'd call a sprite artist? Doing the necessary modifications to get it to where I was at least happy with it was rough and even looking at it now? I'm still not sure if I truly like it.

Now in terms of other things I did? I added slight glow effects on each character and the stars to make them stick out more, I opted to give Optimus in particular a light trail effect inspired by visuals I've seen every so often in Gundam and I also applied a filter or two. Now I could've probably gone for the more recognizable choice of Nemesis Prime for the evil Optimus rather than SG but honestly, considering the color schemes were purple and pink for the most part? I felt SG Prime just went with this a lot better. That being said, I hope you all like this fun little image and that you'll all take care.