Xypter Final Version (Fo Real Though)

Boy it's been a long time coming. This character has gone through tons of revamps. This was mostly due to my endless perfectionism and my way of never being satisfied with anything. It used to happen more frequently, but as I've gotten older I've learned a few things about art and character development. Although I've said it before, I promise that this will be the last redo of his sprite.

As you can see, the current version has quite a change from the previous 6 before him. I spent a lot of time reanalyzing my old spriting style and found that it was lacking in what I currently wanted. I didn't want to start any comic project with outdated, mediocre sprites, so for the billionth (and yes, last) time, I decided it would be wise for me to give him a sprite utilizing my current art prowess. But unlike the previous version, I didn't want to make this a hard edit of what I already had. I ultimately wanted something that looked fresh with an overall purpose in mind. After mustering up the confidence to touch my old pixel editing programs, I started my two week journey of reinventing what I knew.

From then until now is what you see before you. I wanted to give a recap for people who hadn't seen my previous versions to show how much improvement I've gone through. I'm honestly embarrassed that it took me this long to attempt something new. I recolored and edited the last sprites so much, that there's really no way to tell the difference between them except their obvious clothing change. Doing this 5th and final version has made me feel like that I've turned a new leaf in the right direction.

Now as I stated before, I wanted this final version to be different in more than just the appearance. I made a tough choice to revert my character back to the roots of no clothing (taking away the pants and shirt). This decision was made in part for aesthetic purposes as well as simplicity. However, though these things were important, the more bigger reason for this change was for story purposes.

Xypter was originally somebody I envisioned to have some futuristic aspects apart from the original Sonic series, but not so much that it looked like an entirely different series. Therefore, I decided to introduce a concept of first and second generation hedgehog genome revisions. In my story, hedgehogs (and other species as well) started making more scientific discoveries about their basic genetics. Even the concept of chaos energy, which for a long time was regarded as something only a select few people could use, was eventually able to be utilized by future species because of technological advancements. Research on genetics eventually led to making advancements in the modification of the body. The first batch of newly modified hedgehogs had their back spines and tails removed to make them resemble their human counterparts more closely. This is the reason why Xypter has both of these traits removed. His parents along with his sibling Breaker were part of the first group to have these modifications tested on which led to other plot points that I'll mention in later bios.

This and other things were what I wanted to add in order to give more purpose to my character. It wasn't enough for to make characters that have unique powers and appearances. I wanted to have something deeper that gave them a purpose for why they are unique.

In any such case, these are just a few things that I've been playing with lately. I regard this revamp as the beginning of something big and exciting that I finally get to release from my mind. With each new character I'll be searching for ways to add them to the big comic story I have in the works. I hope to release a beta sprite sheet soon so if any one is interested in giving me some help they can do so. Until then, look forward to more things to come.

Edit: I also forgot to mention that version 1 was made so long ago that I don't even have the original sprites saved on my current PC. I did have them posted on sheezyart, but as of right now the site is down and it doesn't look like it's going to be coming back any time soon. It makes me sad face :C