#SLN-001

[stardestroyer81]

This past Saturday marked the five year anniversary of Mega Man Ultimate's conception, and my good friends got to see a slides presentation of my sizeable archive of five years worth of concept art and early sprites dating as far back as late 2017!

One such early sprite was the very first stage select portrait for Zap Man, in which I had drawn him in a front-facing angle rather a 3/4ths angle. My sister @stephysalcido suggested I ought to remaster Zap Man's original stage select portrait, and what I ended up with not only exceeded my expectations but looks wicked cool too! 💙✨

[mmx-code-crimpphire]

Headcanon - The Robot Master Wanderers

Since I know this won't get touched upon in detail within the story, so I might as well make a post/chapter about this.

NEW CHAPTER ON AO3!!

So - Protoman aka Blues, makes a group called the Robot Master Wanderers. He makes this out of other Robot Masters wanting to escape being Wily's robot, to explore the world as a human would, or explore beyond their programming. It didn't start out that way, of course.

But Blues did it all on his own. It all starts by running away to not have his personality taken from him just to get his core fixed. Yes, I think you noticed I got this from the Archie Comics. From there, Wily finds him and he becomes part of Wily's legion of robots and fights out of his newfound hatred for Dr Light.

Until he meets Rock in person. They fight and Blues realizes how much Rock cares for their creator. No matter if Rock has a driven purpose or not. Rock trying to convince Blues that Dr Light isn't a bad person and that he doesn't want to destroy any part of him, is the first instance of his code expansion-

Damn I should make a delta nano headcanon part 2- since it started from code expansion, plus Blues' independence, his coding helping with that.

Anyway- It's, of course, a visible change, albeit subtle, and Blue definitely notices it.

He then learns that Wily only temporarily fixed him, and he decided to run off again. Fighting alongside Rock. He then finds another Robot Master named Night Man, who was one of Cossack's Robot Masters and they grow a friendship in a short matter of time. I'll also make another post about Night Man and who he is, don't worry. But I'll have to get my best friend's permission first, cuz it is his character so- ye lmao

But yeah they wander together while helping Rock as he fights the Robot Masters tied to Wily and Wily himself within his Wily Machines.

Over the course of the two wandering, they find a few Robot Masters have escaped Wily's clutches to find out about their story and rumors circulating around them. Some were curious about their wanderings and if they could do the same, and Blues knows they can do what they please, as long as they don't hurt other humans, referring to the First Law of Robotics.

Which I may also touch upon. Man, I'm thinking of other headcanons I wanna post from this one alone, jesus.

I'll put in the list of wanderers they acquire throughout the story of Classic, and a little bit of X in the AU.

In order of joining in the Robot Master Era, we have

-Protoman/Blues (DLN-000) -Night Man (DCN-009) -Metal Man (DWN-009) -Skull Man (DCN-008) -Star Man (DWN-037) -Tengu Man (DWN-057) -Bass Maestro (SWN-001) -Tornado Man (DLN-010) -Splash Woman (DLN-011) -Jewel Man (DLN-013) -Chill Man (DWN-076) -Sheep Man (DWN-077) -Solar Man (DWN-080) -Block Man (DLN-017) -Fuse Man (DLN-018) -Blast Man (DLN-019) -Tundra Man (DCN-010)

And in the Replioid Era we have

-Kejicchi (Who I'll also touch upon, and he's my OC huehue) -ProtoBlues (SLN-REP-000) -Nocturnal Bat (SCN-REP-001) -Bass “Fortenium” Maestro (SLN-REP-001) -Dynamo -Night Shade -Axl (Temporary) -Lumine (Temporary)

The reason why Axl and Lumine go in temporarily is when Axl tries to ask the Hunters for help in X7 Arc, he teams up with Keji, who also fights alongside Zero. I can't wait to write that arc too omg.

And why it's temporary for Lumine is after his redemption arc starts (yes, he gets one), he goes to Keji and Blues to see if he could join somewhere, so he won't be cooped up at Hunter Base all day. And Keji welcomes him to the club. And so he and Axl can find their respective creator, since she went missing after Lumine went under quarantine for his very dangerous variant of the Maverick Virus.

After they find her, they all live together as a family, a domestic life they all wish they had and are having their wish come true.

And because of the Wanderers starting in the Robot Master Era, they have code expanded on them as well, Blues being untouched most of the time, because his already does that on its own. X's does too, of course, but on a wayyyyy more advanced level compared to Blues.

Bass' code expands when he joins the Wanderers and gets a torn cape from Tengu Man to try and find Blues to join. Especially being closer to Rock.

Oh- and the Wanderers have a theme of wearing capes, cloaks, and scarfs, thanks to blues starting that with wearing his own scarf. But it's unintentional, he swears upon it. The others just started wearing their own after a while and he established the group officially.

And- there you have it. A brief history of how the Wanderers became an official group of Robot Masters who would expand their coding to experience things and to be able to break the obey code for the Three Laws of Robotics. As well as Blues internally promising to himself that he would redeem robots having independence like him and hot have a stigma of Robots being dangerous.

Which may hint that he may feel responsible for starting the obey code become a reality in the first place >w>

[ministar100]

🌟Special Numbers!🌟

Since I created a "SLN -001" (Light Man) and "SCN - 001" (Tenor), Bass doesn't seem happy... Because he isn't so "Special" as he thought anymore... *** Desde que creé un "SLN - 001" (Light Man) y un "SCN - 001" (Tenor), Bass no parece feliz... Porque él ya no es tan "Especial" como él pensaba...

[quietlydiabolic]

I’m working on a Brain Bot stim board and trying to decide what his registration # should be, or if he should have one. 🤔 Since Ruby Spears only had the original Light line, would that make him DLN-009?

But to tell you the truth. I’m very tempted to make him SLN-001. Like, Dr. Light’s idea of a Special line is a scientist robot, and Dr. Wily’s idea of a Special line is a combat machine.

If Brain Bot had ever shown up in any other media, however, I think he’d just have a different creator.

What do you guys think?

[graysonhome]

Surya Stallion SLN-001 Decorative Accent

Surya Stallion SLN-001 Decorative Accent

Price:$270.00

Book End Stone Colors: Gray Made in India

Shop now: https://graysondh.com/collections/decorative-objects/products/surya-stallion-sln-001-decorative-accent

[stardestroyer81]

Last month, after seeing the success of my then-previous attempt to sprite something in 16-Bit, I decided to give it another go many months later by giving Glitch Man a Mega Man 7 styled makeover... with a result that I'm still very much thrilled with!

Very shortly after I showcased my 16-Bit Glitch Man sprite, I knew I wanted to jump straight into SNES-ifying yet another Synth Legion Number, though it was admittedly tough to decide who to choose of the remaining seven. I wanted to focus on choosing a Number that'd be a fair challenge to sprite in 16-Bit, but nothing too extreme.

And who better to choose than the Synth Legion's second in command?

Up next in my ongoing series of doubling the bits of Mega Man Ultimate's robot masters is none other than Zap Man, who proved to be exactly the sort of fun challenge I was looking for!

(Check under the cut for the usual Star Insight, Zap Man’s spriting process and a little bonus!)

This is something I never touched on when first revealing Zap Man and the sprite I'd drawn for him to tumblr, though of the eight Synth Legion Numbers, I would say that Zap Man was probably the second to third hardest to sprite. I'm certain that this is because I stuck within a five color limit, and his hulking size is slightly non-standard when compared to other robot master sprites in canon.

However, it was and still is a sprite I'm proud of nonetheless, and when preparing to go about my method of creating Mega Man 7 styled sprites out of already existing 8-Bit sprites, I had but one goal for Zap Man's SNES iteration— to up the detail to the absolute maximum.

Naturally, with over double the amount of colors I was able to use, it was an easily attainable goal! Since the above sprite is about two or three times bigger than Zap Man's original sprite, this of course meant that I could run wild in squeezing out as much detail as I could, and that was something that I had an absolute blast with.

Zap Man definitely took me much longer than an hour to sprite. If I recall, I think this sprite took me just about a day to draw— not twenty-four consecutive hours, obviously, but as you can probably tell, a sprite with THIS level of detail was no walk in the park to create, as evident by the above sprite process!

With that said, though, I think that Zap Man's 16-Bit sprite may just be one of if not my best SNES styled sprites yet, and I'm thrilled to finally be able to show him off! ✨

[stardestroyer81]

Longtime followers of mine may have seen my faux Mega Man Ultimate screenshots, which range from exemplary stage designs to full-on boss battles! However, it's been a little while since I've made another sprite piece of what certain in-game moments of Mega Man Ultimate would look like, and for my next screenshot, I knew just what I wanted to sprite!

My last faux screenshot detailed the electrifying battle against SLN-001, Zap Man, and seeing how easy it was to sprite full screens with the magic of tilesetting, I aimed to make a mockup of a battle against another one of the Synth Legion Numbers, Satellite Woman! And unlike Zap Man's simpler NES-esque boss arena...

... the boss arena of SLN-003 has a lot more going on!

Who doesn't love space? When it came time for me to decide which of the eight Synth Legion numbers to devote my next boss battle mockup to, Satellite Woman was my first choice, because that meant I got to sprite an out of this world background for her by way of tilesetting!

And there was a lot I could do with it, too. While I initially didn't have a whole lot of ideas as to what Satellite Woman's boss arena could look like, I did eventually come up with two goals: for it to have a Mega Man V feel to it as well as referencing her bio, which mentions her base of operations being exactly one hundred parsecs away from Earth.

This is what I came up with! One of the earliest design decisions I made was that I wanted to have Mega Man fall into the boss arena rather than walk into it— we haven't had a lot of robot master boss arenas of a vertical caliber since the original Mega Man! Fortress bosses have entrances of this type, so why can't more robot masters?

Secondly, the arena lacks walls, because I find that the quarters in which you do battle with Satellite Woman feel a lot more vast without them than they would with the usual boss-in-the-box formula. I first planned on having the satellite platform be shorter in width, where if you fell off, it'd be a one-hit KO, but I felt like that wouldn't be too fair (Even if Cloud Man did it first).

Perhaps the most appealing part about the entire background are the drifting satellites and the gorgeous view of Earth— both of which took me quite some time to sprite! The Earth sprite in particular (Which I think was the asset that took me the longest to sprite) fits snugly into a 32x32 tile, whereas the satellites make up a 48x48 tile.

The last design choice I'd like to mention are the colors in this piece. For Satellite Woman's boss arena, I wanted to stray away from the usual NES limitations and go for something a little more flashy— hence my decision to make the space background all kinds of blue hues instead of a solid black (Plus, if I went with the latter, you wouldn't be able to make out Satellite's complex sprites very well!).

I kept switching between purple and light green for the bottom platform, and when I couldn't reach a consensus, I tried a turquoise color to see what that would look like, and it made for a stellar in-between! It was always a given for the space station up above to be colored after Satellite Woman, so I didn't have a lot of trouble figuring out colors there.

And finally, as I've started to do for my art posts, this was the process I went about in designing the arena! Starting with a conceptual sketch of the room I drew in MS Paint, it follows up with a general layout made up of placeholder green and purple tiles, and from there you can see the final product start to form!

With design specifics out of the way, we can touch base on what it's like to be pitted against the connoisseur of the cosmos, Satellite Woman! Her battle takes a lot of inspiration from Star Man's battle from Mega Man 5, with the emphasis on the robot master constantly being shielded and zero-gravity jumping aplenty.

When she's not putting her Reflect Satellite to good use, Mega Man may attempt to land a blow on her... if she doesn't land a blow on him first! The only time you can do damage to Satellite Woman is when her shields are down or when she's firing lasers from her Satellite Buster (Pictured above), so it's very much easier said than done...

That is, of course, unless you arrive with her weakness weapon in tow!

Enter Glitch Strike, the weapon you acquire after defeating the bug-tastic Glitch Man! Glitch Strike allows Mega Man to speedily glitch a lengthy distance in any direction, passing through any projectiles without harm and— with precise aim— may ram into opponents. However, this ability comes with a hefty energy cost (Much like Tornado Blow in Mega Man 9), and you'll only see four or five uses of it with a full meter. Better use them wisely!

Well, that's about everything— this ended up being one of my biggest sprite pieces in a while, and it took a whole lot of thought and experimentation to look just right! I hope you've enjoyed reading through the design process, and more importantly the fruits of my labor!

[stardestroyer81]

Ever since I’ve started making faux screenshots for Mega Man Ultimate, I’ve begun practicing the art of tilesetting, which makes making sprite art LEAGUES easier than how I used to go about creating it. Since my first experimentation with tilesetting in this post, I’ve learned how use 16x16 tiles to create visually appealing foreground and background elements in sprite posts. My personal favorite might have to be the background I sprited for Torch Man or this background I sprited for Spore Knight! I’ve been wanting to do another faux Mega Man Ultimate screenshot for a little while now, and instead of focusing on another in-stage screenshot like I did with Strafe Man, I wanted to see if I could try my hand at a boss battle between one of the eight robot masters. It took some thinking as to who I wanted to focus on in terms of conceptualizing a boss battle for and in terms of tileset design, but it didn’t take long for me to make a decision. Thus...

Let’s take a trip to the Top•Energy Electrical Plant and duke it out with the master of all things electric, Zap Man!

While I don’t have the specific doodle on-hand, I knew when I first designed Zap Man that I wanted his boss battle to involve large columns of electrical barriers descending from the room’s top. Interestingly, this was before I had the chance to play Mega Man 11, and a similar attack can be found in Fuse Man’s stage against Dread Spark! So, that was part of the inspiration for Zap Man’s boss battle, though there’s a little more to it than that. In addition to electrical barriers, Zap Man uses his Zap Chaser (A powered up version of Scramble Thunder) to really keep Mega Man on his toes during the fight. Between that, the barriers and Zap Man continuously leaping around the boss room, a heavy emphasis on evasion is key to reign supreme against SLN-001! My favorite part about spriting this was undeniably the background. It ended up looking a little different from what I originally had in mind, but I find what I went with looks a lot like a mix between the faux 8-Bit visual style of Mega Man 9 and 10 and the simplicity of the NES Mega Man titles— I’m REALLY proud of it! I knew up front that I wanted to include some kind of big background element like a futuristic electrical generator, and included one that I based around the electrical dome Zap Man’s got! Overall, I am very proud of this piece of sprite art, and plan to make more boss battle mockups in the near future. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! 

[stardestroyer81]

SLN-001: Zap Man

Height: 6'4" Special Weapon: Zap Chaser Good Point: Attentive Bad Point: Hotheaded Zap Man, a robot initially built for electricity plant inspection, talks big and stands bigger. With a glass dome constantly exerting five hundred thousand gigawatts, his electricity is easily the most dangerous out of any of Mega Man's previous shocking foes, able to cause blackouts at a moment's notice. True to his no-nonsense nature, Zap Man can sometimes be an impatient bot and tends to have things done his way, otherwise he grows irritated. In his spare time, he tours electricity plants across the globe, harshly critiquing each one to the point of growing so furious that he'll subject the entire town to a power outage. I had meant to wait a little while before beginning to upload each of the eight robot masters I’ve designed for Mega Man Ultimate, but I simply couldn’t after the unexpected positive response I received upon uploading the stage select- I had no idea it would be received so well! Starting things off is the first robot master I designed for the line, the electrifying Zap Man! I hope you enjoy the sprites!

[ministar100]

“You’re the light of my life…” -Spectre Man

Long story...

But who is that robot next to Spectre Man?

I was planning his existence.

He's the SLN - 001 (Special Light Number), Light Man. In the Japanese Version, he's known as "Right Man".

One day I'll tell you about Spectre Man's love interest and Light Man's backstory...

***

“Eres la luz de mi vida…” -Spectre Man

Larga historia.

¿Pero quién es ese robot al lado de Spectre Man?

Estaba planeando su existencia.

Él es el SLN - 001 (Special Light Number), Light Man. En la versión japonesa, es conocido como "Right Man".

Algún día les contaré sobre el interés amoroso de Spectre Man y la historia de Light Man...