One month until Christmas 📅

In one month it will be Christmas, stores and houses are already starting to be decorated as the date approaches, the year went by too fast... Back to swimming, it was a bit tough. I don't know if it’s because I spent a week without training or if it's related to the more intense workout. We swam a thousand meters freestyle, then 500 meters with a pull buoy and hand paddles, then five 100 meters sprints still using the same equipment. I didn't keep track of all the times, only my best today, 1 minute and 22 seconds. I got tired and unfortunately I couldn't do 10 repetitions on the chin-up, but I managed to complete my workout at the gym.

People2_7, the Bard 🎻, there isn't much difference. In this version, the cyan clothing is tucked under the white cloak, while in the other design the clothing or vest, if it can be called that, is worn over the white cloak.

People2_8, the Bar Mama🍸, according to her, I added some accessories that appear in the Face/Bust version and lowered her breasts to give a sense of volume 🍈. I adjusted some bangs and changed the fur scarf to fit the new body that "Mama" received 💃.

This time I couldn't play anything over the weekend... 🎮🙃

On Saturday I arranged to go running with an acquaintance of mine. I had mentioned that I usually run after the gym and he invited me to run early in the morning along a route close to our homes. We started at 8:00 AM. We ran 3.52 km in 17 minutes and 48 seconds at a pace of 5:03. When we returned to our starting point, we sat at the nearest square and caught up. After resting a bit and drinking some water from a nearby fountain, we decided to walk along another away where we didn't measure the distance and after getting quite far from where we were, we ran back to the square at a lighter pace, which ended up being 1.17 km in 7 minutes and 17 seconds at a pace of 6:12.

He tracked it with his phone's GPS, while I used my watch and the difference was huge. I wondered if at some point my watch paused and resumed the exercise, but I believe that since my watch tracks movement based on arm motion, the measurement ended up being inaccurate, so all this time I've been running using my watch, I was actually running more and at higher intensity ha ha ha. For my next runs, I'll try using my phone's GPS, although I'm a bit afraid of moving my arm too much and sending my phone flying or someone on the street trying to steal it, since unfortunately the world has been getting less and less safe lately... :/

I watched animes on Saturday and Sunday. I wanted to play a game to have some fun last Sunday, but I ended up not managing to do it, so I'll leave it for another week.

Spy x Family, Anya saved the day! It was nice seeing her growth and it seems like the next episode will show the consequences of her actions and maybe bring her closer to the mission's targets.

To Your Eternity, -.- I hope, I really hope this arc with the pervert ends soon...

Gnosia, an episode without a new type of authority, but it had comedy and romance, it made me laugh a few times, especially the way the invaders gave themselves away since they copy the personalities of the bodies they invade. Now, something strange is the AI being infected... so it makes me wonder, will the final villain really be one or more Gnosia or the AI inside the protagonists themselves? Could this be a hint for the finale? Hmm... now I'm curious for more episodes of this infinite cycle of repetitions.

Boku no Hero, it was an episode showing the support of all allies and friends made throughout the series helping to defeat the final boss. "Unity is strength" happens a lot in works with many characters. The animation is still excellent and the emotions the episode conveys are strong. The next episode will be about the Todoroki family, some things are still unresolved, so it'll be good to see them addressed. I don't know if there's a continuation in the manga or if there will be one in the future. I find it unlikely since the big villain who called himself the Demon King was defeated. Maybe they'll explore the past of Deku's predecessors, but honestly, I don't think I'd watch it in either case, I'm a bit tired of long running series. I plan to finish only the ones I've already been watching with many seasons and after that, stick to movies or short series with a definitive ending, since many times I watched shows that were never renewed or if they were, it took years to happen.

TODAY I MANAGED TO GO TO THE GYM!!!! YEAAAAHH

Finally! I went 7 days without exercising, I couldn't take it anymore and I was surprised today because I managed to do 11 rep pull ups, almost getting to 12, my chin was just a little bit away from passing the bar. And I decided to run on the way back. I had to slow down because I started feeling Saturday's fatigue. Even knowing my watch measures things wrong way, I'll at least record that it was 2.1 km in 13 minutes and 6 seconds at a 6'14" pace.

People2_5, the Weapon Shop Owner ⚔🛡, to me he's also a blacksmith, there's little difference. The white leaning toward light blue on the Face/Bust while it's white to grey in the Character. Same with the different clothing color and piece type. In the first design he look older or more tired.

People2_6, the Fortune Teller 🔮, she's always present in RPGs, like crystals, magic circles, slimes, an NPC that never fails to appear. The differences between the designs are in her hair and some accessories, like the one on her forehead and her shoulder pads. I ended up making the crystal ball smaller for the first design, maybe I'll increase its size before making her walking animations, maybe.

A very unusual week 🍃

Not much to say about today... Because this week was quite, hmm, unusual.

People2_3, the Village Chief 👨‍🦳, as she classified him, is an elderly man who has a slight difference in appearance. His clothing changes very little, he has black buttons or holes in his outfit, a wider headband, and a yellow cloth around his neck. I used to think those were gold chains in the Character design. Maybe I'll revise the cloth I made, it looks disappearing in the full set.
People2_4, the Merchant Man 🎒, ended up looking thinner in his Face/Bust version and apparently taller. I tried to follow the reference faithfully for the beret, but I still don't feel satisfied, maybe because of the beret's colors.
I'm reviewing everyone's palette, but maybe I'm being too strict by leaving too few colors available. In the future, when I finish reviewing all the designs, I'll probably increase the number of colors in the palette.

A hospital couch is “way too comfortable” to sleep on... 🥱😴🤕

Since I was accompanying my relative at the hospital last night, I slept there, but I couldn't sleep well because the patient’s room had a short couch and the hospital pillow was very thin. So once again, I ended up not doing any physical activity today. I wanted to sleep after I switched places with another relative of mine, but it was already past 8:20 in the morning, and I got home around 9:15 with no sleepiness at all.

Trying to get back to delivering 2 characters per day.
People2_1, the Priest ✝, in his Face/Bust version, he looks like he's preaching a mass with that ceremonial cloth, and his hair is swept back as if he had used some gel. But in the Character version, he looks older and doesn’t seem to have very detailed ornaments...
People2_2, the Sister ✝, there's a difference between the veil in the Face/Bust and Character versions in how it falls over the shoulders, the colors and the border details. In one, the dress seems to have black tones while the veil has dark blue tones. In her first frame, I ended up leaving the dress too high because I reused it from another frame I made for 031-Cleric07. I might change it to look more similar to the Character version, or leave 2 pixels of height for the shoe since she’s an NPC in this RPG Maker.

Another day without physical exercise... 😩

I think things were pretty bad at the place where I work out, it stayed closed today again. It must be that the agency responsible for safety is preventing the place from opening due to the storms we had last weekend. I thought only two trees had fallen, but maybe there are more with a risk of falling... I worked and reviewed the subjects I studied yesterday and other relevant ones and later at night I went to the hospital to accompany a relative who underwent surgery.

People1_8 and People5_8, a Grandmother 👵, didn't have differences in the design. I imagine that the scarf, if I can call it that, is the main highlight of the Face/Bust, so besides the colors, what differentiates one from the other is the monocle and where the scarf or cloth is tied.

Another day without physical exercise... going without working out is give withdrawal symptoms!? 🤣😂

I woke up really early and unfortunately I didn't know the gym and the swimming classes were still closed, I hadn't seen the announcement. Since I woke up early, I took the opportunity to get ahead on the commission. After that, I worked and studied in the evening.

People1_7 and People5_7, the Grandfather 👴, I designed him inspired by the Face/Bust, he looks like a different person. Then, next to him, I made a recolor version with the head following the Character design. After that, I made versions with the same clothes as the Character. Above those 4 sprites, I placed 4 more with variations in the width of the clothing over the sleeves and the height of the head in relation to the ground to give a bent-over feeling. But even after all that, I'm still unsure which frame I'll keep 🤔🤕🤯. And I thought the pants suited him better than the dark gray ones...

Gunfire, punches and explosions! 👽💥🔫👮‍♀️

On Saturday, I woke up again at 5:00 in the morning and went swimming. Since the water was warm and the sun was very strong, I couldn't swim more than 4,250 meters. Three thousand were in sets of 100 meters, one thousand in 20 sets of 50 meters and the last 250 meters were 5 sets of 50 meters. The gym was closed and I even tried doing a few reps on the pull up bar outside the gym, but I was too tired to do… At night, I watched anime episodes while eating popcorn.

Boku no Hero, The episode was good. I was sure he would solve the problem with Tomura, but nope, All for One reappears. About his memories and the revelations from the past, I already suspected that All for One manipulated Tomura's life. I was surprised by the loss of the arms, but Eri appeared at the beginning of the season, didn't she? That would be the famous "MacGuffin".

To Your Eternity, I'll just say I found the episode weird... 😣

Spy x Family, I liked the episode, they still haven't solved the problem with the kidnappers. The funny faces the characters make in the anime are hilarious,  the anime itself is very funny, a kidnapping situation with comedy.

Gnosia, The voice actor of the new character with the hat is the same one who voices the god in To Your Eternity :O. This time there were 12 participants and 3 Gnosias, they added the Guardian Angel authority to the "game". In the next one there will be a dolphin wearing a spacesuit and it looks like there are still 3 characters left the ending all episode shows all the crew members of that ship.

On Sunday morning, I decided to finish playing the third and final stage of Zero Tolerance. In the Sub-Basement levels, I had forgotten that this was where the labyrinths and scares begin.

Since they're corridors upon corridors with many doors, I had to walk with extra caution not to get surprised and I did, I ran into 8 enemies at once after opening a door in a room near the elevator to another level. Up until then, the first three levels had lots of ammo. The fire extinguisher I'd been carrying since the previous stage ended up being useful later on and there were others to refill it.

In level 3 the "big fingers aliens" started showing up, I call them that because of the way they were drawn, their fingers stick out in front of the sprite, making it look like they have big fingers and they attack melee. One thing I noticed was that the Rocket Launcher was getting in my way in tight spots, since I'd take damage too. The Bullet Proof Vest protected me when I tested the weapon. I messed up and could've collected many Handguns from infected humans in levels 1 and 2 while restocking the Shotgun ammo spread across those levels.

From level 5 onward, the scenery starts to change, it looks like I'm inside a "hive", with hexagonal wall textures. As you can see, I was almost out of ammo, I had just enough to finish off all enemies in level 5. I had to go back through many levels where I didn't pick up Shotgun and Pulse Laser ammo to refill everything again before moving on to level 6, another maze, as you can see.

After restocking, it wasn't hard to eliminate enemies, but the fear persisted because the enemy counter on the left side of the screen only counts up to 99. It didn't go down immediately when I killed some enemies, meaning there were more enemies than the counter could track. And since each weapon's ammo cap is 99, I had to make sure I could beat my own challenge of clearing all levels/maps of this stage without wasting ammo. However, in levels 6, 7, 8 onward, ammo started appearing again throughout the map, which was a relief.

The walls that were previously green and hive-like were now red and the layout of level 8 resembled the corridors of the previous building stage, with long hallways unlike the other maps. Here, they provided plenty of Flamethrower ammo to burn the aliens, so I used that to save ammo from the other weapons in my inventory. Some aliens fired from a distance and the ammo they dropped upon dying was Hand Grenades, more useful than the Rocket Launcher in closed environments. From level 9 onward, it looked like the walls were... dripping blood?

Now from level 10 onward, the floor was probably stained with blood. The second-to-last level, level 11, had the most symmetrical map layout I'd ever seen, resembling some of the maps from the first stage, Space Station. I wasted some time there because I forgot to go through one of the dead-end hallways and because of that, one alien was left. But after running across the whole map, I ended up bumping into it, leaving me with just the final level against the Boss. It felt like an eternity to get there, more enemies, scarce resources, and lots of corridors and paths that can confuse you or lure several enemies toward you.

When using the elevator, I was surprised to see the counter showing more than 1 enemy, I didn't remember there being enemies besides the stage Boss on the same level. It seemed obvious that the big one would be at the center of the map, so with that in mind, I walked around the edges of the map counterclockwise, eliminating enemies one by one. I didn't want any of them interrupting my fight against the last Boss on the same level. It seemed obvious that the big one would be at the center of the map, so with that in mind, I walked around the edges of the map counterclockwise, eliminating enemies one by one. I didn't want any of them interrupting my fight against the last Boss. Each lap I made, I closed in the circle a little more. There were only two enemies left near the Boss, I managed to get away and kill the smaller ones, leaving just 1 on the counter, the Boss himself. Only then was it possible to use the Rocket Launcher I had been saving since the start of stage 2 in the building, along the long extreme hallways. It took me a while to defeat him, he was fast and started shooting from far away. I even lost my entire Bullet Proof Vest and some HP. I thought I was going to die, but I held on and killed the last invading alien.

This is the final screen, after this text, the credits roll, finish and the game returns to the Start menu to begin from scratch. By the way, the spinning SEGA logo fits the atmosphere of the game perfectly. For my childhood, it was an excellent game and it made me replay it many times, like this year, but I had never registered for myself that I had defeated every enemy in every map of all 3 stages, not even the game itself tracks that. It would be interesting if the new Collection, which brings a stage with additional canceled levels for the SEGA-CD called "Underground", and the never-released prototype, had extras like: a kill counter, a timer to finish the gameplay, and if finishing with one character in single-player prevented choosing them in the next run. If they had something similar to when a character dies and can't be used anymore, I'd probably try beating the game with all of them, just out of curiosity to see what extra content might show up. It's a shame it didn't get enough success to become a solid franchise today. There's a YouTube user recreating the stages with modern graphics and smoother gameplay, just search the name of the game and add "remake".

I received a commission request for a CharSet in RPG Maker 2000/2003 style. I've been working with VXP larger sprites for a while and it felt strange again to go back to the limited 24x32 frames, it's really hard to make detailed human/small characters that way *🤏.


There were heavy rains in the city over the weekend and apparently the gym had to close today because of it. Knowing that, on Sunday I used this morning to wake up a bit later and get ahead on the commission I received. It rained all day, even into the evening when I was studying and reviewing my work...

People1_6 and People5_6 👩 follow the same direction as the previous one, their clothes are similar with differences in the hair and, in this case, the headscarf. This time I'm seriously considering keeping the sprite bodies from the outer and using the heads from the center sprites. The center designs seem too thin, while the Character design does not.

I reached 11 reps, now it's time to keep it up!!! 💪😆

I woke up really early today, at 5:00 a.m. I made my coffee and scrambled eggs, changed clothes and went to the gym really early, there were only a few people there. This time I managed to do 11 pull up reps. I want to maintain that for a while, and I'd like to go to the gym tomorrow, but because of a national holiday, it'll be closed. So I finished my workout earlier and decided to jog back at an easy pace, I'm not sure what the best term is for a lighter pace. I managed to complete the whole route without any pain. My watch recorded 1,935 steps, 1.92 km, 153 kcal, 9.3 km/h, a 06'24" pace, an average of 130 BPM, in 12 minutes and 18 seconds.

These two are making me uncertain, People1_5 and People5_5 👨. I'm not sure whether to keep only the two center designs. The Face/Bust looks completely different from the Character, but the clothing colors are similar. For the gray-haired one, I was thinking of keeping the chubbier version because it matches the Character head design better and changing the clothes to match the Character so it doesn't look too similar to People1_5. The problem with this recolor is that the two stripes disappear both on the original Character and on the taller sprite I made, which makes it look to me like an unfinished sprite or like the pixels are wrong.

I overdid it with the ice and burned myself... 😓

I managed to swim and hit the gym today, no issues with lack of energy this time. I did find it pretty hard to work out after swimming though. I guess going a week without doing two activities back-to-back made my body lose its rhythm for high-intensity training or maybe it was for some other reason I don't know. The event that was supposed to happen last Saturday already has a new date, it's been moved to the 29th. I'm thinking of keeping both activities during the week of the 29th and only resting on the 28th.

As for People1_4 and People1_5 👩, I feel like keeping only the second and the fourth, since that way the ribbons, hairstyles and skirts have varied styles and it still connects to the design of the Character and Bust, in People1_4 case. By the way, these differences and others I noticed throughout this whole process make me think about how these RTP's are built among different artists. I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but I regret not asking her, MACK, about that in the interview.

Still feeling pain... 🏃‍♂️😖🚶‍♂️...🏃‍♂️😖🚶‍♂️...🧊🦵

I woke up early, as usual, made my coffee before hitting the gym. I still haven't received any update about the rescheduling of the swimming event. After finishing my workout, I thought about going for a run to see if the shin splints pain had gone away. Unfortunately, it hadn't. I only ran two segments of the route and whenever I felt pain, I stopped and walked back. I spent the rest of the day icing both legs, I really hope it’s nothing serious.

People1_3 and People5_3 🧑, up to this point, I had been taking advantage of the differences between the Face/Bust and Character designs from the previous ones, but this time both are quite similar. I even tweaked the hair on the second sprite to make it resemble the Face/Bust more, while I considered making the third sprite a bit fat.. Then I made the first and fourth sprites, which are just recolors. Now I'm not sure whether to keep all four or make the third one slim again, keep the Character style hair and stick with just the two in the center of the image.