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.

Damn electronic gate... aaah ⚡📉

Another bad morning for my workouts 😢. I woke up early to make scrambled eggs with banana and cheese, but then I noticed the power was out. To open my house gate, I had to unlock the gate motor manually. Unfortunately, it had been a long time since I last touched that mechanism and I couldn't get it unlocked in time. By then, my swimming had already started, so I gave up.

I even sent a message to my city's power company chatbot and it replied that there had been an incident overnight and it would take some time to fix. Not even six minutes after the class started at 7:00 AM, the power came back on... It feels like this month started off on the wrong foot, it rained with lightning on Saturday and now on Tuesday I couldn't swim or go to the gym.

This date, 11/11, reminds me that in the year 2011, eleven weddings were held on that same date in Japan or was it on 12/12/2012? I’m not sure why my memory holds on to random stuff like that 😑.

Just like before, I decided to make the Girl 👧 from People1_2 and People5_2 a bit different from the Character design. I tried giving her a similar dress, but since she "grew up" in this new format, it looked pretty strange to me. I don't think I'll go back to edit the People characters that are used as NPCs in games. Unfortunately, only the Face/Bust art for the People characters up to number 4 was ever made, just like in the 2000/2003 version. I never understood those decisions, leaving parts of the RTP without art, with only some getting Battlers/Faces and others not... So the main difference was the Face/Bust design for People1_2, which now uses pink tones instead of red, almost making her look like a different character.

Is killing alien dogs wrong? 👽🐕💥🔫👩‍✈️

Unfortunately, it rained around 5:20 AM on Saturday. I had already woken up at 4:30 AM to make my coffee, scramble some eggs, pack my backpack, and change clothes ahead of time for the event that was supposed to start at 6:00 AM. I was really disappointed when they had to cancel it because of the thunder, even though it wasn't that bad and by 6:10 AM, the rain has already slowed down and there was no more thunder. Since I had already eaten, drank my coffee mixed with cinnamon, cocoa powder, honey and taken my creatine, I couldn't fall back asleep. To shake off the frustration, I decided to play a bit more Zero Tolerance, continuing from where I left off last week.

I think I missed a secret room inside Floor 163. I remembered there were cameras with alarms on this floor of the building, when the alarms went off, doors would open and enemies would rush you, which was risky. So I destroyed the cameras from a distance. But when I reached the far south of the map, I found a completely sealed room... too late.

Honestly, that building level wasn’t hard. It was really easy to find shotgun ammo on every floor and the robots weren't that tough either. I even used the Laser Aimed Gun they drop when they die, but it's not very accurate and takes a lot of shots to bring down the enemy robots. The only real trouble I had was with an infected human enemy who threw a grenade, but since I was wearing a vest, I was protected and didn't let them get close again. The maps have wide spaces, so you just need to move slowly and take them out one by one. The dogs, they went down easily with a shotgun from a distance. I stockpiled the Rocket Launcher up to Floor 151 to fight the boss, after clearing the maps, I collected a total of 60 rockets and only used 10 on the boss, leaving 50 for the next stage in the Sub-Basement. However, I ended up losing my bulletproof vest, which is a very important item. Even so, I was well-equipped with 99 Pulse Laser, 50 Rocket Launcher, 60% Fire Extinguisher, 99 Shotgun and 6 Handgun rounds, thanks to the character's unique ability to use handgun ammo and her superior firearm skill compared to the others on the character select screen.

The 2nd phase was quick. I could’ve continued playing the Sub-Basement, but I'll leave that for next week. I woke up early and had breakfast really early, so I got hungry again before lunch. I also need to review my studies, it's good to keep things balanced. I don’t want to spend the whole day gaming or binge-watching series and even doing pixel art all day can get exhausting. So I try to divide my day with different activities to avoid burnout.

On Sunday, I got up later. I wanted to stay in bed longer but couldn't. Since it rained through the night and early morning, my sleep was great. I caught up on some anime series like I usually do on weekends.

Boku no Hero, It felt like a final episode, but it wasn't. It was one of those episodes where the side characters reminisce about moments with the protagonist from previous seasons. There are so many characters in this universe, some I barely remembered. The animation is still excellent and the story is quite different. The anime keeps delivering great fights and memorable scenes between various characters. I wouldn't mind if the ending went in a different direction instead of relying on the usual display of overwhelming powers and massive explosions.

Spy x Family, Great setup for the next episode! I feel like the story is progressing and getting closer to the Desmonds. It's already the third season, so the characters and their story arcs need to evolve.

To Your Eternity, So they became too small to be noticed, yet they still seem to have traces of evil. Also, Mizuha attacked her mother, so she definitely has a Nokker inside her. If Fushi lays eggs, would the offspring be natural? Since he copies the genetics of objects and beings, I think so.

Gnosia, A cat passing through a guy’s neck, never thought I'd see a design like that. This anime is really unique. They even added a "Doctor" role to the game, I mean, anime. A story with time loops really needs fresh ideas to keep us entertained.

The Long Walk, That’s right... a movie among the anime list. I felt like watching something with real actors for a change and I'd seen the trailer for this movie a while ago, it caught my interest. I liked how it was put together, the situations each participant faces, their struggles, their personalities and the actor's performances. From what I read online, the ending is different in the movie than in the original book. I read the book's ending and between the two, I preferred the movie, it felt more satisfying. I think I'd have done the same.

Starting the week going to the gym, I struggled a bit. Maybe I didn't eat enough dinner last night, or maybe it's the lack of sleep... or perhaps the days I skipped workouts to rest before the event that didn’t even happen. I'm not sure, but I was feeling unmotivated and ended up skipping my run. I'll wait to see if the swimming event happens this Saturday,  if not, I'll go back to doing two workouts in the morning, one after the other. After the gym, I worked and studied until night.

Since last week was so busy and tight, I almost lost motivation to continue with the redesigns and palette adjustments for a few days. So I decided to switch to the People sets, since they only have Face/Bust and Character as design variations, it might give me a little boost to stay on track until I finish them. I started with People1_1 and People5_1, the Boy👦, unlike other RTPs, in this case, set 5 is just a recolor of set 1, with no changes to the character's features, just color swaps. Initially, I had planned only two designs in the center of the image following the Face/Bust idea. For People5_1, I thought about improving the outfit to my liking. I ended up making two more versions for both sets, faithfully following the Character design, but I still prefer of center sprites.

Anything goes to win! 🥇🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏊‍♂️

Today I woke up a bit later than usual because I skipped the gym to let my body rest for tomorrow. I also started shaving the remaining body hair early in the morning, while it was still bright out. In case you're wondering why I shave before swimming events, it's because it reduces drag in the water while swimming. Just look at professional swimmers who compete, in swimming and other endurance sports, every little detail matters. For example, the proper way to pull with your arm in the water to maximize power and movement, the correct leg position when kicking in freestyle or in another sport like running, how the right foot strike and body posture can help you gain more distance while reducing impact on parts of the leg that can easily get injured.

I remember there was a time when full-body swimsuits were banned in competitions because, just like swim caps that keep your hair from getting soaked and therefore reduce weight and drag in the water, those suits were cutting drag so much that records were being broken too easily.

Finishing up the Spiritual set, God as the eighth design has a slightly more interesting design variation than Goddess, in my opinion.
Recapping the design order, 1º Battler VX Ace (ART BOMB Inc.), 2º Battler VX (Miho Midorikawa), 3º Face/Bust (Fumio Minagawa) and 4º Character (MACK).
I know that pointy ears are common for magical creatures other than elves, but looking at these four, the third one to me would be a deity for the elves, while the second would be for humans. The first and fourth could represent, respectively, the elder and the middle-aged ones.

“A goddess, a crazy woman, a sorceress. She's amazing.” 🎶

I woke up more rested today. This time, I swam just 2 km at an easy pace, using fins for the last thousand meters. The trainer made the session lighter so it wouldn't interfere with our swimming event on Saturday. When I got home, I started shaving my arms and back, tomorrow I'll shave my legs. I always used to shave before competitions when I was a teenager, it's been so long that I’d forgotten the feeling afterward, like when you put on a shirt or dry your arms with a towel. Now I don’t have to rub the towel over and over to dry my back, arms and chest.

Spiritual_7, Goddess, honestly I think I could have made only these versions: Battler VX (2nd), Battler VX Ace + Face/Bust (1st and 3rd) and of course, the 4th matching the Character design like all the previous ones. I believe three designs are enough since they all look very similar. The Battler VX, for instance, looks like a Goddess corrupted by something or someone.