So, what with how I’ve been updating you guys, You’ve probably already put together that I’m not 100% sticking to the source material, Undertale, when it comes to certain designs. This is mainly in part of one defining thing:

What with how Undertale’s works, it’s a bit difficult making certain characters express more than they already do. Don’t get me wrong, characters are expressive as hell in Undertale, hell just look at the Skeleton Brothers, Sans’s face barely even moves, and he expresses more emotion than a majority of triple-a game characters do. But the thing is, Undertale characters usually express enough so that you know they’re feeling something. Past that, expression is largely left up to the player imagining how the character speaks. Like, here, I compiled the original sans face sprites from his battle sprite, which expresses pretty much the same as his overworld portrait, and I lined them up to match RPG Maker VX Ace’s Faceset chart:

It’s enough of course, and given Undertale’s storytelling it’s all that’s really needed.
But I decided to touch up the portraits a bit, made them a fair bit more expressive, and here’s what I ended up with:

Sure, it’s just a couple extra pixels per face, but in the end, the face’s tell so much more, and they express more. In the end, that’s what I aim for. I want these characters to be able to express so much more that what’s already there.

In fact, while we’re looking at sans, why not talk about the more rrrrenowned of the Brothers, Papyrus! I put this Faceset together from his head’s from his battle sprite, just like with Sans.

Much like Sans, Papyrus himself expresses enough with fairly basic expressions, though he does go bug eyed when he’s visibly “triggered”. But, as I was going over the sprites, I decided that this simply wouldn’t be enough for his “moments” in Sanstale. Ultimately, given how small the sprite is, and how much more time it would take to tinker with it to get something new, like I did with sans, I decided to give up reworking the sprites,

and I just sorta made my own:

Now, this is primarily where I let creative liberty take over. Note how instead of keeping his narrow, elliptical eyes, I opted to merge his face a little bit with Sans’s to pull off similar, or even more over the top expressions than he is already known for. This is my main design philosophy. If you’re working with characters and media that can spare some “squash and stretch”, use that, and turn them into hyper-animated, really emotive characters.

That’s all I really wanted to enlighten you all on. I suppose as a general update, i’m still collecting/creating assets for use in the Game. Once I have everything I need for now, I’ll really pile into finishing the “first chapter” of the game. Thankfully, production has really picked up as of late, so it should happen eventually rather than on some non-specific blue moon.

Oh, and while I’m at it, I should tell you guys, I’ve been really getting into writing the Prologue for the Game as it’s own, novelized story. For those of you already familiar with my DeviantART, you’ve likely already read the first chapter. And you probably already have seen that wow, it’s my first chapter. Don’t worry, I plan on rewriting that… atrocity at a later date. As for soon, I’m almost done with the second chapter of the prologue in my sta.sh. So, expect that at some point I guess.